by Mary Renault
We were less hard-pressed in the Guard, the war being fought so much at sea. I found a freeman who would do something on the farm for a small wage and a share of the crop; we only put in quick-growing things.
One fine summer morning in the City, I had just put the last touches on our house, which I had been fresh-whitening. I had been doing it each daybreak till people were about; for though everyone knew nowadays that his neighbour was putting his hand to slaves’ work, no one cared to have it noticed. Still, now it was done I was well pleased with it; so was my mother, especially with the courtyard, where I had painted the tops of the columns red and blue. I had had a bath, dressed my hair, and put a clean mantle on; I was carrying the walking-staff I used in the City, a good black-wood one that had been my father’s. After the dirty work, I felt the pleasure of trimness, as I paused in the porch to take a last look at my handiwork. When I turned my face to the street, I saw a stranger approaching the house.
He was a raw-boned old man, who had been tall when he was straight; he walked halting, and leaning on a stick cut from the thicket, one of his feet being hurt and wrapped in a dirty rag. His white hair was ragged, as if he had trimmed it himself with a knife, and he wore a short tunic of some drab stuff, such as poor workmen wear, or slaves. He was dirty enough for either of these, yet bore himself like neither. He was looking at our house, making straight for it; and seeing this, I felt the sinking of some unknown fear; he seemed to me like the messenger of bad news. I stepped forward from the porch, waiting for him to speak; but when he saw me, he only stared. His drawn and bony face with its month-old stubble was weathered nearly black; his eyes, being grey, showed in it piercingly. I had been about to hail him, and ask him whom he was looking for. At first I did not know what it was that kept me from asking. I only knew I must not ask.
His eyes moved past me to dwell on the courtyard. Then he looked again at me. I felt before his silent expectation a creeping in my flesh. He said, “Alexias.” Then my feet carried me down into the street; and my voice said, “Father.”
I don’t know how long we stood there; I daresay not many moments. I said, “Come in, sir,” scarcely knowing what I did; then collecting myself a little, praised the gods for his preservation. On the threshold he stumbled with his lame foot; I reached out to help him, but he righted himself quickly.
He stood in the courtyard, looking about him. I remembered Lysikles, and it seemed strange to me now that I should have taken his word without any doubts, seeing how broken the man had been and how his tale had wandered. What had put me in mind of him was the sight of my father’s hand, calloused and knotted, with dirt sealed into the cracks and scars. My mind was at a stop. I groped for words to say to him. I have felt this painful dumbness in war, at the sight of a brave enemy flung down before me in the dust; but in youth one does not recognise such thoughts, nor indeed ought one to understand them. I made again, in different words, the speech about the gods I had made before. I said we had despaired of this happiness. Then, beginning to come to myself, I said, “I will go before you, sir, and tell Mother.”
“I will tell her myself,” he said, and limped towards the door. He moved quite fast. In the doorway he turned and looked at me again. “I did not think you would grow so tall.” I made him some answer. I had grown a good deal; but it was the bowing of his back that had brought us eye to eye.
I reached the doorway behind him, and then paused. My heart was pounding, my knees felt like water and my bowels were loosened within me. I heard him go into the women’s rooms, but I could not hear anyone speak. I went away; at last, after what I thought must be a proper time, I went through to the living-room. My father was sitting in the master’s chair, with his foot in a bowl of water whose steam smelled of herbs and of a putrid wound. Before him knelt my mother, with a cloth in her hands, cleaning the place. She was weeping; the tears were running down, her hands not being free to dry them. It came into my mind for the first time that I ought to have embraced him.
The walking-stick was still in my hand. I remembered the corner where I had found it first, and put it back there.
Drawing near them, I asked him how he had come. He said from Italy, in a Phoenician ship. His foot was puffed up to twice its size, and green matter came from it. When my mother asked if the shipmaster had trusted him for the fare, he said, “They were short of a rower.”
