Death Ex Machina (3 page)

“No,” Sophocles said.

“Then the machine must be doing something. How does it do that?”

Sophocles shrugged. “Who cares? It works. That’s all a theater man needs to know.”

“Thank you, sir,” Socrates said politely.

Socrates walked over to inspect the machine more closely. I knew that would be the last we saw of him until he had worked out the machine to whatever satisfaction he required, or until someone physically dragged him away.

“Tell us about this ghost, Sophocles,” Diotima said.

“I was startled when you said Pericles had sent you. He knows perfectly well there is no ghost.”

I nodded. “His plan is not to try to convince the actors and crew that there is no ghost, but instead to fool them into thinking that the ghost has been removed. He thinks it would be easier than convincing people who believe in the ghost that there never was one.”

“His idea is clever,” Sophocles said.

I said, “Sophocles, what is it that’s caused so much fear among the crew?”

Sophocles frowned and pursed his mouth. “There have been a few accidents, probably due to negligence among the men. That,
and a little bad luck, and some over-active imaginations were enough to convince everyone that a malevolent spirit is haunting the Theater of Dionysos.”

“I see.” I didn’t like the sound of that. Accidents and an over-active imagination are a normal part of life. But bad luck is sent by the Gods, and usually means something has offended them.

“Since we all agree that there’s no ghost, what are we doing in here?” Sophocles asked.

“We’re inspecting the entire theater, sir,” I said. “So that we can report to the crew that we’ve found definite signs of the ghost and are taking steps to expel it. Then we’ll go away, return with some seawater, some herbs, and a small sacrifice. Diotima will perform a ceremony—a genuine one so that the Gods are honored—and then we’ll tell your actors and crew that the ghost is gone, cast out by … by …”

I wasn’t sure who would cast out the ghost.

“By the power of the Lady Artemis, goddess of the hunt,” Diotima finished. “She’s the only goddess I’m qualified to officiate for.”

Sophocles nodded his appreciation. “The Huntress is a fine choice for chasing an evil spirit.” Then he frowned, in afterthought. “Should we not also sacrifice to Dionysos? It is his theater after all.”

That was a good point.

“We’ll need a priest of Dionysos,” Diotima said.

“That will be no problem,” said Sophocles. “The high priest of Dionysos is known to me.”

Sophocles was clearly a man who moved in exalted circles. There was another important man who should be present, but I hadn’t seen him. I asked, “Who is the choregos of your play, sir? Where is he?”

“His name is Thodis, of the deme Pallene. He returned to his home when it became clear that the actors could not be moved. Probably to weep in private.”

Pallene was one of the most ancient demes, so old that it had once been its own city, until Athens grew to encompass it. It was a place of wealthy estate owners and old money. I could easily see how a man of Pallene would have the funds to back a tragedy in the Great Dionysia.

Diotima said, “You spoke of accidents.”

“Things have gone wrong during rehearsals,” Sophocles said. “But only since my play was given use of the theater. Before that, everything was running smoothly.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“There are ten choral performances, five comedies, and three tragedies to be played, in that order. It’s the custom that we take turns for use of the theater, to practice our work, in the order in which we appear.”

“I see,” I said.

“The tragedies occupy the final three days because they are the most important event,” Sophocles said without the slightest hint of modesty. “By the drawing of lots my play is the final performance. I am therefore last to rehearse in the theater. There were problems from the moment we took possession. No one noticed at first because things always go wrong during rehearsals. Then the wave of little problems mounted until even the stage crew began to mutter. Each incident on its own was entirely trivial, or obvious bad luck.”

“Could you list them, please?” I said.

“The first was the broom left lying at the stage entrance. Romanos tripped over it as he made an entrance.”

“Romanos is?”

“Our third actor—the
tritagonist.
It was only a little thing, really, but it spoke of sloppiness on the part of the stagehands. Kiron—he’s the stage manager—had harsh words for everyone who works backstage. They all denied dropping it.”

“It doesn’t seem like much,” I said dubiously.

“That’s what I just told you,” Sophocles said in exasperation. “But then we all fell ill.”

“Surely a ghost couldn’t cause that.”

