The Just City (10 page)

It was our turn in the palaestra directly after breakfast, which I could hardly eat, I was so full of fury. Pytheas was not yet there when I arrived, so I exercised with weights, hurling the discus farther than I ever had with the vigor of my wrath. When he arrived I ran over to him the second he had his kiton off and knocked him down into the sand. “Hey, give me a chance to set my feet!” he protested, slapping the sand to mark a fall. I threw myself onto his back, holding him down. There were no masters around to object. I could really have killed him before anyone could stop me, if that had been what I truly wanted. Of course, what I wanted was to understand.

“What did you mean, saying to Klymene that she was only a girl?”

“Am I going to lose all my friends over that?” he asked, so sadly that I immediately felt sorry for him, despite my anger.

“You are if you don't explain it right now.” I thumped his arm hard. He wasn't trying to shake me off or to fight at all. He had gone limp, which made it difficult for me to want to pummel him.

“Will you let me up if I agree to talk to you?”

I climbed off him and he got up. He had sand all over his front, which he did not brush off. “She was sad and needed comfort, and I never know what to say. I didn't think and fell back on what I grew up hearing. Women—outside the city there's a tendency in most places to think that women are soft and gentle and good at nurturing, that by nature they should be protected. You must remember that from before? She was crying, and she had run away, she was just acting the way women usually act. I put my arm around her. I've seen you do that. I know that's right. But then I had to say something, and I was completely blank on what.”

“For somebody so intelligent, how can you be such a complete idiot?” I asked.

“Natural talent?” He wasn't smiling. “Do you want to hit me again?”

“Would it make you feel better?”

“I almost think it would.”

“I won't then,” I said. Then I relented, and twisted on the ball of my foot to thump him in the chest as hard as I could, so that he sat down abruptly. “Did that help?”

Even in that moment he automatically slapped the ground to mark the hit. “Yes, I think it did.”

“Did it help make you realize women aren't just soft little doves to be protected?” I was still angry.

“That's exactly how she seemed to me at the time,” he said, looking up at me. “A soft little dove who had been asked to act as a falcon, against her own nature. And why should everyone have to fight, if they're not suited for it?”

“Would you have said to Glaukon that it's all right for him to be a coward because he's only a cripple?” Glaukon had lost a leg in the first year of the city. He had slipped in the woods, and his leg had been crushed beneath a worker's treads.

Pytheas looked up at me guilelessly. “Well it doesn't matter as much if he did happen to be one. But in fact he's very brave.”

“But imagine how he'd feel if you said that to him. It's not considering him as a person but as part of a class of inferior things. Klymene's a coward, she says so herself. And our souls have parts in different balances—maybe she doesn't have as much passion, and perhaps not everyone has it in them to stand in the line of battle—not that I see what enemies we're going to need to fight anyway. But some of those who don't are men, as everyone agrees. Every example of a coward we've ever heard about who was shamefully wounded in the back has been a man. And plenty of those who are brave and would stand firm are women. And by saying what you said you insult all women—you insult me!”

He nodded, getting up again. “It was a really stupid thing to say. Do you think there's any point apologising?”

“Not yet. She's too upset. I'll tell her I beat you up, that might make her feel a bit better.”

“You hit me harder than the boar,” he said.

“I still don't know if you understand!”

“That everyone is of equal significance and that the differences between individuals are more important than the differences between broad classes? Oh yes, I'm coming to understand that really well.”

I glared at him.

“What? You're still going to be my friend, aren't you? I need you to help me understand these things properly.”

“Yes, I'm still your friend. But I don't know how I'm going to explain to people about what you said.”

He spread his hands. “I do know there's a difference between being soft and being a woman. I do see that there are men like doves too. And I don't see anything wrong with them, as long as there are enough falcons to protect them, and there are.” He hesitated. “I do see that you are a falcon, not a dove, even if you'd rather be making art than making war. I would myself. Peace is better than war. There's too much glorification of war and not enough glorification of peace, and especially not enough glorification of the importance of the doves. I value Klymene, even if she'll never believe it now.”

“The masters say we are all equally valuable,” I said.

“But they don't act as if it's true.” Pytheas frowned. “The worst thing about that hunt is that there was nobody there who really knew how to do it, nobody who had done it before. Atticus and Axiothea are scholars, not warriors. The city is heavy with scholars, unsurprisingly. Testing us for courage isn't a bad idea, but that was a stupid way to do it. Boars are really dangerous. People could have been killed or crippled if I hadn't known what to do.”

“Write a poem glorifying peace,” I suggested.

“And you paint a picture doing it, and you'll soon see how easy it is.”

Ikaros was walking towards us, no doubt to find out what we were doing standing still for so long. “Come on, let's wrestle properly,” I said.

At the festival I came second in swimming and third for running long distance in armour. As I had taught swimming to Kornelia, who had won, I regarded this too as a victory. I could have eaten from the boar Pytheas had killed, but I declined in favour of bread and honey.

 

9

M
AIA

A month or so after the art collections began, Ficino and Ikaros blandly presented to the Art Committee a lost bronze of Michaelangelo, a David, but very unlike his most famous David. They told us unblinkingly that it was Theseus with the head of Kerkyon. I nodded and made a note of it. “Excellent,” Atticus said. “One of the best artists of your time.”

“Of any time,” Ficino said, smiling.

I asked Ikaros if I could speak to him a little later. He agreed at once. After dinner, that day a kind of nut porridge, we went for a walk.

The island was beautiful, even then when the city was still a building site. We walked off to the west and sat under a pine tree overlooking the sea to watch the sunset. “You're a monk,” I began. I was speaking in Latin as we usually did together.

Ikaros jumped. “I am not! I was just wearing the habit. I've taken no vows of celibacy, don't worry.”

