The Just City

by Jo Walton

He nodded, getting up again. “It was a really stupid thing to say. Do you think there’s any point apologising?”

  “Not yet. She’s too upset. I’ll tell her I beat you up, that might make her feel a bit better.”

  “You hit me harder than the boar,” he said.

  “I still don’t know if you understand!”

  “That everyone is of equal significance and that the differences between individuals are more important than the differences between broad classes? Oh yes, I’m coming to understand that really well.”

  I glared at him.

  “What? You’re still going to be my friend, aren’t you? I need you to help me understand these things properly.”

  “Yes, I’m still your friend. But I don’t know how I’m going to explain to people about what you said.”

  He spread his hands. “I do know there’s a difference between being soft and being a woman. I do see that there are men like doves too. And I don’t see anything wrong with them, as long as there are enough falcons to protect them, and there are.” He hesitated. “I do see that you are a falcon, not a dove, even if you’d rather be making art than making war. I would myself. Peace is better than war. There’s too much glorification of war and not enough glorification of peace, and especially not enough glorification of the importance of the doves. I value Klymene, even if she’ll never believe it now.”

  “The masters say we are all equally valuable,” I said.

  “But they don’t act as if it’s true.” Pytheas frowned. “The worst thing about that hunt is that there was nobody there who really knew how to do it, nobody who had done it before. Atticus and Axiothea are scholars, not warriors. The city is heavy with scholars, unsurprisingly. Testing us for courage isn’t a bad idea, but that was a stupid way to do it. Boars are really dangerous. People could have been killed or crippled if I hadn’t known what to do.”

  “Write a poem glorifying peace,” I suggested.

  “And you paint a picture doing it, and you’ll soon see how easy it is.”

  Ikaros was walking towards us, no doubt to find out what we were doing standing still for so long. “Come on, let’s wrestle properly,” I said.

  At the festival I came second in swimming and third for running long distance in armour. As I had taught swimming to Kornelia, who had won, I regarded this too as a victory. I could have eaten from the boar Pytheas had killed, but I declined in favour of bread and honey.

  9

  MAIA

  A month or so after the art collections began, Ficino and Ikaros blandly presented to the Art Committee a lost bronze of Michaelangelo, a David, but very unlike his most famous David. They told us unblinkingly that it was Theseus with the head of Kerkyon. I nodded and made a note of it. “Excellent,” Atticus said. “One of the best artists of your time.”

  “Of any time,” Ficino said, smiling.

  I asked Ikaros if I could speak to him a little later. He agreed at once. After dinner, that day a kind of nut porridge, we went for a walk.

  The island was beautiful, even then when the city was still a building site. We walked off to the west and sat under a pine tree overlooking the sea to watch the sunset. “You’re a monk,” I began. I was speaking in Latin as we usually did together.

  Ikaros jumped. “I am not! I was just wearing the habit. I’ve taken no vows of celibacy, don’t worry.”

  It was my turn to jump. “Did you think this was a sexual assignation?” I asked. I was simultaneously horrified and delighted. Ikaros was a handsome man, only about ten years older than me, and I had believed everyone who told me that nobody would ever want a bluestocking. Yet at the same time I felt diminished, as if it meant he wasn’t taking me seriously.

  “Such things have happened,” he said, smiling. “Even here. Plato does not describe how the first generation of teachers are supposed to regulate their lives.”

  “He does talk about how children are to be born,” I said, as sternly as I could. “And really, sneaking off to the woods is against everything he says.”

  He took my hand and ran one finger around my palm, making my breath catch. “But if it were a proper festival of the Republic, and you and I had drawn each other by lot?”

  “That would be entirely different,” I said, pulling my hand away in as dignified a way as I possibly could. Entirely different and far too exciting, I thought. “Come on Ikaros, we’re friends.”

  “And what does Plato say about friendship?”

