Death Ex Machina (7 page)

Sophocles smiled ruefully. “My first actor chooses my second, and my second chooses my third. I’m fairly sure that’s not the way things are usually done. Well, reliable is what we need around here. All right, as long as your friend can stand and deliver lines, he’s in.” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “Maybe we can survive this disaster after all.”

SCENE 10

THIS IS BECOMING A HABIT

M
EN SCATTERED IN all directions. The crew moved to repair the machine and also, at Kiron’s stern command, to check everything in the theater all over again, to make sure all was in order. Akamas muttered darkly that he’d lost track of how many times they’d done that in the last few days, and yet still men were being hurt.

Sophocles and Romanos departed to interview the actor Romanos had recommended.

Diotima and I walked over to Kiron after he finished barking out orders. He stood there with hands on hips, glaring at the working buzzing about him.

I said, “Kiron? We need to know, did anything unusual happen when Phellis was attached to the machine?”

“Akamas does that job,” Kiron said. He waved to the stagehand. Akamas sauntered over, wiping his grimy hands on his tunic. I was struck by what a large and strong-looking man he was. The cloth of his exomis bulged slightly over a belt made of rope. Akamas was a man who didn’t miss meals. I repeated my question.

Akamas said, “I reach down the back of the actor’s neck for the leather strip. I pull it up and clip on the rope. That’s it. And before you suggest it, I didn’t make any mistake with Phellis.”

“So everything was the same as normal?”

“Yeah, just like any actor, except when Phellis goes on as Thanatos I got to put the noose around his neck.”

I’d forgotten about the noose. “That’s a good point. Wouldn’t Thanatos choke to death on the noose?”

“Funnily enough, we thought of that,” said Kiron. “The noose is loose. It looks like solid rope—it
is
solid rope—but the rope that makes up the noose doesn’t go anywhere. See here …”

Kiron held up the noose for Diotima and me to inspect. The noose ended only a few hand lengths from its loop. Thin threads had been sewn and looped around the thicker rope. The threads had clearly been torn apart.

Kiron said, “The noose is attached to the rope of the machine with only this thin piece of sewing thread. We bind it carefully to make it look like one piece from afar.”

“I see,” said Diotima. “When Phellis fell, the sewing thread broke. That was all that held the noose in place. It fell with him. That’s why he didn’t strangle.”

Kiron dismissed Akamas back to his work, then beckoned Diotima and me to follow him. “There’s something you ought to see,” he said.

We followed him to the wall that backed the stage. Kiron gestured at the scene on the skene. “What do you think of it?”

The skene had been painted to portray the city of Corinth. In the middle was an agora. Tiny figures were going about their business. Buildings surrounded the market. The buildings became smaller the further they were from the agora, so that it was like looking down on the city from a high place. Off to the side was the Acrocorinth, a high hill fort like our Acropolis. Everything was painted in bright, vibrant colors.

“Ah, it looks very nice,” I said. I wasn’t sure what Kiron expected of me.

“Look here.” He pointed at one of the figures in the agora. “See this one?”

I peered closely. So did Diotima. The tiny figure wasn’t
upright. It seemed to be flying across a brown line, or about to sprawl on the ground.

Diotima said, puzzled, “Is that a picture of someone tripping?”

“I think it is,” Kiron said. “And see this?” He traced the thin brown line that I’d noticed. “There’s a tiny dab of light yellow paint at the end of this line. I think it’s supposed to be a broom.”

A man tripping over a broom, like happened to Romanos.

“It has to be a coincidence,” I said.

“That’s what I thought. Then, after the incident of poisoned water, I looked again. I noticed this …”

Kiron’s finger traced the outline of one of the stalls in the agora. It showed a typical wine vendor. Men stood about drinking from cups.

Amongst the crowd, one man was doubled over. He appeared to be vomiting.

“He wouldn’t be the first man to throw up after drinking too much,” I said.

“But painting it for decoration?” Diotima said in disbelief.

She clearly hadn’t been to the same parties I had. Among my acquaintances were several with party-ware decorated with the figures of men who had drunk too much of the bounty of Dionysos. I recalled one particularly detailed decoration on a wine cup, of a slave girl holding up a bowl while a man vomited into it.

