The Mask of Apollo (15 page)

Wringing his hands till I thought they would come off, he gasped out, “Oh, Nikeratos! I appeal to you, sir, I ask you, how could I have foreseen it? On my life, by all that’s holy, I meant no harm to anyone. Somebody had to bring Dionysios the news, and get the good-tidings gift; why some hired courier, why not me? I rode up to Corinth, and got a ship through the gulf from there, and saved two days. Who could have thought of its harming artists like yourselves, who were sure of all the honors? Who could have known? Am I a soothsayer? A god?”

“No,” I said. “Not by the look of you. So you shipped ahead of us with the news. What then?”

He showed the whites of his eyes, like a beaten dog. I would have shaken it out of him, but the merchant said, “I can tell you quicker. When the Archon got the news, he paid Wingfoot Hermes here the price of it, and a good price too. Then he began the victory feast. It went on two days and I daresay they would still be at it, but that he took a turn in the gardens to get cool. He wasn’t young; he’d had the marsh fever more than once, and it clings then to one’s bones. He went sick within two hours.”

The chorus man gazed from one to the other of us, his silence giving assent. Hermippos caught Anaxis’ eye, and jerked his head at the water. They rolled back their gowns from their arms.

It was hard to blame them. I had half a mind to it, too. But the wretched man had only done what anyone else might who thought of it; and the sponsor’s courier, no doubt, would still have got here before us with the same effect. Even when I had talked them out of it, they were all for putting him back on shore, saying he carried bad luck enough to sink a squadron. The only man more superstitious than an actor is a sailor, and I saw the captain listening. The chorus man—whose name I can’t recall, though I thought it graven on my mind forever—fell down and clasped my knees. I have seen it done better. Weeping, he cried that his sole hope of life was to get away before the Syracusans started to blame him for the death; otherwise he would be crucified on the walls, and his ghost would haunt us.

It was a good long speech, so I had time to think. I had been pretty late about it. Still, what need of time? A man who gets omens at the hour of fate should not turn back at the door and call it chance.

“Stop grizzling,” I said. “No one can hear himself speak.” He choked it down, and I went on, “Very well, you meant no harm. But you did it. You’ve still come off with your profit, which I’m sure was a good one; while these artists here have lost the chance of their lives. As I see it, the least you can do is to stand them their fares to Athens. In that case, we will ask the captain to let you sail.”

He could not offer fast enough. Anaxis said, “Of course that includes Nikeratos, though he was too much the gentleman to mention it. As protagonist, he has borne the greatest loss.”

“Thank you, my dear,” I said. “But there’s no need, I shan’t be sailing. I’ve a fancy to see Sicily.”

This line, as I had feared it might, stopped the show. Then the big scene started. Even the captain joined in. Had I lost my wits, they asked. What would be doing in the theater? Civil war was the likeliest thing, and then maybe the Carthaginians moving in while the walls were weakly manned. Even for a man tired of life, said the captain, there are ways and ways of losing it. To all this I replied that I could look out for myself, and had always wanted to see Syracuse. After a while Hermippos and the captain gave me up; but Anaxis drew me aside.

“Niko, my dear friend.” He grabbed my shoulders, a thing I had never known him do. I saw, surprised, that he really liked me. “Don’t, I beseech you, rush off like a boy into a battle, looking for the one he loves without helm or shield. I said nothing before the others, out of respect for your feelings; but it needed no oracle at Delphi to tell me how things were with you. Think! You have no head for affairs; you know it; you’ll find nothing but trouble; and the man whose fortunes you want to follow, excellent as no doubt he is, won’t be at leisure now to remember that such a man as Nikeratos walks upon the earth. You have no notion what can happen in a city when a tyranny changes hands. Once faction fights begin, and throats are cut in the streets, men don’t wait to ask if you are a stranger in those parts. Come, sail home with us now, and come back later when everything is settled.”

“Don’t fret so, dear boy,” I said. “I toured with Lamprias at nineteen, on the second-class circuit, and came out of that alive. I daresay I can shift in Sicily.”

“How will you even eat?”

“I’ve some prize-money still in hand. Look, the boatman’s shoving off; I must catch him now.” If I had to wait for another, I should have all this two or three times over.