  “He says not to get Eros mixed up with it,” I said crisply, though far from unmoved. I was very aware that the kiton left far more of me uncovered than the clothes of my own period. I had never really noticed that before, because nobody had been looking at me the way Ikaros was looking at me. I stared straight ahead. The sun was setting into the sea and turning both sea and sky as crimson as my cheeks felt.

  “If you didn’t want that, then why did you want to drag me off alone?”

  “I wanted to ask you about the David.”

  “Theseus,” he corrected me at once.

  “Exactly. That’s why I wanted to ask you alone.”

  “Well, what? It’s a good Theseus, it meets the needs, it’s beautiful and we’ve rescued it. Atticus didn’t blink.”

  “But why not say it’s David? Why do we have to keep Christ out? What’s the necessity? The reason I mentioned that I thought you were a monk was because I thought you were a Dominican, but still you prayed to Athene.”

  “I was having a bad moment when I prayed to be here. The church refused to hear my arguments and then I was imprisoned in France.”

  “You prayed to Athene when you were imprisoned by the Inquisition?”

  “With very good results,” he said, smiling and spreading his hands.

  “Yes, fine, but my point is that many people have reconciled Plato with Christ. Ficino did.” Only a sliver of the sun was left, but the sea and sky still blazed. Why would he have been wearing a monk’s habit if he were not a monk? Did they have fancy dress parties in the Renaissance? Could I possibly ask?

  “I myself did,” he said, proudly. “I reconciled Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Platonism and Zoroastrianism. I learned Arabic and Hebrew. I was so proud of myself. But don’t you see, we were doing it starting from a belief that Christianity was true. If instead it’s the Greek Gods who are true, if we have immortal souls that go down into Hades and on to Lethe and new life, then what price salvation? They can mix from the other side, we could say that Plato was really talking about God. But from this side, well, we can’t say that when Jesus said he’d be in his father’s house that he was really talking about Zeus, now can we?”

  “I do see that,” I said. “But it’s not as if it does any harm, even if it’s not true. It’s a lovely story, about good people. It’s not … contaminated. I don’t see why we have to exclude it so entirely that we have to say the David is Theseus.”

  Ikaros lay back, propped on his elbow. “Christianity is harmful to the Republic because it offers a different and incorrect truth. We want them to discover the Truth, the real Truth that a philosopher can glimpse. That’s important. We don’t want to clutter it up with irrelevancies. Christianity would just get in their way. So no Madonnas and no crucifixions.”

  “But David is all right as long as we say it’s Theseus?”

  “Why not? What harm could that do? I’d bring a Madonna and say it’s Isis, but Ficino thinks that’s going too far.”

  “I wish I could see the Madonnas again. Botticelli’s Madonnas, that is. I only saw them once. I was going to buy an engraving, but I spent all my money on books. Still, we have the new ones.”

  “We do. Athene in the Judgement of Paris looks a little like you.” He moved closer and put his arm around me. “The real trouble with Christianity is that the morality can do so much harm.”

  “I didn’t offer you Christian morality, but Plato on love,” I said, standing up. I wasn’t afraid that he would attack me, although I was aware that he was strong and could e
asily have overpowered me if he had wanted to. What frightened me was the thought that if he persisted, and especially if he persisted in touching me, I would give in to him. “Come on, let’s go back if you can’t exercise temperance.”

  “But you are a poor little Christian virgin, not somebody holding out for agape,” he said, not moving.

  I was furious. “How could you possibly know?” I asked.

  He laughed, silhouetted against a sky of violet and rose. “Oh sit down. I can’t talk to you when you’re hovering over me like that. I’ll concede that I could be wrong. But I doubt it.”

  “Nobody will ever say yes to you if you’re that smug,” I said, sitting down but out of arm’s length.

  “Lots of people have said yes to me already,” he said.

  “Here?” I was amazed, and a little jealous.

  “Here, and in Italy before. I know my way around. I know what women like.”

