The Golden Mean Part 22

My housemate with the lazy eye drew me over to some other young men. "We're going into town. Want to come?"

I nodded. "I have to say goodbye to my family."

Proxenus had sent a messenger ahead to the house of our city relatives, so that the twins were already waiting in the street with the carts when we arrived. I kissed the baby, Nicanor, that Arimneste held out for me, and embraced Arimnestus.

"Those yours?" my brother said of my housemates, who hung back a little, respecting our farewells.

Eudoxus had told them of our parents' sudden deaths, and told them too, I guessed, of my own numbness. At least, they hadn't yet asked me why I didn't talk. They probably looked freakish to my brother: indoor skin, no weapons, skinny arms hanging down. Freakish brains, like mine.

"Friends," I said.

Arimnestus knew I didn't know how to make friends. I could see he wanted to say something, some advice he was afraid to offer. Finally he brought our foreheads together in an affectionate b.u.t.t and whispered, so Proxenus wouldn't hear, "Relax. Drink a little more."

I nodded.

Arimneste hugged me long but said only, "Take care."

Proxenus had never dismounted. I was sorry, in that moment, that he so disliked me, read me so wrong.

"You come to us in Atarneus when you're done here," he said.

"Write," Arimneste called, holding the baby up to see me.

The carts were already moving, sending up dust. I held my hand up, kept it in the air while they moved away. I wanted to die.

"All right?" my housemate said.

They knew a place where we could eat, a two-storey house on a busy street in a commercial district. Over bread and meat skewers at a long table someone produced the piece of paper from the night before, and they were off again. I wandered away from the table, deeper into the house, looking for somewhere polite to p.i.s.s.

"Through there," a woman called from the kitchen. She waved a shooing hand at me. "Through, through."

I went through the door she meant, into a bedroom, and found the pot in a corner. When I turned around there was a girl sitting on the pallet on the floor.

Outside, I took my place again on the bench. "All right?" my housemate said again.

It was an hour's walk from the door of the little garden house to the door to the girl's room, a walk I made many times over the next few months. It never cost much; we hardly spoke. Back at the school there was a library where I spent most of the rest of my time. Occasionally there were public lectures in the mornings; occasionally a symposium in the evening. I could attend or not; my time was my own. I thought of Perdicaas and Euphraeus and their snotty dinners: the ritual measuring and watering of the wine, the blessing, the rehea.r.s.ed disquisitions on set topics, the learned quips, haw, haw. One night I spoke too, some ideas I'd been putting together about the forms that everyone here talked so much about, the ineffable essences of things. I was not much keen on the ineffable, and said so, carefully. Surely things had to be rooted in the world to make any sense at all?

"The boy smells of the lamp," someone said, making them laugh. They were pleased, and curious too. So they'd been watching me after all, waiting.

I would always smell of the lamp, I knew that. I lacked spontaneity; my wit was dry as mouse droppings, and as measly. I needed to put in the hours, yes, late hours over the lamp, exhausting myself. I had lied to Eudoxus. The inside of me was not empty, but viciously disordered. On the s.h.i.+p to Athens we'd been sitting below at a meal, my sister pa.s.sing out plates of food, when a sudden swell sent everything sideways, she and the baby tumbling over, food swept to the floor, plates and cups shattering, everyone crying out. My mind was like that now, p.r.o.ne to such sudden upendings. Some days all I could do was wake and roll over and sleep some more. My housemates, by some instinct, left me alone. Some days I knew I would never have to sleep again, and produced monuments of work that were pure luminous hammered gold genius. Less so, the next day. I learned never to show or speak of my ideas to anyone until I'd sat on them for weeks like a broody hen, checking and rechecking, making sure everything was strapped down tight and s.h.i.+pshape. Oh, good, steady, studious, boring me, who worked that girl over and over, used her hard, and came shouting when there was no one to hear.

In my nineteenth winter, word came that Plato was returning early from Sicily.

"What's he like?" I asked Eudoxus at supper. I'd almost forgotten he was the reason I was here at all. I could more or less manage my life as it was, my Illaeus-life of s.e.x and books and a fair amount of privacy, and I feared change.

I had pitched my voice quietly but it made no difference: because I spoke little, people stopped to listen when I did, and because I was bright, people loved what ignorance I let show. It turned out I was the only student who hadn't met him. He liked to approve admissions himself, and I was the last he'd considered before leaving for Sicily. Voices around the room competed to enlighten me. He was n.o.bility, descended from the great Athenian statesman Solon on his mother's side and the G.o.d Poseidon on his father's. His family had been active in politics and he had been expected to go that route, but he was too fastidious, too moral, and occupied himself instead with political and pedagogical theories, theories he had tried to implement in Sicily. But the young king there was already well schooled in tyranny and debauchery, and wasn't interested in the kind of beatific restraint Plato preached; so interpreted Eudoxus from the letter he read to us over our meal. Plato would be home in two weeks.

