The Blood Star (51 page)

Once we passed an island, and I noticed that
Kephalos could not take his eyes from it, as if the sight fed some
hunger in his soul.

“What is this place?” I asked him.

“Naxos, Lord—where I was born, where perhaps
my mother and father live even now.”

“Then shall we stop here for a visit?”

He shook his head, and there were tears in
his eyes.

“No, Lord,” he said at last. “As a boy I was
eager enough to leave these shores, and it is now too late to
return to them. Some things are best left as they are.”

He watched the island slip past us, even
until the darkness closed over it. That night he kept silent vigil
with his wine jar, and we spoke no more of the matter. Those who
have never known the pain of exile cannot understand.

For the next several days we traveled west
and north, without particular purpose, through the islands of the
sea the Greeks call Aegean. We visited Delos, said to be the
birthplace of Apollo and sacred to him, and there I consulted the
oracle, who took my silver and told me the god was silent. We also
stopped at Cythera, which claims to be the birthplace of Aphrodite,
as do Cyprus and half the islands between Caria and the
Peloponnesos. The Greeks, I was discovering, are not overly
scrupulous concerning their gods.

At last we came to Attica, to the mainland,
and we followed its southern shore to Athens.

We stayed there for six months. I have
difficulty in describing Athens, for by comparison with the other
great cities I have seen it is hardly more than a tawdry little
waterfront settlement, and yet it made a considerable impression on
me. For one thing, it was a Greek city, and that separated it at
once from the rest of the world.

I was struck immediately by the fact that
there were no grand palaces or temples, for the Greeks seem to
think that buildings are only for sleeping in—they live in their
marketplaces, for they are the most sociable of races.

A Greek is always talking, either debating
the significance of some piece of news or complaining to anyone who
will listen about prices or the general unworthiness of human
nature. It is for this reason, I think, that the Greek tongue is so
powerful and supple an instrument, for it is in constant use.

There are also no kings, the Athenians having
expelled them at least a hundred years before. The government and
most of the wealth are controlled by an aristocracy, but this is a
very fluid body into which a man may rise if he has gathered enough
silver to himself. In the councils of war, a common soldier may
argue strategy with a general, and if he carries opinion with him
can succeed to the command. An Athenian, like every other Greek,
regards himself as being at least as good as any man alive, so they
do not tolerate much insolence from their leaders.

Yet, although the kings are gone, one can
still see the remains of their citadel. Like many Greek cities,
Athens is built around a huge outcropping of rock, the site of an
arcopolis surrounded with fortresslike walls. The Athenians use
theirs as a temple district and for ritual enactments of the
stories of their gods during the Festival of Dionysos, which is a
rather frenzied affair. They worship their gods as they do
everything else, in public, and they seem to have no priestly
caste. Piety is a duty of the citizen and therefore incumbent on
all.

The roads leading into the city are lined
with linden trees, and I could not but be reminded of the one that
grew in the garden in the house of women while I was a boy there.
In Nineveh it was rarity, but here they were as common as weeds. My
mother came from Athens, and the Greek spoken there always sounded
to me as if it could have come from her lips. Thus Athens seemed
filled with ghosts, and I found myself much oppressed in
spirit.

A thing that struck me about the
Athenians—and I am sure it is characteristic enough of the Greeks
as a race—is the tolerance they exhibit towards lovers of the same
sex. For men to take beardless boys to their sleeping mats seems a
common and accepted practice among them. It is even regarded as
beneficial, as part of their education, for youths thus to be
brought into commerce with those older and more experienced than
themselves. In the land of my birth such a thing, had it became
known, would have carried with it scorn and even punishment.

I had known for some time that Kephalos
shared this taste, but I did not immediately connect it to the
change that came over him shortly after we arrived in Athens. I had
begun to notice in him a certain bemused preoccupation—he would
often lose the thread of conversations and sometimes stared
distractedly into space for long moments, as if he had forgotten
where he was. He drank more wine with dinner and often had to be
carried to bed. And he had taken to dressing with more than usual
care, even to scenting his beard, before going out for a stroll in
the afternoon. I was becoming very worried about him until one day,
quite by chance, I discovered what was ailing him.

