The Mask of Apollo (22 page)

Plato had noticed him, Dionysios not yet. When he passed two men drawing in the sand, he said something, straight-faced, which made them grin, and followed it with a mock reproof. Plato, clearly, was meant to see. Then he swept along till he was level with Dionysios, to whom he bowed deeply.

The young man said, “Good day, Philistos,” and their eyes met. Philistos paused a moment. His face was that of a man who sees his superior, a nice inexperienced boy, making a fool of himself, but blames rather the man who should know better, yet leads him on. The glance was eloquent of respect, discretion, and quiet irony, with a touch of patronage to make it sting.

Dionysios looked in two minds whether to call him over. He refrained however. There was a moment when Philistos seemed to ask himself whether anything he could say would open his poor friend’s eyes; then, as if deciding the time was not yet ripe, he gravely withdrew. He remained, though, at the far end of the court, watching the geometrists.

Dionysios looked after him, then back to me. He had been put off, and was now stuck. I would have given him his line, if only I had known what it was.

“But,” said Plato, “we were talking, I think, about the nature of the actor’s skill.”

He was not joining the debate, just making himself felt, like a protagonist who enters upstage and, though silent, at once commands the scene. That was his quality; it cut down Philistos at once to a rich old gentleman, rather overdressed and overfed, who is getting set in his ways and sniffs at everything beyond him. Dionysios revived. He was ready now to dash on and finish the scene.

“Well, Nikeratos, in spite of all your varied skills, I would rather hear from you always that dignity and seemliness with which you spoke the Eulogy. Shall I tell you why?” I saw Plato stir, but his pupil was off by now, showing his paces. “All things here below are only imitations of the pure forms God knows: good if they approach the likeness, bad if they fail. So, when you enact men and their qualities, you are imitating an imitation, isn’t that so?”

“So it would seem,” I said. I was anxious to keep him going, and get it over.

“Then, if you imitate the worse rather than the good in men, however well you do it, you are giving, really, the worst imitation, the least like the true model. Doesn’t that follow?”

I had not met Axiothea and her friends for nothing; one must keep the rules. “Yes,” I said. “It would follow on the first.”

“But, Dionysios, are we not forgetting how recently Nikeratos joined us?” Plato’s clear voice came in like a silver knife slicing an apple. “You and I have come step by step to the concept of divine originals; but he in his courtesy conceded the premise without demonstration. There is a saying that one should not press a generous man too far. At present we may thank him for the pleasure his art has given us; later, when he has followed all the argument, we may win him to our conclusions.”

Dionysios looked dashed, as well he might. He took it, though, as pupil from master. The lord of the fleet of Syracuse, of the gates and the catapults and the quarried prison, sulked like a chidden boy. He shot me a look. I saw not the anger of a tyrant put down before a traveling actor, but just a pique, because Plato had not taken his side.

I was trying to think of some civility which would get me off, when at the end of the colonnade I saw Dion enter.

I can’t tell how I felt. It was wind against tide. There he stood, the same man as always, without a mean thought in his soul, a man who, if he had pledged protection to a suppliant, would have stood to it till death, though it were for a thrall on a peasant farm. Yet this same man wanted to take away not just the bread out of my mouth, not just the reputation I had worked for all my life, but, as it seemed to me, the soul out of my body.

As he came on, he passed Philistos. I saw it was a greeting of open enemies. They measured one another, like men who do it daily as the fortunes of conflict shift. A child could have picked the better man. Philistos went out sneering; Dion did not look back. I saw a glow on him of victory and hope. He saluted Dionysios. But before that, his eyes had sought Plato’s from far off, and the young man had not missed it.

When he noticed me, Dion did not show surprise. He must have known I was coming. His greeting was formal, but I knew he wanted to see me afterwards. When, therefore, I was dismissed from the presence, I made my way to his house. Waiting in the anteroom, I had a good while to think, but found no answer. It needs a sophist, I thought, for that.

At last he came. Keeping his distance before the servant, he went in, then sent for me; but, once we were alone, he greeted me even more kindly than before. He shone with happiness. I had thought he would be ill at ease before me, but no. Among his great affairs, he had not even remembered.

