Abroad Read Online Free PDF Page B

was indecipherable—Latin? No, Etruscan, according to the materials on the wall. I peered at the violent scenes depicted: a woman with a head of snakes, warriors tearing each other’s limbs, and the griffin, its beak thrust forward, its great claws splayed in warning.
    There was one subject that appeared again and again, the meaning of which I couldn’t make out: a man carrying a struggling girl—sometimes small, sometimes a woman—to a rock. In one hand, he held a sort of bowl over her head. Around him, men and women were howling, their hands over their eyes. In one or two of the scenes, a knife was drawn.
    I stared at the girl for a long time. After a while, I heard a group of heels clicking down the cloister behind me, as well as the voice of an Italian woman. I looked over and saw a rather efficient-looking signora in a navy summer suit, leading a wealthy-looking German couple who, I couldn’t help thinking, seemed a bit overwhelmed by the amount of information raining down upon them.
    “The Etruscans … a savage people … life cheap and extinguishable … yet unheard-of sophistication … mysterious, complete disappearance … an aqueduct we could use even today…”
    “ Scusa ,” I said after a while, hearing a pause in her commentary. The woman glanced over in that way only an Italian matron can, challenging, slightly annoyed, yet tolerant. She wore a large, expensive hat and looked pointedly at my grubby shorts.
    “ Sì? ”
    “Can you tell me what this image is?”
    She turned to her charges. The husband, a stout man about ten years older than my father, was observing my legs with keen interest.
    “Iphigenia,” she said. “Stabbed as a sacrifice to Artemis.”
    “Why?”
    The guide looked pleased at the opportunity. “Ah, this is a famous story. Agamemnon killed a deer in Artemis’s sacred forest, so she stole his wind when he sailed to Troy. A prophet said the only way to start the wind again was to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia. And so…”
    “They slit her neck on the rock.”
    It was another voice—British, educated. Young, yet commanding. I turned around expecting to see a boy. But it wasn’t a boy. He looked my age, but someone with so fierce a face—a beautiful, terrible face, with a nose proud as a hawk; wide, kind lips; and deep-set eyes that glittered in the shadows—could be nothing but a man. He was very tall. I wanted to go closer. It felt as though by being near him, I myself would grow more delicate.
    “Agamemnon was being punished, and Iphigenia was his daughter. It was the greatest sacrifice.”
    The man was still looking at me intently, which left me feeling not altogether unpleasant.
    “Yes, that’s right,” the guide said, beaming. She obviously liked the looks of this well-dressed, tall stranger much better than mine.
    “So her father killed his daughter himself?” I asked. “To please the gods?”
    “You are too interested in this gory story,” the German said, catching my eye and winking.
    His wife studied her guidebook, ignoring us both.
    “This is a very prevalent image in Grifonia,” the guide pressed, struggling to regain control of her charges. “You may see Iphigenia in several of the squares, in the base of the ruined temples, in the palace…”
    “Why?” I asked.
    “There’s the theory that women were sacrificed in Grifonia,” the British man said, looking at the urn. “For fortune in war, or crops. Sacrificed to the gods.”
    “A theory based on nothing,” the guide snapped. “What, you have credentials?” She lifted her badge, as if to show her superiority. “There is no proof. And certainly it would be pre-Etruscan. A tribal practice, if at all.”
    “It’s all stories!” the German erupted. And then, almost pouting: “Though this is not a happy one.”
    “It’s true,” the wife said, finally looking up at him. I was surprised to see she was perhaps only three or four years older than I was. “It’s a sad, complicated