The Last of the Wine (48 page)

I heard him till he had done. “You know, Father, I will do all you ask; God keep it far from us. What has happened?”—“Have you not heard, then, that Theramenes died today?”

“Theramenes?” Even of Alkibiades I could believe it sooner: he was an acrobat, as Kritias once had said; one knew that some day the rope would break, or the sword slip. But Theramenes was shrewd like a mountain fox, who does nothing for show, and digs no earth without a second door. “Murdered,” my father said, “by the Council, under the form of law.” He tipped a loose tile in a corner, set so well that I had never seen it, and put the will in the hole. “If when you come for this you find other papers, burn them, but read them first. I should wish you to know you are the son of a man who did not consent to tyranny.”

“I never supposed it, Father. Through my own fault you do not know me.” And I tried to tell him what I had been doing. But he was displeased to hear I had made connections in Piraeus. “I had sooner you spent your time with flute-girls. I thought no good would come of your going to sea, and mixing with riff-raff.”—“Father, we will talk of that later. What happened today?”

“Kritias indicted Theramenes on a charge of treason. In his defence before the Senate, he did not deny that he opposed the Council, as its aims are now. He accused Kritias boldly in turn, of having betrayed the principles of the aristocracy, and set up a tyranny instead. I have no time to give you his speech, but I never heard an abler. The whole of the Senate, except the notorious extremists, acclaimed him at the end. About our verdict there could be no doubt, nor the sequel; he had put Kritias in the dock in his room. But meantime, a rabble of young louts had crowded in upon the public floor. Before the verdict could be voted on, they began shouting, and waving knives: men of no city, metics out of work, soldiers broke for cowardice, such men as take to the trade of hired bully for money or from choice. These, Kritias said, had come to make known to us the people’s will. Well, some of us who had faced a Spartan battle-line had seen bigger men. We pressed for a vote. Then Kritias reminded us that only the Three Thousand have right of trial; and holding up the list, he crossed the name of Theramenes off it.”

I marvelled that no one had thought before of something so simple. My father went on, “He was condemned out of hand, by order of the Thirty, and was dragged off from the very altar of the Sacred Hearth, crying on gods and men for justice … He was good to you, Alexias, when you were a boy, so I daresay you will be glad to hear that he died creditably. When they gave him the hemlock, he drank it straight off, all but the lees; those he tossed down, and called, ‘This for Kritias the Beautiful.’ Even the guards laughed at it.”

He paused. I said, staring at him, “But, Father, how do you know that?”—“I was with him,” my father said. “He has been my friend these thirty years. When we were lads, we served in the Guard together. There was a notion, in the beginning, that the City was going to be governed by gentlemen. Because Kritias has forgotten it, we need not all do so, I suppose.”

He glanced at the tile where the will was buried, and tapped it down with his foot. “Over Apollo’s sanctuary,” he said, “at Delphi, the navel of the earth, is written ‘Nothing too much.’ Extremes breed one another. I have tried to give you a decent education; yet you, too, instead of learning from the sight of tyranny to fear all extremes, can only fly from one to its opposite. And a man like Theramenes, who has risked his life often, and given it at last, in the cause of moderation, gets nothing for it but a vulgar nickname. There is some reason, I suppose. Well, he is dead. The Council made no difficulty when I asked to attend him in the prison. Kritias said they were glad to know who his friends were.”

I opened my mouth, to say I know not what; but I could see he thought me a fool, and it made my tongue heavy. “You must be out of the City, Father, before the night. I will go and hire the mule I go to the farm on; no one will notice that. Will you go to Thebes?”—“I shall go to my land,” he said. “It will take a better man than Kritias to send me chasing over the border like a slave on the run. A hundred years and more before we owned any house in Athens, the farm was our home. It is a pity we left it. Men are better watching the seasons, and putting good into the earth, than running together in cities, where they listen all day to each other’s noises and forget the gods. Acharnai is quite far enough.”

“I doubt it, sir. I beg you to go to Thebes. The Thebans hate Lysander now more than they ever hated us; they have sworn not to give an Athenian up to him. Some of our best men are there.” I was going to name Thrasybulos, but remembered in time. “I should have gone myself, if it had not been for the harvest. Leave the farm to me; I will see to that.” At length he said unwillingly that he would go to Thebes. “Take your sister,” he said, “to the house of Krokinos. Though only a cousin he has family feeling; he offered to take her of his own accord. I have arranged for her keep.”

