The Praise Singer (22 page)

He quietened and looked at me. There crossed his face, drawn though it was with sleeplessness, the shadow of his charming smile. The life he knew had come in sight on the skyline, and he began to be Anakreon once again. He even said something pretty about my coming to fetch him, and the pleasure he would have in being my neighbor.

“But,” I said, “didn’t you know all along you could come to Athens? We tried hard enough to get you there.”

“I know. I know. It has been like the whole world ending . . . horrible! I can’t tell you now. You don’t know yet, do you? I’ll tell you, but not now. I must put a few things together.”

I began to help him wrap his precious vases, and asked where his servant was. “I let him go. He came to me scared to death, saying the Samians would tear any Persian they saw to pieces. Poor boy. I daresay some would. I gave him some journey money; I suppose he has found a ship. Oh, don’t trouble with all that, this is all I need, and a change of clothes, that’s all. Then we can be going. Blossom, be quiet.”

“No, take your time. You can’t throw such good things away. The streets are quiet, so far as I could see. Presently I’ll find some porters.”

“I only want to be gone from here. When you come back I’ll be ready.”

I did not protest; the bitch’s shrill yelping hurt my ears, as she jumped from one to the other; she had the nose of her kind for catastrophe and change. I left them together, and found porters without trouble at the harbor; already ships were avoiding it. When I came with them, Anakreon had strapped up his baggage. He put Blossom under his arm, and we went down to the ship.

Meantime, some of the soldiers had been let ashore to the taverns and came back with the latest news; by the time we cast off, I knew what had been done to Polykrates. They would have liked Anakreon to fill out the tale for them, and were disappointed that he sat silent, muffled in his cloak, in the darkest part of the deck-house.

As it happened, the wind turned contrary, and the nearest harbor was Koressia. So I brought him up, the two of us soaked with spray, to Theas’ house. It was plain, before we reached the door, that he’d asked in some friends to celebrate his good fortune. I saw Anakreon wince when he heard the singing. It could not be helped that Theas greeted us with a shout of pleasure, and bade us change our wet clothes quickly, and drink level with the rest. However, he had never been thick-headed. When he’d heard Anakreon’s name, and taken a second look at him, he said he must be tired out with the journey and the gale, and would want to eat supper in quiet.

It was a big house now, our father’s old place run together with Theas’ new one; Anakreon’s room had the women’s quarters between it and the feast. I left him awhile to meet my brother’s friends, all eager to hear the news. Few were much moved at Polykrates’ fate; such things happened in Persia. As soon as I could, I went back to Anakreon. He had fed Blossom, but scarcely touched food himself. I’d brought him a warm posset with a little poppy, which one of the wom?en had brewed for him, and begged him to eat something with it, to help him sleep. He picked up a morsel, but put it back on the plate. “Did they know down there, did anyone tell you, whether he is dead?”

“No. Nobody here knew that.”

The little dog crept into his lap, and nestled there softly, gazing up with its liquid eyes. I remembered hearing somewhere that these lamblike dogs of Melita have the power to take away pain.

He said, “Did you ever see it, Simonides?”

“No. My old master saw it once. I think it was in Karia.” I put the lid on the posset-bowl. It was time he talked, if he was to get any sleep that night. “Have you seen it, then?”

“In Phrygia. Fifteen, twenty years back. One could travel about in those days. The man had offended the Satrap, I don’t know how. I didn’t see it being done. We came by two days after. Two days he had been sitting there, on that iron ring, at the top of the mast. The vultures were coming; one lighted on his head, you know they go first for the eyes; then it squarked and flapped off again, and I saw that his hand had moved. And the bird came back . . .” He was shaking all over; the dog in his lap gave a little whine, and patted him with one paw. I too put a hand on his shoulder; he seemed glad of a living touch. Presently he said, “They used to set them up beside the road. There would be one every stade or so, the old skeleton sitting on the iron wheel, up in the air. And when the birds had picked them clean, you could see the spike up the middle. It’s the spike, you see, that holds them there so long.”

I could hear his teeth chattering, and pulled up the blanket round his shoulders. “You can be sure,” I said, “that by this time he is dead.”

“He was strong.” He rubbed the dog’s ears to quiet it. “He never exercised, but he was as strong as an ox. Nothing ever ailed him.”

“It’s the lean man lives long. Believe me, he is dead.”

