The Mask of Apollo (35 page)

“If you call him that. I doubt the troops do, now.”

“What was it old Dionysios said on his deathbed, Niko? ‘A city in chains of adamant.’ The chains are rotting. Dion should know.”

T
HE SOLDIERS REJOICED ALL NIGHT, AT THE
expense of anyone they found at hand; then they went back on duty, and the city breathed again. I was scolded by Menekrates for going to Ortygia, and by Thettalos for not having taken him with me. At the mention of Herakleides, our host looked so nervous that, remembering his past hints, I added two and two. Though it was hard to think of so frank a soldier conspiring, yet it was certain that the mutiny had tested the troops’ loyalty, and the Archon’s strength. I wondered if Speusippos guessed.

Two days later, all being still calm, I went to call on Chairemon the tragic poet, taking with me Thettalos, whose work he would certainly know. After asking around (just like a poet, he had forgotten to say where he was staying) we learned he was in Ortygia, as a palace guest.

“Good,” said Thettalos as we went. “This time you can’t leave me to bite my nails all morning, wondering if you’re lying dead in a gutter. Lead me to the tyrant’s lair.”

It was with no great delight that I approached Ortygia. If the gates were to be closed again, I had no fancy to be inside. However, I showed our passes for outer Ortygia (these were easily got from the Athenian embassy) and had them endorsed for the palace citadel by the captain of the guard.

I had expected slackness at the guardhouses, after yesterday, but not what met us everywhere—restlessness, rumor, suspicion. At the Iberian gate two men were quarreling. As the first blows were struck, an officer came up cursing; there was a dangerous moment before they obeyed. We went on, not envying him his employment, nor indeed much liking our own. “Never mind,” said Thettalos. “It’s all in the business. One must study how men behave. Something can happen anywhere—pirates in the islands, satrap wars in Ionia, and in Macedon they’re forever assassinating the king.”

Our one strict check was the last, into the palace citadel. In the park, we found the groves full of men running about, light-armed Cretans going like beaters through the coverts, calling to one another. Some of them stopped us, but passed us through without saying whom they wanted.

In due course we found our way to the second-class guesthouse where Chairemon had a room. All the other inmates—poets, envoys, minor philosophers and so on—were huddled in the courtyard muttering. When Chairemon recognized us they all ran up asking for news. “Of what?” I asked. “If you mean the mutiny, it seems to be over.” Someone said, “Then they’ve not caught him yet?” When I asked whom he meant, he said, “Herakleides.”

“I don’t think so. The place is full of men searching. Why, what has he done?”

Of a sudden, everyone became careful; Chairemon said one could not be sure, one merely heard he was being searched for; if we would come to his room, he had a play he would like to talk about.

When the door was shut, he wrung our hands and thanked the gods for the sound of Attic speech. I thought he would burst into tears. “Never again! I came with Karkinos; he’s been before, and persuaded me to accept—the works of art, banquets, music and so on. Never, never again! Not that I’m concerned in this, not at all.” He looked round at the door. “It’s knowing that anything can happen—really, anything. It’s the thought, just the thought of it.”

I answered, “Pythagoras said, ‘Accept in your mind that anything which can happen can happen to you.’” I had heard this aphorism at the Academy. He looked at me in appeal, as if I could make it otherwise. I saw Thettalos laughing to himself.

It seemed Herakleides had been accused of causing the mutiny, and had gone missing. His friends, including Plato, had been pleading for him, because he had belonged to Dion’s party; and had got a safe-conduct for him from the Archon, to prepare his affairs for exile. Then today, on news that he had been seen, troops had been sent out to catch him. It was now supposed that the safe-conduct had been a trick, to delay his getting away.

“Maybe,” I said. “Or Dionysios just changed his mind.”

“But, surely, Nikeratos, his honor …”

“There’s only one judge of honor, in Syracuse.”

Chairemon blinked. I said, “Never mind, there’s still the theater. If Troy hadn’t fallen, where would we be today?” His eyes reproached my frivolity, but he consented to talk business.

