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July 1993
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SO, IT’S COME to this, I’m an old man shivering beneath a thin blanket on a narrow bed waiting to be shipped out to a home for the feeble minded. What time is it anyway? The large clock on the wall seems to say 1:45, but that can’t be right, or is it? Who knows? My eyes are bad, and time’s gotten slippery lately. I used to be able to count on days and hours to behave themselves, to line up in an orderly queue and wait their turn, but now? The only thing I know for sure is that I’m cold and that my hip is killing me.
How did I wind up in Canada anyway, so far from Alwoodley and the Humber, another wandering Jew cast out on a foreign shore? My parents must have been just as surprised to find themselves in Great Britain. Thirty years after emigrating from Odessa, my mother, may her memory be a blessing, could barely speak English. Yulia Kanter was a sturdy soul with a kind heart and an unwavering devotion to her family, and here I am, an old man still yearning for the comfort of her arms.
There, you see, time’s slipped again and I’m ten years old waiting for her to take a honey cake from the oven. I fidget in my chair, fingering the slick silk of the hand embroidered tablecloth, hoping she doesn’t see the soup I’ve dribbled on the fringes. Time means nothing. I can still smell the garlic she hung around my neck to prevent colds in winter and the thread she made me bite while sewing a button on my shirt to ward off the malakh ha-movet.
Bess nearly wet herself when she heard that one, the bit with the thread. Her parents were enlightened Jews from Germany who’d cast off old superstitions even before they arrived in London a generation before my folks fled the Odessa pogroms of 1881. The memory of my mother hanging garlic around my neck makes me laugh out loud. The sound echoes eerily in the empty room and makes my fractured hip bone ache.
“My God, I’ve become a sentimental old fool. Bess would give me what for if she caught me wallowing in such nostalgic muck. I need hot tea and my medication. Where’s that call button they claim will bring a nurse? For God’s sake, they’ve pinned it to my pillow. They really do believe I’ve lost my marbles.
If Bess were alive, she’d never put up with this. She’d be sitting right there in that chair beside the bed reading something by Gabrielle Garcia Marquez and stopping every few minutes to share a passage with me. She’d make sure I had something to drink and that the nurses were looking after me. Where is she now? That’s what I want to know. Well, I’ll have the answer soon enough. How much longer can I cling to this leaky old skiff of a body? That woman on the ship was so like Bess, and she seemed to know me. I wonder if she had Bess’s childlike laugh. One more thing I’ll never know.
Everything’s farmished, I’m in a constant state of confusion. Cady, her mother, and Joanie are all mixed up in my head to the point where I don’t know what to think. Considering my mental state, it was a surprise when that Savas woman showed up yesterday asking for a consultation. I didn’t think anyone would want my opinion about anything anymore, although I’m still remarkably clear about the distant past. Its recent memories that fade like dreams.
Wouldn’t it be funny if she actually had something, a second Phaistos disc? I smile, imagining a groundbreaking article in the American Journal of Archaelogy. “Ancient professor uncovers new Rosetta Stone.” What do you think, Bess? Do you think the Archaeological Institute of America would give me a gold medal? Of course, I’ve been out of the game for a while, but a second Phaistos Disc, imagine.
“Mr. Kanter, do you need something? You pressed the call button.” It’s the nice nurse who came to my rescue the day that huckster took my money. I’m delighted to see she’s back on duty.
“Yes, thank you, I could use another blanket and a pain pill, and maybe a cup of tea.” I try to roll over to face her, but a sharp, shooting pain stops me cold. “Damn. How long do these hip fractures take to heal, anyway?” I try not to sound too plaintive, but I can hear a faint, childish whine in my voice.
She’s immediately at my side pretending to take my pulse, but I think she only means to hold my hand. I pull away, appalled to be seen as so pathetic. “Would you mind getting that blanket? This room is freezing, or am I already in the morgue?”
“Good heavens, no. You’re quite alive, but I’m afraid they keep the air conditioning too low for many of our patients. I’ll be right back with a hot cup of tea and some Demerol.”
“And a blanket,” I remind her.
She leaves as quickly as she arrived and I’m left staring at the ceiling wondering if my old friend, Izzy is still alive. How old would he be now? A year older than me, that’s how old. He was a nice boy, good at maths, but we lost touch after grade school even though he lived just a few blocks away. I can’t think why we stopped being friends. It’s strange how people appear and disappear. I hope he had a nice life. There’s a knock at the door to my room, even though it’s standing wide open.
