The Mask of Apollo (21 page)

I asked, “What did Dion do?”

“Looked in at the party, so my friend told me, to try and get sense out of someone. Of course Dionysios refused to delegate, and only tried to make him drink. That was while she was there; next time he came, I expect everyone was dead-out on the floor, or busy on the couches. So he bided his time, and waited for his philosopher friend from Athens; and not in vain … Well, at least no artist starved. Between parties, a play nearly every week; we don’t keep them for the high feasts as you do in Athens. I can live half a year on what I’ve made. A good thing, for the grasshoppers’ summer is over.” He gave me a glance under his brows, as if in hope he had said enough.

“All summers end,” I answered. “I’d not heard of this when I set out; I was only hoping for something at the festivals.”

He stood silent, biting his lip, his dark brows pulled together. There was now no mistaking it; he looked bitter. I was getting on edge, and told him sharply to come out with it, whatever it was.

“I wish,” he said, “you’d stopped at the tavern and heard it there.” He walked past me into the high-walled courtyard. It was green now with vine-shade, and the gourd dangled great yellow flowers. It gave his face the tint of bronze that has lain under the sea. He came back in again and I thought, “Now it is coming.”

“Who wants to bring a friend bad news? The truth is, Niko, your Dion and his Sophist want to make an end of the theater. Finish it, root it up. That’s all.”

I said, “What? Impossible,” while feeling the shock that only truth can give. “But the festivals are sacred.”

“So sacred that the theater is unworthy of them. Or so the word goes round.” The hot dark anger of Sicily set his face in a frowning mask; then he overcame it, and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Niko. One would think I was blaming you for it. Maybe one shouldn’t believe all one hears. This I do know, though. Artists were everywhere in Ortygia, giving recitals, asked to supper, paid in gold. Now, overnight as it were, since this Plato came, nobody, no matter how distinguished. And what’s more, for thirty years at least, there’s been a play on the Archon’s name day. One of his own, if he had one ready, but always something. This month, the new Archon’s day came round. Nothing, not even a party. Just sacrifices and hymns.”

The shadows had lengthened in the courtyard. Its green light had become cold-looking, like light before rain. I thought of Delphi, of the painted wine cup with Eros in it, the talk by lamplight. I could remember thinking what a high-class supper I had been asked to, all conversation instead of jugglers and flute-girls, a real gentlemen’s symposion. I had no more expected this to come of it, than at a fencing class one expects to be run through.

“Don’t you think,” I said, “that Dionysios is just lying up with a crapula? Has your cousin Theoros heard anything? After a debauch like that, there must be some palace stomachs needing physic.”

“I saw him yesterday in the street. He waited, so I walked away. If Theoros wants to give me news, I can guess what kind it will be. No, Niko, no crapula lasts so long. It’s this philosophy. Everyone says so.”

We were looking at each other with faces of disaster, when I remembered what this meant. Dion had won the victory he, and the Academy, had been praying for. I ought to have been rejoicing.

Trying to bring all this to terms, I said, “But surely, then, he must have given the city proper laws, and called a free Assembly? Even if the theater stops for a time, and artists have to tour, you are citizens too, so wouldn’t the good outweigh the bad?”

“If that happened, it might. There were rumors at first, when we had the amnesty. But nothing came of them. I tell you, Niko, I don’t mean to sit here eating up my savings. I must get upon the road, as soon as I find a man to tour with. I could make up a company of nobodies tomorrow and play lead, but I’d far rather do second to a good protagonist. More credit, more pleasure, and the money about the same.”

“I’m ashamed to ask,” I said, “whether I would be good enough.”

He flashed his white teeth and grasped my hand, saying, “I hadn’t the face to ask outright.” I told him I had come here in the hope of it; we laughed, and at once found all our prospects looking brighter.

“I tell you what,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll present myself to Dionysios. He told me to, next time I came, so I’ll take him at his word. I’ll learn what I can, and while I’m there I’ll try to see Dion too. If I do, I’ll ask him straight out about the theater. Then at least we’ll know where we stand.” In spite of everything, I was wondering whether he might have some business for me.

