The Walled Orchard (26 page)

I nearly fell off my horse.

‘Next year,’ said Jason, ‘we shall line it with stone, and then it will be just like the Theatre of Dionysus.’

I doubted that somehow, but I remembered that I was here to further the interests of Athens, and said on the contrary, it would be better. ‘In fact,’ I went on, ‘I wish that I could put on a play here. ‘It’s so …’ I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I waved my hand in the air instead.

Then Jason giggled, sounding just like one of the conduits at Nine Fountains when it gets blocked with leaves, and I felt a terrible sense of foreboding.

‘Then your wish is about to be fulfilled,’ Jason said. ‘If you would care to take your seat, we’ll see what we can do.’

I got slowly off my horse and followed him down into his earthwork — I refuse, even now, to call that overgrown sump a Theatre. Alexander was already sitting there, in a great big carved oak throne. He was obviously livid that the Theatre wasn’t ready yet, and there was a man on his knees in front of him, who I took to be the overseer of the work.

‘This miserable dog,’ growled Alexander in his own Thessalian voice, ‘has betrayed his trust. He swore by the head of Poseidon that all would be ready, and he has broken his oath. Very well, then; his blood shall—’

‘No, don’t do that,’ said Theorus suavely. ‘It’s terribly unlucky, you know. Isn’t it, Eupolis?’

‘Terribly,’ I said.

Alexander shrugged his shoulders and became all Athenian again. ‘But it’s so terribly naughty of him,’ he whined. ‘He knew we were expecting honoured guests, and just look at it.’

‘It’s perfect,’ I assured him. ‘Don’t change a thing.’

‘Well, if you think it’s right, it must be right,’ chirped Jason. ‘So why don’t we all sit down and let the revels commence?’

The Thessalian lords who had been at the feast last night were filing in and saluting the princes; they looked as miserable as I felt. Finally Alexander called for silence and warbled out, ‘Eupolis, bring on your Chorus!’

I once saw a play by Cratinus which was a burlesque on the blinding of Oedipus, and although I enjoyed it, I wondered what Oedipus himself would have made of having his Tragic sorrow made into a Comic travesty. By the end of the opening scene of my
General,
as performed by members of the flower of Thessalian youth, I knew the answer; he would have loved it. To start with, I didn’t know where to look; I was so embarrassed, especially with Theorus and Strato sitting there looking like a couple of owls, that I would gladly have cut my own throat if I could have borrowed a razor. But when the actors started forgetting their lines and I had to prompt them, I actually started to enjoy myself. It helped that the entire company, Chorus as well as actors, hadn’t the faintest idea what any of it meant, and so recited their parts with a sort of Tragic profundity. They had tried their best to make trireme costumes out of old goatskins and the staves of buckets, but the people wearing them had no idea what they were meant to be, and apparently nobody had thought it wise to tell them; so they must have assumed that they were some sort of sacred vestments, and moved accordingly. As the play went on, I could see exactly what was wrong with it; why the dialogue was so flat, and why the Choruses had failed so utterly. There was, quite simply, too much of everything; twenty years of wanting to be a Comic poet jammed into one little play. That was why the jokes had flown over everyone’s heads; like Xerxes’ arrows, they had blotted out the sun. As for the choruses, they were far too complicated for anyone short of Athena herself to follow at first hearing. Written down, of course, and read slowly at leisure, it quite probably seemed to coruscate with wit. On stage, it was a meaningless torrent of words.

So, when the Chorus had floated gracefully off, there was real feeling in my voice when I thanked the princes.

‘It was marvellous, really,’ I said. ‘You don’t know how much pleasure that gave me.’

Jason seemed rather taken aback — I think he had prepared a little speech of apology — but Alexander beamed, and said that it was an honour. I replied that no, it was an honour for
me,
and I think we’d be there yet if Jason hadn’t got bored and suggested we eat something.

