The Mask of Apollo (8 page)

The terrace was paved with colored marbles. The low rush couches had cushions of white linen, whose embroidery looked like Egypt. There was no sign of a party; it was a good thing I had turned down Anthemion’s robe. Only one other guest was there, a man of about sixty, gray-bearded, with a heavy brow and deep-set eyes. He was squarely built, but not fleshy with it, in good hard shape for his years, like an old athlete from those days of the gentleman amateur they talk about. There were white battle-scars on his left arm. Hoplites with shields don’t get wounded there; he must have been a knight. Indeed, even standing by Dion he still looked quite distinguished. Not a Sicilian—Athens was written all over him. Not a politician—he looked too honest, and was too graceful when Dion presented me. But by accident both spoke at once, so I missed his name, and did not like to ask.

“We saw the play together,” Dion said. “Do you know that neither of us had ever seen it performed before? But we had read it … of course.”

He looked across, smiling. One could not miss it. I suppose
The Myrmidons
is least acted and most read of all great plays. Lovers meet at it, as if it were a shrine like that tomb in Thebes. However long ago that had been, something of it hung about them still.

“Indeed, we have,” said the other. I understood this must be a thing the whole world knew about them; there is a certain air which tells one so; but it seemed to me, too, that it had surprised him to see Dion so unbend. As if to hide this, he added, “And then the mind hears an ideal rendering, which reality seldom equals. But you, on the contrary, enriched the play for me. I shall be many times your debtor.”

We walked over to the terrace balustrade. The sunset was rusting away, but Delphi seemed still to glow from the light it had drunk before.

“I have been making Dion envious,” he went on, “by telling him how I saw you as Alkestis, last year at the Piraeus. The death scene was very fine. Her steadfastness, her loneliness … a voice receding, it seemed, with every line, as if already on her journey—that was memorable, far beyond the pathos most actors aim at.”

I was pleased, yet for some reason answered, “Who wouldn’t be lonely, dying for a wet stick like Admetos? I’m always glad to change masks for Herakles and the drunk scene, even though I do have to play it on three-inch lifts.” He made me nervous. I don’t think he meant to; some men are used to distance. It had not stopped him from giving me, once, a certain glance which said that if I had been five years younger it might have been a serious matter. I don’t think he meant to do that either. He had the nature he was born with, though he might never slip its leash.

I could tell my answer had disappointed him. But Dion smiled. One seldom saw him laugh aloud; but he had a certain smile, with the head thrown back a little, which was a laugh for him. There are men hard to be at ease with, whose walls one breaks by some stroke of chance; this was my good fortune here. And it comes, I thought, through a man who tried to kill me. Somewhere a god is working.

After more talk about the play, we went in to eat. The food was excellent, but simply cooked, and two courses only, not at all the Sicilian banquet of the proverbs. The flowers came in, small yellow roses, and the wine, the same he had sent me at the theater. He had given his best. He was always all or nothing.

A splendid lamp-cluster hung from the ceiling, Etruscan work, a sunburst with outward-soaring nymphs whose arms held up the lampbowls. You don’t get such things in a hired house unless you bring them with you. There was nothing in the room which did not serve some use, but what there was, was royal. I found it hard to take my eyes off him long enough for manners. Reclining wreathed on the supper couch, cup in hand, he could have modeled for a vase-painter drawing a feast of gods. His bare arm and shoulder were like fine bronze; he could not make an awkward gesture; the dignity actors train for was bred into his bones. And his face passed the test of motion. Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask; but here each change, like a change of light, brought out new quality.

Presently he sent out the slave, saying we would serve ourselves; the krater was set in the middle, the dipper laid on a clean cloth, our couches pulled up nearer. “Now tell us, Nikeratos,” he said, “about your escape this morning; and if I am intruding on your mystery, forgive me; for I am a soldier among other things, and I never saw such coolness in the face of death. Were you inspired? Or do you prepare for such things in training?”

