Ferdia Lennon

Part Waiting for Godot, part O Brother, Where Art Thou, and completely original, Glorious Exploits is a celebration of the things that bind humanity across battle lines and history, and an ode to the redemptive power of storytelling. Set in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Peloponnesian War but told in contemporary Irish dialect, Glorious Exploits follows Lampo and Gelon, best friends since childhood. Thrilled to have survived the Athenians’ recent invasion and as shocked by the Syracusan victory as everyone else, these unemployed potters are in a mood to celebrate. Of course, they hate the Athenians. Still, that doesn’t mean you can’t love the theatre of their great playwright Euripides, does it? Realizing that if the Athenians are as doomed as everyone says, this might be their last chance to hear Euripides’s poetry, they go down to the quarry where the Athenian prisoners are being held and offer extra rations to any prisoner who can recite his work, a decision that sets into motion an extraordinary series of events. A novel that asks big questions about war and its aftermath, Glorious Exploits is a story as hopeful and playful as it is tragic.

A Novel

Glorious Exploits

Laura Dobie

He goes on. Occasionally he pauses and forgets a word, mumbles, but overall it's the strangest thing. So different from anything else we've seen. Paches and I sit and listen to this starved bastard, half his body covered by rocks, and as we listen, something happens. The words and voice blend so that what he is blends, and he becomes two things at once, a starving Athenian, yes, but something else, hidden, then rising. He's Medea, poor princess Medea from Colchis, and as she lists her grievances against Jason: how she'd cast spells so he could get the Golden Fleece, murdered her brother, and betrayed her father, so he could regain his kingdom.

"She loves you!' says I. She bore your children. You bastard!' 

‘What?' It's Numa. No semblance of Medea left. He and Paches are staring at me. Both scared shitless. 

‘Sorry,' says I, 'was doing a bit of improv. That was brilliant, Numa. I’ll have to confirm with Gelon, but I'm fairly sure the part's yours. Good work, Paches, too.’

‘You'll kill yourself. No play's worth that.' 

 smiles. The first in a long while, and though I've had a scare, it lifts my spirits. Such conviction in it, like there's knowledge at the root of its feeling, and he grips my hand and squeezes. Strong bastard that he is, it hurts, but I won't say a thing. The pain is welcome; friendship's what I feel. 

‘It's poetry we're doing,' he whispers. It wouldn't mean a thing if it were easy.’

He passes me a wineskin, and we drink and wait for the blood to dry.

Straight ahead is the best scene of all: Hades. The River Styx, to be exact, the water green and trembling, with faces and limbs rising. It reminds me of those statues at Victory Gate, but it's more beautiful than them. The light on the water is different from any I've ever seen in this world, yet it seems I know it. Gelon says that's what the best plays do. If they're true enough, you'll recognize it even if it all seems mad at first, and this is why we give a shit about Troy though for all we know, it was just some dream of Homer's, and I walk towards this green soul river, and for a moment it like I'm going home.

He sings a good three verses on Ajax, the tabby. All this stuff about individual duels with especially fearsome rats, and a real odd verse about Ajax climbing the mast and staring out at the horizon. Then he goes back to singing about himself.

Music - doesn't need to be a dithyramb or anything but still. A tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn't give of heat: dead, and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sail for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm, and the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.

She hands me a more jagged piece this time. The same grey as the sky, but I pocket it anyway. We don't say much more for the next mile, and walk in silence. But this isn't the silence that comes from comfort, no, it's that strained silence, where you can feel the throb of the other's thoughts; stillborn sentences that die on the lips before they're spoken. I want to speak, but nothing right is coming, and so I just ask her if she's got another stone in her shoe.

Later, walking the lonely road to the quarry, I listen to the sound the coins make in my pocket -much fainter than the din from the pouch Gelon gave me, yet its music is all the sweeter, 'cause it's mine, and it's hers, and I know in time we can make it a song.

Tonight we're not drinking to forget, but to remember and dream. It's hope that makes us afraid, and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, 'cause it means he has something to lose and to win.

Only a couple of birds have started to sing, and their frail song gets drowned out by the wind, the snorting of the horse. I can't see well in the back of the wagon, and it's a curious thing. Not so much seeing the dawn, but hearing it. The birds are tentative to start, like nervous performers before a tough crowd. As we roll along, their confidence grows, and pretty soon they're really going for it, other birds joining from disparate trees, and when I peek out through the canvas, I see a yellowing at the edge of things that in an hour or so will become the sun.

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