Everything Beautiful Began After Part 4

It would soon be time to go home.

Her nose filled with the smell of her grandfather's stew.

The dull light of Tuesday afternoon.

The France of legend was a place unknown to Rebecca. It was a place from which the modern youth had been tacitly excluded. She had never been to central Paris-to the museums. Despite wanting to be an artist, she was afraid she might see her mother and then scare her off completely, or worse, that she wouldn't recognize her. But she had seen the Eiffel Tower at New Year's Eve on television.

The Museum of the Ancient Agora was a long yellow corridor with tall gla.s.s cases and female security guards who took no pleasure in people coming in.

Henry led Rebecca to a case that at first looked empty.

Inside, was a shallow box that held mounds of dry earth from which fragments of bone were visible. Henry pointed to an abrupt line of jaw, a delicate femur, a few lingering teeth.

"It's the grave of a child," he said. "She was about three years old when she died. See those bracelets?"

Rebecca nodded.

"Well, she was buried with them on her wrists, and so they lie now in the position she had worn them when they laid her in the coffin."

"When did she die?"

"About three thousand years ago."

Rebecca looked at the child's remains for a long time. People walked around her.

"Why do I feel so sad?" she said to Henry. "She'd be dead anyway by now."

Henry nodded but didn't walk away until she was ready.

They shuffled slowly past cases of small stone figures, pots, bowls, a child's commode, and jewelry. They paused before a case of small lids with writing on each one.

"Ostraka," Henry said. "The names of people who the citizens wanted exiled."

"Why?"

"I don't know, maybe they were a.s.sholes."

Henry read the names of the a.s.sholes: Onomastos Perikles Aristeides Kallias Kallixenos Hipparchos Themistokles Boutalion "If enough people wrote the same name, that person would be asked to leave the city for ten years," Henry said.

"I wonder what would happen to them," Rebecca mused.

"What happens to anyone in exile-they are finally free."

"That's a lovely thing to say," Rebecca said.

"Is it?"

"Yes, because it's us."

Henry laughed. "We're in exile?"

Rebecca nodded. "We're free from the duties of fate."

Henry smiled. "What a wonderful idea."

Then they pa.s.sed a cabinet of things found at the bottom of a well. There were oil lamps-which Henry said were probably dropped in at night, after being balanced on the edge as the bucket was lowered and raised. There were fragments of bowls and a ca.s.serole dish, which someone who lived close to the well must have brought to fill. There was also a small vase in the shape of a child that would have been very valuable in its time. Rebecca told Henry that it was her favorite piece.

"Because," she explained, "it will always be a mystery why people toss out valuable things."

"They do, don't they?" Henry said quietly, pondering the idea. "Let's go somewhere and think about it."

Outside they found an empty marble bench. Henry opened the dusty leather briefcase he carried with him. Inside was a bottle of water, a slim book, and some interesting rocks he'd found.

He opened the bottle and offered it to her first. Instead, Rebecca impulsively pulled a notebook from his bag, opened it, and read a line.

"Why is there not nothing?"

"Isn't it the most interesting thing you've ever heard?" Henry said.

Rebecca grinned. "Yes-did you write it?"

"No," Henry said. "I copied it, but here's something," he said, pa.s.sing her the bottle of water.

As she drank, several drops escaped her lips and rolled down her chest making tracks across her skin through the sweat and dust.

She saw Henry look, and their eyes met in a single moment of understanding.

In the marketplace around them, the sun was beginning to set and the narrow lanes of Monastiraki swelled with hungry people.

Chapter Seven.

Henry's apartment was in a working-cla.s.s neighborhood, beside the metro tracks. Although he had very little furniture, piles of books softened the s.p.a.ce and gave it a sense of home. Henry and Rebecca sat on his balcony overlooking a fountain. Couples perched at its edge-leaning toward the water and dipping their hands. A few dark leaves had sunk to the bottom, held in place by the rushing water. Children lowered their small bodies carefully into the cool depths. Then an angry voice from a balcony and the children scattered like marbles rolling away.

On the rickety table before them lay two whole fish that Henry had rubbed with garlic and lemon before roasting.

