The Devil Takes Half by Leta Serafim

appeared to be an in situ mud brick wall about 30 centimeters down in the SW quadrant of the first trench. On June 23 rd , we found crushed terra cotta tiles beneath the mud-brick in the NE quadrant of the second trench. This time the mortar was thick and pink and lay horizontally. On the morning of June 24 th , we’d been working in the third trench and found three whole mud bricks in a row, roughly parallel to what looked to be the wall of a house.

    Although she meticulously described everything—the location and depth where she’d been working, the times, the nature of the finds—it all boiled down to the same thing: earthen mortar, mud bricks, and terra cotta. In other words, dirt. Sometimes the dirt was sandy, sometimes pebbles or clay was mixed in with it, once or twice greenish-gray matter. She’d found patches of charcoal and two glass beads. Also animal bones, “including what appears to be the jaw of a goat and the tooth of a horse.”
    When Patronas read this entry in the log, he gave up. She hadn’t found Pompeii or Atlantis. No. All she’d found—in addition to the various manifestations of dirt—were “the jaw of a goat and the tooth of a horse.” He shut the computer. He’d have to send it on to the archeologists in Athens, along with Petros’ statue of the bull, but not just yet.
    The book on abnormal psychology was no better. Parts of the chapter on narcissism were underlined with her stepmother’s name penciled in on the side. So that was the person she was studying up on. No mystery there.
    He opened her journal, searching for the quote the priest had mentioned. One passage he discovered read, “There are few villains in this life. I, for one, have never met one.” Yet she had, Patronas thought sadly—the man who murdered her. Farther on, in a long passage about the suffering men inflict on women, he found the quote the priest had spoken of:

    Ulysses left his wife to yearn, to wait, to grieve, fearing she would never see him again and longing for him.
    After a few weeks in the gilded light of summer, all men go like Ulysses, abandon their women like Penelope on the shores of a lonely sea. Hope is those women’s only companion, poor hope, desperate hope. Standing there, searching the horizon for a sign that he will return, that it will be as it was. Seeking to convince themselves that there had been a point to their coming together, that it had not all been in vain.

    â€œ What the hell is this about?” the chief officer asked himself. “Gilded light. What is gilded? What is she talking about? Now ‘gelded,’ I could understand. Gelded would make you sit up and take notice.”
    Thinking this was women’s business, he went downstairs and asked his wife Dimitra what the quote meant.
    â€œ Simple,” his wife replied. “She thought the man she loved was one thing and found out he was another.” She gave him a long look. “It happens.”
    â€œ What happens? I don’t understand.”
    â€œ That part about the ‘convincing themselves that it had not all been in vain’? That means that, in order to survive, she pretended their life together was better than it was, that she lied to herself in order to keep going. Like I said, it happens.” His wife’s voice always held a hint of martyrdom, as if there were an invisible cross on her shoulders and it was heavy. This time was no exception.
    Thinking of Eleni Argentis, he asked, “Why would a woman feel this way?”
    â€œ Because men lie and deceive you. They don’t really want you around. They want to be eighteen again and start all over without you.”
    As far as he knew, he was the only man Dimitra had ever known, so when she said ‘men,’ she was talking about him. He was the liar, the deceiver, the one who didn’t want you around. Patronas sighed. So this was going to be about them. He was