"It'll be all right," he added, so only I could hear.

WE WENT DOWN TO the port to meet his s.h.i.+p, the whole merry gang of us, led by Eudoxus, and Plato's nephew, Speusippus. Everyone spoke too loudly and they might as well have worn flowers in their hair. I wandered some little distance away to watch the unloading. The sun struck coins in the water where I stared, dazzling my sight, and when I looked up the great man himself was on the quay being mobbed by my teachers and cla.s.smates. My name was called but I was already on my way over. I would not reveal sullenness. the port to meet his s.h.i.+p, the whole merry gang of us, led by Eudoxus, and Plato's nephew, Speusippus. Everyone spoke too loudly and they might as well have worn flowers in their hair. I wandered some little distance away to watch the unloading. The sun struck coins in the water where I stared, dazzling my sight, and when I looked up the great man himself was on the quay being mobbed by my teachers and cla.s.smates. My name was called but I was already on my way over. I would not reveal sullenness.

Speusippus introduced me, a hand on my shoulder, as though he knew me well and my accomplishments were his. Plato was slightly younger than my father would have been, and looked tired. He had close-cropped greying hair and lines around the mouth and eyes. Thin, not as tall as me, simple light clothes, hard chips of light in the eyes. I liked the look of him despite myself. I had expected someone soft and jolly, with seriousness represented by the cryptic.

"I'm sorry I wasn't here when you arrived," he said, as though three years ago was last week. "I wanted to be. I was so sorry about your parents. I thought I could do good work in Sicily, influence many fates, and that it was the better choice. So it seemed at the time."

"The moral calculus, the choice to serve the greatest good for the greatest number," Speusippus announced, as though interpreting an oracle.

Around us the crowd murmured and nodded. Plato looked annoyed.

"I would have waited longer," I said. More murmuring and nodding; a good answer; only I meant it. Your parents Your parents, he had said, not your father your father. He and I shared a bubble: we were both stuck together back in that moment three years ago. I was only now arriving at his school, in his mind; my parents had only just died, in mine. Every morning as I woke they died all over again. Today my true studies would begin.

"I want to spend time with you," he said.

We were moving away from the s.h.i.+p, swept along by the crowd eager to get him moving, to reinstate him at the school, like a city craving her king back in the palace, or a child his parents in the house.

"Later. I'm too tired right now. I want to tell you a lot of things, and hear a lot from you also. I don't like not knowing you. Eudoxus has written me-"

I allowed Speusippus to slip between us then and the crowd to peel me away. Was that flirting? At a stall I bought apricots and hung back to eat them while the crowd I had come with disappeared in the distance, sheep guiding the dog. Musicians had already been hired, I knew, and a great supper was being prepared; no one would be working this afternoon. Had they heard him say he was tired?

"You," the girl said, surprised, when she saw me sitting alone at one of the long tables. Unusually, I had been told to wait. Her hair was loose and her face puffy. I followed her to the back room, where she rubbed hard at one eye with the side of her finger while I undressed. The bed was made.

"Where do you sleep?" I asked.

She pointed at the ceiling. Business quarters downstairs, living up.

"Mornings. You sleep mornings."

She shrugged, nodded.

"I'm sorry."

"No, no." She dropped her dress and yawned, then laughed. "I'm "I'm sorry. I'm not very s.e.xy today. I worked last night. Need a bath." sorry. I'm not very s.e.xy today. I worked last night. Need a bath."

Could have been a s.l.u.t's patter-I'm so dirty-but she looked at me a moment too long. I wondered if this too was something I should offer to pay for, or if she was trying to tell me something else entirely: I don't belong to you. Just to you I don't belong to you. Just to you.

"How about we don't talk," I said.

I got back late to the Academy. The sun was setting and the grounds were almost deserted. I could hear the music from the big house, glimpse the light and the movement of dancers through the windows. Laughter, clapping, smell of roast. At the guest house I washed quickly and changed my clothes. Teeth-marks in the soft places. A big meal would be perfect.

In a niche by the front door I pa.s.sed Speusippus in linen, reviewing some notes. We looked each other up and down and looked away. A roar went up when I walked through the inner door. They were drunk already, my cla.s.smates, and roared at every appearance: me, Callippus with a scroll under one arm, a slave with a tray of new delicacies. Plato sat with Eudoxus, but broke off his conversation to look up and smile every now and then at this or that student and mouth some pleasantry. So long So long, I read many times on his lips, and thank you thank you. Something something something so long so long. He had not changed clothes, or his travelling clothes were his only clothes. I saw him notice me. He raised his hand for silence.