“Come in, don’t be shy.”
“Hi, it’s me, Amy Savas. I brought you that clay disc we were talking about. Is this a good time?”
Before I can answer, the nurse bustles back into the room. “Here you go, Mr. Kanter.” I feel the weight of a proper blanket settling over me and my shivering legs relax. “Now, let’s see if we can get this bed cranked up a bit so you can drink your tea.”
“I see you’re busy now. I’ll come back another time. Sorry to disturb you.” The woman is about to leave with her small treasure.
“No, please don’t go. I want to look at whatever you’ve got there. Can you wait just a minute?”
The nurse empties a large pill from a frilled paper cup into my hand then notices my guest. “You’re Nick and Cady’s mother, aren’t you? I didn’t know you were friends with Dr. Kanter.”
“We’re not really friends, in fact we just met. My daughter introduced us because he’s an archaeologist and I have an artifact I’d like him to look at.”
She hands me a glass of water and waits while I swallow the tablet. “I’ll leave you to your discussion then. It’s so nice the two of you have finally met. I know you have a lot to discuss.” She gives me a beatific smile, pats me on the leg, and leaves the room.
The warm blanket and hot tea work their magic even before the Demerol kicks in. The young woman, I’ve already forgotten her name, is still standing just inside the door. It’s hard to make out details with my bad eyes, but she resembles both Joanie and her daughter from this distance. They all have the same compact shape and disorderly black hair. I blink and squint, trying to focus, trying not to see Joanie in this woman. Was Joanie even real? The question gives me a cold shiver.
“Come in, I’ve been hoping to see you again. Let’s see what you’ve brought me.”
“If you’re sure I’m not disturbing you.”
“No, not at all, you’re a welcome distraction. I’m glad you’re here.” Now that she’s closer, I can see she’s older than Joanie, but those eyes, the resemblance is remarkable. She hands me a small white box, the sort of thing you’d get from a jeweler. I take off the lid and try to make my eyes focus. If it’s supposed to be a copy of the Phaistos Disc it’s an obvious fake. The real disc is just shy of six inches in diameter and marked with a spiral of hieroglyphic shapes on either side. This thing can’t be more than five inches across and it’s a tad thicker than the original.
I struggle to make out the markings on the piece. I know the symbols on the Phaistos Disc as well as I know my own name, but my eyes are useless. I run my finger over the surface, trying to read the piece like Braille. Even with my bad eyes I can tell it’s not a copy, it’s something else. There aren’t enough spirals, and the central medallions are like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I move my glasses up and down on the bridge of my nose, trying to make out the images pressed into the clay. This one could be the plumed head, this one the eagle, and those might be the beehive and the ship, but these others are completely unfamiliar. It’s all a bit of a blur although I recognize the diagonal lines separating groups of images. Similar lines on the Phaistos Disc have always fascinated me. Are they some sort of archaic punctuation? Symbols in their own rite? Are the glyphs between the lines meant to be read as a single words or as full sentences?
“What do you see? Do you know what it is?” The young woman is hovering over me, attentive and expectant.
“I told you this might be of particular interest to a printer.”
“Yes, I was wondering what you meant by that.”
“Well, if I’m correct, this is one of the first examples of printing ever created in the world. It precedes Gutenburg by thirty-five hundred years. Look closely and tell me if you see the same glyphs repeated at intervals, like this one here that looks like a little boat.”
She bends over the disc and examines it closely with her excellent young eyes. “Yes, it’s kind of sidewise, but it does look like a boat. I see one here and here and two more here.”
“Exactly. Those boats weren’t carved into the clay the way someone would write on a clay tablet with a stylus. They were printed. A Bronze Age Minoan carved a set of movable symbols and used them to stamp or print this disc. It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? The art of printing was invented four thousand years ago and then was lost again for eons.”
My mind is racing, and my heart is beating too fast for someone my age, but this is remarkable. If this is real, it’s the only other example of late Bronze Age Minoan writing apart from the Phaistos Disc. It might even hold the clue to its translation. I try to keep my voice steady as I look up at the woman standing expectantly by my bedside. “Where did you say you got this?”
“From an old boyfriend, my daughter’s father actually, he gave it to me just before he went back to Greece.”
