8
Lioba
Peter bumps against a wall. It is dark. Feeling around with his hand, he touches a metal knob. He twists it, and a door opens.
Peter stares at the sight in front of him, faintly illuminated by early morning light from a window. It is a room filled with rows of wooden tables and chairs. Peter’s eyes are drawn to a huge picture on the wall. A face with a mustache, shiny black hair combed to one side, and piercing eyes looms over the room. On a big blackboard, he can just make out two lines on top in a scraggly script, the last word missing where someone had started to wipe the board.
Oh, stranger, when you arrive in Sparta, tell of our pride
That here, obeying her behests, we—
“That here, obeying her behests, we died,” he completes the line in his mind. He had heard the lines o