He sat looking before him, like a sick man weak from a fever that is leaving him. “Come, eat,” I said, “or my brother’s wife will be on at me. ‘What was wrong with the supper, Sim, that the great Anakreon wouldn’t touch it?’ “

A smile flickered on his face. “Sim? Do they truly call you that at home? Do they truly dare?” After that he picked at the food; before long I got most of it into him, and the posset too. In the end he grew quite garrulous, as men do sometimes after a shock.

“His fate, Simonides, what an implacable fate! It was resolved to have him. It had marked him down, as the hunter marks the deer with the longest horns, because he has the shell for a lyre and is impatient to finish it. What drove him? What madness, to trust that man. He had even insulted him already; I know, I was there. He had sent an envoy to Samos, some business about ships. The man behaved like an envoy from king to king. Well, Polykrates had done things in his day, we all know that; but he looked as pure as lilies, anywhere near Oroites. The man stank, and had done for years. The greed of a crocodile, murder for any whim, oppression; cruelty most of all. Well, he may pay for it yet, now that Kambyses is dying.”

“What?” I cried, jumping nearly out of my skin. “The Great King, dying? No one has heard a word of it. Is it true?”

He passed a hand across his forehead. “I am sorry. Didn’t I tell you? I’ve hardly known what I’m saying these last two days. I daresay it’s true. Sikinnos told me before he left. My gracious Persian, you used to call him. He always knew everything, I don’t know how. ‘The Great King’s wound has mortified,’ he said.”

“What wound?” This news would have made the day for Theas and his friends, and only now I heard it.

“I don’t know.” He pushed the heels of his hands against his eyes. “He didn’t say, or perhaps I wasn’t attending. I’d only just heard the other thing. What were we talking about just now?”

“Oroites’ insolent envoy.”

“Oh, yes. It happened we were on our own that evening. I’d been singing something he wanted to hear again. Bathyllos had been playing for me-you remember him? His flute-p?laying improved as his looks went off. When this envoy was announced, and we could hear him outside, demanding audience at once, Polykrates said . . . What’s that noise?”

He had gone paler, if that could be. Poor man, he was at the end of his tether. “It’s some dog out there,” I said. “It’s nothing, the house must have a dozen.”

It did seem, as I listened, that there were four or five outside. I could hear snufflings from tenor down to bass. So could Blossom. She had leaped from her master’s lap, and, squeaking softly, was pressing her pitch-black nose to the crack under the door. Now that I thought of it, some Samian dogs had trailed us down to the harbor.

“Anakreon,” I said, “you don’t think that bitch of yours . . . ?”

“Oh, no!” He sounded quite like himself again. “It can’t be half a year . . . Oh, Herakles!”

“Not Herakles, I fear, but Aphrodite.” A huge deep bark sounded outside. Kean shepherd dogs are as big as wolfhounds. Blossom scrabbled eagerly at the door; she had done her duty faithfully, and thought she had a right to something for herself. Two dogs started snapping at each other; Kean watchdogs are fierce. “If I open this door,” I said, “we shall have them all in here. Can’t you pick her up?”

He grabbed her, wriggling, and reproaching his ingratitude with her melting eyes. The suitors stayed, however, and we should have been besieged all night, if they had not started to do battle for right of precedence. This drew the kennel-man, who had to get help before he could whip them off.

I looked round for the Helen who had caused the war. Like the first one, she had gone home again, and was curled at Anakreon’s side. What with sorrow and weariness and poppy-juice, sleep had at last caught up with him. He never stirred when I covered them both with the blanket.

After that, I went down to tell my brother, and anyone else who was still there, that the Great King was said to be dying. I remembered that Kambyses, who had killed so many men, had not begotten any. His only brother he had already murdered. He had no heir. Had he been a king in Homer, one would have foreseen great contests at his funeral games.

FOR SOME TIME, all eyes in Greece were turned on Persia. First we heard that Kambyses’ brother had after all survived, and assumed the throne. He passed many welcome laws, remitted taxes, and was well thought of, except that nobody ever saw him. After some months, he turned out to be a pretender. It was revealed by a concubine, and confirmed by the man who knew it best of all; he had cut the real brother’s throat on Kambyses’ orders. Having declared this, he leaped off the citadel wall, leaving Persia an anarchy. This is not a state which commends itself to Persians. Several lords made a pact together, first to kill the pretender, then to choose a king from among themselves by seeking a sign from heaven. They got into the Palace and did the deed, after which, as the world knows, Darius got the sign. It was to be that the chosen man’s horse would be the first to neigh after sunrise. So they all rode eastward together; and if Darius was the only one of them with horse-sense enough to know that a stallion will whinny when he scents his favorite mare, I should think the Persians were lucky not to get one of the others.