“And where did he get it?”
“His father brought it back from Crete a long time ago. I don’t know if he found it or bought it as a souvenir. Arcas just used it as a paperweight.”
My palsied hands are trembling so badly that I’m afraid I’ll drop the piece, shattering a four-thousand-year-old relic on the floor of a twentieth century hospital. I place it back in its cotton nest and replace the lid. “So, your boyfriend’s father wasn’t from Crete. Was he there on holiday?”
“No, he was just there for the summer working as a cook. He went back to his village in Arcadia after that and raised sheep and made cheese for the rest of his life. That’s pretty much everything I know.”
“Could he have been working around a place called Phaistos? Does that name ring a bell?”
“I’m sorry. Arcas just said Crete. He was working for some Italian professors if that helps.”
It does. The penny drops. “And this would have been, when?”
“In the fifties, I don’t know when exactly, but Arcas was old enough to remember his father being away, so maybe the late fifties. Do you know what this thing is?”
She continues talking, but I can barely hear her. I’m back in Crete at a small cafe on Chandakos Street sipping Turkish coffee with Bess who’s polishing off a cream-filled bougatsa. The sky is that impossible blue you only see along the Mediterranean. We have the day off so, once we’ve finished our small repast, we hold hands and stroll down Heraklion’s old stone streets gawking at Ottoman mosques, Venetian fountains, and the dome of a Greek Orthodox church. Our walk ends at the port where small fishing boats cast off into the sea and we can just make out the silhouette of the Rocca a Mare Fortress protecting a thin peninsula to the east.
It’s Arpil of 1935 and we’re in Crete working with Pendlebury to excavate the ruins at Knossos. Most of our time is spent classifying shards of Minoan pottery, but we have ample time off to explore the island. The Phaistos site, just thirty-five miles to the south, has been abandoned since Luigi Pernier left in 1929, but Bess and I have been there numerous times, poking around, imagining what we’d do if we had the resources to complete the project. I imagine coming back one day and making my name uncovering its treasures. I’m in love with Phaistos. It’s as remarkable as Knossos, nearly as large and, of course, it’s the place where the mysterious Phaistos Disc was discovered. Like many diggers of my generation, I’m convinced that other examples of the strange hieroglyphics must be buried in the ruins. A second disc or tablet is the holy grail we’re all searching for. Without more examples we’ll never solve the riddle inscribed on that old clay disc.
I never did get back to Phaistos, but Doro Levi, an Italian Jew, excavated the site with a team from the Italian School in the fifties. I’d have given anything to join them, but I was teaching in Toronto by that time and well, I missed my chance. By the time I showed up with a group of Canadian students the work was finished. We were little more than tourists gawking at the excavation of the ancient temple, but this woman’s boyfriend’s father was there in the fifties, working at the site with Levi and his team. He’d probably noticed a curious engraved rock, picked it up, and brought it home as a souvenir for his young son. Security wasn’t as stringent in those days. Even so, it would have been a crime. He must have known he was compromising his employer’s work and appropriating an ancient treasure for himself. Do I tell her that her boyfriend’s father was a thief?
“Dr. Kanter, are you alright?” I feel a small hand on my shoulder and see the woman staring at me, a concerned expression on her face.
“Please, forgive me, I’m alright. The pain in my hip sometimes gets the better of me, but the spasm has passed.” I start to refresh my cup of tea, but my hands are shaking. I put down the cup. “What were you saying?”
“I just wanted your opinion. Do you know what this thing is? Can you read what it says?”
“Oh, my dear, don’t I wish that I could read it. That would be the dream of a lifetime. It seems to be an example of the earliest known Minoan writing that no one has deciphered yet. We don’t even know if these symbols are true hieroglyphics or if they represent the sounds and syllables of a pre-Hellenic language. I can’t say for sure, it would take a team of experts to authenticate, but if I’m right, it would be the second example of late Bronze Age Minoan writing, ever found.”
“Wow.” She steps away from the small box, apparently impressed by what I’ve told her.
“How would Arcas have a thing like that?”
