The Praise Singer (2 page)

I crossed the grass, humming as I went, to fix the song. Theasides was with them; six feet high and hardly done growing yet; wide shoulders and strong thighs; his golden hair cut short across his forehead and hanging down his back, neatly crimped from overnight plaiting in honor of the feast, and crowned with fresh flowers. He was smiling still from the pleasure of the dance. I could not think why our father should have missed me.

Beside my parents stood neighbor Bouselos and his wife, whose small vineyard was near our land. With them was their six-year daughter, picking her nose with a fat finger. As I came up her mother slapped down her hand. She tugged Theasides’ mantle, and he turned to give her a smile.

My parents did not scold me for my absence. My father even remarked to Bouselos how I had grown. Bouselos eyed my bare lanky legs, nodded and winked.

People forget their own childhood, or they’d remember a child’s long ears. The moment she saw that wink, the child jumped at her father’s arm. “Daddy!” she piped. “I don’t want to marry Sim! I want to marry Theas!”

There was the pause that you might expect; then the fathers laughed, my mother looked down her nose, Bouselos’ wife said, “Hush, naughty girl!” But being a spoiled only child, she stamped and said it again. It distressed my brother, who, though himself a favorite, was sweetened by all the gods had given him.

“You can’t marry me,” he said, reasoning with he?r kindly. “You know I’m promised to Hegesilla. You don’t have to marry Sim yet, not till you’re big; and then you’ll like him. He’s very clever.”

All the parents gazed at him, admiring his good heart, in which indeed they were not deceived. My betrothed looked from him to me; it was, you might say, an epigram. Going fiery red-with temper, not maiden shame-she shouted, “I won’t marry him ever! When I’m old I still won’t marry him! He’s ugly, he’s all black, he’s got a dirty face.”

I had scrubbed it well for the wedding, but had not lightened my swarthy skin nor taken off my birthmark. Like all Ionians who have gone east and mixed their blood, we Keans set store by Hellene looks. It is said that before the war in Troy, King Minos’ Cretans had a city where Koressia stands, and sometimes we throw back to them. One thing’s for sure, on Keos it is not admired. I had black hair, before it whitened; also, though my beard covers it now, a dark mole on my cheek, as big as a double drachma. If I had been a girl, no doubt they would have exposed me on the mountain. But my father was never one to waste a pair of hands.

He looked put about by the words of his chosen daughter-in-law; but it was Theas who darkened with his rare anger. I think he’d even have given the girl a clip; but her mother, from civility to mine, was first with a box on the ear. She was led off bawling. Little Philomache screamed out after her, “You’re uglier than our Sim! You’re dirtier too! You smell!”

I did not wait to see how they made the best of it. I slipped through the crowd, not roughly lest anyone else should stare at me, and ran into the olive grove. There I could have wept unseen; but I went on dry-eyed through the vineyards to the mountain. Before sunset I was up above the sheep-grass. I sat on a boulder while somewhere below me a goat-boy piped to his herd, out of tune, and the goats replied, fading away downhill. In clear golden air I looked west over shimmering sea; first the little islet of Helena, then beyond that the purple Attic hills.

I had never been out of Keos; so though all Hymettos stood between, I could believe I gazed on the Rock of the ancient kings: Theseus who redeemed the land from Crete and killed the Minotaur, Akamas his son who fought at Troy, Kodros who went disguised to be killed in battle, when the oracle proclaimed that the King must die.

Till now I had been angry only with the present; at being reminded I was ugly, though I was used to that; much more at having the song put out of my mind, for nearly all had gone. But now I seemed to feel my fate close in on me. This island, twenty miles by ten, was to be my prison; here I would plod the circle of sour Hesiod’s seasons, works and days, works and days, tied to a fool and to her fools of kindred; tasting the food of the god once in five years, maybe, when some bard might chance to call at the harbor, held up by rough winds or the need to sing for his passage-fee. Like Homer’s orphan child, I would get the sip that wets the mouth and leaves the belly empty. I looked at Attica, and thought of her kings and heroes, of whom I had sung in solitude.

They had come to me in snatches of Homer, or peasant songs, or old wives’ tales; but they had faces and ways of speech for me; I knew their armor, and if they used sword or spear. Child as I was, I thought they asked me for something. I had no blood-libation to give their shades body and voice; yet they seemed to say to me, “We die twice when men forget.”

