Old Men in Love

by Alasdair Gray

  “She was old, Tippy. You had to do more for her than she could do for us.”

  “She stopped neighbours seeing that I am the only slave in this house. Their helpful little advices madden me even more than the worry of paying for food. ‘Get your husband into jury service! Get him into parliament – the pay is good and all he need do is vote,’ they say. ‘He’s pally with men who could get him a government job,’ they say. ‘A foreign embassy even. Think of the bribes he would get on top of his pay,’ they say. ‘He can’t do any of those things,’ I tell them, ‘his demon won’t let him. It wants him to do nothing but teach all the time.’ ‘What does he teach?’ they ask. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘He doesn’t talk to me about it, I’m just a stupid woman.’ And I laugh as if our marriage is a wonderful joke. Which it is not. It is not. It is hell. What do you teach those pretty boys you keep meeting?”

  “I teach them not to be so sure of themselves, Tippy.”

  “They like you for that?”

  “The reasonable ones do.”

  “Put on your sandal!” she said, handing it over. “Go to your pretty, reasonable friends. Get money out of them.”

  The child on the floor, upset by her tone of voice, made a mewing sound and folded its arms comfortingly round her leg.

  “Tippy,” said Socrates beseechingly.

  She looked and saw his face so full of misery and love that, after biting her under lip, her own face took on much the same expression. In a voice mingling tears and laughter she said, “They call you the wisest man in Greece!”

  “They know no better, Tippy. I can’t teach you anything because you only know facts.”

  “Yes. Women can never escape from those.”

  He bent down and buckled on his sandal, telling the boy quietly, “Please be kinder to your mother than I am.”

  5: A STATESMAN’S DAY

  Soon after daybreak Pericles came to the Athenian port and for nearly three hours conferred with harbourmasters, dockers and seamen, occasionally scratching notes on a thin wax tablet backed by wood. He then returned to the city, striding swiftly uphill between two great new walls joining the port to the Athenian citadel. The sky was clear and blue, the air warm yet fresh, the big marketplace more than usually busy. He crossed it, entered the council chambers and stood in a corner of the big lobby, glancing over his notes but able to see those who entered or left. Most councillors were as familiar to him as he to them. He steadily ignored knowing looks from many who shared his views and enquiring looks from some who did not, but beckoned to his side one at a time new councillors whose opinions were not exactly known. He talked to them about revenues to be voted for dock maintenance, for equipping warships and for building new ones. Each councillor tried, usually successfully, to hide his elation at being singled out by the nation’s greatest statesman. He listened to them as carefully as they to him, giving different reasons for increased expenditure. He told a merchant it was needed to protect trade from barbarians and pirates – an arms manufacturer that it would maintain Athenian military supremacy – a landowner that it would reduce local unemployment – a patriotic farmer that it would spread democracy abroad. Pericles thought all these reasons valid but did not expect others to be so broad-minded. He ended each speech by saying how the expenditure would profit dealers in timber, metal, sailcloth, cable, earthenware and food. All councillors were chosen from the electorate by lot so only one of his hearers belonged (like Pericles) to The Few who owned big estates. The rest were from The Many, but all Athenians profited by some commodity the navy needed and his final appeal to the profit motive clinched every previous argument. By its fourth utterance Pericles was sick of that argument and almost sick of himself. He regarded Athenian democracy as an example to every nation, present and in future, so regretted that what most united his fellow citizens was greed. “You’re tired! Come and eat with me,” said the fourth councillor, pleased to see the great statesman show signs of weakness. He gestured toward the excellent restaurant where councillors dined at public expense and could entertain guests.

  “Impossible. Goodbye,” said Pericles regretfully. He was hungry but always avoided flaunting his privileges.

  It was now afternoon when most Athenians had lunched and were enjoying a siesta. He liked the streets at this time for there were fewer people to greet or stare at him. He ignored starers and answered all greetings with the slightest of nods: a manner that led some to call him Zeus or The Olympian, though he knew he had coarser nicknames. The only people he sometimes spoke to in the streets were sausage sellers – fast food peddlers thought socially inferior because they sold the cheapest parts of animals in a shape supposed to be used as dildos by sexually frustrated women and impotent men. From a market stall he bought two sausages and ate them sitting on a stool in the shadow of an awning.

  “Where’s your man today?” he asked the sullen woman who sold them.

  “On a bender.”

  “Hm?”

  “Getting sloshed out of his tiny wits by drinking with equally rotten mates.”

  “A pity.”

  She resumed a silence in which he calmly finished his meal then went to inspect public building work.

  Which was no more his business than that of any other Athenian, but by listening to complaints of tradesmen, foremen, artists and architects he left most of them in a happier frame of mind. The walls of the new concert hall had been completed but not the steep pyramidal roof. Though designed by an acoustics expert it was the subject of jokes that amused the workmen but alarmed the architect who said, “A roof like this has never been built before. It may echo worse than the inside of Dionysus’ quarry.”4

  “It didn’t echo in the model.”