I had a Thessalian appetite for my food, but my mind was full of Comedy again; it was as if some God had inspired me, and all I wanted to do was sit down somewhere quiet and start composing. It didn’t matter that I had no plot or theme or characters — mere details. What mattered was that the cloud of the
General
had been lifted from my shoulders. And then, as if a second God had joined the first, I remembered what Cleonymus had said when I spoke to him in Pallene; he could get me a Chorus, and then everything would be all right.

Don’t ask me to remember how much we paid for the cavalry in the end — it was something like four obols a day and one talent, and we got past the Assembly on our return without too much trouble. The next thing I can remember is sitting under my fig tree at Pallene, with half an opening scene in my head searching frantically for a name, and someone in the fields above the house calling out the name of my steward, who was called Maricas. Not long after, I took three rolls of Egyptian paper to the Archon, and was granted a Chorus.

Maricas
won first prize at the City Dionysia in the year that Ameipsias came second with his
Wineskins.
Aristophanes won third prize with
The Two Brothers.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

I hadn’t expected to win first prize with
Maricas,
and so I hadn’t thought of a suitable place to hold my Victory party. The true horror of my situation only dawned on me at the Cast party, immediately after the performance (I had been called on last), and for a while I sat with my head in my hands, trying to think of some way out of the mess. As I saw it, I had three options: not to hold a Victory party at all (which was unthinkable, like fighting a battle and not raising a trophy afterwards, or growing corn and not harvesting it); to hold it at Phaedra’s house; or to find somewhere else. I had just decided to beg the backer — a cumin-seed-splitting, parsimonious old fool called Antimachus — for the loan of his pottery warehouse in Piraeus, when a messenger came looking for me. It was Phaedra’s slave Doron.

‘My mistress asks me to tell you that she’s visiting her father in the country,’ he said, ‘and so the house will be empty for three days. She asks you not to let your friends be sick on the couches.’

At the time, I raised my hands in thanksgiving to Dionysus and started issuing invitations immediately; but as I was being carried home to Philodemus’ house, my soul pointed out to me that this was a generous gesture from someone whom I had not treated well.

Mind you, I think that I had drunk so much wine that some of it must have seeped through into my soul, for it was being unusually sentimental that night.

After a few hours’ sleep I was up and busy, sending all Phiodemus’ household, Callicrates, and even Philodemus himself out into the City with invitations, which were on no account to be refused. My own role in this Xerxian campaign was quartermaster, and I filled my purse with handfuls of money and set off for the market. The sunlight hit me like a hammer as soon as I set foot outside, but I persevered manfully and bought up every drop of wine in Athens, together with a good stock of food, mostly fish, in case people should forget to bring any of their own. Then I descended on Phaedra’s house, with a train of porters behind me that seriously disrupted the movement in the streets, and got to work.

Phaedra’s house, which I had not seen for some time, was a splendid setting for a party with all its expensive and ostentatious fittings. There were more couches and chairs than in Aristophanes’ house, and enough mixing-bowls to mix the Aegean with Ocean. Phaedra had removed every feminine object from the place, and the floor was scrupulously clean and dry. But outside the back door, I found a cache of empty wine jars, all ready for the jar-collector, and I wondered how on earth she had managed to empty so many.

Needless to say, I hadn’t expected the prize guests —what you might call the collector’s items — to turn up, for I had invited men who I had never even met. But they came. Everyone came, from Cleonymus and Theorus down to my nearest neighbours at Pallene; even Cratinus came, although he was very ill indeed and had to leave early. Only Socrates son of Sophroniscus didn’t come, at which I was secretly relieved, for he never seems to get drunk and monopolises the conversation. Oh no, it wasn’t one of those cosy little parties where seven or eight close friends sit in a semicircle and talk about the Meaning of Truth, which is how people celebrate victories nowadays. It was a good old Athenian thrash. The formal drinking-rules I had devised, the subtle order of courses and succession of toasts and libations, were abandoned like the shields of an infantry-line when the cavalry attacks it from behind. I have heard many times how Atlantis was overwhelmed by the sea, but I could never visualise it properly until that night.

