The Athenian Murders Read Free Page A

mumbling.
    When Heracles looked at Itys again, he saw that she was watching him.
    'What happened?' asked Itys. 'The captain of the guard told me only that a goatherd found him dead a little way from Lycabettus
    'Aschilos, the doctor, claims it was a wolf attack.'
    'It would take many wolves to kill my son!'
    And not a few to overcome you, O noble woman, he thought. 'Doubtless there were many,' he said.
    Itys began speaking in a strangely gentle voice, not addressing Heracles, as if she were alone, intoning a prayer. The mouths of the cuts on her pale, angular face were bleeding again.
    'He left two days ago. I bade him farewell as I had many times before, unconcerned - he was a grown man well able to take care of himself . . . 'I'm going to spend the day hunting, Mother,' he told me. 'I'll fill a knapsack with quails and thrushes for you. I'll set traps with my nets for hares.' He said he would return that night, but he did not. I was going to chide him, but...'
    Her mouth opened suddenly, as if about to pronounce an enormous word. She remained thus a moment, jaw tensed, the dark ellipse of her maw motionless in the silence, 3 before closing it gently and murmuring: 'But now I cannot face and rebuke Death ... because it will not return with my son's countenance to ask my forgiveness .. . My beloved son!'
    3 As the attentive reader may already have noticed, all the metaphors and images in the second half of this chapter relate to 'mouths' and 'maws', as well as 'screams' and 'roars'. What we have here, obviously, is an eidetic text. (T's N.)
    Slight tenderness in her is more terrible than Stentor's roar, Heracles thought admiringly. "The gods can be unjust at times,' he said, because he felt he had to say something, but also because, deep down, he believed it.
    'Don't speak of them, Heracles. Do not speak of the gods!' Itys' mouth trembled with rage. 'It was the gods who sank their teeth into my son's body, and smiled as they tore out and devoured his heart, breathing in the warm scent of his blood with relish! Oh, do not speak of gods in my presence!'
    It was as though Itys was trying, vainly, to subdue her own voice, issuing as a powerful roar from her maw, imposing silence all around her. The slaves had turned to look at her; even Elea was silent, listening to her mother with mortal reverence.
    'Cronius Zeus has brought down the last great oak of this house while it was yet in leaf! ' curse the gods and their immortal caste!' She raised her arms, hands open, in a fearsome, precise gesture. Then, slowly lowering them and her voice, she added, with sudden contempt: 'The highest praise the gods may expect from us is our silence!'
    The word 'silence' was torn by a triple clamour, which penetrated deep into Heracles' ears and remained with him as he left the terrible house - a ritual, threefold scream, from the slaves and from Elea, their mouths open, jaws almost unhinged, forming a single throat rent by three distinct, high-pitched, deafening notes - the funereal roar of the maw. 4
    4 I find it surprising that, in his scholarly edition of the original, Montalo should make no mention of the powerful eidesis present in the text, at least throughout the first chapter. But maybe he didn't know about this strange literary device. It's not unusual to find translators, even among the most erudite, who are not familiar with a literary technique which may, in any case, have been used by only a handful of Greek writers - in some ways the most celebrated ones -and whose main feature is precisely that it is only noticed by those who know about it.By way of example for the curious reader , and also to be honest about how I came to discover the image hidden in this chapter (for the translator must be honest in his notes, lying is the author's perogative) I will recount the brief conversation I had yersterday with my friend Helena, whom I respect as a learned and highly experienced colleague. The subject of work came up and I told her