  “A wood and clay model, no matter how big, cannot accurately predict the acoustics of a vast building.”

  “Then all you can do is build it,” said Pericles. “Remember that you’ll be praised if it sounds good, I’ll be blamed if it does not.”

  He walked back to Aspasia’s house before sunset, brooding with some satisfaction upon the day’s events. As he passed a group drinking outside a tavern one of them bawled, “Pericles! Smy pal Pericles!”

  Pericles neither paused nor looked aside. Behind him a stool was knocked over, then came stumbling steps and a yell, “Don’t you know me, Pericles? Have you no word for your pal the good old sau-sau-sausager? Sausagist? Sausalogistical expert?”

  Pericles resisted an urge to walk faster. After a few more maudlin appeals the drunkard behind lost his temper and yelled “Onionhead! Onionhead! You think you’re the Lord God Almighty yet your balding head is shaped exactly like an onion! You damned Olympian onionhead who thinks he runs the whole city! – the whole empire! Nya! Onionhead!” Excited children and some interested citizens now accompanied the prime minister and his critic. They excited the sausage seller to a greater range of insult.

  “Skinflint! Miserly skinflint! And the richest man in Athens! He spent so much money buying our votes with plays and processions that his sons had to dress like commoners! No wonder they hated his guts, the damned miser. Listen to me, Onionhead! Stop pretending you’re deaf! You’re a miserable, miserly, onionheaded skinflint and whoremonger! Yes! Whoremonger! You live with a foreign prostitute and kiss her every morning before going to work, you unmanly queer old queen! You rotten ugly onionheaded miserly skinflint whoremonger!”

  The enlarging crowd accompanying them stimulated more insults in a louder voice.

  “And an atheist! You believe a damned foreign physics expert who says heaven and earth were made by accident! You don’t believe in Zeus because you think you are Zeus! For nearly thirty years you’ve tricked us Athenians into letting you do what you like with us but you’re a guttering candle now, my friend! We’re beginning to see through you – our democracy now has a REAL spokesman in parliament! – Cleon, a man of the people who’ll soon sort out you and your foreign pals and foreign experts and that foreign whore of yours, the brothel-keeper! What a hypo
crite you are, passing laws against poor bastards and living in a brothel with your mistress! No wonder your two wives divorced you! No wonder your first son was a rogue and the second an idiot and God killed both of them you onionheaded, foreigner-loving, blasphemous, hypocritical, miserly multimillionaire tyrant in commoner’s clothing! But you can fool nobody now, you indecent, whoremongering utterly incompetent war leader!”

  The sun had set when Pericles reached the yard before Aspasia’s house and turned round. The sausage-seller fell as silent as the watchful crowd behind him. Pericles looked thoughtfully at the dark sky overhead. A servant came from the house and stood near him.

  “The moon won’t rise for another hour,” Pericles told the slave.

  “Fetch a lantern and show this citizen home.”

  He turned his back upon a great explosion of laughter and applause and entered the house. The sausage-seller also turned and, facing the jeering mob, stroked his beard for a while then raised his hand in the parliamentary gesture requesting permission to speak. An interested silence followed. To the slave he cried imperiously, “Lead the way, boy!” and advanced upon the crowd with a grotesque expression of lofty disdain and a swagger that caricatured the stride of Pericles. The crowd, laughing, parted to let him through, a few humorists bowing low on each side.

  Inside the house Pericles embraced Aspasia and stood a while with closed eyes and his cheek against hers, sighing sometimes because the past quarter hour had been a strain. She murmured, “A bad day?”

  “A good one till near the end. Now I will wash. And then enjoy, please, you. And then can we eat and be intelligently entertained? Who comes tonight?”

  “Heavenly Reason. And our greatest artist and greatest playwright and wisest man.”

  “Our wisest man. You mean Socrates.”

  “That’s what the Priestess of Apollo called him.”

  “I wonder why. He was an honest though not great stone carver. He is certainly a brave soldier and talks amusingly, but he has done nothing else I know toward the welfare of the state.”

  “You think The Oracle should have mentioned you.”

  “I do.”

  “You’re jealous of poor old Socrates!” she said, laughing.

  “Yes. Thanks for letting me admit to a weakness. You’re the only one I can do that with. Anyone else coming?”

  “The Golden Mean, High Anxiety and Critias.”

  “Rich men should not come here,” he said wearily. “If The Many find out they’ll think The Few are plotting against them. And The Many will be right.”

  “The Few are worried about Cleon. They say he’s now too popular, too powerful.”

  “I wish they would leave their political worries to me who knows how to handle them. Please come to bed. I’ll wash afterwards if you don’t mind.”

  6: AT ASPASIA’S

  The evening was less agreeable than Pericles wished because Alcibiades arrived and insisted on talking politics. Pericles listened with an air of polite attention that his nephew vainly tried to make serious attention. Socrates and Aspasia watched them from across the room. Aspasia said, “You love our Darling?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then maybe you can help him – I can’t because he doesn’t trust women. Yet he won’t grow up properly without the love of someone he admires. He knows it, too. Most of his lovers have been intelligent older men of good character, but he shatters them. After a week or two they grow servile and pathetic. So the only man he can admire is Pericles.”