“Alexias,” said my mother, “see if your father’s bath is ready, and that Sostias has not forgotten anything.” I was going, when I heard a sound come near, and the breath stopped in my throat; it was I who had forgotten something.
The child Charis came in, singing and chattering. She was holding a painted clay doll I had brought her from Corinth, which she was talking to; so she had come into the middle of the room before she looked up. Then she must have noticed the smell, for she stared with round eyes, like a bird. I thought, “Now he sees how pretty she is, surely he will take pleasure in what he made.” He leaned forward in his chair; my mother said, “Here is our little Charis, who has heard so many tales of you.” My father drew down his brows; but he did not seem very angry or surprised, and my breath came easier. He held out his hand and said, “Come here, Charis.” The child stood still; so I came forward, to lead her up to him. But as soon as I tried to move her, her face grew red, and her mouth turned downward; she hid herself in the skirt of my mantle, wailing with fright. When I tried to carry her to him, she clung to my neck and screamed. I dared not look at him. Then I heard my mother say the child was timid, and cried at any strange face; the first lie I had ever heard her tell.
I took my sister away, and went to look at the bathroom. Poor old Sostias, in his confusion, had made a bad job there; I found razors and comb and pumice, and carried in the clean towels and mantle my mother had laid out. She said, “I will come with you, Myron; Sostias is too clumsy for today”; but he said he would manage for himself. I had seen already that his head was lousy. He went off, using the stick I had laid by. As my mother cleared away the cloths and bowl, she talked quickly to me of how sick he was and what he should eat, and which doctor to get for his foot. I thought of the miseries he had endured, and it seemed to me that my heart must be made of stone, that I had not wept for him as she had done. I said, “At least he will let me trim his hair and beard for him. He won’t want a barber to see them as they are.”
When I entered he looked ready to order me out again; but after all he thanked me, and told me to close-crop his head, for nothing else would get it clean. Taking the razor I went behind him; then I saw his back. Eumastas the Spartan would have been humbled before it, and owned himself a beginner. I don’t know what they had used on him; it must have had lead or iron tied into it. The scars went right round his sides.
At this sight, I felt all the anger that a son ought. “Father, if you know the name of the man who did this, tell me. One day I might meet him.”—“No,” he said, “I don’t know his name.” I worked on him in silence. Presently he told me that he had been taken out of the quarries by a Syracusan overseer, to sell for himself. He had changed masters several times; “but that,” he said, “can wait.”
His head was so filthy and scabby that it made me feel sick; luckily I was out of his sight. When I had finished, I rubbed him down with some scented oil of my own. It was good stuff from Corinth, which Lysis had given me; I only used it for parties myself. He sniffed at it and said, “What’s this? I don’t want to smell like a woman.” I apologized, and put it by. When he was dressed, and one no longer saw his hollow ribs and flanks, he looked nearly presentable, and not much above sixty.
My mother bound his foot with a dry bandage and set food before him. I could tell it was hard for him not to snatch at it like a wolf; but he soon had enough. He began to question me about the farm. I had pulled things together as well as one could expect to; but I found he knew little about the state of Attica; he seemed to suppose I could have given it all my time. I was going to explain that I had other duties; when, as if a
nswering my thought, the blast of the trumpet swelled over the City. I sighed, and got to my feet. “I’m sorry, sir; I had hoped they would leave me longer than this with you. It’s some days now since we had a raid.”
I ran out shouting to Sostias to make my horse ready; then, coming back in my riding-kilt, reached down my armour from the wall. I could see him following me with his eyes, and hoped, after what he had said about the oil, that I now looked enough like a man to please him; but at the same time my mind was running on the raid, thinking of one way or another the Spartans might be coming, and where we could head them off. My mother, who was used to these alarms, had gone, without my asking her, to get my food ready. Now she came back and, seeing me fight with a twisted shoulder-buckle, went to help me. My father said, “Where is Sostias? He ought to be here for that.”—“In the stable, sir,” I said. “We lost the groom.” It was too long a tale to begin on. Just then Sostias came to the door and said, “Your horse is ready, Master.” I nodded and turned to take leave of my father. He said, “How is Phoenix?”
