‘Ptolemy. Your servant has not seen me before? He deserves a good whipping. I’m not getting any younger, you know. It’s not a secret that your ambitious library project is keeping me busy.’
‘I knew you were the right person for the job. It must be torture to leave your now primary home, is it not?’
‘It is indeed. It is indeed. May your ambition for it keep expanding together with its size, so as to keep me fit and sustain my soul.’
‘Well, you have always been fit. But some fresh air will not make you ill, let alone kill you. Demetrius, I have a mission for you. I hear some canny souls in Pergamon are attempting to bypass my ban on the export of papyrus by experimenting with a new material made of animal hides. I want to know what progress they have made.’
‘I will not ask whether your source is reliable.’ Demetrius saw Ptolemy’s thunderous expression, eyes shooting fire and shut up.
‘You’ve never questioned my information before. How dare you do so now?’
Demetrius was aware he had overstepped the mark and putting familiarity to one side, deployed a respectful tone suitable to the great king before him. ‘My king my intention was not to doubt you. Please forgive me.’ He could not help himself. He had to say it. But Ptolemy caught his thought before it was transformed into words.
‘You think it improbable, don’t you?’ ‘No, my Great King. I will go personally’ ‘First, do not patronise me, Demetrius. Drop the formalities. We’ve known each other for far too long. And though I would trust you with my life, you are to remain here. You are too valuable to me. I want you to send someone else that you can trust, but who is also expendable. The journey is perilous.’
‘As you wish. I believe I have someone in mind.’
‘Good.’ Ptolemy turned to look at his beloved city deep in thought. That was Demetrius’ cue to leave.
Demetrius bowed gently and walked away. Now, with that out of the way, Ptolemy needed to tend to two well-travelled visitors who had just landed in their midst from afar. He waited and when Demetrius was out of earshot he turned his attention to Hieronymus.
‘My dear Hieronymus, how is progress at the Pharos? Will I see my lighthouse finished, do you think, before I die? I have passed by in disguise and I did not like what I saw. Construction appears to have slowed lately. Work should have been even faster as I get older. I’m not getting any younger, you know. Maybe I should pay the site a visit, undisguised, to speed things up.’
Ptolemy paused and extended his arm towards the city before them. Hieronymus next to him was looking at his feet, deep in thought.
‘Hieronymus, feast your eyes. Do not ignore the feast before you at your feet. Isn’t it a spectacle? My creation in only a few years, out of nothing. Alexander may have planted the foundation stone, but it was I that gave it life and the nutrition to grow. And it has grown, beyond my expectations and wildest dreams. The greatest city on earth.’
Giorgos and Aristo were not far behind. But they had taken a detour. Aristo could never resist markets and the market by the harbour called to him like a flower to a bee.
Giorgos saw Aristo veering off course at every turn and soon after every attempt to correct his deviation, or so it seemed, from their intended destination when relief at such an apparent success quickly turned to annoyance. ‘Come on, Aristo, let’s go. Why are you going that way?’
‘I want to see that stall over there. Oh, and that one… Yes, I’ll have two of that… and… look at that… look at those pancakes and the honey… yes, two of those… and I have to get some of that.’
‘What’s got into you? You are behaving like an impetuous child. You sound as if you have regressed to the age of ten. Come on, leave that, we have to go.’
Aristo winked conspiratorially at Giorgos to remind him about such a thing as a sense of humour. ‘Hold your horses. How often do get the chance to be here? It’s never happened before and it’s not likely to happen again. Oh, what is that smell? Let me just see that stall over there. It will be the last one, I promise.’
Giorgos rolled his eyes to the heavens. But Aristo pretended to relent feigning disappointment. He was really playing with Giorgos after all. What Aristo was really looking for was for valuable manuscripts and he found a contact from whom he bought two with coins that he had found inside a small pocket in his chiton.
That would be their passport as visitors into the Great Library. Ptolemy, determined to make his Library the greatest in the world, decreed that every visitor to the city was obliged to leave behind a manuscript for the Library’s collection.
Giorgos and Aristo reached the great Library where, as visitors from Athens, and bringing with them the ultimately desirable gift to Ptolemy, two rare manuscripts, they expected to gain favour with the King and entry into the inner parts of the Library.
After a short meeting with Ptolemy, they were led on an honorary tour of the Library they had so generously endowed, and about which they had heard so much and were dying to see for themselves.
During the tour Giorgos and Aristo noticed that the building was unusually quiet for this time of the day. They asked their guide who simply smiled and looked away as if he did not understand their question.
As they were passing by shelf after shelf choked full and brimming to its lips with papyrus scrolls, their eyes caught a glimpse of something that looked unlike any of the expected contents of the collection, not a scroll but something shiny. It was only a brief glimpse that stared them in the eye and sent the light through their eyelids and burned their skin, as if rushing to brand itself, its memory upon them.
They both screamed, but their scream died inside their vocal chords that went on strike and never left their locked lips. Their guide seemed to be oblivious to their predicament and impervious to their reactions. He kept walking and smiling to himself. His lips seemed to be moving of their own volition, but nothing came out. His arms were glued to his sides, the movement of his hips was awkward and his walk unsteady.
Their guide then stopped in the great hall of the Library. He briefly looked around the numerous shelves extending as far as the eye could see, furiously searching for something. His stare seemed to settle on a point on the opposite wall, as if he could not see anything else in that magnificent space, as if his life depended on it. He was transfixed, but his face retained its mask of gentle expression, occasionally blighted by colour in his cheeks or knocked into the shape of a crooked smile.
Giorgos and Aristo’s eyes followed the guide’s gaze and settled on a strange small statue in a niche at eye level, above a shelf that seemed to hold a collection of strange manuscripts different from the others. They went close to study this little creation. It just did not fit in this exalted space.
They looked around at the statues having pride of place in their little heavily adorned niches near the ceiling. They seemed to have a theme, except for the small statue, which at closer inspection turned out to be a bust.
‘It looks Byzantine. What is it doing here?’
‘That’s what I would like to know.’
‘Aristo, the face looks familiar…’ Giorgos stopped and turned around as if in search of something. ‘Wait a minute. Where’s the guide? He seems to have just vanished into thin air. He was standing right there only a moment ago. And another thing, I cannot hear birdsong or the running water.’ He stared at the fountain. ‘Aristo it looks as if time has stopped, but we are still conscious and moving. What’s going on?’
Without warning the bust’s features became distorted and it came alive and started to speak. At the same time another voice rose behind them. They turned and they saw the guide standing before them again. Where had he disappeared to earlier?
The guide suddenly stopped talking. A huge smile broke on his face, which turned into a malevolent laugh that echoed around the hollowed space, building in volume and intensity to a high crescendo. The walls and the shelves were resonating.
Aristo felt his own body resonating. He looked over at Giorgos. He too seemed to be resonating and at the same frequency, like a suspension bridge tossed about by an earthquake. They both hit the ground at the same time, writhing in agony, covering their ears, holding their heads in their hands and shaking their head from side to side, in a vain attempt to banish this torture. The ordeal stopped as suddenly as it began.
Giorgos was surprised to discover he could still hear his voice; that he even had a voice to hear in the first place. He was relieved his ears had not been smashed to pieces together with his brain, which he would expect had turned to mash. But thankfully it hadn’t as it was not gibberish that came out of his mouth. ‘I don’t think I can take any more of this. First a burning light, now this. That’s a high cost to pay for this mission.’
‘Well, Giorgos, you know what they say. No pain, no gain.’