Peiraeus is the harbor area of the city and
also a place where much business is done. I was returning from an
inspection of our ship when I happened to pass close enough to the
slave market to catch a glimpse there of Kephalos, in seemingly
casual conversation with a boy who wore the bronze collar that
meant he was for sale—it was clear from their demeanor toward one
another that this was not their first meeting. I kept out of sight,
observing their curious transaction, and watched as a few coins
changed hands and the two of them disappeared into a shed.

This explained much. My friend, it seemed,
had fallen in love.

It gave me an idea, for I remembered what
Selana had once said:
“Someday, if you have pity on him, you
will go to the slave market and buy him a dark-eyed boy with a face
as pretty as a woman’s.”
It seemed a small enough recompense
for all that I owed him.

I waited until they came out again and
Kephalos, with a fond smile and a final caress, took his leave.
Then I approached the slave dealer.

“This one, Your Honor, is just eleven years
old and was the body slave of Cleisthenes, the renowned charioteer,
until that gentleman was dragged to death by his horses while
preparing for the games at Nemea. I bought him when the estate was
settled, last month, and have been awaiting a buyer who would
appreciate him. Cleisthenes, as you may have heard, had a
reputation for being most discriminating in such matters, so I am
sure the youth will give satisfaction.”

“The youth” had round red cheeks and large
dark-brown eyes with the longest lashes I had ever seen on anyone,
man or woman—I doubted he would ever grow to proper manhood, for he
seemed quite hardened in his effeminacy. Already he had acquired
the insinuating smile of a practiced harlot, and I suspected he
would probably turn out to be a thief and a troublemaker, but it
was not I who had to be pleased. I guessed he would do very
well.

“You will observe that his hind parts are
remarkably well formed,” the slave dealer told me, pulling up the
back of the boy’s tunic so I might see.

“Yes—most impressive. How much do you want
for him?”

“Two hundred drachma, Your Honor.”

He cringed slightly, as if afraid lest I
might strike him in my outrage. It was not an unreasonable
expectation, since the man was obviously attempting to rob me by
profiting from the ignorance of a foreigner.

Two hundred drachma was an absurd figure. The
slave dealer in Naukratis had asked only one hundred and fifty for
Selana and in the end had settled for thirty silver shekels.
Besides, this boy had gone unsold for a month.

“I will give you fifty drachma, and no
more.”

The speed with which my offer was accepted
indicated clearly that even at fifty I had overpaid.

“My name is Ganymedes—after the cupbearer of
Immortal Zeus,” the boy announced in a lisping voice as he followed
me back to our lodgings. He smiled, showing his teeth, and allowed
his eyelashes to flutter seductively. One did not have to be a
soothsayer to observe how extraordinarily vain he was of his
beauty. “I know how to make myself approved.”

The information was not particularly welcome.
Perhaps unfairly, I had already conceived a strong dislike for
him.

“It is not I who must approve you,” I
answered curtly. “You will serve at my table this evening and there
meet your new master, if he will have you. If not, then I will
apprentice you to a sailmaker or some other craftsman that you may
learn to support yourself through a useful trade.”

This had the desired effect of ending his
flirtatiousness, for it seemed I had guessed correctly that useful
trades would be very little to young Ganymedes’ taste.

“Then you are not to be. . ?” he began again,
after a short silence.

“No, for my inclinations do not tend toward
little boys with remarkably well-formed backsides. You will be the
servant of a wise and learned man who has traveled widely and
served as physician and counselor to princes.”

“He is not by any chance a fat gentleman who
perfumes his beard, is he?”

“Yes. You shall be my gift to him.”

“Oh, well then!” he exclaimed. “If it is to
be Master Kephalos, I shall not disgrace you.”

