The Mask of Apollo (7 page)

For I am Phoibos, zenith-cleaving, sun-shafted archer,

Unforsworn tongue of truth …

Brave words. I could hear myself as I spoke them, breaking off to yell, “Help! Help! Let me down!” and the theater echoing with a belly-laugh that would sound in my ears if I lived to threescore and ten. And it might be still too late. What a way to end, bawling like a scared child on a swing; what a line to be remembered by. The eagle circling the crags gave a long shrill “Yah!”

I thought of the mask I wore. I had sat so long before it, I knew its face like my own. I thought of that human bleat coming out of it. And I thought, “My father would have gone on.”

This had passed in moments. My voice still spoke the lines; now I put my will to them. The words, the light, the rock-peaks seen through the mask-holes; the smell of the mask, old and woody, mixed with new paint; the scoop of the hillside filled with eyes, struck on my senses clear and brilliant, as each moment passed which might be the last of my life. A kind of ecstasy, such as I have heard men can feel in battle, flowed all through me.

Suddenly the audience had grown restless. There was a buzz; then someone shouted aloud, “Watch out! The rope!”

It had started in the side seats where they could see behind the screen. I wished they would keep quiet. I might be dead before the end of this speech; they could at least attend, not interrupt with stale news. I lifted my hand palm out, Apollo commanding stillness, and threw in the first tag I thought of: “Lord of all gods is Fate!” Then I picked up the speech again.

Dead silence now. Each word dropped into a breathing stillness. In the harness straps I felt a tremor and strain from the rope above. The third strand was parting.

It went. The fourth must be the last, I thought; it was giving already; I was sinking down. Then as the audience groaned with relief (or else with disappointment) it came to me what was happening. Mikon had been warned; he was paying out softly, letting me down on stage.

One moment, it seemed, I was dangling from death’s forefinger; the next my feet touched ground. It was over. The silence broke then. Here I was right downstage, with nobody to unhitch me, and they expected me to stand there taking bows. I got my hand back and slipped the ring, and made some kind of exit. My last line was about flying back to high Olympos. I had just enough sense left to cut it. With a keyed-up audience, it would have been the very thing for a laugh.

By now it seemed I had been up there by myself for days. It was quite strange to have everyone grabbing me backstage and asking me how I felt. “Later,” I said. “Just let me change.”

Anaxis rushed up to me, his boyish Patroklos mask shoved back, his beard and eyebrows staring; he had gone quite pale. He pushed a wine cup at me, but after one swallow I put it by; I was afraid of throwing up. “Can you go on?” he asked. “Would you like Anthemion to stand in for you?” I pulled my face straight just in time. “No, thank you. In the name of the gods, get out on stage; nobody’s there.”

My dresser unharnessed me, and strapped on my panoply for Achilles, clucking and chattering. Mikon came running, the frayed rope in his hands, waving it about. “Later,” I said.

Achilles has a good while to sit sulking before he consents to speak, which would give me a rest; but when he does break silence, he has to be worth hearing. My blood was still stirred up, I felt ready for anything; I remember thinking, “This is just how one feels when acting badly.” However, when I got to the lines where he chooses glory before length of days, suddenly a burst of applause broke out and stopped the play. I had never thought of that; I think it was the nearest I got to losing my lines.

At last it was over. The noise seemed to last forever. Even after I went to change, I could have taken another call; but of a sudden I felt hollow as an emptied wineskin, sick, and deathly tired. Even the applause seemed empty; it would have been the same for some juggler who had jumped through a ring of knives. I thought with loathing of my performance, which I was sure had been ham all through. Stupidly I stood while my dresser stripped me, trying to be civil to the people who had come behind. Presently Mikon brought his rope again, and showed it round.

“I checked it overnight, every foot.” He pushed it under the noses of two sponsors, who had come behind to complain. “Look here, at the cunning of it. The strands were opened, and a hot iron laid inside. With filing it would have frayed, and I’d have seen it as I ran it out. This was done in the night. That drunken loafer, the painter’s man—I’m told that he was seen here.”

Hagnon said, “I saw him, round about midnight. I thought nothing but that he’d picked up some odd job. Well, I hope they find him. The young men were off on the mountain trails; they reckoned he might have gone up there, to watch it work.”