It was my turn to jump. “Did you think this was a sexual assignation?” I asked. I was simultaneously horrified and delighted. Ikaros was a handsome man, only about ten years older than me, and I had believed everyone who told me that nobody would ever want a bluestocking. Yet at the same time I felt diminished, as if it meant he wasn't taking me seriously.

“Such things have happened,” he said, smiling. “Even here. Plato does not describe how the first generation of teachers are supposed to regulate their lives.”

“He does talk about how children are to be born,” I said, as sternly as I could. “And really, sneaking off to the woods is against everything he says.”

He took my hand and ran one finger around my palm, making my breath catch. “But if it were a proper festival of the Republic, and you and I had drawn each other by lot?”

“That would be entirely different,” I said, pulling my hand away in as dignified a way as I possibly could. Entirely different and far too exciting, I thought. “Come on Ikaros, we're friends.”

“And what does Plato say about friendship?”

“He says not to get Eros mixed up with it,” I said crisply, though far from unmoved. I was very aware that the kiton left far more of me uncovered than the clothes of my own period. I had never really noticed that before, because nobody had been looking at me the way Ikaros was looking at me. I stared straight ahead. The sun was setting into the sea and turning both sea and sky as crimson as my cheeks felt.

“If you didn't want that, then why did you want to drag me off alone?”

“I wanted to ask you about the
David
.”

“Theseus,” he corrected me at once.

“Exactly. That's why I wanted to ask you alone.”

“Well, what? It's a good Theseus, it meets the needs, it's beautiful and we've rescued it. Atticus didn't blink.”

“But why not say it's David? Why do we have to keep Christ out? What's the necessity? The reason I mentioned that I thought you were a monk was because I thought you were a Dominican, but still you prayed to Athene.”

“I was having a bad moment when I prayed to be here. The church refused to hear my arguments and then I was imprisoned in France.”

“You prayed to Athene when you were imprisoned by the Inquisition?”

“With very good results,” he said, smiling and spreading his hands.

“Yes, fine, but my point is that many people have reconciled Plato with Christ. Ficino did.” Only a sliver of the sun was left, but the sea and sky still blazed. Why would he have been wearing a monk's habit if he were not a monk? Did they have fancy dress parties in the Renaissance? Could I possibly ask?

“I myself did,” he said, proudly. “I reconciled Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Platonism and Zoroastrianism. I learned Arabic and Hebrew. I was so proud of myself. But don't you see, we were doing it starting from a belief that Christianity was true. If instead it's the Greek Gods who are true, if we have immortal souls that go down into Hades and on to Lethe and new life, then what price salvation? They can mix from the other side, we could say that Plato was really talking about God. But from this side, well, we can't say that when Jesus said he'd be in his father's house that he was really talking about Zeus, now can we?”

“I do see that,” I said. “But it's not as if it does any harm, even if it's not true. It's a lovely story, about good people. It's not … contaminated. I don't see why we have to exclude it so entirely that we have to say the David is Theseus.”

Ikaros lay back, propped on his elbow. “Christianity is harmful to the Republic because it offers a different and incorrect truth. We want them to discover the Truth, the real Truth that a philosopher can glimpse. That's important. We don't want to clutter it up with irrelevancies. Christianity would just get in their way. So no Madonnas and no crucifixions.”

“But David is all right as long as we say it's Theseus?”

“Why not? What harm could that do? I'd bring a Madonna and say it's Isis, but Ficino thinks that's going too far.”

“I wish I could see the Madonnas again. Botticelli's Madonnas, that is. I only saw them once. I was going to buy an engraving, but I spent all my money on books. Still, we have the new ones.”

“We do. Athene in the
Judgement of Paris
looks a little like you.” He moved closer and put his arm around me. “The real trouble with Christianity is that the morality can do so much harm.”

“I didn't offer you Christian morality, but Plato on love,” I said, standing up. I wasn't afraid that he would attack me, although I was aware that he was strong and could easily have overpowered me if he had wanted to. What frightened me was the thought that if he persisted, and especially if he persisted in touching me, I would give in to him. “Come on, let's go back if you can't exercise temperance.”

“But you are a poor little Christian virgin, not somebody holding out for agape,” he said, not moving.

I was furious. “How could you possibly know?” I asked.

He laughed, silhouetted against a sky of violet and rose. “Oh sit down. I can't talk to you when you're hovering over me like that. I'll concede that I could be wrong. But I doubt it.”

“Nobody will ever say yes to you if you're that smug,” I said, sitting down but out of arm's length.

“Lots of people have said yes to me already,” he said.

“Here?” I was amazed, and a little jealous.

“Here, and in Italy before. I know my way around. I know what women like.”

I was completely cold now. “There's nothing less exciting than being thought of as part of a class of beings that are all the same,” I said. “You're treating me as a thing.”

“It doesn't mean I don't see you as a person,” Ikaros said; “that I want to copulate with you. Latin is an impossible language for this, and you don't know Italian. Let's speak Greek.”

“I'd rather talk about why we have to exclude Christianity,” I said, but I did switch to Greek.

“I know, but you're misjudging me.”

“You keep changing the subject,” I said.

“I see you, and I like you, and I find you attractive, and it would be a pleasant thing we could do together, like … sharing a meal. It doesn't stop us having serious conversations that we have silly conversations with imaginary wine. It wouldn't stop us having serious conversations if we indulged in eros. All I meant by the remark about knowing what women like is that I'm not a clumsy oaf who would hurt you, or who wouldn't care about your pleasure.”

The sky was darkening to mauve and the first star was visible. I stared up at it, avoiding his eyes. “I believe you,” I said. “But I'm not comfortable with that. Neither Christian nor Platonic morality condone the kind of thing you're talking about.”