We then turned to planning out our tour, on the usual terms. I would put up two-thirds of the expenses, including the hire of the third actor and extra (which I could afford, now I had not their fares to pay from Athens) and split the profits the same way. Then we went to drink to it at the barber’s tavern. It was half-empty; the few men there were drinking almost in silence, or getting quarrelsome. We walked home still pretty well sober. He was in better spirits than I; the tour was fixed up, and he was a man for living from day to day. It was I who lay awake. I felt both my heart and mind being torn in two.

Next day I set out early, knowing how long it took to get through all the gates. This time I had no pass; besides, I might find the guards all drunk or dicing. But discipline still seemed fairly good. The assets of a mercenary captain, and his future, are in his men, and he will do his best not to let them spoil.

The guards had been changed at the causeway gatehouse. Instead of the Gauls there were some Italians, who spoke a dialect strange to me: dark, curly-haired men in polished armor, with straight-sided shields and heavy six-foot throwing spears. Their drill was much smarter than the Gauls’ and their Greek less barbarous. They looked as proud as the Spartans but more at home; Spartans hate crossing water. These troops seemed as tough, and more professional. They asked my business (I had hoped for someone who knew my face) and then for tokens of my errand. Since Archytas’ letter to Dion was confidential, I showed the one to Plato, which I thought should serve my turn, seeing he was the Archon’s guest.

The captain read the name; at once his black brows knitted above his haughty nose, and his nostrils curled as if the paper stank. “Plato!” he said for his men to hear. There was a general growl, and a clank as they shook their iron-shod javelins. The captain handed the letter back as a housewife picks up a dead rat. “Well, Greekling, if you get a quiet word with Plato, just tell him this from the Roman cohort.” He drew the edge of his hand across his throat. His men supplied the sound.

They let me through. But the news that I was going to Plato was passed on along with me, and from each lot of guards I got, allowing for race and custom, much the same message. Even a Greek, who conducted me through the royal gardens, said, “If you’ve come from his precious school to fetch him home, you can drink your way through every guardhouse from here to the Euryalos. Only let me know.”

He was a big hairy Boeotian, but I felt more at home with him than with the foreigners; so I asked what Plato had been up to, to be so much hated. At home, I added, he had the name of a quiet man.

“Let him keep quiet at home, then, or someone will quiet him for good. He was brought here to corrupt the Archon and make him fit for nothing; and you can guess who hopes to gain from
that.
Disband the hired troops—oh, yes, that’s Plato’s counsel—and the city left as a gift for his friend Dion. I wish the old man were back. He’d have nailed his head and his four quarters to the gatehouses long before this.”

I made no answer. The long night had brought no peace to the war within me. We were getting near the palace. The Boeotian stopped, to have his say. “Have you seen these Syracusans on Assembly Day? They’ve not shifted for themselves these forty years. How long do you see them keeping off the Carthaginians, without us trained men?” He spat into the grass, saying, “Tell Plato that from me.”

We went through the outer court, and a columned porch, to a court within. “Wait here,” he said.

I waited just inside the porch, and looked about. It was a green shady place, with flowering creepers trained above, and a big square fountain pool in the center, maybe fifty feet wide. This had been drained, and the tiles scattered with clean sand. On the marble edge, a number of well-dressed men were sitting, and seemed, at first glance, to be fishing in the sand. Then I saw that the rods they held were really pointers; they were drawing geometric figures, with letters and numbers beside them. A slave was going about with a rake, to clean off finished work, and sand, to start again on.

When I had got over the oddness of this spectacle, I noticed something else; one side of the court was much busier than the other. I soon saw the cause. The fountain made a little island, a bronze palm trunk twined with a snake upon a base of serpentine; and on the slab sat Plato and Dionysios. It was the courtiers at my end, behind their backs, who were taking it easy. I saw two of them do a lewd drawing and quickly sweep it over.

Plato was turned a little my way. He was talking, sitting with his massive brow and heavy shoulders leaned rather forward, as if with their own weight; I remembered the pose. His hands were on his knees; sometimes he would lift one in a gesture so spare, but clear, that an actor could not have bettered it. Dionysios came further round, so that I partly saw his face. His lips were parted, and his countenance changed like a field of barley in a breeze, to show he was following every word.

My guard walked about looking for a chamberlain, passing on his way a couple of Gauls at the further door. The sight of them reminded me what a change this was. Nobody had searched me.