When I had packed my things, I brought Anaxis the mask-box of Apollo. “Keep this for me, my dear. Set it up somewhere, and give it a pinch of incense now and then—the god is used to it—and ask him to keep me in mind till I come home.”

He promised, shaking his head over me as if it had been the boat of Charon I was boarding to cross the Styx. He and Hermippos both embraced me. They watched me all the way to shore. Further along the rail stood the man from the chorus, staring after me as if at a man bereft of his senses running into a house on fire. It stuck in my mind, as I set foot on the wharf of Syracuse.

I
DECIDED TO DO THE NATURAL THING AND MAKE
for the theater. It would be a starting point; something would come to me there. I found my own way, seeing nobody I felt like asking.

Syracuse is a splendid city, taking after Corinth, which founded it. But it was warmer, greener, dustier, stank more, and already smelled of spring. There seemed more of everything—more gilding, more marble, more shops, more people. They had traits of every nation under heaven: fair Hellenes and dark Hellenes, brown hawk-faced Numidians, black thick-faced Libyans; reddish little black-haired Sikels, and every kind of cross-breed these could produce. All they had in common was their Greek dress, and fear. The place was like a kicked anthill, before they start putting it to rights. Only they did not look to me like doing it, but as if they were waiting to see what would be done to them. There was a kind of meanness with it too, as if each watched his neighbor lest he might find a foothold quicker in this slippery time, and manage to make something out of it.

The theater was empty. Even the caretaker and cleaners had gone off, leaving it unlocked. The streets had been full of people in their working clothes. I went in, and felt better for it, more myself. As I had expected, there was too much of the best of everything—colored marble, gilding, painting, over-decorated statues—a place designed to make one think, “I am playing at Syracuse,” rather than, “I am playing in Sophokles.” I had never seen such machinery as there was backstage and under it Dionysios must have turned his war engineers loose there when they had nothing else on hand. One huge device of wheels and levers left me quite at a loss; later I found it was to raise the stage or lower it by pumping water in or out of chambers below.

However, as I had guessed I would, from here I knew where to go next. I went down into the street and found the theater tavern.

One could tell it at a glance, as one always can: a barber’s stand in one corner; a set of the tragic masks on one wall; on another a scene from the
Agamemnon
, with actors’ names written in. Though the theater had been empty, this was cram-full; the noise came out to meet me, the sort which, in cities all over Hellas, makes an artist feel at home. No muttering and whispering, as in the streets. An actor always knows that if one city gets too hot, there are others.

The barber’s chair was free, so, having shaved that morning, I asked to be pumiced, a good long talkative job. News buys news.

The barber was a Corinthian, as every barber in Syracuse is, or claims to be. When he asked me whence I came, and so on, I told him everything, except that I knew Dion; there seemed no sense in hiding the rest. While he spread his towels he passed on the news over his shoulder; presently, to save him trouble, people got up and sat around. Some of them offered me wine. It was as unlike as possible to the city outside. Here one could feel one’s footing. Actors understand actors, as dogs do other dogs.

No one was surprised that, having come so far for nothing, I should stay to see the city before going home. The barber, who owned the tavern, introduced me to the leading actors who were there, and to some old ones who I expect sat there all day. Then he remembered that Dionysios’ chorus-trainer, who would have worked on
Hectors Ransom
, lived nearby, and sent someone to fetch him. Meantime, everyone told me about Dionysios’ fatal party, some adding that by habit he was a sober man, and might have lived if he had been better seasoned to it. They talked of the plays he had put on; there was a good deal of smooth backbiting among the leading men, far more than at Athens, which came, I should say, from their having had to compete for the tyrant’s favor. The man I took to most was a second-role tragedian called Menekrates. As he seemed talkative, and I had learned nothing useful yet, I asked him whether young Dionysios would be as good a patron as his father.

For a moment everyone glanced round in search of eavesdroppers; even here one was still in Syracuse. But they seemed satisfied. Menekrates smiled, flashing his white teeth; he was dark almost to blackness, with a high-bridged Numidian nose. “My dear Nikeratos, that is the riddle of the Sphinx. No one knows anything, about theater or anything else. If you want my opinion, the man who would most like to know what young Dionysios is like is the man himself. Since he left off playing with his toys, he’s not dared to be anything that a man of rank could take seriously. He won’t even laugh at a comedy till every one round him has laughed first. He cries more easily. I made him cry once. That’s as much as anyone knows. He may be sitting at this moment, like an actor without a mask, waiting for someone to write him a part.”