“It would be best for you if you did
not.”

That evening I presented my gift. Kephalos
almost wept for pleasure and retired for the night with what could
have been taken for unseemly haste.

The next morning Selana brought me my
breakfast.

“I gather you have made the old pederast a
happy man,” she said, drizzling honey over a piece of bread for
herself—lately she had fallen into this habit of eating half my
morning meal for me. “Do not expect him out of his bed before noon,
for he and that horrible boy were at one another most of the
night.”

“You were listening?” I asked, less shocked
than perhaps I should have been.

“Who could help but listen? The walls are
thin, and Master Kephalos is noisy in his ecstasy.”

You are impudent, and you have honey on your
chin.”

“Why don’t you lick it off for me?”

She smiled—a wicked, lecherous enough smile
for one who had never felt a man’s weight on her belly—but when I
answered only with silence her eyes filled with tears.

“Perhaps you too prefer little boys with
cheeks like apples,” she shouted, rising angrily and throwing down
her unfinished piece of bread. “Unless you have been sneaking off
to the brothels, you have not had a woman since we left Egypt. I am
grown up now, so what else am I to think if you treat me with such
indifference!”

“I am not in the habit of sneaking, Selana—to
brothels or anywhere else.”

“Then when is it to be my turn, Lord?”

She did not wait for an answer but ran from
my presence in a storm of humiliated wrath.

Selana was right, of course. This banter
between us, which in earlier days had been merely amusing, had gone
past a jest. She was a woman grown, and I would soon have to make
some decision about her. I must either take her as my concubine or
find her a suitable husband and part from her. I could not account,
even to myself, for my reluctance to choose.

Perhaps this made some part of my weariness
with Athens, for I was becoming more and more convinced that I
would not find the end of my quest along her sand-covered streets.
Athens was my mother’s city, but she was a city of merchants and
craftsmen and within her walls there seemed to be no place for me.
It was time to leave.

One day I met a man who spoke of an island in
the Western Sea, a place called Sicily, where there was rich,
well-watered land to be found, with fewer stones in the ground than
one encountered in Greece. He said there were colonies of Greeks
all over it.

“It seems a likely place,” I said to
Kephalos. “And I cannot stay in Athens.”

He raised his eyebrows at this, for he would
have been more than willing to stay in Athens, which was very much
to his taste, yet he knew me well enough to understand.

“You are a soldier, Lord. What will you do in
Sicily?”

“Farm—aside from war, it is the only work I
know.”

“Well, I do not know how Ganymedes will fancy
the change, since he has had little experience of the rustic life.
Yet his jealous nature may find solace in such an isolated
place.”

Selana too expressed her willingness.

“I will follow wherever you lead, Master, but
if you think to marry me off to some farmer with dung where his
brains should be, you will find you have made an error.”

When I told Enkidu, I could not even be sure
he was listening.

We refitted our ship and set sail in the
spring, for no man who is not weary of life sails upon the sea in
winter.

It took us four days to make our way around
the Peloponnesos to Mount Aegaleos, and on the first of these
Ganymedes grew violently ill and spent most of the time with his
head over the rails, to the general benefit of the fish. Kephalos
gave him a draught, which steadied his belly and took away the
greenish pallor from his face, but he continued to complain.

From Mount Aegaleos, so we were led to
believe, we had only to sail “straight into the dying sun.” After
the first day we were out of sight of land, a thing every sailor
fears, and on the third a storm, lasting all afternoon, tossed the
ship about like a piece of driftwood, so that for a time we
despaired of our lives. After that we had smooth weather. It was
not until the morning of the fifth day that we saw a plume of smoke
on the western horizon, the sign we had been told to look for.

“It is a mountain which burns in its belly,”
Kephalos explained. “Sometimes, when the giant who lives beneath it
is angered enough, it belches forth fire and even molten rock. I
did not imagine I would ever live to see such a thing.”