After the war, Ventris returned to England and started to compare the photographs of the newly discovered tablets from the Greek mainland with the inscriptions on the old Cretan tablets. He noticed that certain symbols on the tablets from Crete were not replicated on any of the samples from Pylos. He guessed that those particular symbols might represent place names on the island. Working from there, he figured out how to decipher the script – revealing that Linear B was in fact an early written form of ancient Greek. Ventris’s work not only demonstrated that Greek was the language of the Mycenaean culture, but also provided evidence of written Greek which predated the earliest-known examples by hundreds of years. After the discovery, Ventris and the
classical scholar and linguist John Chadwick wrote a book together on the translation of the script, entitled ‘Documents in Mycenaean Greek’. Weeks before the publication of the book in 1956, Ventris crashed his car into a parked truck and died. He was thirty-four.
I’ve condensed the story here into a suitably dramatic form. There were plenty of other classicists involved, including an American professor named Alice Kober, who made significant contributions to the interpretation of Linear B and died of cancer at the age of forty-three. The Wikipedia entries on Ventris, Linear B, Arthur Evans, Alice Kober, John Chadwick and Mycenaean Greece are somewhat disorganised, and some even offer variant versions of the same event. Was Evans eighty-four or eighty-five years old when Ventris attended his lecture? And did Ventris really find out about Linear B for the first time that day, or had he heard of it already? His death is described only in the briefest and most mysterious way – Wikipedia says he died ‘instantly’ following ‘a late-night collision with a parked truck’ and that the coroner gave a verdict of accidental death. I have been thinking lately about the ancient world coming back to us, emerging through strange ruptures in time, through the colossal speed and waste and godlessness of the twentieth century, through the hands and eyes of Alice Kober, a chain-smoker dead at forty-three, and Michael Ventris, dead in a car crash at the age of thirty-four.
Anyway, all this means that during the Bronze Age, a sophisticated syllabic script was developed to represent the Greek language in writing, and then during the collapse you told me about, all that knowledge was completely destroyed. Later writing systems devised to represent Greek bear no relation to Linear B. The people who developed and used them had no idea that Linear B had ever even existed. The unbearable thing is that
when first inscribed, those markings meant something, to the people who wrote and read them, and then for thousands of years they meant nothing, nothing, nothing –
because the link was broken, history had stopped. And then the twentieth century shook the watch and made history happen again. But can’t we do that too, in another way?
I’m sorry that you felt so terrible after running into Aidan the other day. These feelings are no doubt completely normal. But as your best friend, who loves you very much and wishes the best for you in every part of your life, would it be aggravating of me to point out that you weren’t really happy together? I know that he was the one who decided to end things, and I know that must be painful and frustrating. I’m not trying to talk you out of feeling bad. All I’m saying is, I think you know in your heart that it wasn’t a very good relationship. You talked to me several times about wanting to break up and not knowing how. I’m only saying this because I don’t want you to start retroactively believing that Aidan was your soulmate or that you could never be happy without him.
You got into a long relationship in your twenties that didn’t work out. That doesn’t mean God has marked you out for a life of failure and misery. I was in a long relationship in my twenties and that didn’t work out, remember? And Simon and Natalie were together for nearly five years before they broke up. Do you think he’s a failure, or I am? Hm. Well, now that I think of it, maybe all three of us are. But if so, I’d rather be a failure than a success.
No, I never really think about my biological clock. I feel like my fertility will probably continue to haunt me for another decade or so anyway – my mother was forty-two when she had Keith. But I don’t particularly want to have children. I didn’t know you did either. Even in this world? Finding someone to get you pregnant will not be a problem
if so. Like Simon says, you have a fertile look about you. Men love that. Finally: are you still planning to come and see me? I’m forewarning you that I’ll be in Rome next week but likely home again the week after. I have made a friend here whose name is (genuinely) Felix. And if you can believe that, you will also have to believe that he’s coming with me to Rome. No, I cannot explain why, so don’t ask me. It just occurred to me, wouldn’t it be fun to invite him? And it seems to have occurred to him that it would be fun to say yes. I’m sure he thinks I’m a total eccentric, but he also knows he’s on to a good thing because I’m paying for his flights. I want you to meet him! Yet another reason for you to come and visit when I’m home. Will you, please? All my love, always.
7
The same Thursday evening, Eileen attended a poetry reading hosted by the magazine where she worked. The venue was an arts centre in the north city centre. Before the event, Eileen sat behind a little table selling copies of the most recent issue of the magazine, while people milled around in front of her, holding glasses of wine and avoiding eye contact. Occasionally, someone asked her where the bathrooms were, and she gave the directions in the same tone of voice with the same hand gestures each time.