  I was completely cold now. “There’s nothing less exciting than being thought of as part of a class of beings that are all the same,” I said. “You’re treating me as a thing.”

  “It doesn’t mean I don’t see you as a person,” Ikaros said; “that I want to copulate with you. Latin is an impossible language for this, and you don’t know Italian. Let’s speak Greek.”

  “I’d rather talk about why we have to exclude Christianity,” I said, but I did switch to Greek.

  “I know, but you’re misjudging me.”

  “You keep changing the subject,” I said.

  “I see you, and I like you, and I find you attractive, and it would be a pleasant thing we could do together, like … sharing a meal. It doesn’t stop us having serious conversations that we have silly conversations with imaginary wine. It wouldn’t stop us having serious conversations if we indulged in eros. All I meant by the remark about knowing what women like is that I’m not a clumsy oaf who would hurt you, or who wouldn’t care about your pleasure.”

  The sky was darkening to mauve and the first star was visible. I stared up at it, avoiding his eyes. “I believe you,” I said. “But I’m not comfortable with that. Neither Christian nor Platonic morality condone the kind of thing you’re talking about.”

  “No, I suppose it’s Hedonist,” Ikaros said. “But what Plato says about festivals and everyone drawing lots is like that. Eros separate from philia and agape. And every word Plato says about agape is about love between men.”

  “What he says about agape between men with no thought of love between men and women being like that makes me think he didn’t know any women who were capable of being seen as equals. Which from what we know about Athens at the time is probably realistic—women kept cloistered, uneducated, except for hetairas. But … if he didn’t know any women who were people, how could he have written about women being philosphers the way he did in the Republic? It’s in the Laws too.” I’d only recently read the Laws. “He must have thought about it a lot. And nobody ever listened to him in all those centuries they were reading him. I wonder how did he come to that conclusion? It’s stunning.”

  “I don’t know. I suppose he must have met somebody. You’d only have to really know one woman with the right kind of soul to change your mind about their capabilities.”

  “Axiothea?” I suggested. “I don’t mean our Axiothea, but the original. The woman who came to him in disguise as a youth and was admitted into the Academy? Perhaps she made him realise it’s souls that matter.”

  “No, she came because she’d read the Republic, the same way you came here. It’s mentioned in Diogenes Laertius. So he must have met women with philosophical souls before that.”

  “Showing a philosophical soul doesn’t work on everyone, unfortunately,” I said. “I wish Tullius would deign to notice the souls of the women here.”

  While I had been staring out over the sea and talking, Ikaros had moved so that he was right beside me again. “I know you are afraid,” he said. “But I also know that you want it. I saw you start. There’s nothing wrong with what we’re going to do.”

  “No!” I said. “No, really no, Ikaros, I don’t want to!”

  “I am stronger than you and it’s too late to run away,” he said. “And you don’t really want to leave, do you?”

  I did. I tried to get up, but it was true that he was stronger, and that he knew what he was doing, which I did not. He had no difficulty wrestling me to submission. I screamed as he pulled off my kiton. “Hush now, hush,” he said. “You know you want it. Your breast likes it, look.”

  “I don’t care what my breast likes, my soul doesn’t like it, get off me!”

  “Your soul is timid and has learned the wrong lessons.” He rolled on top of me, forcing my legs apart.

  “It’s my soul, and up to me to say what I want!” I said, and screamed again, hoping somebody would hear even though we were too far from the city.

  Nobody heard. “There, see, you like it,” he said as he eased himself inside me. “You’re ready. I knew you were. You want it.”

  “I do not want it.” I started to cry.

  “Your body is welcoming me.”

  “My body is a traitor.”

  He laughed. “You can’t get away, and I have taken your virginity now. There’s nothing to fight for. You might as well enjoy it.”

  My body unquestionably enjoyed it. In other circumstances it would have been delightful. My mind and my soul remained entirely unconsenting. Afterwards, when he let me go, I turned my back on him and put my kiton back on.

  “There, didn’t you like it?”