Dionysios beckoned my escort, who told his errand and presently came to fetch me. I scrambled across the balustrade, picked my way over the sand, side-stepped a diagram (Plato’s I suppose) they had been discussing, and made my bow.

Dionysios had changed greatly. Of course, last time he had been in mourning, unshaven and with cropped hair; but it was more than that. His skin looked clearer, he fidgeted less; he seemed better-favored, like a plain girl pleased with her marriage. Plato was watching him, not as I had once seen him look at Dion, close and proud; still, there was a kind of affection in his face, like a mother’s when her child is learning to walk.

“Well, Nikeratos,” Dionysios began, but then at once turned round. “Here, Plato, is a man you know, though without, I daresay, knowing his face. This is Nikeratos, the tragedian of Athens, who was protagonist in my father’s play.”

Plato greeted me with courtesy, but as a stranger. It did not offend me; I guessed the cause, and replied suitably. He complimented my performance, and congratulated me on my crown. He did, at least, seem to hear and see me; Dionysios, from first to last, talked through me at Plato, not slightingly, but as if nobody else were real to him.

“And what brings you to Syracuse?” he asked me.

Good, I thought; now we shall see. “Just the business of my calling, sir. I have come to work.”

He looked pleased with this answer. “Well, Nikeratos,” he said, going back to his opening line, “so you have lately been in Athens at the Dionysia; and I suppose, after your success at the Lenaia, you were given a leading role?”

I told him yes; he inquired the name of the poet, the theme of the play, how it had been received—things that anyone might ask. But as he went on, I began to recognize that special tone I had observed at the Academy, when they played the game of questions, leading someone on till they scored a point. Being new and half-baked at it, he sounded rather silly. With the side of my eye I glanced at Plato. He was a man who would not have fidgeted if he had sat down on an anthill; but his patience was starting to show.

“So you enacted Orpheus. Did the play treat of his descent into the underworld to ransom his wife, or of his death at the hands of the maenads?”

“The second,” I said. “Though he relates the first in a soliloquy.”

He brightened. I must have given him the right feed-line.

“Orpheus was the son of Apollo, as we are told. Is it possible that being god-begotten he should have failed to calm the maenads with his song, inspired as he was by the divinity?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But some audiences don’t want the best, and let you know it.”

“Tut,” he said, brushing this off. “How will men think of the gods, if their sons are shown in error, or defeated?”

“Perhaps, sir, that they took after their mothers’ side.”

Plato’s eye flickered, like an old war-horse’s when he hears the trumpet. But he kept quiet, and left it to the colt, who as I saw was looking put out. I should have held my tongue, as Anaxis would have told me.

“In any case,” he said, “you imitated the passions of Orpheus in his desires and fears, hopes and despair; and the audience was pleased with you?”

“I think so. They gave the usual signs.”

“And I expect you are also skilled in imitating women, whether old and in sorrow, or young and in love?”

“Yes, I can do that.” I wondered how long he could keep this up, in any hope of making me look more foolish than himself. I recalled the quick smooth give-and-take at the Academy, and the humor, of the sort you get when people are really serious. So did Plato, I suppose.

“And you can imitate, too, brawling drunkards, scolding wives or thieving slaves?”

“A comedian would do it better.”

“Then you think such parts unworthy of you?”

“No, my skill is different.”

“You mean,” he said, his nose pointing like a game-dog’s, “that you find no kind of person too base to imitate?”

“That depends on how the author uses baseness.”

I could see I had cut his cue, whatever that should have been, and it had annoyed him. He came pretty close to asking me how I dared to argue, but then remembered the principles of debate. He peeped round at Plato, partly for approval, but partly in hope that the champion would ride into the battle, and spear me through.

Plato did not notice this appeal, and I saw why. A man was coming along the colonnade which ran round the empty pool. He seemed about Plato’s age, and held himself like one who has been somebody all his life. His red weathered soldier’s face was getting pouchy with good living, but his light blue eyes were still bright and hard; they had an air of having seen everything worth notice, and knowing what to think. He was well dressed for Sicily, meaning very florid by our standards, but within the bounds of breeding there, covered with clasps of malachite and heavy gold, even to his sandals. He came along by the balustrade, limping a little, from a stiff joint or some old wound, eyeing each man and acknowledging greetings, sometimes warmly, sometimes not; one felt none of it was without meaning.