I made a mental note never to introduce my wife to that particular friend.

I said, “The point Kiron’s making is that the figures in the skene painting seem to presage the accidents at the theater.”

“Or maybe they were drawn in afterward?” Diotima suggested. She looked to Kiron. “Do you know? Were the figures there
before
the accidents?”

Kiron shrugged. “I didn’t notice them until afterward. But then, I wouldn’t, would I? As your husband says, they’re not so remarkable on their own.”

Diotima looked closely at the figure of the man throwing up. She shook her head “I can’t tell if he was painted in later. Maybe an expert could tell.”

“There’s something else,” Kiron said. He looked worried. “After you left with Phellis, while everyone around here was arguing, I had a close look at the skene. And …”

He pointed at a spot below the Acrocorinth. “Right here, see this building? It was always there, but I never noticed before how much it resembles a theater.”

Diotima and I leaned forward. It did indeed look like a theater, and in the middle, on what would be the stage—

Diotima gasped.

I turned to Kiron.

“I’ll swear it wasn’t there before,” he said. “I’ll swear it.”

In the middle of the theater upon the skene wall was the god machine. And falling from it was the tiny figure of a man.

“What do you think?” Kiron asked.

“I think we need to speak to the artist,” I said. “Who painted your scenery?”

“Stephanos of Vitale. Everyone uses him.”

“Vitale? Where’s that?”

“Some place among the islands of the Cyclades, I think. He’s a
metic.
”

Athens is full of metics. Their numbers increase every year as people from poorer cities flood in to enjoy our wealth and success.

Kiron told us where to find this Stephanos. The artist lived in Outer Ceramicus. It was one of those places where rich and poor mingled together. We arrived at his home—a small artisan’s house, neat and tidy—only to be told by the house slave that Stephanos wasn’t in. He was painting a mural for a client at a house close to where my family lived … in the exact opposite direction, back past the theater.

As we walked all the way back I realized, too late, that I
should have sent a runner ahead to inquire if Stephanos was in. But then, knowing the way my luck ran, if I had sent the runner, he would have returned to say Stephanos was at home and I would have wasted my time waiting.

We finally found Stephanos at work in a house in the deme of Agryle. There was no trouble getting in to see him. The front door was wide open. Tradesmen streamed in and out with their tools and materials in hand.

I stopped one of the men, to ask him what was happening and where I might find the painter. It seemed the home owner was renovating. He’d moved his family elsewhere while his home was stripped to its bare beams and rebuilt from the ground up.

Inside, I paid close attention to what the workmen were doing. I counted no fewer than twenty of them. Carpenters cut away and replaced walls. One man was tearing up the treads of the stairs to replace the old wood. Stone workers laid new paving in the courtyard. Two thatchers stood in the courtyard and stared straight up, pointing at this or that as they discussed how they would replace the roof.

This was what I wanted to do to Diotima’s house, but could never afford unless I did it myself. The mere sight of all the work involved depressed me. On my own it would take ten years, or maybe a hundred.

We followed the tradesman’s directions to the only room that was complete: the master’s bedroom, to the left off the courtyard. The room had that new wood smell that makes you want to breathe deep. But it was mixed with an aroma that was even sweeter. It smelled like honey.

A thin man of medium height stood with his back to us, bent over pans. He wore an exomis spattered with colors that ranged from faded pastel yellow to recent hits of vibrant red and blue. It could have been a bright party dress, except the paint was crusted hard.

This must be the artist.

“Stephanos of Vitale? My name is Nicolaos, son of Sophroniscus. I have a few questions to ask—”

“They’ll have to wait. I’m working.”

He hadn’t even turned to speak to us.

Stephanos pulled a sponge from the small brazier over which he leaned. The brazier stood upon a tripod. A gentle fire lapped at the metal from an oil lamp placed beneath. A layer of something sticky coated the sponge in the artist’s hand.

“What’s that?” Diotima asked.

“Beeswax.”