He spoke as if to a guest of honor. I paused to think. “Well, no,” I said. “After all, a theater is a sacred precinct. It’s a crime to strike a man there, let alone shed blood. We don’t train for such things, though we do reckon not to be put out easily; I’ve known a man who fell off the god-walk to change masks and play on with a broken arm. But today, I think … You saw the mask of Apollo. It’s not a face one would care to make a fool of.”

He threw a quick look at his friend, as if to say, “I was right,” then turned with his grave eager smile. “Not without cause, then, these words were in my mind:
Do you think I have less divination than the swans? For they, when they know that they must die, having sung all their lives sing louder then than ever, for joy at going home to the god they serve. Men, who themselves fear death, have taken it for lamentation, forgetting no bird sings in hunger, or cold, or pain. But being Apollo’s they share his gift of prophecy, and foresee the joys of another world …
” He broke off, and said to his friend, “I speak without the book.”

“Near enough,” he answered, smiling.

“No. I forgot the hoopoe.”

I had been listening with all my ears, and could hardly wait to exclaim, “What marvelous lines! Who wrote them? What is the play?”

They looked at each other. I seemed to have made them happy. Dion said, “There is the poet. They are from Plato’s dialogue
Phaedo
.”

The name amazed me. These were the people whose story I myself had told Anaxis! All those years ago—near twenty it must be—and here they were still meeting. But I had thought this Plato was some kind of sophist.

“The words are mine,” he was saying. “The thought was a better man’s.”

“But the words!” They were still sounding in my head. “Sir, have you more like that? Haven’t you ever thought of writing for the theater?”

He raised his brows, as if my little compliment had startled him. At last, however, he said half-smiling, “Not lately.”

“Plato!” said Dion. “What is this?”

“Strange to say, in my youth it was my first ambition. I was full of images and fantasies; they had only to knock and I would open; only to ask, and I would feed and clothe them … oh, yes, Dion, surely I told you that?” I noticed again his expressive voice, like a low-pitched aulos played by a master. But no volume with it. With that chest of his, he could have overcome it in a month, if I had had the training of him. Forcing would make it thin; it seemed he had learned that and no more. “I assure you it is so,” he said. “I once wrote a whole tragedy, and brought it as far as the Theater Bureau, to enter it for the Dionysia. From what I saw at the contest, it might have been considered; I cannot tell. But by chance, as men say who are content with ignorance, I met Sokrates in the porch—the friend, Nikeratos, who brought me to philosophy—who asked to see it, and put some questions, all too much to the purpose. I saw I had a lifetime’s work before me, to find the answers I had given so glibly. Everything was there but truth.”

“Well, sir,” I said, “even Euripides was a beginner once. Truth to nature can’t all be learned in the study; it comes half the time from getting out in front to listen. The actors will soon show you if a line speaks badly. From what I’ve just heard, I should think you’ve let your friends put you off too easily. Believe me, the theater is crying out for good new tragedies; just look at all these revivals. Why not get it out and go over it, and this time get it read by someone in the business? Would you care to let me see it, and tell you what I think?”

“Why not?” said Dion. “Then I can read it, too.”

“I burned it,” he said, “as soon as I got home.” Seeing my face he smiled—he could be a real charmer when he chose—and said, “My friend, Apollo does not ask us all for the same offering.”

Dion filled my cup. The bottom was painted with an Eros playing the lyre, pretty, flowing work, heightened with white, in the style of Italy. “Well, Nikeratos, if Plato has no play to give you, some other friend must step in as best he can. I intended asking you, but was diverted by the pleasure of our talk—”

He broke off short. We all started bolt upright. From the sky, as it seemed, outside, had sounded a scream that stopped my breath. In all my life, I don’t think I ever heard a sound so dreadful. As a meteor plunges trailing light, so plunged from some great height above us this shriek of terror, then ceased as if cut with a knife. I put down my cup, which was spilling in my hand. It was Dion who, calling the slave in, said, “What was that?”

The man beamed, like a good-news-bringer sure of his welcome. “Why, sir, that must be the godless fellow they’ve been hunting since this morning, who tried to pollute the precinct with this gentleman’s blood. The young men were saying, before they went up after him, that if they caught him they’d throw him off Aesop’s Rock.”

The wine went cold in my belly. Dion said, “Aesop’s Rock?”