“Maybe.” I could not feel concerned. Nearby was the bier of the dead Patroklos; I pushed off the dummy corpse, glad of something to sit on.

Krantor said, “Where’s that wine jar?” He poured, and held out a cup to me. I would have swallowed anything; but the rich Samian fragrance told me this must be the best in Delphi. It ran through me like new warm blood.

Anthemion tittered. “It’s a gift from some admirer in the audience. It came round before the end of the last chorus; the message just said, ‘To honor the protagonist.’ But you’ll be hearing his name, I’m sure.”

I put it down. “You fool! Someone’s just tried to break my neck; and now you give me wine from you don’t know who.” I wondered if I ought to take an emetic. It seemed less trouble to die.

“No, no, Niko.” Old Krantor patted my shoulder. “Drink it up, my boy, I saw the slave who brought it. Groomed like a blood-horse; born and bred in good service, that one. It must come from a sponsor.” He looked at the two who had come behind; but they coughed and looked elsewhere.

He filled my cup again. The wine, though neat, was so smooth it went down like milk. On an empty stomach—I can never eat before I play—I pretty soon felt the difference. I started floating on air, needing no crane. Everything was golden, everyone kind and good and beautiful. I turned, the cup in my hand, and saw on my table the mask of Apollo, propped in its box. My dresser had plaited the hair and bound it, as I had shown him, in the style of Perikles’ day. As the wine lighted me up, it seemed about to utter prophecies. I swayed to my feet before it. It was never I who had made that speech; the mask had spoken, I thought, while I hung like a doll in Apollo’s hand. I tilted the cup, and poured him a libation.

“You do well,” said a new voice. “Truly, the god must love you.”

I turned. The skeneroom crowd had parted, just like extras for a big upstage entrance.

A man stood there who might have stepped straight off a statue plinth in the Street of Victors. Six feet and a hand-breadth tall; dark curly hair, the temples graying, but the face still young; a face of the gravest beauty, austere even to melancholy, yet keen with life. Surely a face of those days Hagnon had talked about, when men deserved their gods. His eyes were dark, and fixed on me.

I don’t know, with so much having come between, what I felt then. Only that he had come, as if sent, when I poured the offering.

All this, and the wine, had slowed me down. My answer halted; and Anaxis rushed in, all talk and civilities. The sponsors had come back and were edging up. I saw this was someone to everyone, not just to me.

While Anaxis talked, I had time to look. He was dressed very quietly for a feast day, with the severity almost of a philosopher: a long robe, no tunic under it, the left shoulder bare. There was a great battle scar running half the length of his upper arm. His robe was simple, barely an inch of border. But the wool was fine-combed Milesian; his sandals, stamped Carthage work with gold clasps. This was the plainness of a man who only knows one shop, the best in town.

He spoke upper-class Attic, yet with a touch of Doric somewhere, and some other accent mixed with that, which I had no chance to define; for his answer to Anaxis was so short and formal that the compliments all dried up. Then, with his face still set in this sternness, he looked back at me, and swallowed. I don’t know what cleared my eyes; I expect it was the truth of the grape; but I thought at once, “Why, he is shy. But too proud to own it.”

I had gazed on him with awe; he seemed from another world. Now, discerning an infirmity which proved him mortal, I began to love him.

I got up from the bier, keeping one hand on it to steady me. I was not much put-out at being drunk; after all, he had sent the wine. He was here in friendship, never, as any fool could see, having set foot backstage before. He must feel all at sea; and I was his host.

“Thank you,” I said. “The best drink I ever had, just when I most wanted it. You saved my life, next after Apollo, who stood by me like the gentleman he is. I’ll give him a goat tomorrow. And I owe a grave-offering to my father, Artemidoros. Did you ever see him as Cassandra?”

He half-smiled, looking easier, and saying, “Yes, let me think.” He put his word to nothing lightly, that was clear. “Yes! It was in
The Troiades,
was it not—not the
Agamemnon?
I was a very young man then, visiting friends at the Academy; but I have never seen it rendered so movingly. If I remember, Hecuba was done by Kroisos.”

“Kroisos!” I said. “Then you saw me too. I was the child Astyanax.”