I gave him his own letter, and the one for Plato. He put down my constraint, I think, to bad news I brought, for he read Archytas’ letter standing; then, reassured, he offered me wine. The cup was Italian, the painting touched up with white, like his gift at Delphi. Memories crowded me: the crane, Meidias’ death cry, the battle at Phigeleia, my father as Cassandra, the great theater at Syracuse where Aischylos put on
The Persians
, Menekrates saying, “It’s all one under the mask.” The cup shook in my hand. As one learns to do, I steadied it. He had been putting back the jug, and had noticed nothing.

Raising his cup, he said, “To the fortunes of Syracuse. A glorious dawn, Zeus prosper it.”

I held myself in, and answered slowly, “Shall we offer the prayer of Hippolytos,
Grant me to end life’s race as I began?
”

“Choose,” he said, smiling, “some prayer of better omen, for, as I remember, that one the gods rejected.”

“I see you know your Euripides. Well then, a toast to purified Syracuse. Down with all riffraff—hired troops, spies, gluttons and drunkards, whores, and artists.” I lifted the cup, and threw it down on the marble floor.

I had not known I would do this. The wine made a great red star, and spattered both our robes. A piece of the cup lay at my feet, a crowned goddess, in the Italian style.

He stood stock-still, amazed, then angry. Sicilians of his rank don’t know such things can happen to them. Well, I thought, he is talking to an Athenian now, and must make the best of it.

“Nikeratos,” he said, “I am sorry to see you so forget yourself.”

“Forget?” I answered. “No, by Apollo, I have remembered what I am. I am a citizen of no rank; I don’t understand philosophy; when you were studying, I was playing stand-ins and extras, picking up my trade which you want to take away. But whatever I am, or you choose to call me, one thing I know: I am a servant of the god, and though I honor you and love you, I will obey the god, rather than you.”

He had listened unmoving; but at these words he started, as if he knew them. I waited, but he did not speak.

“You have been godlike to me.” If I had let myself, I could have wept. “But beside the god you are just a man. Farewell. I daresay we shan’t meet again.” I paused at the door, but there was nothing to stay for, so I only said, “I am sorry I broke the wine cup.”

“Nikeratos. Come back … I beg of you.” The words came out stiffly. His tongue was strange to them. It was that made me turn.

“Come, sit down,” he said. We sat by his desk. It was covered with letters and petitions such as are sent to men in power. There were sheets too of geometric figures and a diagram of the stars.

“My friend,” he said, “Archytas tells me that you almost lost your life upon my business. I have grieved you, which I cannot help; but I did it thoughtlessly, and for that I ask your pardon.”

“If the thing is true,” I answered, “does it matter how you say it? Is it true, or not?”

“This is hard,” he said, and leaned his brow on his open hand. “Plato could say this better than I; but it rightly falls on me, the man who you feel betrays you … What did you mean, Nikeratos, when you said you served the god? Not just that you perform the sacrifices to Dionysos and Apollo, and respect their precinct, but something more?”

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t need to be an artist yourself to understand me. It means not setting oneself above one’s poet, nor being false to the truth one knows of men. When one can see that the audience wants the easy thing, or the thing just in fashion, and even the judges can’t be trusted not to want it too, for whom does one stay honest? Only for the god.”

“You hear him speak, and obey him. But could you have heard so clearly, if you had not learned your art from boyhood?”

“No, I think not. Or not so soon.”

“Suppose you had been badly trained, and always heard bad work praised above good.”

“A great misfortune. But if an artist is anything, sooner or later he thinks for himself.”

“But others, not? Bad teaching spoils them past remedy?”

“Yes, but they are men the theater can do without.”

“You mean they can take up some other calling. So they can. But, Nikeratos, all men have to live, either well or badly, as they are taught. If enough are taught badly, the bad will get rid of the good. And you, whether you choose or not, are a teacher. Young boys, and simple men, don’t go to the theater to judge of verse; they go to see gods and kings and heroes, to enter the world you make, to steep their minds and souls in it. Can you deny this?”

“But,” I said, “one plays for men of sense.”

“You keep faith with your art, Nikeratos. You will not offend the god with anything unworthy, even though men would reward you for it. But your power stops there. You cannot rewrite your play, though the poet may be doing the very thing you would scorn to do.”

“That is his business. I am an actor.”

“But you both serve the god. Can his god say one thing, and yours another?”

“I am an actor. He and I must each judge for ourselves.”

