The Golden Mean (16 page)

“I know you have,” I say. “You are Achilles, your father is Peleus. Hephaestion would be your Patroclus, yes? Who’s your Odysseus?”

“Ptolemy. He’s clever.”

He glances automatically toward the door at the sound of bark-shouts from outside. I have him alone today; his companions are out doing drills as the leaves crisp and drift from the trees in the high fall air. He’s annoyed not to be with them. Hell, he’s annoyed not to be in Thrace with his father, deposing kings, founding cities.

“Do I have to go through it again?” he says.

“You’ve read it with Lysimachus. You haven’t read it with me.”

He starts to say something, then stops. I wonder if Lysimachus has got his ear pressed to the door even now. “Let’s talk about book one, the argument,” I say. “Can you summarize it for me?” We’ll see if the prince considers this an exercise of memory or attention.

“Nine years into the Trojan War.” He’s still staring at the window. “Agamemnon has been allotted a girl, Chryseis, as a battle-prize. Her father, a priest of Apollo, offers a generous ransom for her return, which Agamemnon refuses. Apollo comes down like the nightfall—” Here he hesitates, leaving a little space for me to admire him; exercise of memory, then; I say nothing. “And besieges the troops until Agamemnon is forced to relent. But since he must give up his own prize, he requires Achilles to hand over
his
girl Briseis. Achilles, feeling the injustice of this, refuses to fight until she is returned to him.”

“Very good. And the squabbling ensues for the next twenty-three books.”

Now he looks at me.

“ ‘Briseis of the lovely cheeks.’ Do you suppose Achilles is in love with her? Or is his honour slighted? Or is he petty and pompous and rather full of himself?” I ask.

“Why not all of the above?” He shifts his leg on the bar, winces. “I’ve noticed something about you, Priam. You don’t mind if I call you Priam? You remind me of him, the sad old king who doesn’t fight and has to beg for his own son’s shreds so he can give him a proper burial after he’s been defeated. I’ve noticed you like to say, On the one hand”—he holds out an open hand—“on the other hand”—he holds out the other hand—“and then what we’re looking for is some conflation of the two.” He brings his hands together. “Don’t you ever worry about being too tidy?”

“I don’t
worry
about it. Isn’t tidiness a virtue?”

“A woman’s virtue.”

“A soldier’s, too. Tidiness is another name for discipline. Let me put it this way. Do you think the story is a comedy or a tragedy?”

He holds out both hands again, juggling them up and down.

“Well, it has to be one or the other, doesn’t it?” I say.

He shrugs.

“You didn’t enjoy it at all?”

“Finally,” he says. “Finally, a question where you haven’t already planned the answer. I liked some of it. I liked the battles. I like Achilles. I wish I were taller.”

“Men regress. It’s a rule of nature. In Achilles’s time, men were taller and stronger. Every generation shrinks back a little from greatness. We’re just shadows of our ancestors.”

He nods.

“You could read it as a comedy: the squabbling gods, the squabbling kings. The warriors running around whapping each other upside the head for nine years. Nine years! The farcical showdown between Paris and Menelaus. The trope of mistaken identity when Patroclus masquerades as Achilles. These are the elements of comedy, aren’t they?”

“I laughed all the way through,” he says.

“I know you have a sense of humour.” I’m going to allude to Carolus’s production of Euripides, to the head, but he’s looking at me so brightly and expectantly, now, waiting for praise, that I falter. Such a needy little monster cub. Shall I continue to pose him riddles to make him a brighter monster, or shall I make him human?

“I’ve been working on a little treatise on literature, the literary arts. Tragedy, comedy, epic. Because I’ve been wondering, what’s the point? What is the point of it all? Why not simply relate such history as has come down to us in a sober manner, not pretending to fill in the gaps?”

He hikes his leg down from the bar and massages the muscle for a moment. “I’ve been reading something. I brought it from the palace library. Wait.”

He limps off, to his room I guess. Except he doesn’t limp, though he must want to. He takes care to disguise the injury and walk evenly. A leader must never reveal weakness in battle, in case he demoralize his troops and encourage the enemy. Something he figured out for himself, or had to be taught? Something a king would teach a king; I hope it comes from Philip.

He’s back, breathless. He ran on it once he was out of the room. The book he wants to show me is one I know well, one of my old master’s, where he rails against the depraved influence of the arts on decent society.

