Chapter 3

Harve

The big bird appears

Harve stood up like a shot from his seat on the train and quickly started to move. He realized suddenly that he was not OK at all. He had been working on his research about Delos, the archeological site. He had pages and pages of files of Delos’s  houses, it’s statues, it’s roof tiles, it’s architecture, all organized in neat order and was, in his usual manner, plodding through it. But this time to his great surprise he found himself trying his hardest to find the pattern that tied the disparate data all together. Of course, he knew, as an archeology professor, he was one the the greatest scholars of Delos who ever lived, he knew there was no pattern, it was all data only and there was no story, it was all random data that it was his job to collate, and he would. So on the train had been working  as he usually worked. He had been arranging the files of his researchers on red ceramic roof tiles in one folder and arranging the files of clay perfume bottles in another and so forth and so on. But something was terribly wrong. He knew this in his body. He kept turning and twisting, he kept staring out the window. He could not concentrate and became obsessed by finding the secret, the answer, the theme, the deeper meaning behind all this data. Somewhere, his organized mind started to come apart and to move and vibrate.

He had spent years in the best French schools studying archeology, studying architecture, learning ancient Greek so he could read what was below the statues and read and translate the poems about Delos by the ancient Greek poets and he had painstakingly  learned  modern Greek so he could speak to the Greek workers. He had read the works of all the archeologists before him who had worked in Delos for the hundreds of years since Louis IX became obsessed by the sun god and sent French archeologist to Delos, the birthplace of the god of the sun,  to find the secret of the sun god and bring it back to him in France. He had read the papers of  the young and old archeologist scholars  working now. With hard work, he had  become one the the leaders in the French School’s research in Delos, and  was now going to Delos for his yearly research and leadership. He had just been at an international conference on archeology in Italy and had just listened with criticism to hundreds of papers on roof tiles, perfume bottles and marble stones and was tired. Before the conference he  had just broken up with his partner of more than 10 years and now he found himself beginning to drink more than he liked to drink and all this endless research was getting less and less pleasurable and more and more tiresome along with his whole empty life.

So, with all this behind him,  on the train, in the midst of his obsessive organization, he found himself daydreaming. His mind wandered from the exact size and count of ceramic  roof tiles to the secret meaning of it all, again and again. He took out the maps of Delos he had just finished. They showed the buildings, the streets, the temples. He stared absent mindedly at the first map, the general map of the whole site and suddenly he felt faint. The map started to vibrate and he could begin to see colors forming shapes over the paths. He quickly looked away, he looked out of the window. A young woman was sitting next to him next the the window. There was something strange about her too. She was vibrating and changing colors.  He looked past her quickly so she would disappear into the moving Italian countryside. Then, outside the window he saw a huge shape. It looked like a giant bird with black wings, but was made of light. It moved with the train. It stared directly at him. He knew who and what it was and did not want to know at all. In one second this vision made him terrified and afraid of everything. He gathered his papers quickly, stood up suddenly and walked away from this apparition as quickly as he could. Maybe by leaving, it would disappear, it would stop bothering him and he could find some peace and get back to his old life past.