He had a choregos for his new play,
Achilles Slays Thersites
, and wanted us to do it for the festival. Although he
would
read it aloud (why do so few poets read well?) it was a good piece of work. It started with the Amazon Penthesilea arriving as a Trojan ally. She challenges the Greeks; Achilles, still mourning for Patroklos, is brought the tale of her victories. Now he has resumed his place as champion of the Greeks, it is for him to meet her. They hail each other, she on the walls and he below, to exchange defiance. Love at first sight. But they are equal in pride and standing; each values honor more than life; they must fight to the death. Achilles wins. He enters from battle walking by the bier on which they bring her breathing her last. There is a lovely speech in which he praises her valor to cheer her parting soul. She’s gone. He kneels and weeps for her, bowed upon the bier. Thersites the mocker, who has been longing to hear that the great Achilles has fallen at last by a woman’s hand, now has his say. What a mourner! he cries. You’ve only just done grieving for Patroklos; now it’s this Amazon, and both of them died through you. Achilles gets up; Thersites takes fright and runs; off stage sounds his deathcry as Achilles fells him with a blow. After a lively scene with Diomedes, who has to demand satisfaction for the blood because Thersites was his kinsman, Artemis appears to stop the fight and reconcile the heroes. Big choral procession, Penthesilea given to her Amazons for burial, to end the play. It is now well known in Athens, but this was its first performance.

Achilles is for the protagonist, but there is a great deal of fat for the second too. Penthesilea dying is a dummy; he can play both her and Thersites. Chairemon had had the script copied so that we could take it home; we walked off so full of it that we hardly noticed the Cretans still rummaging the boskage. Reading as we went, we missed our way, and found ourselves in a new part of the park, among houses which looked dangerously important. I pushed the script into my robe, saying, “We must go back the way we came.”

“By all means,” said Thettalos, “if you know which it is.”

There were three paths behind us, all much alike. Beyond a grove of pink oleanders one could glimpse the palace roofs. “We had better look through,” I said. “If I see which side we are on, I can steer by that.”

We pushed into the bushes. As I saw light, I also heard people talking, and stopped dead, gripping Thettalos’ arm. One of the voices was Dionysios’.

Thettalos, who read my eyes, stood soundless. It was not a time to be found where one had no business, creeping up on the Archon. I recalled Pythagoras’ saying, which I had quoted to Chairemon so lightly.

Thettalos had paled a little, but was already edging softly towards a gap in the leaves. One must study, as he said to me later, how men behave.

At first I could only hear Dionysios’ voice, eloquent with self-pity. Now and again one of the men with him, some two or three, would say, “Yes, indeed,” or “Everyone can witness that,” or “How true!” They were coming towards us; as their words got clearer, fear that they might discover us made me deaf. They paused, however, as they naturally would on coming to a thicket, and I allowed myself to breathe. Dionysios was saying, “But no, a friend of Dion’s can’t do wrong for him. Anyone, a traitor who eats my salt and corrupts my soldiers, anyone before me.” He almost sobbed. He was half-drunk, but quite sincere.

Someone said, “Birds of a feather, sir. You have been too generous to his insolence. The truth is—forgive me for my plain speaking—you don’t value yourself enough. It feeds his pride.”

“When I think—” Dionysios was beginning; then he broke off. They were now walking away; I crept along to share Thettalos’ peephole. There was the Archon with his friends; and crossing the lawn to them came three men, the oldest leading. Thettalos, who was watching entranced, mouthed a name at me with questioning brows. I nodded.

The two younger men stood silent, in attitudes of formal grief. Plato came forward. His shoulders and heavy head were stooping more than I remembered; his beard, which had had some gray in it, was nearly all white, though there was black still in his brows. His eyepits had deepened; from their caves gazed his eyes, piercingly gray. I could almost see Dionysios’ gaze shifting, through the back of his head. However, encouraged no doubt by his admirers, he decided to put a face on it. “Yes, Plato?” he said. “What is it?”

“I am here,” said Plato, “at the instance of these friends of mine. They are afraid you may be taking some new action against Herakleides, in spite of the promise you made me yesterday. I believe he has been seen hereabouts.”

Dionysios’ back jerked upright, giving at the same time a kind of wriggle. “Promise?” he said, sounding indignant. He had tried, also, to sound surprised.