It was touch and go at times, but I stuck it out to the last drop. About an hour before dawn, the only people still capable of speech were me, Callicrates, Philodemus, Euripides and Cleonymus, and we were talking about the Soul; we had decided that it couldn’t possibly live in the liver, where everyone thinks it lives, but that it couldn’t live in the chest, since that’s where the heart lives and the two never seem to agree. That left the head (which is absurd), the groin or the feet, and I can’t remember what we finally decided.

The next morning I left the slaves to scrub the floor and make good the damage, and rode off to Pallene. Cleonymus rode part of the way with me, and I screwed up my courage to thank him. He made a noise that was something between a laugh and a sneer, and changed the subject. Of all the men that I have ever liked, I think he was the most repulsive, with the exception of my dear Cratinus.

I spent my first few days at Pallene going round my rapidly crumbling new terraces, to remind myself that I was not successful in everything, and then settled down to work. The old Tragedian Phrynichus, who wrote his best plays in Themistocles’ time and was once prosecuted and fined because his
Sack of Miletus
depressed everyone so much, used to say that when a playwright sat down to watch his Chorus being led out, he should already have his next opening speech perfect in his mind; and I have always tried to follow this advice. When a play is presented and the actors run out to speak the first words, you know that that is the first and last time that that play will ever be heard. It’s like raising a son who is the pride of your heart to run in one race at the Games; even if he wins, you know that you’ll never see him again. So I have always had another play in my mind, and as soon as I hand my words over to the actors I do my best to forget them utterly. Likewise, I am always striving to do better, as if my last play were my own most deadly rival.

I had rivals enough as it was. My next play,
The Man With Two Left Hands,
came second, well beaten by Hermippus and only narrowly beating Ameipsias, at a Lenaea for which Aristophanes, Phrynichus and Cratinus had not contributed anything. My
Vines
and
Cities
were only saved from third place by the brilliance of the costumes — I paid the vase-painter Phrygus to do them, out of my own pocket — and Aristophanes narrowly beat my
Corinthians
at the Dionysia when Aristomenes’
Heracles
was booed off the stage. I had resigned myself to a future of second prizes when I won, quite unexpectedly, with
The Flatterers.
After that, I seemed to lose that sense of urgency which had been driving me to compete as often as possible. Although I was never without a play in my head, I found that I could bring myself to wait for a while, instead of forcing myself to complete it in time for the next Festival. I have had a good run, all in all; I have led out seventeen Choruses and won seven first prizes, and only once come third. As for my reputation with posterity, I no longer worry about it. The other day, for example, I came across a book of Aristophanes’ plays, with the copyist’s scribble all down the margins and on the back of the roll, in which some fool had written that Aristophanes’
The Acharnians
beat a play called
The New Moons,
which was there ascribed to me. I have never written a play of that name, and if the copyist had had the sense to ask someone who knows me, he would have found out that I was far too young to have been given a Chorus that year; as you may remember,
The Acharnians
was the play for which Aristophanes gave the party I went to. But I couldn’t be bothered to look up the copyist and make him correct the mistake, even though this
New Moons
of mine was supposed to have come third. Twenty years ago, of course, I would have cut his head off for saying such things about me.

It wasn’t long after
The Flatterers,
at a time when I was as near content as I have ever been, that I heard that my daughter Cleopatra had died, quite suddenly, from drinking bad water. By the time the news reached me the funeral had already been held, since I was staying with a friend at Araphen, and nobody knew where I was. My host commiserated with me and sent away the guests he had invited, but I must confess that my principal feeling was relief. I suppose that sounds very heartless, especially nowadays, but I had never so much as set eyes on the child, and somehow, given the circumstances of her birth and that stupid, insulting name that Phaedra had given her, she seemed to represent the division between us. You know the story of the Hero Meleager; how when he was born the Goddess prophesied that he would live only as long as it took a certain log on the fire to burn, and how Meleager’s mother grabbed up the log and kept it safe, until one day many years later, she flung it on the fire in a fury and so brought about her son’s death. Well, it had somehow got into my mind that as long as Cleopatra was alive, I could not bring myself to see Phaedra again, even though I had long since come to accept that Cleopatra was my child. Now she had died, as suddenly and inexplicably as Meleager. I felt no guilt for her death; but it seemed to me that there was a purpose to it. If I was one of those people who believe in what they say at the Mysteries, I would no doubt explain it all as the innocent child sacrificed for the good of the People; but I could never be doing with that sort of thing.