“No, but the tainted water in the water bottles could.”

Sophocles pointed to the back tables, where amongst all the stage kit was a row of ceramic water coolers and clay cups.

“We drink from those. The slave who sees to filling them must have collected bad water, because after a rehearsal a few days ago every one of us fell ill. Half of us had vomiting and diarrhoea. We couldn’t work the next day, and it was a struggle the day after.”

Bad water happens to every household from time to time. It only needs the house slave to fill the water bottles from the public fountain at an unlucky time.

“What else?” I asked.

“The broken props. We came in one morning to find that the masks had been torn.”

Diotima had walked to the back wall. A row of tables was arrayed along it.

“These?” Diotima asked. She picked up a mask that lay on the prop tables.

Sophocles nodded. “Precisely. The actors wear them, to represent different characters. All our masks were damaged one night. We arrived to find them slashed.”

“By a knife?”

“It looked more like claw marks to me. I thought some animal must have got at them. Perhaps a wild cat. I had to ask the choregos to pay for new masks. Fortunately the maskmaker was available. He’d finished all the masks for the festival. But he charged extra.
He
at least didn’t think there was a ghost. Oh no. He thought we hadn’t taken proper care of his work.” Sophocles threw his arms up in frustration. “By this time the muttering among the men had turned to open talk. They are convinced it’s the ghost of Thespis.”

“Who’s Thespis?”

“The first man ever to act on stage. He’s long dead. My friend Aeschylus tells of seeing Thespis act when he was but a small boy. Aeschylus says Thespis was not only the first actor, but the best he’s ever seen.”

I knew Aeschylus. He was an old man about to retire. If he’d seen this Thespis as a small boy, then Thespis had indeed lived long ago. I pointed out the obvious, “If it’s the ghost of Thespis, then why did he wait all this time to appear?”

Sophocles grimaced. “It’s nonsense of course. I’m afraid it was me who put the idea of Thespis in their heads. Rehearsals haven’t been going well. You can see why. To lighten the mood I made a half-hearted joke that Thespis would be furious with us if he saw the state of our play. Someone latched onto my comment and magnified it into an angry spirit. The worst was when one of the men saw the ghost.”

“What?”

“Akamas. He’s one of the stagehands. The one who was rude to you out back. He’s also a troublemaker. He says he was in here late one night and saw the ghost. That was the over-active imagination I told you about. He turned up next morning babbling about a ghost in the theater.”

I made a mental note to talk to this Akamas.

Sophocles went on, “That same morning, the railing on the balcony suddenly collapsed. No one was hurt, fortunately, but it was a close call for Lakon, who was standing on it at the time. That was the end of any chance of getting the players to play.”

“Where’s the balcony?” I asked.

Sophocles led us around the skene and onto the stage.

The balcony was directly above us, held up on four long wooden legs that had been painted white. It looked sturdy enough.

Sophocles pointed. “The actors stand there when they are playing a god. During the incident with the railing, Lakon leaned upon it, and the railing simply fell away. He almost went over with it, which would have been a disaster for the play. Lakon is our first
actor, our
protagonist.
He’s irreplaceable.” He sighed. “I had harsh words for the carpenters. They fixed it at once, but what’s the point if the actors won’t play?”

“Must gods stand upon the balcony?” I asked. “Maybe you could avoid it.”

Sophocles held his hands up in horror. “Don’t even suggest it. Imagine if you were the goddess Athena, I mean
the real goddess
, and you looked down from Mount Olympos to see that someone in Athens was not only pretending to be you, but stood on the same level as ordinary mortals. How would you feel?”

I thought about it. “Not good,” I said.

“Exactly. Our gods stand above the crowd, to avoid insulting the real ones.”

“Does Athena appear in your play, Sophocles?” Diotima asked.

“No. I have Zeus, the king of the Gods, and Thanatos, the god of death.”

“Death! What’s the play about?” I asked. “Or shouldn’t I ask?”

“Certainly you may ask. The title is
Sisyphus, King of Corinth.
The story is of that ancient king’s fall from power due to his serious personality defects, and his subsequent terrible punishment in Hades.”