A neighbor had left them in a box at Henry's front door, with instructions on how Henry should prepare and cook them. Henry also cut a brick of feta into thin slices, between which he slipped leaves of mint and basil.

"Dip them in oil like this," he said.

Then he opened more Greek wine by holding the bottle between his knees. He explained to Rebecca why he'd come to Athens.

Like her, he was from a small cottage, but in Wales, on a hillside.

"It was like camping every day," he confessed. "The house smelled of wet magazines and I shared my bed with a dozen animals."

"A dozen?"

"At least."

"Do you speak French?"

"In bits,"

"Like your work then," she said.

"Exactly-how did you know that?"

"When we were walking in the marketplace, you mentioned the bones."

"Oh."

And from the remains of the fish that lay on his plate, Henry explained how bones grow, how they change, and a few of the intricacies involved with his work.

Rebecca said that it was impossible for an artist to draw a person without seeing them alive, at least once.

Henry folded his arms appreciatively.

"Only Michelangelo could resurrect the dead," she went on. "I heard a story where a Roman statue was found about fifteen hundred years after it had been sculpted. It was intact except for a missing arm. Michelangelo was asked to sculpt a new one. Despite serious concern at the angle of the new arm in relation to the body, Michelangelo insisted that it was anatomically correct-that his arm was an exact replica of the missing arm. A few hundred years later, a farmer found a heavy piece of marble in his field outside the city of Rome, which turned out to be the original missing arm from the statue."

"And?" Henry exclaimed, ashing his cigarette.

"It was exactly the same shape and dimensions as the one Michelangelo had made."

"Amazing story."

"I'm not sure I'll ever make a living from painting," Rebecca admitted, "but if I work hard, I might get to a certain standard-maybe good enough to exhibit in Paris."

"That's exciting," Henry said, "and enviable."

"Enviable?"

"Yes," Henry explained, "most people don't have such a pa.s.sion for something. When you do, it stands out."

Rebecca asked him if it felt personal, taking people's bones from the soil.

"No, but I suppose it is. I'm their last point of contact."

"It sounds as though you wish you could say 'hope,' their last point of 'hope.' "

Henry thought for a moment. "But I'm a scientist; I would never say that. There's a reason why people die, and it's often straightforward-nothing to get emotional about."

Then he looked over the balcony. A man was brushing his dog next to the fountain. The dog was standing very still with his tongue out.

"How about those human remains," Rebecca said.

Henry smiled at her.

"I wonder what will happen to mine," she laughed. "I wonder what will remain of my life-who will find my body."

Henry nodded.

"Will anyone remember the way I felt?" she said and then forked the last few pieces of flesh from under the spine of her fish.

Henry removed the plates.

"I'll be back in a minute."

Rebecca sat alone on the balcony as Henry disappeared into the bright kitchen. It was getting dark. More people had gathered at the fountain. Three old men had taken off their shoes. They lit cigarettes. The smoke drifted above them, unfolding its wispy arms until it reached Rebecca as the faint aroma of something on fire.

"Are you ever going back to Wales?" Rebecca shouted toward the kitchen.

"No," Henry bellowed. "Would you care for more wine?"

"Oui, oui, of course," she shouted. "I'm a French girl after all."

Henry returned with a fresh bottle and a packet of Greek cigarettes.

"Why did you come to Athens really?" she asked.

"I'm an archaeologist-so I need ancient places."

"But people die everywhere."

"But they have to have died a long time ago," Henry said, and found her hand under the table for the second time that day. "It's most interesting to me if they died before the invention of written language, because in the absence of records, the way someone is buried tells us so much about what was important to them when they were alive."

"Did you grow up close to Paris?" He poured a heavy gla.s.s of wine. Rebecca shook her head.

"I think someone once said that Paris is the most modern of ancient cities, while New York is the most ancient of modern cities," Henry said.

"Who said it?"

"I forget now-were you always a painter?"

She touched her chest. "In here, yes, but I worked for Air France for a few years."

"Air France?"

"As a flight attendant."

"Is that why your English is so good?"