At the fall of dusk I led round the mule. As he mounted, I saw he was shivering. “It’s this accursed fever,” he said. “I knew I was in for a turn. It’s nothing; I have taken the draught for it. The air is better in the hills.”—“Give me your blessing, sir, before you go.” He blessed me, adding immediately after, “Don’t fill the house while I am gone with drunken sailors, or those young nincompoops from the scent-shop. Perform the sacrifices on the proper days, and keep some decency in the place.”

Afterwards I led Charis to our cousin’s house. “Please,” she said, “can’t I stay with Thalia and Lysis? I liked being there.”—“You shall go again, when Father comes home. Just now Lysis might have to go away too, and Thalia would be at his sister’s then.” She did not ask where our father had gone, or why. I never knew a child of her age with so few questions. A year or two before, she had been full of them.

Krokinos’ house was overflowing with women to the doors. A good fellow, as unlike as possible to his father Strymon, he and his wife had taken in the womenfolk of their remotest kindred, if they were exiled or had to fly. Strymon himself, after getting through the siege without losing any flesh to speak of, had died a month afterwards of a chill on the belly.

Next day early, I packed a bag and set out for the farm, on an ass I had hired outside the walls. On Lysis’ advice, I meant to stay there for a week or two. There was plenty to do, and no sense in being about the City when my father was missed. Lysis had promised to come often and bring me news.

It was a beautiful fresh morning when I rode into the hills. Everywhere the wasted farms had started to bear again. In one they were treading the grapes. A little bare boy, driving goats, gave me a smile of milk-teeth and holes. The birds were singing; the cool westward-leaning shadows were the colour of Athene’s eyes. I rode up to the farm, humming to myself
The King’s Wife of Sparta
. Then I saw that the door stood open.

I thought the place must have been broken into, and ran inside. Nothing seemed disturbed, except one of the beds, which had a blanket on it. But as I walked about, I found my foot was leaving a stain on the floor. Going back to the door, I saw what I had trodden in.

I followed the blood-trail down the path, and across the farmyard. As first there were footsteps, then the marks of hands in the dust, and of a body dragging itself along. Up on the hillside, a mule was cropping the scrub.

I found him at the well, lying on the stone of the well-head, his head hanging over the shaft. I thought he was hours dead; but he said, in a voice like dry grass brushed with the foot, “Draw me some water, Alexias.”

I laid him down, and drew water, and gave it him. He had been stabbed in the back, and again in front when he turned to fight. I don’t know how he had lived so long. When he had drunk, I bent to raise him, and carry him to the house; but he said, “Let me alone. If you move me I shall die; I must speak first.”

I knelt beside him, and dipped my cloak in the water, and cooled his face with it, and waited. “Kritias,” he said. I answered, “I shall remember.” He sunk back into himself, being near his death, and his mind lost in shadows. Presently he said, “Who is it?” I answered, and he came to himself a little.

“Alexias,” he said, “I gave you life. Twice over I gave it.” I said, “Yes, Father,” thinking he wandered. Then he said, “An untimely birth. Sickly and small. One could foresee no credit in you. A man has a right over his own stock. But your mother …” He paused; not as before, but with his eyes on me, seeking strength to speak. I said, “Yes, Father; I owe you a debt.”

He muttered to himself; I heard a few words: “Sokrates” and “Sophists” and “young men today.” His eyes widened, and he pressed his clenched hands back upon the earth; and lifting his voice, as one might lift a heavy stone, he said, “Avenge my blood.” Then he shut his eyes, and turned his head away, and muttered again.

I took his hand, and grasped it hard, till his eyes turned towards me. “Father,” I said, “since I was seventeen I have borne arms for the City. I have not run off any field, though I was fighting strangers only, who had done me no wrong. Am I so base of soul as to forgive my enemies? Believe, Father, that you begot a man.”

His eyes met mine; then his lips parted. I thought he was grimacing in pain, but perceived presently that he was trying to smile. His hand closed on mine, so that his nails pierced my flesh; then it slackened, and I saw that his soul was gone.

Soon after, the hired men, who had fled from the murderers, came back ashamed. I did not reproach them, for they had no arms, but set them to dig a grave for him. At first I had meant to burn his body, and bring back his ashes to the City; but remembering his own words, I buried him in the old plot of our ancestors, which they used long ago before we lived in town. It is a little way up the hill, above the vineyards, where the earth is too poor to farm; but you can see a long way from it, and pick out, when the sun is right, the flash from the High City, when it strikes Athene’s spear. I set the offerings on the grave, and poured the libations. As I sheared my hair for him, I recalled that it was the second time; and yet, I thought, the first time too it was not unfitting.