“Doomed to push the boulder uphill, only to have it roll back down again, for all eternity,” I said.

“Yes, that’s how the play ends.” Sophocles sighed. “The net result of all these problems is that, even if the actors and crew return to work at once, we still won’t be ready in time for the Great Dionysia.”

“Don’t worry, Sophocles,” I said. “We’ll help you.”

“So you will tell the men the ghost is gone?” Sophocles said.

I thought about the bottles of tainted water, the broken props, and the damaged balcony.

I said, “The problem is, I think the ghost might be real.”

SCENE 4

THE MASK

“N
Ο, I DON’T think there’s an evil spirit haunting the theater,” I said. “But I’m sure there’s a mortal man of ill will. Someone’s trying to wreck the play.”

Diotima and I had left the theater, leaving behind Socrates, who was still prodding and poking the machine. We had stopped only long enough to tell the men waiting outside that we had detected clear signs of a malign presence (which was true), that we knew how to deal with it (which was also true), and that by the time we were finished there would be no ghost in the theater (take that one as you will).

“They all look like accidents, Nico. You can’t prove otherwise,” said my wife, who is the logical one in our partnership.

“Yes, but there’ve been too many to call it coincidence. The best explanation is sabotage,” I told her. I’m the cynical, suspicious one.

Diotima bit her lip while she thought about it. “I was wondering the same thing,” she admitted. “But I’m less certain than you are. Why would someone want to wreck the Dionysia?”

I had no idea.

I said, “Maybe he’s merely an idiotic prankster. Do we necessarily have to know his motive? Or even find him? The job after all is to get the actors and crew back to work. We can expel the imaginary ghost without having to find the real culprit.”

“But if you’re right, the saboteur will try again,” Diotima said.

“So we’ll be on the lookout for him. We’ll watch every rehearsal, check everything every morning. If he tries again, we’ll catch him.”

We had stopped on the corner of Theater Street and Tripod Road. The backstage of the theater was clearly visible from there, including the wide-open side entrance.

Diotima pointed and said, “Anyone could walk in there, any time they wanted. You can guard the theater all day, Nico, but your prankster could sneak in at night, no trouble.”

That was true.

“I’ll arrange for a watchman,” I said.

“How?” she asked dubiously.

“I’ll think of something. We have to stop him.”

“You really think these are pranks then?” Diotima asked.

“A troublemaker, for sure.”

“Sophocles called one of the stage crew a troublemaker,” Diotima said.

“The one with the muscles. Akamas. We’ll have to look into him.”

“Then this is the perfect moment,” Diotima said. “Because here he comes.”

Which indeed he did. Akamas was walking down Theater Road, swinging his arms with a slight swagger.

I held up my hand as he passed and said, “Akamas, I’d like a word.”

He stopped and stared at us. “Yeah? I got business to attend to.”

I was surprised. “You do? But rehearsals are stopped until the ghost is gone.”

“That don’t stop me drinking. There’s a decent tavern over there.” He pointed to a place across the street.

It wasn’t even lunchtime yet. The value of anything Akamas had to say was going rapidly downhill.

“Sophocles told us you saw the ghost.”

“Yeah.”

I waited. Akamas had nothing else to say.

“What happened?” I prompted.

“I saw the ghost. It was nighttime.”

“What were you doing in the theater at night?” I asked.

He spat on the ground. “Kiron made me work late after everyone else had gone.”

“Kiron’s the stage manager?”

“Yeah. He said one of the actors had complained about the footing on the stage. Said it was too slippery. I had to grind it rougher. That was when I saw it.”

“The ghost?”

“I was down on my hands and knees, scrubbing the stage floor with a stone, you know? I looked up, there it was.”

“Standing in front of you?”

“No. On the balcony. Way above me. I don’t know what made me look up that high. Maybe some movement.”

“What did it look like?”

Akamas scratched his head. “It was getting dark, you know? With the festival so close they work until it’s too dark to see. I saw the outline and I saw it was acting, but no sound was coming out.”

This was interesting. “Acting how?” I asked.

Akamas shrugged. “I dunno. You know how actors move around. They exaggerate everything? It was like that. It was like there was an audience there and the ghost was acting to it.”