Carol Goodman - The Night Villa

CONTENTS

For Nora

There also stands the gloomy house of Night;

ghastly clouds shroud it in darkness.

Before it Atlas stands erect and on his head

and unwearying arms firmly supports the broad sky,

where Night and Day cross a bronze threshold

and then come close and greet each other.

HESIOD, Theogony

Acknowledgments

Id like to thank my editor, Linda Marrow, for her always insightful editing and my agent, Loretta Barrett, for her continued support and encouragement. Thanks, also, to all those at Ballantine whose hard work made this book possible: Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, Kim Hovey, Brian McLendon, Gene Mydlowski, Lisa Barnes, Dana Isaacson, and Junessa Viloria. Thanks, too, to Nick Mullendore and Gabriel David at Loretta Barrett Books.

As always, Im grateful to my circle of first readers: Laurie Bower, Gary Feinberg, Marge Goodman, Rick LaFleur, Lauren Lipton, and Scott Silverman and Nora Slonimsky.

I couldnt have written this book without my husband, Lee Slonimsky, who wrote the sonnet to Wilhemina Jashemski and the Golden Verse of Pythagoras. It was Lees research into the life of Pythagoras that gave me the idea to create the Tetraktys.

Finally, I owe special thanks to the late Ross Scaife, professor of classics at the University of Kentucky, who gave me the idea for the Papyrus Project. To Ross, who died in 2008, and his wife, Cathy Scaife, I owe not only the inspiration for this book but many years of invaluable friendship and encouragement.

W hen the first call came that morning I was with a student, so I didnt answer it.

Dont worry, I told Agnes Hancock, one of my most promising classics majors, the machine will get it.

But it stopped after the third ring.

I guess whoever was calling changed his mind, Agnes said, relacing her fingers to conceal the ragged cuticle on her right thumb. Shed been gnawing on it when I found her waiting outside my doorten minutes early for my eight oclock office hours. Most of my students were sound asleep at this hour, which was why I held my office hours so early: to discourage all but the most zealous. Agnes was definitely a zealot. She was on a scholarship, for one thing, and had to maintain a high average, but Agnes was also one of those rare students who seemed to have a genuine passion for the material. Shed gone to a high school with a rigorous Latin program and gotten the highest score on the national Latin exam in the state. Not shabby for a state as big as Texas. She wasnt just good at declensions, though; she had the ability to translate a line of ancient poetry and turn it into poetry again, and the agility of mind to compare the myths from one culture to those of another. She could have a successful academic career in classics or comparative literature. The only problem was that her personal life was often chaotica result, I suspected, of her looks.

Agnes was blessed with the kind of classic American beauty that you thought only existed in fashion magazinesuntil you saw someone like her walking down the street. Long, shiny blond hair, flawless skin, straight teeth she was born with, blue eyesthe kind of Barbie-looks I would have traded my dark hair and olive skin for when I was growing up. I couldnt complain though; the enrollment in my Latin and mythology classes had never been so high before Agnes declared her major. There were always a couple of suitors waiting outside on the quad when we emerged from Parlin Hall, but they had been replaced this year by one in particular: a wild-eyed philosophy major who pursued her relentlessly through the fall and then became so jealously possessive of her when she finally agreed to go out with him that shed broken up with him over spring break. I hadnt seen him since then and Id heard that he dropped out. Now I wondered if he was back. I have a feeling the torn cuticles and dark shadows under her eyes are his doing, but Im afraid that if I ask her about it shell burst into tears. And that wont do either of us any good. Were both due in Main Building at nine oclock for the Classics Departments summer internship interviews. Which is why, no doubt, shed camped out on my doorstep so early this morning.

It was probably someone calling about the final, I say, reaching toward the phone. Ill turn the ringer off so we wont be disturbed.

Oh no, you dont have to do that, Dr. Chase. It wasnt anything that important Shes already half out of her chair. Id forgotten how easily spooked she gets when attention, good or bad, is directed at her. It surprised me at first because I thought that, with her looks, shed be used to it, but Ive gathered through talks weve had about her childhood that her father, a Baptist minister in a small west Texas town, preached endlessly against the sin of vanity. She seems to think its her fault when boys fall in love with her, which has made it all the more difficult to deal with her possessive ex-boyfriend.

Dont be silly, Agnes, I do it all the time. Believe me, theyll just e-mail me instead. My inbox will be filled with a dozen questions designed to ferret out the exact passage thatll be on the exam. Anything to avoid actually reading the whole of Metamorphoses.

But Ovid writes so beautifully, Agnes says, her eyes widening in genuine disbelief. Why would anyone not want to read everything he wrote? I especially love his version of the Persephone and Demeter story. Im using it for my presentation.

I smile, not just because of the pleasure of a shared literary passion, but because my ploy has worked. At the mention of her favorite poet a calm has settled over Agnes. Shes sunk back into her chair and her hands, released from the knot shed wrung them into, fan open, loose and graceful, in her lap, like one of those paper flowers that expand in water.

Is that what you wanted to see me about? Your proposal to Dr. Lawrence for the Papyrus Project?

Agnes hesitates and I see her gaze stray out my second-story window toward the quad, where a few students are lounging in patches of shade cast by the live oaks. Its not yet nine, but the temperature is already in the eighties and the forecast predicts itll break a hundred by noon. The sunlight between the trees is so bright that its hard to make out anything but amorphous shapes in the shade. So if Agnes is checking to see if her ex-boyfriend is waiting for her, shell be looking in vain.

Its on the role of women in mystery rites? I prompt. Since my specialty is women in the ancient world, Ive been coaching Agnes on her proposal.

Yes, she answers, tearing her eyes away from the window. I plan to argue that the frescoes in the newly excavated section of the Villa della Notte, which was buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, depict a mystery rite similar to the little mysteries of Agrai, which combined Eleusinian and Dionysian elements.

And can you give a brief definition of mystery rites and of those two in particular?

Sure. A mystery rite was a secret form of worship that revealed some kind of truth or doctrine only to those initiated to the rite. They usually had something to do with the afterlife. The most famous were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which got their name because they were originally celebrated in Eleusis, Greece, and although we dont know exactly what went on because they were, well