I laid it on the grave; then heard behind me a movement, and turned swiftly, my knife in my hand. But it was Lysis standing there. I perceived he had been some time waiting, in silence, while I finished the rites. He came forward and took the knife from me and cut off a lock of his hair in token of respect, and laid it on the grave. Then he held out his hand to me, and, when I took it, said, “Come, my dear, get together what you have. We are going to Thebes.”

“No, Lysis. I must go back to the City. I have a matter to settle there.”—“From Thebes it can be settled better. So Thrasybulos writes. I should have come out tomorrow to talk of it; but I had word they were coming for me tonight.” He smiled and said, “Two men warned me, neither knowing of the other. Manhood may be sleeping in the City, but it lives. It has slept in me too, Alexias. I should have gone long since, and tried to do what Thrasybulos has been doing. Weakness held me. It is hard to watch over the green shoot, and then when the flower opens to go away.”

We set forth within the hour upon the mountain road, going on foot, for we had sent back our hired mounts to the City. At first we were silent; he because the parting he had come from was a wound that still bled in him, I because I seemed only now to know myself, when what had pressed my soul into its mould was gone. But in a few hours, with the good air and clear light, and the movement of walking, and seeing places all about where we had fought in the Guard, sorrow lifted from us; and Lysis told me about the force Thrasybulos was raising to free the City. The road climbed high; the air grew sweet and thin; we saw the stone fort of Phyle on its steep hill watching the pass, and left the road lest the guard come out to challenge us. We had a hard scramble over the mountain, but made good going after, and were out of Attica by fall of dark.

So we turned aside, and in sheltered place between rocks we made a little fire, and ate what we had. It was like the days on campaign; we sat recalling old fights and old comrades, till sleep made us heavy. Then we fell to disputing, as we had years back, whether the thicker of our cloaks should be spread to lie on, or above to keep out the cold. When one, which of us I can’t remember, had given way grumbling to the other’s view, we came to spread them, and found there was not a bit to choose between them for thickness; so we laughed, and lay down to sleep.

We were tired, and slept late. I opened my eyes to find a blush of dawn already on the peaks; then I heard a voice say, softly, “One of them is awake.”

I touched Lysis to rouse him without noise, and felt for my dagger. Then I turned my head; and saw two youths, or boys rather, sitting on their heels and smiling. They were dressed for hunting, in leather tunics and belts and shin-guards; one was sturdy and fair, the other long-limbed, and dark. The fair one said, “Good morning, guests of the land. Can you eat a hunter’s breakfast?”

We greeted them, and they led us off to the place where their horses were. There was a fire, and a hare wrapped in clay and leaves baking in the embers. The lads got it out, burning their fingers and swearing and laughing, and cut it up, and handed us choice pieces on the points of their knives.

After they had asked the latest news from the City, “Tell me pray,” said the dark one, “how a man can converse with another whom he doesn’t see or hear?” Something in the way he put his question told me he studied philosophy; so I said smiling, “Enlighten my ignorance, best of men.”—“He can now if he’s a Theban; for our new law is that when we meet you Athenians crossing the hills to take up arms against the tyrants, we don’t see you or hear you; and quite right too.”—“However,” the fair one said, “coming on you asleep, we forgot for a moment you were invisible, and said, ‘These two like us are old friends, and for friendship’s sake we ought to entertain them.’ Kebes and I took the vow of Iolaos, you see, a year ago today. My name is Simmias.”

We introduced ourselves, with compliments on their long association. You could not have told which was the elder, except that Kebes, the dark one, had his boy’s hair still. The sun rose as we ate, round and red above the valley mists. Simmias said, “Our teacher, Philolaos, the Pythagorean, considers the sun to be a great round mirror, reflecting back the central fire of the universe, like a polished shield. But why the fire grows red at sunrise, and white at noon, we cannot determine to our satisfaction; can we, Kebes? How do the Athenian philosophers explain the sun?”—“In nearly as many ways,” said Lysis, “as there are philosophers. But our teacher says that the nature of Helios is a secret of the god; and that a man’s first business is to know himself, and seek the source of light in his own soul. We don’t eat everything we see, but have to learn what our bodies can turn to good. So with the mind.”