Suddenly I remembered him, standing to arm himself on the spot where I stood now. It seemed like half a lifetime gone. “Overworked, sir, I’m afraid,” I said, “but I’ve kept him for you as well as I could.” I should have liked to pause and think, and to say more; but the trumpet had blown, and the troop had never yet had to wait for me. I kissed my mother; then, seeing his eyes on me and glad this time not to have forgotten my duty, I embraced him before I left. He felt strange to the touch, bony and stiff. I don’t think I had embraced him since my grandmother died, except on the dock when he went to Sicily.
We had a hard patrol, and were gone some days. It was scorching weather, the hills burned dry, flies round the camp and tormenting the horses. We saved a valley of two or three farms; but in the pursuit young Gorgion was killed. It was hard to see him, who had always been the joker of the troop, dying in pain, and in astonishment that here was something he could not laugh away. Lysis, whose lot it always was to bring such news to the dead youth’s father, seemed more than commonly oppressed by it. We could not bring back the body, because of the heat, and had to burn it on the hillside. It was so hot that one could not see any flames, only rippling air, and the body smoking and crackling. As it burned, Lysis said to me, “Had he a lover?” I said no, only a mistress, a little flute-girl. “I’ll take her some keepsake of his,” I said; “I daresay he would like it.”—“Why do that?” Lysis said. “What they had, they had.”
When we got back, he came to pay his respects to my father, and they had some talk about the war. Presently my father said, “And Alkibiades, I suppose, is still among the Spartans? Hard living must come easy to him by now.”—“No longer, sir,” Lysis said. “He sleeps on down; he’s in Persia now.” We had had this news some months, but I had not mentioned it. My father said, staring, “In Persia? How was he taken? What was he doing, to fall into the barbarians’ hands?”—“Why,” said Lysis smiling, “he fell as a cat falls in the cream-bowl. Sparta got too hot for him; King Agis got out a warrant for his death. But they say Tissaphernes the satrap thinks the world of him, and that he makes the Persian princes look drab, like cocks beside a pheasant.” My father said, “Is it so indeed?” and spoke of other things. That evening, as I passed the courtyard, he was there throwing some broken crocks into the well. Going there by chance soon after, I saw a small sherd lying beside the well-head. The painting looked so delicate that I picked it up; there was a running hare on it, and an outstretched hand. It was a piece from the bowl of Bacchios’ wine-cup.
If I had guessed that things would not be easy now at home, I had tried not to think of it, shocked at the baseness of grudging anything to one who had suffered so much. But this could not be for long. The first trouble came from little Charis. If she had been only a year or two older, one could have reasoned with her. But she had been filled with stories of her father’s fine looks and gallant deeds; I had often seen her point to some hero on vase or wall, or even to a god, and say “Dada.” Now we offered her instead this ugly and stern old man; and I don’t think her trust in people ever after was quite the same. I know that full fourteen years later, when I had arranged her betrothal to an excellent person, she listened unmoved to my accounts of him till she had seen him for herself; I was almost angry with her, till I remembered this time. My father, who seemed not to question that his letter had been lost, would I believe have accepted her with a good grace, if he had not been daily wounded by her aversion. This was bad enough; but worse was the way she had of running at these times to me. She could never be got to call him Dada: which was the more noticeable because she had called me Lala ever since learning to talk. I began at once to train her out of it, and heard my mother doing the same.