 So I took my leave of my host at Araphen and rode to the City, only to find that Phaedra wasn’t there. The doorkeeper at the house said that she had gone to stay with her uncle, out near Eleusis, and wouldn’t be back for a month. I thought of going to Eleusis after her, but I had business in the City which couldn’t be put off, and so I decided to wait until she got back. I moved into the house, and asked the servants how Phaedra had been getting on.

They were reluctant to talk to me at first, but when I had convinced them that I wanted a reconciliation between us, it was hard to make them stop. Their mistress had been terribly unhappy, they said; she had stayed in the house, spinning her wool and weaving cloaks and tunics for me in the hope that one day I would come back. She hadn’t touched a drop of wine —wouldn’t have it in the house — and had been to see all my plays. I was deeply touched by this, until I found the remains of several broken wine jars on the ash-heap, which made me suspicious. So I asked the servants to show me the clothes Phaedra had made for me; there must be several chests full of them by now. They looked mustard at me and admitted that they had been exaggerating slightly, about both the clothes and the wine. But they swore by Styx that there had been no men in the house at all, and offered to be tortured if I didn’t believe them.

Then a messenger arrived from Eleusis to say that Phaedra wouldn’t be back for another couple of weeks at least. He was rather surprised to find me there, and didn’t want to say any more, but a four-drachma piece did wonders for his sense of loyalty, and he told me what had happened.

Phaedra had gone with her aunt and some other women to make some offering or other at one of those little country shrines; it was more an excuse for a picnic than a religious occasion. They had made their offering and eaten the rest of the food, and the groom was just harnessing the donkeys to the cart when one of them was stung by a fly and went out of control. Phaedra, who had been putting the picnic things in the cart, had been kicked in the face, and her jaw had been broken. They had done what they could — the eminent doctor Eryximachus had been staying near by, and they had sent for him to set the fracture — but the bone had been too badly damaged for much to be possible. Phaedra, said the messenger, would never look the same. She would have a sort of permanent smile; just like that, he said, pointing to me without thinking, only on the other side of her face…

I burst out into uncontrollable laughter, until everyone was quite angry with me, but I just couldn’t help myself. The thought that my beautiful Phaedra would henceforth be as repulsive as her husband — a matching pair, in fact, except that presumably she still had some hair — was a sort of pure delight, such as you feel when you recognise the intervention of a God. It was not that wonderful feeling you get deep inside you when you hear of the misfortunes of an enemy; there was nothing vindictive about it at all. When I had control of myself again, I told the messenger to go back to Eleusis as quickly as he could and tell Phaedra that I was on my way, and that if he said anything at all about my reaction to his news, I would make sure he spent the rest of his life in the silver mines. First thing next morning, I set out for Eleusis with Little Zeus riding with me, since it would be just like my luck to run into bandits at such a time if I went on my own, and I was determined to go straight there. But my soul made me stop off at Callicrates’ house to pick up the gold and cyanus necklace which I had been given as a parting gift by the princes in Thessaly. It was the most valuable single object I owned at that time.

I once bought a tripod from a Syrian; it was a wonderful thing, with bronze lion-heads all over it and inlays of lapis and glass. It was far too expensive, and when a man offered to buy it from me, I sold it to him gladly, since I had been worrying about spending so much money ever since. But almost as soon as I had delivered it, I regretted what I had done, and finally I went to the man who had bought it and begged him to sell it back to me. He was a shrewd man, and asked rather more for it than he had given me, but I paid what he asked and took the tripod back with me. When I got it home, I saw that one of the little bronze lion-heads had been broken off and most of the lapis had been dug out with a small knife, probably to be used for earrings. But I didn’t feel that the damage spoiled my precious tripod; it made me value it all the more, and I never had it repaired.