"Nephew," he called.

Speusippus had entered immediately behind me, and made a show of putting his clammy hand on my head to move me aside. "Uncle. All here now."

Speusippus released me. I stepped back into the crowd, back and back, as he made his speech of welcome, until I found a slave against the wall with a tray I could pick clean. I finished in time to applaud with the others.

"Water," I told the slave with two pitchers on his tray. My hands still smelled of the girl, or I imagined they did. I plucked a large flower from an arrangement and shoved finger after finger down its white throat, reaming for scent. Plato was responding to Speusippus. He had taken the scroll from Callippus and unrolled it and held it up. It was a map of the world, fly-specked with black dots. Plato was explaining that each dot represented the birthplace of a member of the Academy. We all edged closer, looking for our dots. There was no Stageira-dot. The Pella-dot was probably supposed to be me.

"I'm so proud of you all," Plato was saying. "I've been away for so long. Too long, I know. I'm very tired, and can't imagine travelling again anytime soon. You're all stuck with me, is what I'm trying to say." Laughter. "We have a lot of work to do, a lot of problems to solve. Difficult problems. But there is no problem without a solution. We are the world in miniature here, and together we will solve the problems of the world. Problems of geometry, problems of physics, problems of government, problems of justice and law. What we achieve here will be incorruptible down the ages." Applause. "And I apologize for the rubbish they're feeding you. I see standards in the kitchen have slipped unconscionably since I've been away. We'll remedy that problem tomorrow." Laughter and applause. A rebuke: the food was fine and fancy, the master a known ascetic. "Tomorrow," he repeated.

I made my way over to him as the party resumed.

"Did the new boy like my speech?" he asked.

"All problems have solutions and the food will be worse tomorrow?"

He laughed, and leaned forward to look into my cup. "He doesn't drink?"

He spoke like Illaeus. Illaeus spoke like him. "Not much."

"Why not?"

Callippus was rolling the scroll, listening to something Eudoxus was saying in his ear. We were alone for a moment in the middle of the crowded room. "My master in Pella drank. It stopped him from getting his work done."

"Illaeus."

I nodded.

"I remember his time here. A lovely boy. Lovely mind. A gift for languages, and for language. Loved poetry. He drank then, too, and liked to go into the city, alone, at night. It seemed harmless at the time."

I held his look.

"His letter moved me," Plato said. "Unexpected, first of all, because he left angry. I hadn't heard from him in years. Then he says, I have a boy here. You must take this boy."

I smelled my fingers.

"I had a master myself, years ago. Will you come with me, please? I'm having trouble hearing in this room."

He led me through a curtain. I felt my cla.s.smates watch us go. We sat in a room I had never entered, a cell with a bed, table, two chairs, and a shelf of books.

"My master was a father to me," he said. "I will be a father to you, if you'll let me. You are already so many people to me. Illaeus, again, and my own younger self, and your own self too. Eudoxus tells me the others are frightened of you. He says you spend a lot of time alone."

"Yes."

"That's not a bad thing. It doesn't have to be."

"Why did Illaeus leave angry?"

"He wanted me to love him the most. I failed him."

We sat listening to the party sounds from the big room.

"Not all problems have solutions," I said.

We spoke for a while about that. I too wanted him to love me the most, already, and suspected the way to achieve that was to fight him. He had enough fawns in the other room. He said he believed in perfection; I said I believed in compromise. Perfection was an extreme, and I had a need to avoid extremes, perhaps because I was so subject to them.

"I will help you," he said.

A tap on the door frame, and Eudoxus looked in. "Food." He set a plate on the table.

"Sleep, rather." Plato rose, handing me the plate. "Eat for me. Boys are always hungry. Our conversation will last years; we needn't finish it tonight."

Eudoxus led me back to the party. "You may not want that." He nodded at the plate. "It was prepared specially for him. No honey, no salt. He likes you. What did you talk about?"

Bread, figs, yogourt, a duck egg.

"Lucky!" My friends gathered around, staring at the plate, at me.

The girl had licked and bitten, licked and bitten, until I didn't know myself. I knew I had seen her for the last time. Giddy, I gave the plate away.

FIVE.

