Sophie and the Sibyl (30 page)

Mr. Lewes apprised me of the arrangements you have agreed with Tauchnitz, and while I regret that we shall not have the pleasure of promoting the original in the Continental reprint this time, I trust that you will not forget us when the Cabinet edition of the Collected Works is to be considered. Nothing would give me greater pleasure, or be a higher honour, than to publish you here, in both languages.

(There, thought Wolfgang, that should do it. Be a gentleman. No recriminations. Don’t mention figures at this stage. He dipped his pen again into the glass well.)

Max, as you no doubt already know from the
Times
reports, has carried off a little coup with his discovery of the original statue representing Lucian. I shall never forget your comments on the famous
Fragment
when you discussed that unsettling work here with Max, in this very office. He has become a more stable and dedicated person. I firmly believe that this is due to your influence, for after his journey to Stuttgart all those years ago, he returned, chastened, transformed, more serious and responsible. Your wisdom, madam, transfigures lives, and raises our sights to the ideals we might achieve, enables us to become better men.

(‘Transfigures’ sounds convincing. She has a religious turn, and likes to see herself as a saviour.)

Max is at present on his way to London in company with his young wife and the great Professor Marek. They are transporting their rare find to the British Museum, and hope to return with the bas-relief of the
Erinys
, who forms part of the glorious frieze, also discovered at Miletus and at present incomplete. He longs to see you and Mr. Lewes again, and I trust he will bring back word of your good health and steady progress towards the completion of this glorious book.

I remain, madam, your loyal and devoted publisher

Wolfgang Duncker

(There, that should plant the seed for future negotiations. I’ve set out my stall and I’m open for business.)

Wolfgang patted the letter with his blotter, read it over again, checked for the duplication of flattering adjectives and then prepared the evening post, while his clerk made a fair copy. Wolfgang kept track of every obsequious phrase; he liked to think that his delicate insinuations were well judged.

(I haven’t sounded bitter or reproachful; softly, softly, that’s the way. Lewes is bound to read this out to her, as it’s billowing with compliments. Have I laid it on too thick? No, nothing here I can’t honestly repeat. The new book is powerful, no denying it, but why on earth does she have to drag in the Jews?)

Professor Marek’s younger sister had married an Englishman, a man not overeducated in classical languages, but good-natured and rich. The couple maintained a large white house in Regent’s Park, complete with carriages and stables, not half a mile from the Priory. Marian Evans and George Henry Lewes purchased a forty-five-year lease on this house at No. 21 North Bank, for £2,000 in August 1863, and had lived there ever since. The Priory stood on the edge of the canal, embedded in a garden of roses. Sophie and Max had therefore settled on a London perch uncannily close to the Sibyl’s lair.

Sophie, enchanted by the dynamic bustle of the London streets, wrote to her dear Mama and Papa that the multitudes churning up the mud, both in carriages and on foot, made Berlin’s wide boulevards seem comfortable and empty of all urgency. She loved the theatres, luminous in gas light, she watched the prostitutes in the Haymarket, gaudy as tropical birds, working the crowds. She galloped round the park on her host’s horses, enjoying the early white frosts, which gave way to ravishing floods of narcissi and yellow
jonquilles
. The London spring foamed over garden walls in white brushes of lilac, and thick green buds. But the greatest excitement for the young Countess presented itself in mechanised form: her hostess possessed a small fleet of bicycles.

She had a high-wheeler, later known as the penny-farthing, which she couldn’t ride, and a
vélocipède
that her husband had purchased in France. This astonishingly heavy machine sported a cranked axle, like the handle of a grindstone, which could be turned by the feet of the rider. Sophie read the accompanying instruction booklet. ‘The rider who wishes to stay upright and in command would be wise to pedal as rapidly as possible or take a spill in consequence.’ Once on board and held straight by two grooms Sophie padded out the saddle with a small cushion. After several inconclusive wobbles round the stable yard the intrepid Countess enrolled for an intensive course of lessons with a well-known bicycling expert. They battled with the oily
vélocipède
until she could handle corners unaided. Max watched, appalled, as his wife whirled away at speed.

1.  Always look where you’re going. (She didn’t.)

2.  Always sit straight. (Well, she always did that, especially at table.)

3.  Pedal evenly and use both legs. (Her boots vanished in a circular blur.)

4.  Pedal straight. (Corners, corners, Countess. Lean.)

5.  Keep the foot straight. (Both feet.)

6.  Hold the handles naturally. (Of course!)

7.  Don’t wobble the shoulders. (Never!)

8.  Hold the body still and sit down. (Sophie was anxious to keep her cushion firmly beneath her.)

9.  Don’t shake the head. (At this point her hat flew off. Max chased after his wife, who was even now flying over the winter potholes in a torrent of ribbons, cheered on by the footmen and grooms whose democratic spirit had begun to alarm him.)

10.  Sophie, Sophie, your hat!

She bicycled away round Regent’s Park alongside Professor Marek’s enthusiastic little sister, delightfully unchaperoned.

‘It’s quite a craze among the ladies, Max,’ grinned the vivid little Professor. ‘But don’t worry. As soon as our young Countess is in
anderen Umständen
, or as the English put it, an interesting condition, we’ll persuade her to give it all up.’

Max blushed and rubbed his chin.

The statue’s size caused a furore in the Museum, not because of the niche for which it was destined, and into which it fitted perfectly, but because the Director of Antiquities had set his heart on a theatrical coup, in which the veiled figure of Lucian would suddenly be unveiled, emerging from a mass of swirling red drapes to ecstatic exclamations. But the marble form settled so snugly into the designated space that removing any form of veil, let alone the heavy red velvet cape, already lying folded and ready, proved practically impossible. A screen? A curtain? Various solutions were proposed, then rejected. No screen tall enough could be procured at short notice, the curtain would have to go round a corner before the philosopher could be entirely revealed, and the necessary rails with runners needed an Isambard Kingdom Brunel to perfect the contraption. Lucian stared blankly at the gaggle of great minds, none as distinguished as the philosopher they honoured, who stood assembled before his mighty toes, disagreeing with one another, like new pupils seeking enlightenment.