“That’s what I was wondering. The only other example is inside a bullet proof case in The Museum of Archaeology in Heraklion.” It’s an effort to keep my voice steady. My heart’s pumping faster than can possibly be good for a man my age, and I’m hiding my trembling hands beneath the bedcovers. I need to show this relic to someone at the university, but the new department chair doesn’t know me from Adam. Who might still remember me? What strings can I still pull? MacComber? No, he resigned and moved to Florida. Tinsley? Dead. Grunberger? Senile and living with his daughter. What about my students? My God, it’s been almost twenty years and I’ve lost touch with everyone.
“Forgive me, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Amy.”
“Yes, Amy, this could be an important find. I can’t authenticate it by myself. It will take a team of experts to tell us what we have here. Would you trust me to show it to some of my old colleagues?” It’s vanity, but I want to be the one to bring this marvel to the attention of the world. If I live long enough, I could even work on the translation. What an achievement at the end of a long, but undistinguished career, the Kanter Disc, just think of it.
“I don’t know.” I can see the wheels in her head turn. “If it’s real, I assume it would be quite valuable. Forgive me, but we don’t really know each other.” There’s a long pause while I hold my breath as she weighs her options. “How about this, once you feel better, you can call your department and make the arrangements, and then we’ll take it there together. Would that be alright?”
I nod. She’s quite correct. She doesn’t know me. I have no intention of stealing from her, but she has no way of knowing that. The university doesn’t have the budget to purchase such a thing, but the Royal Ontario Museum might. Of course, if all she wants is money, she’d do better selling to some billionaire who’d just throw it in a drawer with his other baubles. The thought gives me the shivers.
My mind is suddenly clear. The excitement has deadened the pain in my leg, and I’m determined to see this through to the end. “You do understand that the piece is of no value, it’s just a lump of old clay, until it’s authenticated.” A few moments ago I was ready to give up the ghost, but now I’m alive with anticipation. I turn to her with my most ingratiating smile. “It will need a champion, someone who believes in its potential, to present it to the world. I’m only asking to be that advocate. I completely understand your reticence. Of course, we can go together.”
“I’ll look forward to it then, just as soon as you’re back on your feet.” She’s smiling as she tucks the jewelry box into her large handbag, but I’m afraid she’s humoring me, that she’ll simply walk away and disappear with that precious relic.
“Wait, before you go, I’ll need photographs of the disc, both front and back, taken against a plain background. Do you have a camera?”
She smiles at me as though I’m simple minded. “I’m a printer. I work with commercial photographers all the time, and I do some photography myself. I can get a set of prints to you in a day or two. Will you still be here?”
“I honestly don’t know.” It’s the truth. I have no idea where I’ll be two days from now. “You’d better jot down your contact information so I can find you if I’m transferred to another facility.” She hastily writes down her phone number and disappears into the corridor.
The sound of her heels clicking down the hall is audible for a moment and then fades into the general cacophony of a hospital at work in the late afternoon. I lay in bed, listening to the squeal of wheeled carts, the murmur of a distant television, the beeps, and thrums of medical machines with a smile on my lips. It’s all music to my ears. I cling to the shred of paper in my hand as though it’s my ticket back to a world I’d almost forgotten. Doors open in my mind and possibilities present themselves. Articles appear in respected journals under my name. I’m on a stage lecturing to an audience of my peers. I almost feel like the man I was on the Aqua Meridian. I feel that good.
Michael doesn’t show up until long after they’ve cleared away my dinner dishes and given me my evening meds. Despite the late hour and my flagging energy I am still riding a wave of ebullient joy. I can’t wait to share my good fortune with my son, although he’s in one of his moods and it’s hard to get his attention.
“Michael, something happened today that’s quite remarkable, almost unbelievable.” He’s just arrived, but he’s already pacing and checking his watch as though it’s time to go. “Sit down, for heaven’s sake. You need to hear this.” He takes a seat, but his feet continue tapping beneath his chair. His agitation is contagious, and I lose my train of thought. “Michael, what in the world? What’s going on? You look as if you’re about to jump out of your skin.”
“It’s Peter. He went and got himself arrested. He’s spending the night in jail because they can’t schedule a bail bond hearing until tomorrow.”
I’m dumbfounded by the news. It’s not possible. Peter’s never been in any sort of trouble. “I don’t believe it. The boy’s never done anything out of line.”
“Oh, believe it. He turned up at a white supremacist rally with a group from the Anti- Racist Action Committee and beaned some Nazi with a wooden pole.”
Ah, now, this makes sense. I brighten considerably. “Did he kill him?”