With all this, rumor had not much time for Samos; on the other hand, news came in faster from there. It appeared that the island was still being ruled by Polykrates’ regent whom he’d left behind to do it; and this was the same man, Maiandrios, who had been his envoy beforehand, to view Oroites’ promised gold.

Anakreon said to me, “I saw something of this. All we knew at first was that Polykrates was dead. So much we’d feared and half expected. I didn’t spend those first days in the state you found me in, when I’d just learned how he died. Before that I looked about. Maiandrios started with a great flourish about putting an end to tyranny; talked about setting up an altar to Zeus the Liberator. But I don’t remember any word about elections.”

Certainly n?one were held; in fact, when the opposition looked dangerous, Maiandrios invited its leaders to a conference, and chained them up in the castle dungeons. Then he moved into the fort himself, which Polykrates had never needed to do, and set about getting rid of anyone still at large whom he distrusted.

“Do you know what I think?” said Anakreon when this news came in. “He was in it from the beginning. Whose word did we have but his, about all this deceitful treasure? It’s my belief the only gold he ever saw in Sardis was what Oroites bought him with. I hope some god makes them both pay.” Maybe one did; for Darius was not long on the throne before he got rid of Oroites. Maiandrios did not rule long either; but while his tyranny lasted, the Samians looked back on Polykrates’ reign as a carefree summer.

Poets, musicians, sculptors, painters and potters were soon in flight before he had time to murder them; arriving mostly at Piraeus. Nearly all the talent from Polykrates’ court attached itself to the Archons’. Athens seemed to grow more splendid every day.

Ibykos got away by the skin of his teeth. He’d believed in Maiandrios at first, but, thinking it unseemly to court a new patron in the house of a murdered benefactor, had lived privately and not come forward with any praise. It was not long before he had word the Tyrant’s men were looking for him as a man suspected of treason; so he got off on a fishing-boat that night.

Hipparchos received him civilly, but did not ask him to remain. In the past he’d been a long time in Sikyon, down in the Argolid, a guest of the house of Kleisthenes; and ever since they’d married into the Alkmaionids, the Archons had counted them enemies. That was an undying feud, and poor old Ibykos had got himself mixed up in it.

Anakreon greeted him as a friend, and was sad to part with him. He’d long forgiven him for his first, sycophantic song in Samos; as he said to me, “My dear, it was just that it was so bad, and nobody dared to say so.” Since then, he had made a whole garland of fine songs, love songs mostly, to please himself. I buried my private grudge, which he had never known of, and joined the party to see him off at Piraeus. “One can forgive him anything,” said Anakreon going home, “for the sake of that song that likens the lover to an old chariot-horse, trembling when it is yoked for another race.”

I don’t think he had any great wish to stay in Athens. His tall frame was bent under its costly robe, his gold-pinned hair was snow-white; he was at the time of life when many men will crave for familiar things. He went first to Syracuse, where I don’t doubt they made him welcome; but soon crossed to Italy, and ended in Rhegium where he was born. No doubt he did well there; one day when he was crossing the hills, some robbers thought it worth while to kill him. That’s a hazard of our calling; Apollo has no friends among barbarians.

For some time we talked of him, and sang each other the new songs he’d brought; but there was so much talent in the city, even so great a man could pass by and be not long missed. Those years were rich and sweet, and I shall say so still. One must not renege upon the Muses.

Artists and craftsmen prospered; and the countrymen were still safe under Solon’s laws. No man could distrain another for a debt. Hippias did the rounds of Attica to judge causes, just as his father had done. People missed the old man’s presence, but the verdicts were pretty fair, if not quite so wise. Hipparchos supported his brother when required, pursued the joys of life, and furthered the arts. Hippias’ children were growing up; it seemed, in those days, the dynasty might last a century.

Attic potters were famous now from Sicily to the Euxine. The sculptors came closer every year to that marriage of flesh and mind that their sons achieved. Just to walk through the city would lift your heart. For that matter, they are doing great things now and will do greater, if they only know where to stop. Well, if they don’t I shall never see it.