There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods. Helios Apollo was going down over the Attic hills, to plunge his chariot in some distant sea; and as he passed from sight, suddenly a great wing of cloud, which had been grey, flamed like rose fire against a sky as green as kingfishers and deeper than the sea. Come then, he said. Then he folded his bright wing in the mist, yielding to night.

Down the mountain I went, possessed by a daimon that made me run, so that I might have broken my neck had not a bright moon lit me. In the far?ms and hovels, all folk who had lain down with the dusk were sleeping, and the last of the lamps were going out. I would not be back before our door was barred, and our father would beat me. Why not? Tomorrow was the day for mulching the vines; and there was never a night when he had not earned his sleep.

I was still on the sheep-track when our lamp was quenched. Only one was left shining now. It was in the house of Hagias, father of the bride. It seemed strange, seeing she and her groom were long since bedded at his own fine place, new built from his gains at sea; I had seen the bridal torches threading there from up the mountain. Then I thought, It’s the bard who is still awake.

If a mouse had crossed my path, I was ready to see an omen. I took the next fork in the track.

As I came to Hagias’ vineyard, his two watchdogs bayed at me. They were running loose, which meant their bite was worse than their bark. Wandering men grow either to hate dogs or to know them; but there are no two ways for a shepherd. I sat on a stone, to let them nose me at leisure; after a while they let me tickle their jaws, and we walked on together. I did not go too close to the house, which, good sentinels that they were, they would not have approved; there was a little plowshed, whose roof faced the lighted window.

I’ve been a fool, I thought. All I saw was a pallet bed, with a boy upon it. But no one on thrifty Keos sleeps with a lighted lamp, and I looked again. He was fair-haired, with a flush upon him, pushing the clothes about and tossing. This explained the lamp, but was no affair of mine. I was about to start climbing down, when a shadow crossed the window, and a man came into the light, holding a cup, which he lifted the boy to drink from. He was a stiff grizzled man, looking old and anxious, with a blanket caught around him as if just risen from bed. Hagias had many servants, and again I would have gone, but something bright caught my eye; craning, I saw on the clothes-stool an embroidered robe. Against the wall was the kithara.

I sat, and watched, and thought of the god’s bright omen, and of where it had led me now. It shocked me. There is no one more just than a child. A stranger, a guest of the land, a pleasant-faced lad who had a look of my brother a few years back; what evil was I wishing him, perched on the shed like a dark kite waiting to feed? Black Sim, the boys in the village called me.

Often I had wished my father dead, and Theas in the master’s chair, but had never dared to know it. This was the first time I had looked for gain through death, knowing my thought. It is man’s nature to pray for what he much desires; but I had the justice of a child, and I did not pray.

Soon the bard left the window-square, but I knew he was sitting near the bed, because I could see one of his feet. The boy dozed with half-closed eyes showing the whites. Presently I climbed down, speaking softly to the dogs, who suffered my hand, but saw me off as far as the olive grove, lest I should deceitfully take a sheep. They’d have made better soldiers than some men I’ve met.

When I got home, there was a shutter open. I crept up, and two strong hands hoisted me in. Theas set me down, signed to me to be quiet-he had no need!-and showed me a dummy of rolled sheepskin, which he’d laid under my side of the blanket in our bed. In the great bed our parents were fast asleep, and had never missed me. He took me by the ear and gave me a soft slap on the head. I gave him a soft punch on the belly, which was flat and firm as a shield. We were used to these silent games. When he had hidden the skins and we were both in bed, he went straight off to sleep. He had kept awake to save me from my beating. I warmed myself on his wide shoulders cloaked with long golden hair.

Long after this, when I had made my name, someone from Keos asked how it was I had not come to hate my brother, to whom it must have seemed the gods had given everything, leaving nothing for me. I answered that next to having the gods’ gifts ourselves, it is best to? honor them. If not, one must grow to hate them; and, Zeus be my witness, I have seen what can come of that.