“Or,” said a man with a flute-player’s flat-topped fingers, “he may be taking off the mask he’s been playing in all this time, to make his bow and show his face.”

Just then the chorus-master came in, a little bouncing man who knew artists all over Greece and demanded news of them, and I had to talk theater. After all, it was the center of these men’s lives, and it was only chance that was making me any different.

What next? I was no nearer knowing than when I landed. If I had been anyone else, I could just have walked to Dion’s house and asked how I could be of service. But what kind of entrance could I make which would not seem to say, “Here I am, stranded without work after coming all this way. You hired me; now look after me.”

The barber had done, and it was noon. But Menekrates would not let me order food, and shared with me a good fish stew. Then, when we had eaten, he said that since I had come to see the sights, he would be happy to show me Syracuse, and to offer me the spare bed at his lodging.

Here was an omen at the crossroads. I had taken to the man; he liked gossip, too, and might have some useful knowledge. All over Hellas, a web of guest-friendship binds the artists of Dionysos; it went without saying that when next he came to Athens I would return his hospitality. So I could accept it without loss of pride—a great piece of luck, with my passage home to think about.

“It will have been worth your visit,” he said, “just to see the funeral. There is always a big show for an important man; but this should be the sight of a generation.”

“Of two,” said the chorus-master. “Dionysios has ruled for two, by the common reckoning.”

I asked who would arrange the rites. “Why, the heir,” he answered. “Young Dionysios.” Plainly no one doubted who the heir was. I wondered what was going on in the island stronghold. There was not much chance of my ever knowing.

After this Menekrates took me to the small street where he lodged, in a good clean room with whitewashed walls opening to a courtyard. He showed me my bed, lay down upon his own and slept at once, as everyone does there at that hour. Even so early in the year, it was getting warm. Not being used to it, I lay thinking, looking out through the window at the court with its green shade of palms and gourds.

When the shadows started lengthening, he woke up. As we splashed well-water on our faces, he said, “Let us go and see if my cousin Theoros has got home yet. He should have been purified from the death chamber by this time. We shall learn something at first hand from him.”

As we slipped along a crooked alley where two could not walk abreast, I asked who this Theoros was. He answered, “Oh, he is the great man of our family. He works for Leontis the physician, puts on his poultices and so on. For three days now he and his master and the other leading doctor, Iatrokles, have been locked up in Ortygia. My cousin (he is really my cousin’s husband) has been at her wits’ end, poor girl. She said if the Archon died they would all be executed. I told her not to fret; there was no one the old man’s life was as precious to as it was to him.”

Apollo, I thought, you have not forsaken your servant.

“He does not approve of me,” said Menekrates. “He thinks I should have had foreknowledge of so dignified a person marrying into the family, and chosen another calling. But we’ll hear something from him; he is too self-important to keep it in.”

Some children playing in the street told us he was back. We went on, and found a small room fast filling up with kindred and acquaintance. The women had hidden inside, but the door-curtain bulged with them; two little boys ran about underfoot like chickens. There was no room to sit down. Theoros, a weighty fellow with a long combed beard and a manner copied from his master, held forth beside the hearthstone. He received me civilly, but condescended to Menekrates. I saw that all the family, except for him, was quite fair and Greek. This often happens in Sicily.

I will cut Theoros’ opening narration, which followed Dionysios’ sickness from the first shiver through rigors, vomitings, sweatings, purgings, and so on, with all the treatment. He described how every time Leontis sent him outside for anything, before being let back into the sickroom he was searched to the skin by the guards. “A foolishness, when so many means of healing can be means of death, misused. But they had their rule and no one dared change it; when Iatrokles, our colleague, complained of the delay, the captain related how a guard was once put to death for handing a javelin to the Archon’s own brother, when all he wanted was to draw a siege plan in the dust for Dionysios to see. He would not have a razor near him, even to shave himself, but singed his beard with glowing charcoal. So now, as you can understand, they feared he might yet recover and make them answer for it. When he began to sink, and they heard us say it was only a matter of time, they stopped searching young Dionysios; but you could see it made them anxious. If it had been Dion, that would have been different; the rule had always been waived for him.”