“Only, you know, he can’t mean what he says.” Alexander sits again. “Because he uses theatre to convey his arguments, doesn’t he? A pretend dialogue between pretend people, with a setting and so on. He needs the artifice for something, doesn’t he?”

“Exactly. That’s exactly right.”

“To get the reader’s attention. It’s more fun to read than a dry treatise.”

“It is that.” I think of my own early attempts at the dialogue form. I had no gift for it, and gave it up. “Then, too, I think, you feel more when it’s set up that way. You care more about the characters, about the outcomes of things. That’s the point of the literary arts, surely. You can convey ideas in an accessible way, and in a way that makes the reader or the viewer feel what is being told rather than just hear it.”

“Agreed.” He’s mocking me, but nicely.

“I too have been reading a book, wondering if it might interest you.”

“It interests me.”

I hand it to him.

“Small,” he says.

“An afternoon’s read at most. I hope it will amuse you. It’s by the same author. The setting is a dinner party.”

“Majesty, Master.” An attendant in the doorway looks stricken. “A visitor.”

“Go away,” Alexander says.

“Don’t tell me to go away, you miserable little brat.” Olympias brushes past the attendant, who jumps away from her as though scalded. “Kiss your mother.” Olympias herself, all in white furs, silver stars in her hair, bringing in a fragrant cold breath of the outside.

Alexander looks at her but doesn’t get up. She bends to him and presses her cheek to his.

“Lovely warm boy. I wrote you I was coming. Don’t you read my letters? Don’t lie to me. I know perfectly well no one was expecting me. That attendant looked like he’d seen a ghost. Hello, sir,” she adds, to me. “What’s the lesson?”

“Majesty, Homer. What an unexpected—”

“Not to me,” Alexander says. “I’ve been waiting and waiting.”

“Sweet.” She helps herself to a chair and pulls it up to the hearth to make a threesome. “Well, sit down,” she says to me. “Go on. I won’t interrupt.”

“Yes, you will,” Alexander says.

“May I ask to what we owe this—”

“You owe it to her majesty being bored out of her mind in Pella and missing her baby boy. I see little enough of him, and then that animal of a husband of mine sends him out here. Dionysus himself blew on my little pony’s heels to speed my way. No, actually I left all the servants outside. There’s rather a lot of us, and then quite a bit of luggage.” Her eyes drift up to the ceiling, perhaps the original of her son’s mannerism. “I brought food,” she murmurs.

“I love you,” Alexander says.

“You had better. No one else does. Do you hear from your father?”

“You’re not allowed to ask me that, remember?”

She rolls her eyes. He rolls his, mocking her. The whole performance is shocking: the anger, the meanness, the grotesque intimacy, their willingness to do it for an audience, me.

“Run away, now,” mother says to son, as though reading my mind. “I want a private moment with your tutor. Go get them to fix me a room for the night.”

He goes, taking all three books with him.

“We really did bring food. Rabbits and cakes and things. I’ll be terribly popular with the boys for an hour and a half. What a horrible place.”

“Yes,” I say.

“How’s he doing?”

“I think he’s bored.”

“Yes.” She glances at the ceiling again. “Aren’t we all. You will develop the existing faculties, though, I suppose?”

“Of course.”

“Of course.”
She makes an ugly mouth, imitating me. “Does everyone hate me? We’re not talking about Arrhidaeus. We’re talking about my son.
My
son. The hell I will have to pay, when I get back, for coming out here without permission, just for a glimpse of my baby. Into the dispatches it will go: Olympias rode a horse. Lock her up! You know they’ll do that. They’ll lock me in my rooms. They’ve done it before. Last time it was for a month, because I went down to the parade ground to watch him drill. I just wanted to look at him, up on that great beast of his. I wore a veil but they knew it was me. They always know. Can’t think how.”

“Why did you come, Majesty?”

“I needed to see him. That animal thinks he can keep me in a box. He—”

“Mother.” Alexander’s in the doorway. “Why don’t I give you my room? I can share with Hephaestion.”

Olympias takes a swipe at her eyes with the hem of her cloak. “I would love that. Did I tell you I brought food? Rabbits and cakes and things?” She starts to cry. “Do you think they’ll let me stay this time? Just for one night?”

“This time?”

“She tried last month,” Alexander says. “Antipater caught up to her an hour out of Mieza. Why don’t you go lie down now, Mother? In case you have to ride again tonight.”