I knew myself happy, compared with her. You would have supposed that after so much want and toil, simple comforts would have been bliss to him; but he could not bear the least change from our former ways. She would explain the cause, and the reasons for the want of labour; he would assent, but still be unreconciled. She never complained to me, and only once touched on the matter at all. This was when she begged me not to say that while he was gone I had taught her to read. She had been a quick pupil; these lessons had been a happiness to me, and I think to her too. She could even read poetry now if it was easy, and I had begun teaching her to write. Now we could seldom talk together at all, for he hated to have her out of his sight, and would always call for her if she were gone for long.
I dwelt on it as little as I could; for it was pain to me, so that I was not always in command of my own thoughts. After a while I found I did not like to see her dress his foot, which she did last thing before they retired: I used to go out, and walk about the streets.
Even to Lysis I could not say much. It was not only that I felt how shabby my feelings would appear to him. There was another cause. Lately things had not been so happy with us as before. That he should have been out of spirits after the Games I could understand; but when I found him becoming jealous, I was bewildered. I was too young to have learned understanding of it; I only knew I had given him no reason, even in my lightest thought. That he should suspect such baseness in me as to be changed by his reverse, injured me to the soul; yet to tax him with it seemed baser. In past times no one had been a better loser when outmatched by a better man; I could not see why it struck him so deeply to be beaten by a worse. I felt only my own wrongs; like a silly peasant who, when the roof is shaken from the temple, complains about his broken pot.
If I had brought this trouble to Sokrates, he would have helped not only me, but have been in the way to help Lysis too. But it was all entangled in my mind with things I could bring to no one.
It was while I was away on patrol that Strymon had first called upon my father. Since I was of age he had troubled us little, so that I had not kept him in mind. It was only by degrees that the mischief he was doing appeared. First my father brought out the rolls of the farm, and had nothing but fault to find with them. It was plain where he had got his misinformation, and I soon cleared it up; yet I still felt him resentful. Again I heard that Strymon had called while I was out in the City; and just afterwards my father charged me with keeping bad company. As soon as Phaedo’s name came up, I knew whom to thank. “Sir,” I said. “Phaedo is a Melian. You know better than I what choice he had. His breeding is as good as ours, and he is living now as befits it. You surely won’t judge a prisoner by the lot that falls to him in war?” This went too near the bone. He grew angry; and, naming Sokrates, used a phrase of him which out of respect to the dead I will not set down, even after these years.
A little while after, I found my mother crying at her loom. No one was there, and I begged her to tell me her trouble. She shook her head, and made no answer. I drew near to her, till our garments touched, and I felt against my face the outermost threads of her hair. I had meant to embrace her, but confusion fell on me; I held my breath hard, and was still. She kept her head turned away, trying to hid
e her tears. At last I said, “Mother, what shall we do?”
She shook her head again, and turning to me a little, laid her hand on my breast. When I covered it with both of mine, I could feel through it the beating of my heart. She began to draw her hand gently away from me; suddenly, with a swift and violent force, she thrust me off. Then I too heard the sound of my father’s stick outside. I stood as one dazed; I could neither bear to stay nor fly; till I heard her voice, sending me on some errand about the house. As I went, I heard him asking her sharply what ailed her.
After this, I used to see his eyes on me, following me as I moved about the room. It seemed clear that he thought we complained together against him. There was only wretchedness at home, and I spent all my time in the City. While walking in the colonnade, I fell in with Charmides. I was now so far from the green youth he had courted, that I could take a man’s pleasure in his conversation; for his light manner hid an accomplished mind. We took two or three turns together, while he told me that Sokrates had taken him to task for wasting his wits on idle talk, when he might be applying them usefully to the City’s business. Unhappily Lysis saw us together, and took it very ill. I defended myself with indignation. Yet I did myself more than justice, and him less; for it had been plain to me that Charmides had not grown indifferent to my person, and that it was not to talk politics he had sought me out.
I had enough of them at home. My father’s foot had healed; he was beginning to get about the City again, and to pick up his old friendships, together with some new ones that dismayed me. All his moderation was gone; I heard him express himself against the democrats with such bitterness as I had scarcely heard within the walls of our house before.