He began to wipe the sponge across the wall in broad, easy strokes. When the sponge ran out of wax he dipped it back in the brazier for more. He continued this way until the wall was coated top to bottom and side to side in a wax undercoat. Stephanos seemed to use a lot of beeswax. Were there really that many bees in Athens?

“I can’t stop now that I’ve begun,” he explained as he worked. “The wax undercoat needs to be soft for the next part. If you want to talk, go ahead, but I’ll be concentrating on this.”

He picked up a stylus, of the sort people use with a wax tablet. But instead of writing notes, the artist sketched the outlines of the mural to come. It was hard to see the scratchings against the translucent background, but I discerned large, robust figures and petite women.

“What are you drawing?” I asked.

“Satyrs ravishing maenads,” he said without stopping.

“Interesting choice for a bedroom,” I said.

He shrugged. “I’m just the hired help. You’d have to ask the owner’s wife.
She
chose the subject.”

“Hmm.”

Stephanos completed the outline of an enormous half-man, half-beast, to which he added an anatomically correct phallus that was entirely rampant. Diotima leaned closer to inspect it.

“Not bad,” she said.

“If you’re thinking about redecorating,” I told her, “you can forget it.”

In a row along the floor were blocks of pigment: red, blue, yellow, green, and white. Stephanos picked up a block of white. He used a knife to scrape flakes into a second brazier.

“Now for the color,” he said. Then added, “Was there something you wanted to ask me about?”

“Yes,” I said. “We believe you painted the skene for the play
Sisyphus
, written by Sophocles.”

“I do the skenes for all the plays,” he said as he stirred the contents of the brazier. “Both the tragedies and the comedies.”

Stephanos added some olive oil. He stirred the brew, then added more oil.

“How did you end up as everyone’s skene painter?” I asked.

“I paint murals,” he said. “One day—it must be almost fifteen years ago—how do the years pass so quickly? Anyway, I’d been hired by a citizen to do a mural for his courtyard. The client was an important man by the name of Aeschylus. He wanted a Battle of Marathon.”

“I’ve seen that painting!” I said. I had been a visitor to the house of Aeschylus. “It’s very good.”

Stephanos said, “Thanks. Aeschylus watched me for most of the day while I worked, like you two are now, only he talked less. When I was done, he admired my work, and then he said, ‘You know, something like that would look great in my next play.’ ” He shrugged again. “So I painted the skene like it was a mural. It was a huge hit with the audience. Aeschylus paid me double what he promised, then made me swear that I’d do it again the next year.”

Stephanos stopped stirring.

“After that, well, everyone else wanted me to paint their skenes.”

The flakes and the oil had melted into solution. He took the
gooey mess to the wall. With the cup in his left hand and the palette knife in his right, he spread the white onto the warm beeswax. I could see the color embed itself into the wax.

“You see why this must be done before the undercoat cools,” he said.

“What’s in the pigment?” I asked.

“For white? You take strips of lead, as thin as you can make them, and lay them crossways in an open tray. Then you pour in vinegar and toss in a pile of goat droppings. Wait a few months, and you’ve got white pigment.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I wish I was. Vinegar I can get from bad wine; the Gods know there’s plenty of that in this city. Goat droppings are free for the taking from any street, but lead ingots cost a fortune.”

“You don’t sound entirely pleased with Athens,” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s the clients in this town that drive me crazy. You wouldn’t believe how many of them are amateur artists. Always watching over my shoulder, demanding changes to perfectly good pictures.”

He glared at me as if it were my fault.

“I’ve got a plan,” he said. “When I’ve made enough money, I’ll buy a nice farm on some island in the Cyclades and live simply and raise goats and chickens. Have you ever heard a goat complain about a painting?”

“No.”

“There you are, then.” He nodded sagely. “Goats are civilized.”

As he spoke Stephanos continued to press and spread paint into his creation. The style was clearly the same as the skene at the theater.

“Stephanos, did you make any changes to the backdrop of
Sisyphus
?”

“I see you know nothing about painting. Every artist has to touch up some places.”

“I mean, after you’d finished the skene, did you return to add anything extra?”

Though he was still painting, he turned his head to look at me. “That is a very odd question,” he said.