“You’ll sit with me, though?” she says.

Noises from outside: a warning bell, men shouting. Olympias begins to rock back and forth, hugging herself and weeping.

“Go,” I say. “I’ll delay Antipater. An hour, anyway. Both of you, go.”

Alexander leads the way, allowing himself to limp heavily now.

“You’re hurt,” Olympias says. “Oh, lean on me.”

He takes her arm and they hobble out. Exit royalty.

T
HE TABLES HAVE BEEN CLEARED
and the door propped open for a bit of air. The first pretty days of fall are long gone now, and raindrops bluster in on sweeps of wind to darken the stoop. The rain is socked in, and each day is colder than the one before. Fall is blurring, smudging into winter. The musicians, a couple of flautists, are finished for the evening, and are being fed their pay in the kitchen. Pythias stood at the door with me in her new dress, welcoming each guest as he arrived, and then disappeared. Only I am still aware of her presence, in the polish on the floor, the trim of the lamps, the twining flowers on the lintels, the plump new cushions on the couches, the delicacy and thought in the succession of dishes. She’s spent a lot of my money tonight, in her quiet way. I’ve put Carolus next to me and the others in careful order after him, with Callisthenes last; I’ve had a word with him, and he understands it’s not a slight. After a bit of a shaky start, it seems to be working, though Carolus has contributed only monosyllables so far and coughs repeatedly into his sleeve. At first I thought he was embarrassed, but I wonder now if he’s unwell. He drinks without eating and follows the conversation doggedly but with dead eyes. Antipater and Artabazus have already clashed swords over the king’s foreign policy and his plans for Persia; Philes and Callisthenes whispered for a while between themselves like schoolboys at their first grown-up table. Leonidas jumped in to spar with Artabazus, though, and soon everyone was laughing. Not a talent I would have attributed to Leonidas; I’m enjoying myself, learning things, already. Lysimachus has simply failed to appear.

Here come the slaves with cups of wine and bowls of water. The formal part of the evening, my favourite part, starts now.

“No jugglers?” Antipater says drily. “No girls?”

Not tonight. The slaves bring each guest a cup and we sip the wine unmixed in the ritual gesture to honour the good demon. A hymn to Dionysus and then I order the wine to be mixed with the water. “Two to five?” I ask, for form’s sake. The standard ratio; I don’t wait for my guests’ assent. Three large bowls are mixed and I hold up a cup of moderate size, again for ritual approval. At the Academy there would be nods all around; here my guests just stare at me. The cups (new, Pythias again) are distributed and the wine is poured, the slaves proceeding around the room in a circle, beginning with Carolus, ending with Callisthenes, who sits on the other side of the doorway from me.

Dessert is brought in on more trays: cheeses, cakes, dried figs and dates, melons and almonds, as well as tiny dishes of spiced salt are placed within everyone’s reach. It’s all been mounded into neat pyramids, even the salt, and I can’t help but look for the shape of my wife’s fingers in the slopes of these dainties. I hate to bring down such painstaking architecture with the yen for a spicy nut. I’m reaching for the more stable brickwork of a pile of dates instead, preparing my opening words, when Callisthenes calls, “Uncle?”

“Nephew?” I say.

“Do you love me, Uncle?”

“Why, what have you done?”

Laughter. “Only you have to excuse me, tonight,” he says. “Everyone has to excuse me. I just can’t do it.”

“Do what?” Antipater asks.

“The talk,” Callisthenes says. “The talk, the speech. I’ve drunk too much and I just don’t think I can put the words together. Forgive me? I’ll just retreat, maybe—” He waves a vague hand toward the door.

He’s performed his little part very well. This way, anyone else who doesn’t want to speak—Leonidas I was thinking of, primarily—can opt out with Callisthenes, save face, and eat sweets in the next room. I’ve thought of everything.

“Speeches?” Antipater says. “I thought that was a joke.”

“I didn’t understand that part at all,” Artabazus says. “I thought it was because I’m an ignorant foreigner.”

“But it was in the invitations.” Antipater, Artabazus, and Leonidas are already on their feet, going after Callisthenes. “ ‘Tragedy,’ ” I say, raising my voice over the noise of their leaving, repeating the words in the invitation. “ ‘The good life. What it means to live a good life, and the ways in which that goodness can be lost.’ ”