Hippias entertained ma?ny foreign rulers and statesmen, and leading Athenians who had supported his father’s faction. Thinking Anakreon too frivolous, he often called on me for a hero song; King Theseus was his favorite theme. These evenings, I thought of as rehearsals. Politicians will always prefer the useful to the true; and beauty will hardly tickle their hairy ears. Most of my best I gave at Hipparchos’ parties; but the best of all, I think, at Lyra’s. Disdaining base lovers, and choosing those who could offer her worthy praise, she had flowed into the images the artists made of her and the poets sang. Whatever graces we assigned to her, she took on; and not skin-deep, either. Though I never got as much of her as I wanted, it was more than enough to spoil my taste for coarser fare. She left you nothing you needed to seek elsewhere, beauty or wit or the crafts of Aphrodite. All one wanted was more; and not to know that next night was another man’s.

However, rare bliss does make for restlessness. There were one or two old companions who made me feel at home and knew my ways. As for Thalatta, for years I never entered the street where her place had been.

One evening, I went with Theas to Piraeus. He had to spend the night on board, for some reason to do with cargo. We ate at his favorite inn, and parted at the door. I was unhitching my mule to go home, when I heard a woman cursing. That’s nothing much in Piraeus. Then I heard my name.

She came from the waterfront into the dim light of a window. Somewhere behind her, the cresset on a moored ship flickered and danced. But for her voice, I would not have know her. She had thickened, and was painted like a Lydian, black round the eyes and a scarlet mouth; her bracelets were of copper and glass beads. She was tousled and dirty; she looked like the lowest of dockside drabs, the kind who will go on board and be passed round among the rowers. I stared at her wordless, my chief disgust for myself. She stood there cursing me in the thieves’ cant of the wharf-side, as if I had made her what she was. I took it she must be drunk.

I ought to have mounted and ridden off; but she had revived my anger. “Yes,” I said, “I know I spoiled your game. Was I really the first who was not ashamed to tell? It was just by chance I had a good friend to listen.”

“A friend!” She screamed it; I drew back from her dirty nails. “A friend!” She swung round with her back to me, and dropped her coarse patched robe. I exclaimed with horror. She was ribbed with old whip-scars; her back was like a Phoenician galley-slave’s.

Resentment followed shock. “If you made off with some sailor’s wages,” I said, “what has that to do with me?”

Her look of bitterness pierced me despite myself. I had come from a good meal with good company; she must be living in some wretched kennel, if she had a roof at all. I took a few drachmas from my belt-bag. “Well, we had what we had. Take this for old times’ sake.” She snatched it from me, her eyes still cursing. I rode off quickly, in case she worked with a robber.

It was not a tale to entertain one’s friends with; but then, one evening, I was sitting alone with Hipparchos. I remember, we were planning that year’s theoria to Delos. Winter hanging on late that year, he called for some spiced wine while we broke off business. A brazier in the corner; a pale cold sky; little clouds edged with blue enamel. He wore a robe of cream combed wool with a yellow border, the end trailing beside his deer-footed chair. He pushed the tablets and scrolls aside, to talk, and told me some current joke about a greedy hetaira. It reminded me that I had confided in him before; so I told him how the tale had ended.

He gave a wise, kindly smile. “Well, well. That was her destined fate. She had a mean sense of her calling. True artists, like our Lyra, will take ten times as much, and a man will thank them for the privilege.”

I did not much want to talk about Lyra; so I answered, “Yes. But this girl-whatever possessed her to blame me? She showed me her back as if she were accusing me.”

He put his head on one side, as if thinking better of something he’d meant to say. I looked at him.

“My dear friend. I see I had better tell you. Neither of us is to blame; but I suppose she could not know it. Now it all comes back to me. When first I heard how you had been treated, I told the story-of course, without using names-to a certain man we know, whose name I won’t use either. He was much moved, and begged, almost demanded, the woman’s name. I was willing to tell him so much for his good. He was so enraged that I knew what he would say, before he could get it out. Yes, fooled just like you. I have seldom seen a man so angry. He said that my other friend, whoever he was, had been too forbearing. Now I know what he meant. My dear Simonides, I am sorry you had so ugly an encounter. But even if he paid off your score too, I can assure you she deserved it.”

That was enough. I could picture her pointing me out to this second victim-or the tenth, maybe-as the ugly man who was threatening to buy her, unless she was rescued first. The whole thing hung so well together, that I never questioned it. Indeed, even to this day I have no certainty.