“Truly? Yet you have to enter his mind. Have you never once felt you were entering a false world, or an evil one?”

I could not lie to him, and replied, “Yes, once or twice. Even with Euripides, in his
Orestes.
Orestes has been wronged, but nothing can excuse his wickedness. Yet one is supposed to play him for sympathy.”

“Did you do so?”

“I was third actor then. I should have to try, I suppose, if I were drawn for it.”

“Because that is the law of the theater?”

“Yes.”

“But, my dear Nikeratos, that is why we want to change it.”

“I understood,” I said, “that you wanted to destroy it.”

“No, not so.” He looked at me with kindness, as if I were a decent soldier he had beaten in war. “Plato believes, as I do, that an artist such as you, who can portray nobility, has his place in the good city. In some such way as this: that the parts of base, or passionate, or unstable men should be related in narration, while only the good man, who is a fit example, or the gods speaking true doctrine, should be honored by the actor’s imitation. In such a way, nothing evil would strike deep into the hearers’ minds.”

I gazed at him, solemn as an owl. If, having begun to laugh, I could not stop, which seemed likely, he would despise me for instability. I told myself this, to sober up. Not that I feared his displeasure now; as I had said, he was just a man. But the man was dear to me.

“You mean,” I said, “that in the
Hippolytos
, for instance, where Phaedra reveals her guilty love, and where Theseus curses his son in ignorance, all that would be narrated? Only Hippolytos would speak?”

“Yes, just so. And we could not admit of evil being caused by Aphrodite, who is a god, to a just man.”

“No, I suppose not. And Achilles must not weep for Patroklos nor tear his clothes, because that is a failure in self-command?”

“No, indeed.”

“But do you think,” I asked at length, “that
any
of it would strike deep into the hearers’ minds? You don’t think it might be dull?”

He looked at me, patient, not angry. “As wholesome food is, after those Sicilian banquets that have made us the scorn of Hellas. Believe me, our Syracusan cooks are artists too, in their way. Yet you would not lose your figure, health and looks to please one of them, would you, even if he were a friend? And is not the soul worth more?”

“Of course it is. But …” It was no use, I thought, against a trained wrestler of the Academy. I had learned my art by asking how, rather than why.

“Only look, Nikeratos,” he said, his fine face lit with eagerness, “at the world around us. Look what men as they are have brought it to. War, tyranny, revenge, anarchy, injustice everywhere. Somewhere, somewhere one must begin.”

At these words, my feet seemed to feel firm ground. I said, “That is true. Then why, seeing Dionysios is eating out of Plato’s hand, doesn’t he seize his chance, and get the Syracusans a proper constitution? Soon it will be too late; even I can see that. Why is the city as full of mercenaries as ever? The tyranny goes on, while you all scratch circles in the sand—” His face reminded me, if my own sense had not, that I was speaking to the first minister. I said, “I go too far. But we were talking about justice.”

“We were,” he said after a pause, “so I will tell you why. You have been very sick this year. When the fever had left you, could you get up at once, and go about your business? Or did you need an arm to lean on? Well, Syracuse has been sick for almost forty years. A whole generation, reared in sickness … even to the highest.”

“And so,” I said, “you must begin with the child at nurse, with the schoolboy at the theater. And Dionysios—he must begin with mathematics.”

He clenched his hand on the desk, as if begging the gods for patience. “Nikeratos, don’t make me angry. Don’t treat me like a child, and Plato like a fool. He was learning politics at first hand before I was born; and so was I, before you were. If you think you know your own business best, give us some credit for knowing ours.”

I was ashamed, and begged his pardon. He only put up with me out of gratitude, and because I had shown him my heart.

“Try to see you are not in Athens now. This is Sicily. Beyond the River Halys are the lands of Carthage. The enemy stands with his foot in the door, pushing as soon as our shoulder slackens. What use is it to pay off the mercenaries, and pull down the walls of Ortygia, and set the people by the ears with a new regime, before we have made a man to lead them? They are better off as they are than as slaves in Africa, or nailed on crosses, or spitted over fires, and they have always known it. Dionysios has no root of greatness”—he had forgotten in his deep earnestness even to drop his voice—“he cannot lead men nor make them love him. But he can still save Syracuse, if he can only be taught to think.”