At this one of the other two rushed forward, flung himself on his knees before the Archon, and clasped his hand. He made some plea, broken by weeping. Dionysios allowed his hand to be cried on, drawing himself up and looking powerful. Perhaps for once he felt like his father. Plato stood watching this scene with distaste. After a while he stepped forward, and put his hand on the man’s bowed shoulder. “Courage, Theodotes,” he said. “Dionysios would never dare break our agreement in such a way.”

Dionysios’ pose collapsed. His hand having been let go before he could snatch it back, he folded his arms furiously. “With you,” he said, “I agreed to nothing. Nothing at all.”

As I said, Plato had aged. His stoop had settled into his bones; he would never draw himself straight again. Nonetheless, at these words he grew alarming. Once, I remember, in some old country theater, I came to the skeneroom with a torch at night, and found myself face to face with a great old eagle-owl, hunched in his dark corner, his round eyes glaring into mine. I almost dropped the torch and burned down the building.

“By the gods, you did!” He thrust forward his beak; I could almost see the lifted feathers. The sycophants clucked; the friends looked panic-stricken. In case Dionysios had not taken his meaning the first time, he added, “You promised just what this man is begging for.” He turned his back on the Archon, and walked off.

There was a silence; then Dionysios told Herakleides’ friends to get out of his sight. Next moment he was gone himself, I suppose to urge on the soldiers. The lawn was full of powerful emptiness, like a theater after a play.

We scouted our way back to the public path before either of us spoke. Then Thettalos said, “He called him a liar, in front of all those people.”

I said, “And two of them Dion’s friends.”

“Will he kill him?”

“I don’t know.” I could feel myself trembling a little. “His father would have done it. I don’t suppose he knows himself what he means to do. It’s with the gods.”

“A terrible old man! Niko, can’t we try to get him away? It’s like leaving Prometheus to be gnawed by rats. At least he deserves a vulture.”

“My dear, he has a dozen devoted friends in the city. The best thing for us is to find Speusippos and warn him. He may need it.”

Menekrates, when he heard our news, decided at once to send his wife and children out of town, to her father’s place. She could take some valuables with her, in case rioting broke out. The house was in a turmoil of packing.

We called twice at the house where Speusippos was staying, but he was out, they could not say where. The rest of the day we spent going over Chairemon’s script; but next morning, resolved that Speusippos should be found without more delay, we called again. The porter, who knew me well, said he and the master were both at the house of Archidemos, the philosopher, where Plato was a guest. We stared. He went on carefully, “I understand, sir, the Archon needed the guesthouse. So he asked him to stay with friends.”

We looked at each other with relief. “So Plato is well,” I said, “and staying with friends of his own?” He answered yes. “And your master and Speusippos are both there too?”

“That I can’t say, sir. But that was where they were going.”

No doubt he was keeping things back, but we felt satisfied and walked off in relief, remarking that Plato must be even more glad to go than Dionysios to see the back of him. As Thettalos said, it was the end of a famous friendship, but at least he could go home. I thought of Dion, and how he would take the news.

Our minds now at rest about Plato, we settled down to find a cast and begin rehearsals. There was no chorus, only musical interludes, which would be looked after by a music-master. Chairemon was a very modern author. The third actor I had in mind was free, and brought me a friend to audition for the fourth, who had a few lines; I took him on. The extras were easy. Chairemon had found a reasonable choregos; he was said to be mean by Sicilian standards, and therefore pleased to have Athenian actors, who don’t demand bullion trimmings over everything and real gold crowns. I am a little too vain to hide in a heap of ornaments, so we suited well.

We had been rehearsing two or three days when on the way home I said to Thettalos, “My dear, I said nothing before the others, but whatever are you doing with Thersites?”

He met my eye in a way I knew, which meant he was going to try and talk me round. “Don’t you think it would be new, and in the spirit of the times, to play him for sympathy?”

“What times? The play is about the Trojan War.”

“Well, but it’s true Achilles did kill Patroklos, or cause his death. In Homer, the first thing you hear of Thersites is that he stood up to Agamemnon when he was in the wrong. Who else did?”

“Achilles. Diomedes. Chryses. Odysseus.”

“Well, Thersites spoke for the common people.”

“No, my dear, just for the mean ones. He is the voice of envy, which hates great good worse than great evil. In this Chairemon has followed Homer. Penthesilea is the part to play for sympathy; Thersites offers you contrast.”