“It’s called, sir, they tell me, after some old blasphemer who was sent off from there. It’s above those great white cliffs, the Phaidriades. They go all the way down.”

“Thank you,” said Dion. “You may go.” He turned to me. “They have done justice, and avenged you … What is it? You look pale.”

He is a soldier, I thought. Does he think I should have been up there, lending a hand?

“I was avenged already,” I said. “He was an artist once.”

I thought of the long hunt, the quarry stumbling and thirsty like a wolf run down; and then they must have dragged him a long way to the place, knowing what he went to.

Both of them were staring. They did not look scornful; but then I was a guest. Dion said, “He tried to take your life; yet you would have spared him?”

“I would have spared him that. After all, here I am, alive and feasting. Do you think me poor-spirited?”

His eyes opened. I have never seen such dark eyes so light a face. “You are surely joking. Poor-spirited, after what we saw today? By Zeus, no! It is greatness of soul that spares the enemy in the dust. Better than vengeance is not to share the evil.” He leaned forward glowing like a man in love. I did not fool myself; honor was his darling. My head was not fooled, at least.

“It is an old bad proverb,” he said, “that one should outdo one’s friends in kindness, and one’s enemies in cruelty. No; I have seen …” He paused, and turned to Plato: “… too much.”

Well, I thought, Sicily must be the place for that. How does such a man come out of it?

“Believe me, Nikeratos, as much as for your courage I honor you for taking no joy in vengeance.” Being shaken and sick, I could have wept at his kindness; but that he would not have honored. I said something or other, about having enough, in my work, of other men’s revenges. I saw Plato stir at this; but after all he kept silent.

“Surely,” Dion went on, “to crave revenge is to fall down before one’s enemy and eat dust at his feet. What worse can we let him do to us? In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. The man has more profit who beggars himself for a whore. The mind neglected; the soul starved of its true food; condemned at last to some base rebirth, if, as I am persuaded, Pythagoras taught us truly. Who in his senses would give that triumph to the man who wronged him?”

These words impressed me. I had never thought of any of it, and said so, adding, in apology, “I was thinking about this wretched Meidias. All his life he wanted to be somebody, but without having to pay for it, which is always death to an artist. Now this. I couldn’t have done it to a dog. But of course you are right about the soul. You have shown me the riches of philosophy.”

“Borrowed riches,” he said, smiling and catching Plato’s eye. “It is the fate of the teacher to hear his words come limping back from the pupil’s mouth.”

“The pupil,” said Plato in that low light voice of his, “who lives what he learned, is a teacher too. A city of such pupils could teach the world.” Then, as if he had lapsed from courtesy by speaking of some private thing, he turned to me, saying, “You are clean of this death, having neither willed nor welcomed it. Remember, the man suffered it for sacrilege. It was the god’s honor they avenged.”

I drank some wine, which I could do with, and held my peace. But I was saying within me, “Is that what you think, wise man? If I had called for help up there, squeaking with fright through Apollo’s mouth so that they all laughed and despised me, they would have beaten the cover round the precinct, from duty, and then gone home. But I pleased them; they took trouble for me; this is my wreath of victory. So wise, and you can’t see it.” They were quoting Pythagoras to each other. I looked at their fine faces full of mind, and thought, “I’m only an actor; the best I do will be gone like smoke when the last graybeard dies who heard it; these are great men whose fame will very likely live forever. But for all they know, they don’t know a crowd.”

“Your cup is empty,” Dion said, dipping into the mixer. “We cannot have you melancholy. Did Achilles grieve for Hector? And here’s only a Thersites dead. Which brings me back, Nikeratos, to what I had to say. Would you like to play Achilles again, in another tragedy, at the next Lenaia?”

So it’s come, I thought. For a moment I saw Anaxis with the barber. But in Athens? “I am happy that you thought of me; but I’m not yet on the roll of leading men; and besides, the sponsors draw for them.” I had forgotten he was a foreigner. So near, so far.

“Apply again,” he said, smiling. “I think friends of mine can manage that. As for the draw, if we miss first turn we may still have the luck to get you, while your name is new on the list.”