  “No,” I said. “Having my will overruled and my choices taken away? Who could enjoy that.”

  “You liked it,” he said, a little less sure of himself now.

  I ignored him and walked away. I did not run because I was under the pines and it was completely dark and I’d have been sure to have banged into a tree. I could hear him blundering behind me. I ran cautiously once I was out where I could see by starlight, and made it back to the city. Klio, who was to serve the Sparta hall, which was finished, already had a house of her own, where Axiothea and I slept most of the time until our own houses were ready. I went there and slammed the door. I was shaking and crying. It was so humiliating to think that my mother and my aunt and those who had insisted on protecting me had been right all along.

  “What’s wrong?” Klio asked, getting up and coming towards me.

  “Ikaros raped me,” I said, still leaning on the door.

  “Are you hurt?” She hesitated. “Should I get Kreusa? Or Charmides?” Charmides was our doctor, a man from the twenty-first century.

  “I’m not really hurt. I mean there’s a bit of blood.” I could feel it sticky on my thighs. “And a couple of bruises. But nothing I need a doctor for.”

  “I’m surprised at Ikaros. I wouldn’t have thought he was that type.” She hugged me and drew me into the room. “Are you going to tell people?”

  I hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know. He’ll say I wanted it.”

  “You went off with him alone,” she said. “Lots of people would think you did want it. It would be your word against his, and I don’t know what people would decide. Lots of the older men don’t really see us as equals. And once everyone knows, everyone knows. You can’t undo that. And you can’t leave. There’s nowhere to go.”

  I understood what she meant. “I won’t tell anyone. I never want to see him again.”

  “I’m going to smack him myself when I get the chance,” she said, sounding really fierce.

  “I thought he was my friend!”

  “He thought you wanted it.” Klio sat down on the bed, drawing me down with her. “Men, especially confident bastards like Ikaros, always try to get their friends into bed. But actual rape? Did you say no?”

  “I said no in both languages and at great length.” She snorted. “I screamed. He thought I was afraid because of Christian morality and that I wanted it really.” I wiped my eyes. “I don’t know whether some part of me d
id want it. My body did. But not like that!”

  “Not like that, no.”

  “Does that mean he was right and I did want it? I felt that my body was a traitor. Does it make me a hetaira?”

  “No.” She sounded really fierce. “If you didn’t agree, then you didn’t agree and it was rape, whatever your body thought about it.”

  “Can I use your wash fountain?”

  “Of course. Clean him off you. Wait—when did you have your period?”

  “Last week,” I said.

  “That’s good.” I looked at her blankly. “You’re probably not pregnant,” she expanded. “I’m assuming you didn’t chew silphium beforehand, as you weren’t planning on it.”

  “No,” I said.

  Klio frowned. “Do you think Ikaros would do it again? To someone else? Because if so then we should tell people, to protect them.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t expect anyone is as naive as I was, to go off with him like that, without realizing.”

  “I can put the word around that women should be careful of him, without mentioning your name or the word rape,” she said. “Go on, shower.”

  I didn’t tell anyone else. I resigned from the Art Committee. I did not speak much to Ikaros on the Tech Committee. He kept saying things and giving me looks, clearly confused. Once I was sure I wasn’t pregnant, I tried to forget about it. I made sure not to be alone with men, any men, ever. We were busy. It wasn’t difficult.

  A few days after my house was ready and I had moved into it, delighted to have a bed and privacy again, Ikaros waited for me after a meeting of the Tech Committee. Klio stayed with me, glaring at him. His confidence withered a little before the concerted force of our glares

  “I’ve just come back from an art expedition,” Ikaros said. “I have something for you.” He gave me a big book wrapped in muslin. “Don’t open it here.” He left.

  Klio and I went back to my house, where I unwrapped it. It was a book of reproductions of Botticelli paintings, in English, printed on glossy paper and with a publication date of 1983. On the cover was the Madonna of the Magnificat.