2

I WAS UP in the dark next day, before even the thralls were stirring. Going to the shed, I found the best of them just awake. He’d been a smallholder on Kythnos, the next island, who had pledged himself after a bad harvest, having no surety for a loan. Next harvest had been worse; the landlord had foreclosed on him, and, having all the hands he needed, sold him away. Even though he was getting a fuller belly from us than he’d had on Kythnos, I always pity a freeborn thrall. You only find them now in the backward places; in Athens, the good Solon freed them before I was born. I said, “Tell the master I shan’t be minding the sheep today.” The less he knew, the better for us both. I saw him eye my best tunic; he liked but rather despised me, thinking me poor stuff for a husbandman, and thankful no doubt that I was not the heir. He thought the world of Theas; whom I’d left sleeping, innocent of my truancy. It was only fair; even he was not immune from our father’s anger.

At sunup I reached the house of Hagias. He was up and about, and greeted me civilly with a cup of watered wine, boy-strength; though, knowing my father, he was clearly amazed to see me not at work. I had mother wit enough to thank him for the pleasure of his feast, as if sent with this message, before asking to speak with Kleobis the bard.

In this I could hardly claim to be my father’s envoy; and Hagias, of course, asked me what I wanted: adding that their guest was sleeping still, having sat up late with his boy, who was sick with fever.

“I know, sir,” I said. “So he’ll be needing a boy who’s well. I want to ask him to hire me.”

By now Hagias’ wife had come up; she had been bustling about with the women slaves, clearing up after the feast. They both stared at me as if I were off my head. Presently Hagias smiled and stroked his beard; he was a stout good-natured fellow, though rather pompous. “My dear Sim- for so I have heard your kinfolk call you, and I speak as a family friend-boys will be boys and have their fancies, and you’ll not find me a telltale. Why, at your age my fancy was to travel south, and fight for the King of Egypt. But my old friend Leoprepes would be grieved, you know, at this prank of yours. Because he trains you on the farm, so that you’ll prosper when you come to manhood, you don’t suppose he’d let you work as servant to another man? That’s all this boy is, no more; carries luggage, hires mules, looks after the lyre and so on.” My face must have brightened, for he frowned. “Just a menial, and you are son to one of the first men in the deme. What nonsense have you taken into your head? Do you want to be a poet?” And he laughed so heartily that the slaves all turned to stare.

“Yes, sir,” I said.

Till now, he’d just thought I wanted to run away from home, which could have surprised no one who knew our family. Now I had put him at a loss for words. He was still in search of them, when from the room behind him the bard appeared, wishing him good day.

Hagias nodded to his wife to be about her business, and asked after his servant’s health. He replied that his pupil seemed a little easier. Then he looked straight at me, and smiled; a spare slight smile, like that between men who will talk about business presently.

Did this amaze me? Not so. I had had my sign on the mountain. It is only to the wise that Apollo speaks with a double tongue.

So I waited while he had a few more words with Hagias; then he said, “Was this lad here asking for me? I was expecting him.”

Hagias’ face changed in a moment. He could hardly have been more civil if I had been Theasides. It amazed me, I don’t know why. That barelegged boy in his outgrown tunic seems as strange to me now as an Ethiop to a Thracian. Yet I was once within him, and his soul has passed into mine. These are mysteries.

“Let us walk,” said Kleobis, and led me over the meadow into the olive grove. The pale green flowers were falling, the early? sun shone in the leaves. Hagias watched us from the house like a true Ionian. Curiosity is our birthright. What else has made us seek out knowledge and skill?

While I was wondering if he had the gift of prophecy, Kleobis said, “I saw you in the brush, swaying to the music like Apollo’s snake. I knew you would be coming. Who is your father?”

I told him, and he said, “I have heard the name. How long have you wanted to be a poet?”

“I don’t know, sir. Before I knew what a poet was.”

He plucked a spray of olive flowers and held it up to the light. “Go on. It was the same with me.”

I spoke as best I could. Not as if to a friend; I had had no friend but my brother; but as if to a god in some small mountain shrine, who I could believe would listen. “You know, sir, how little boys sing who can just run about, and mostly it’s like the birds. But I sang in tune, all the songs the women sang at work. Then when I was older and went to the Apollo festivals, I started to make songs myself. Please, sir, hire me. I’ll work for nothing, just for my keep. If your boy gets better, I’ll do the rough work, and sleep in the shed with the thralls wherever you’re staying. I’ve a sheepskin for cold weather, I’ll only need my food. I’ll not even ask for music lessons. Just let me hear the songs.”