And so it fell to Sophie, Countess von Hahn, addressing her Professor with ringing decisiveness, to slash the Gordian knot.

‘But didn’t Lucian teach in the marketplace at Miletus? So that everyone, even the poorest weavers and farmers, and all the artisans who worked in the port, could hear what he said? Well, why are we trying to hide him now? He taught in the open air. He said that hidden and secret things were dangerous. Aren’t we here to celebrate him and his philosophy? Not to devise some vaudeville trick?’

At this point, the Director of Antiquities, who disapproved strongly of uppity young women speaking out of turn, felt himself criticised and tried to intervene. Professor Marek tapped his elbow. Sophie bounded on.

‘Why don’t I weave a crown of laurels for him? As if he were an athlete or a victor at the games. He was a decathlon champion in his youth, wasn’t he? And we can lay flowers at his feet. Then anyone who comes in early can see him in all his splendour.’

Sophie cherished a possessive interest in the statue. In her imagination Lucian still belonged to her. She had first touched the greening feet of the worshipped saint in the dark church and known at once who he was, and while she may have been written out of history in the academic papers she still queened it over all others in the popular magazines and expensive memorial photographs. She gazed up at the curiously naked marble face; the body modestly clad in his toga of office, now immaculately cleaned, the features webbed with emotions and judgements. Professor Marek kissed the Countess’s gloved fingers. Her father’s money gave her the right to speak up whenever she chose.

‘Once more,
chère Madame
,’ he said in French, ‘you show us the way that leads to glory.’ To the assembled scholars and the Director of Antiquities he announced in English:

‘I find this idea charming. Flowers, of course, we must have flowers. I propose that the Countess’s suggestion be adopted at once.’

Max led his wife aside, capturing her hand, and stared at her, astonished. Her living beauty glowed, fair and luminous, before the cobalt blocks of the Assyrian warriors, pinched from Mesopotamia.

‘I had no idea that you had already read the
Letters to Myriam
– Lucian’s letter on secrets and the pernicious effect of the anger that is never spoken. I’m reading that section at the ceremony. In English and in Greek.’

‘But I haven’t.’

‘You haven’t? That’s not possible. You just quoted him verbatim.
That which is hidden and secret is always dangerous, because it serves an undeclared interest
.’

‘I didn’t say exactly that. It’s just a coincidence. And anyway, Max, that’s not a sacred piece of wisdom, it’s just common sense.’

Sophie kissed his cheek and grinned.

‘Come on, let’s go to the market and buy armfuls of bay leaves and red tulips.’ Red spring flowers, she had already decided, would set off the philosopher’s massive marble toes to perfection. And everyone seated before him at the ceremony would be gazing at his feet.

In fact the bay leaves had to be filched from the Royal Botanic Society Gardens and wound into a crown by the cook, who devised a cunning method of holding it all together with a shaved branch of pyracantha.

‘If he was still alive this would prick his forehead like the crown of thorns,’ said Sophie, holding the thing at arm’s length. ‘You go on ahead with this and the tulips, Max. I’ll get dressed and have a rest. But I’ll be down there for the inauguration ceremony by two o’clock. I hope the afternoon won’t be too dreary. There’s very little natural light in that gallery.’

She packed the laurel crown into a hatbox and waved him off in the front hall. Then she marched into the library, built up the fire with her own hands, despite the housemaid’s anxious circling patter, and climbed the movable stairs to the top shelves, looking for Lucian’s
Letters to Myriam
. And here they were, the bilingual edition in English and Greek. Sophie sniffed the unread volume, all the pages still uncut. She rang for a paper knife, pulled her chair close to the fire, kicked off her damp boots and sat down to read. ‘Letter VII: On Lies, Secrets and Silence’. Myriam understood Greek and Latin. Some said she was a Jewess, welcomed into Lucian’s household, a fugitive from the wars in Palestine. Other sources described her as a Christian, a convert who had known the first disciples. One thing remained certain, she had become the philosopher’s adopted daughter, and he had set her free, of his own volition. No child he chose would ever be his slave. The
Letters to Myriam
embodied his teachings on ethics, the metaphysics of daily life and the common good. References to the early practices of Christianity, scattered throughout the texts, ensured that the
Letters
remained topical, scoured by historians and theologians for evidence to prove their numerous theses. Sophie ploughed through a third of the turgid introduction, then gave up and sliced open the very pages Max deduced that she already knew.

All at once the clarity and distinctiveness of a unique, unsilenced voice spoke directly to her, as if she listened like the freed slave, the philosopher’s only daughter.

That great anger within you, that remains unacknowledged and unspoken, will corrode and destroy your soul. Did you not tell me the story of your master, the rabbi who drove the moneylenders out of the temple at Jerusalem, armed only with a scourge of small cords? And did he not also drive out the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers’ money, and overthrew the tables? So too should you drive out your anger. Confront that passion within you, and transform its force into a river you control, and you will no longer be its slave.

This fragment of wisdom from Lucian, addressed to an unknown woman in the first century, suddenly acquired an echo that seemed sinister and pertinent. London is the city of the Sibyl. Where is the woman who has held me up as vain, foolish and shallow, a just target for the world’s derision and contempt? Sophie kicked the fender with her stockinged foot. In the distance she heard a bell ringing and ringing through closed doors. Then the maid appeared, clutching a folded note.