PYTHIAS IS DYING. Her pain is a bright ribbon drawing her on through dun days and sleepless nights; it's all that's real to her. She lies in her room, in her bed, in sheets sweet-scented by fruits left to ripen in the cupboards, fanned by the hour by her maid. I can't help thinking of her pain, also, as a rational being, one with whom she must argue to rescue herself, but as a poor reasoner she cannot. I see the perplexity in her face, the lines in the brow, as pain's logic bests her again and again. Sometimes, in a low voice, she speaks of her girlhood in Hermias's court, of her mother and of a younger sister, whom she's never mentioned before; sometimes she cries out, and I can't tell pain from grief. In her sleep she thrashes, gripped by nightmares, and wakes white-faced, eyes and mouth black with fear. It takes a long time to persuade her to tell me what she sees.

"A road," she'll say, or, "I am walking," and then the terror will grip her again and she'll refuse to say more. I know she believes these dreams to be prophetic.

"If you tell me the dreams, I might find a way to stop them." But this, too, troubles her: if the G.o.ds want her to watch her death, it would be impious to refuse the vision.

"So you die in the dream, then?" I ask, relentlessly. I've never had a recurring dream, never had dreams of any coherence, in fact, and am fascinated.

Pythias closes her eyes, and with a great effort opens them again. She looks directly into my eyes while she speaks, and my attention to her words is overlaid with the revelation that throughout our marriage we've rarely made eye contact. She's always gazing just over my shoulder, or at my chest, or my feet.

"I am walking," she says. "I am alone. There is a wind and the sky is black. Then the sky begins to melt. It falls away in strips, and behind the sky is a white fire, and a huge noise. Soon the heavens are on fire, and the sky is a few black tatters, peeling away in the wind. The wind and the noise and the heat are unbearable, but worst of all is that I am alone."

She clings to my hands, her knuckles gone white.

"I barely have to close my eyes and it comes," she whispers. "Have I done wrong to tell you?"

I comfort her as best I know how, in the language of reason, explaining that the body's sense-organ, the heart, needs natural intermissions, called sleep; that the goal is to give rest to the senses. I explain the relations.h.i.+p between digestion and sleep (privately taking note to question the maid about her eating habits), and tell her that dreams are the persistence of sensory impressions, playing upon the imagination. Many factors can affect the nature of one's dreams, such as slight sensory input during sleep-a room too hot or too cold, say-which will then become exaggerated in the dream, producing an impression of freezing or burning. Perhaps her dream of great heat was suggested by her fever, or too many blankets. (Her eyes follow mine throughout this lesson, like Little Pythias's when I tell her she will one day be a great beautiful lady like her mother; doubtful, yet wanting to believe.) I explain further that certain people are particularly susceptible to violent dreams, these including people who are excitable, or under the grip of some strong emotion, or those with vacant minds, vacuums that need to be filled. (I don't suggest to which category she might belong. My own dreams are negligible; my mind is too busy in waking to suck for fuel during sleep.) As for impiety, I explain gently, dogs have been known to dream-they run their legs in sleep-and why would the G.o.ds send visions to a dog? No, dreams might be coincidental, or prescient, but then some people respond to almost any stimulus, the way water trembles throughout when the smallest pebble is tossed into it, and see visions in straw and cooking pots and fingernail clippings as much as in dreams. It means nothing.

"I had thought, perhaps, it was a memory." Pythias is calmer now. "When you told me of the heavens, of all the-the spheres, and the outermost sphere that was black but all full of pin-holes, so that the great fire behind shone through as stars. It frightened me at the time, when you explained it to me, and I thought perhaps I was remembering this in my dreams."

"Now, you see." I feel a simultaneous rush of grat.i.tude and affection and amazement and pain at the inevitable, impending loss of her. "You have already thought it through, without me. I am proud of you."

She lies back, then, and closes her eyes in a show of bravery.

"She is comfortable," the maid says later, when I ask. "She slept this afternoon, a little, while you were out." This maid, Herpyllis, is a warm creature, not especially young, with a tidy bent and a sympathetic face. The dark one with the green eyes, the one Pythias likes. Now that Pythias is utterly bedridden, Herpyllis has taken over the running of the household. I've seen her coddle Little Pythias with hugs and cooing, affection the little girl accepts with total, unsmiling attention. I suspect her of trying to comfort me. I don't resent the effort, but am curious about the audacity it implies. She's a servant, not a slave; still.

"You take it very calmly," I say to her as she closes the door to the sickroom. Her arms are full of the bed linens she has just changed, her face flushed with the effort of stripping them without disturbing Pythias. I'd been meaning to spell her by the sickbed, as I do every evening now, but Pythias waved me away, saying I would only try to make her think.

"You can talk to Herpyllis instead," my wife said. "She will listen."