He gazed at me intently, and said after a pause, “Then you have always been an actor? All your life?” He seemed surprised; yet it was clear he meant no discourtesy. I told him yes. “Why then,” he said, “there are some true words in Euripides, about the many faces of the gods. How does it go?”

I said:

The gods wear many faces,

And many fates fulfill

To work their will…

“Was it that you meant?”

He smiled, without stiffness this time, but like a serious boy. “Yes, and now I can complete it:

In vain man’s expectation;

God brings the unthought to be,

As here we see.

“Words of good omen, this time.”

He paused, and looked about the skeneroom crowd, all breathing down our necks. His smile faded; he said formally, “We must talk more of all this. You will be needing rest now; but won’t you sup with me this evening? Come about sunset, or a little before.”

“Delighted,” I said, more happy than surprised, for I knew we were ordained to meet. “But whose place shall I ask for?”

I could hear the two sponsors cluck and suck their teeth; Anaxis gasped, and started making signs again. But I saw the man was not displeased. It is never bad to be liked for oneself, by anyone.

“I will send my servant for you,” he said quietly. “I have rented a house on the bluff at present. My name is Dion, a citizen of Syracuse.”

B
Y EVENING, WHEN IT WAS TIME TO DRESS AND
go, I would just as soon have got out of it. I had slept off the shock and the wine, and for what seemed hours had listened cold sober to Anaxis, telling me what to say and still more what not to. For of course my host was the envoy of Dionysios. Perhaps, Anaxis said, he would ask me to give a recital.

“Don’t count on it,” I said. “He didn’t look the man to make a guest sing for his supper.” A citizen he had called himself, like any Athenian gentleman. Syracuse, one knew, still kept the ancient forms, but he could as well have said a prince, for it came to that. Such a man, if he is curious and has nothing else to do, may give supper to a touring actor, and will treat him with the breeding he owes himself; but that would be the end of it, as any fool could see. Very likely the place would be full of delegates and politicians, who, when they remembered I was there, would condescend with silly questions. In my heart, I cherished this meeting, sudden and strange like an act of fate; rather than spoil it with banalities, I would sooner we never met again.

It would have been something to dress in peace, without Anaxis fussing like a bride’s mother. He even brought a barber to curl my hair. I nearly lost my temper, and asked what kind of monkey he meant to make of me, when my host had seen it that morning, straight as rain. Luckily the barber walked out, saying it was too short to work on. I had trouble to escape from wearing Anthemion’s party robe, red with embroidered borders, a love-gift from Anaxis. Like many actors who wear finery enough on stage, I like a rest from it. My spare robe was quite clean, a plain dark blue; one can’t keep white fresh on tour. Having got my own way I felt kindly to Anaxis. He would have given his ears for my chance, feared I would wreck all our fortunes with my careless tongue, and yet had not got spiteful. As the time drew near, I would gladly have changed places. Gyllis of Thebes was giving a party in her room, and I was the only one not going.

Presently came the slave and led me to Dion’s house, which stood beyond the town, on the spur above the Pleistos valley. The sun was sinking, and Delphi had on its tragic robes. A blood-red light dyed the pale steeps of the Phaidriades, and filled the gorges with cinnabar and purple. From somewhere high up I heard hallooing, as if the maenads were running there. But it was long past time; it must be the young men, still hunting Meidias. They would have some light, for the moon was rising. I thought, “He must be in Thebes by now. Poor wretch, let him go.” If he had really lurked somewhere to watch his triumph, I reckoned my score was paid.

The square white house faced outward; its terrace hugged the edge of the bluff; beyond was space and the red sky. It was half dusk; on the terrace a torch in a gilded sconce burned with an upright flame. There were urns of trailing flowers, sweet-scented shrubs between the flagstones, a trellis with a vine. A young boy was singing somewhere to a kithara. The music ceased; my host rose from the shadows and came to meet me, his tall head brushing the vine above.

“Welcome, Nikeratos.” On his own ground, not stared at, he seemed ten years younger. The faded light showed him smiling; he touched my arm to lead me in. “I am glad to see you. We are out here to catch the last of the day. But we will go in when the cold begins.” It was a mild evening; I remembered he came from Sicily.