Michael presses his lips together so tightly that they disappear altogether as he glares at me with bulging eyes. He looks like an oversized carp. “This isn’t funny. The man needed stitches and he’s pressing charges. Peter says it was an accident, but who knows?”
“Well, I’m proud of him. If there’d been more Peter’s back in the thirties we might have avoided the Holocaust.”
“I doubt it. More likely he’d have been the first one thrown into the furnace. What was he thinking?”
“Michael, stop that, he was doing the right thing. You have to nip Fascists in the bud. You can’t give them an inch.”
“Of course, you’re right. I am proud of him. He’s got more guts than I do, but this could cost him his scholarship. I was really enjoying not paying his tuition.” He leans forward and puts his head in his hands. “His mother was on the phone sobbing to her sister when I left the house. I’ve never seen her so torn up.”
“Tell her not to worry. He’ll be fine. It’s good to be passionate and idealistic when you’re young. In fact, if I were younger, I’d be out there with him.”
Michael stands up and paces again. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re not interested in anything that’s happened since Alexander the Great conquered Thebes.”
Is that what my son thinks of me? I’m surprised. I’ve always imagined myself a man of the world, someone interested in the events of the day. “Not true. You should have seen me during the war. No one accused me of being a dusty academic when I was fishing Mountbatten’s men out of the drink.”
He runs his fingers along his balding pate, and I take an odd satisfaction in knowing that I have a better head of hair than my middle-aged son. He shakes his head. “Sorry, Dad. I didn’t come here to dump on you. You’re right. Peter will be fine. You’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine as soon as we get things sorted out. Now, what were you starting to tell me?”
I struggle to pull myself to an upright position, but an awful pain runs down my leg and I collapse back into my pillow, but my excitement must be evident because I finally have Michael’s full attention. I grin at him, anticipating his amazement. “You know the Phaistos Disc? I have a copy of it on my desk at home. You used to play with it when you were little.” He nods, but I can see that he’s already losing interest. “It’s one of the great archaeological mysteries. I’ve spent years of my life, many of us have spent years of our lives, trying to decipher it, but without more examples it’s impossible. We’ve always needed more and then today, well, you won’t believe this, a woman shows up with what I’m almost certain is a second disc from the same site, a disc that was stolen from Doro Levi’s dig forty some years ago.”
Michael stares at me, mouth agape, utterly flabbergasted. It’s satisfying to see that he’s grasped the magnitude of the news. “The woman is going to bring me professional photographs of this new disc so I can present them to my old department, although I expect the ROM will be in a better position to purchase such a thing. Early Minoan artifacts don’t just walk into your hospital room every day, now do they? Can you believe my luck?” Michael is still staring at me with bulgy fisheyes. “Well, what do you think? Amazing, isn’t it?”
“Oh, Dad.” He comes to my bedside and takes my hand. I think he’s congratulating me, but then I see tears in his eyes. “This is too much. How much can I take in one day?”
“What? What do you mean? It’s wonderful news.”
He pats my hand in an utterly patronizing way. “Sure, Dad, it’s wonderful news, but would you do me a favor? Please, don’t call anyone at the university for a while. Maybe we should do a little research first, make sure this disc’s the real deal. Can you promise me that?”
He thinks I’m daft. Well, it is hard to believe, but I’m not an idiot. I spent fifty years studying late Bronze Age artifacts and I know a genuine article when I see it. I remove my hand and glare at him. “No, Michael, I’m sorry, but this is too important. The disc may have shown up in an unorthodox way, but I believe in it. A disc like that could be another Rosetta Stone. It could unlock mysteries surrounding Bronze Age culture.” He opens his mouth to protest. “Don’t try to talk me out of this. I am going to alert my colleagues. It would be irresponsible not to.”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. I can see he’s deeply troubled, but his misgivings aren’t going to deter me from what I have to do. “Go home, Michael. Look after Peter and your wife. Get some sleep, bail your son out of jail, and stop by again in a day or two. Don’t worry about me. I promise I won’t bother you about the disc again.”
“So, you won’t call anyone at the university?” He opens his eyes and looks at me with a hopeful expression.
“No, I said I won’t bother you again. I’m afraid I can’t promise more than that.”
He shakes his head and sighs. “Oh, Dad,” he mumbles. “Oh, Dad, I’m so sorry.”