  “Who can only love Athens.”

  “And Heavenly Reason,” she suggested.

  “And you.”

  She smiled, smoothing the dress over her breasts and murmuring, “I think so. I wish more women would come here, my girls are too few. I’ve asked our cleverest men to bring their wives but they won’t.”

  “Housewife talk is mostly limited to household matters.”

  “Yes, because Athenian husbands treat them like slaves. When a man’s friend calls on him, even during a meal, the wife retires to a back room with the children. Which is barbaric. No wonder the men here prefer boys and prostitutes.”

  “In Sparta,” said Socrates thoughtfully, “boys and girls are educated by the state.”

  “Educated to wrestle and fight! So Spartan women grow up as harsh and brutal as their husbands. But in Aolia the women walk the streets in brightly coloured gowns and meet in colleges where they practise every beautiful art from embroidery to poetry and love. Which is why the greatest Greek poet is an Aolian woman.”

  “Sappho?”

  “You disagree?”

  Socrates said gently, “Some think highly of Homer.”

  “A killer’s poet. The pains and glories of warfare are the best things he knows. But Sappho sang of the wounds love inflicts and love is the best thing of all.”

  After a pause Socrates said mournfully, his eyes still on The Darling, “Yes.”

  “Listen,” said Aspasia urgently, “His talks with Pericles always end badly. When that one stops he will go to the wine table to make himself drunk. Can you prevent that?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Let me tell you how to woo him. You must – ”

  “No no no. If my little demon won’t tell me how to do it nobody can.”

  “The Oracle at Delphi says our war with Sparta will last thirty years,” said Alcibiades urgently.

  “For once the Oracle may be right.”

  “You cannot deny that the Persian Empire is in decline.”

  “Maybe,” said Pericles.

  “Not maybe. Certainly. A nation that conquers beyond its own natural boundawies must keep spweading and spweading because if it calls a halt it inevitably shwinks. Our people have halted Persian expansion so it’s time for a new world empire to awize. And if we twy we can make it – ” (he hesitated and with an effort said,) “ – Grreek. Because Gweek technology and social organization is better than anywhere else and Athens has the biggest fleet in the world!”

  “You’re quoting one of my speeches.”

  “Our democwacy can send an iwesistible fighting force against any countwy in the world!”

  “Only one country at a time.”

  “But with all Gweece behind us Athens could wule the Meditewanean – though not while we are fighting each other! A master strrroke of policy is needed to weld us into unity under Athenian leadership. A stwoke that must first take in Sicily because . . .”

  “My dear nephew,” said Pericles placing a hand on the young man’s shoulder, “That bright idea is a very old one. I had it when I was your age.”

  “I wish I had known you when you were worth talking to,” said Alcibiades icily, shaking off the hand.

  He went to the wine table and lifted a full flagon.

  “You mustn’t drink that terrible stuff,” said a voice at his elbow. Startled he looked sideways and saw nobody at first, being a head taller than the speaker who, with a surprisingly strong grip, took the flagon from Alcibiades’ hand, tilted back his head and emptied the wine down his throat in one long continuous swallow.

  “Now then,” he said, placing the flagon on the table with no sign of breathlessness and the air of someone getting down to business, “You look at yourself a lot in the mirror I hope?”

  “Yes I do,” said the young man coolly. “Why do you hope that?”

  “It should help you to become what you appear to be.”

  “Which is?”

  “Good.”

  “You believe beauty encouwages virtue?” said Alcibiades incredulously.

  “Yes! A soul that doesn’t fit its body is as uncomfortable as a foot that doesn’t fit its shoe.”

  “And ugliness?” said Alcibiades, staring at the hairy face with the broken nose.

  “Ugliness encourages virtue even more. If we don’t cultivate our virtues nobody will talk to us . . . will they?”

  Alcibiades smiled and relaxed a little. Socrates raised a forefinger saying, “Listen! Beautiful people
envy your beauty, brave men admire your courage, clever folk respect your intelligence. This city dotes on you. Everything you do has become fashionable, from lisping to horse racing. And if you thought you would be like this for the rest of your life you’d kill yourself.”

  “Yes. I want to be ... grrreat!”

  “I’m glad. But there are many false kinds of greatness. You must learn to discard those.”

  “What do they look like?”

  “I don’t know,” said Socrates, smiling and shaking his head. “I’m ignorant, I’m no expert. But you want to enter politics in a big way?”

  “Yes.”

  “And become a statesman like Pericles?”

  “Not like Pewicles. You know how he wants us to win this war. ‘Fight the Spartans when we have to,’ he says, ‘but do it as seldom as possible. We’re wicher than them, so if the war lasts long enough they’ll go bankwupt first.’ How vewy wise! How abominably mean!”

  In another corner of the room three of Athens’ richest men were gathered, each having discovered that Pericles would not speak to them. One was Theramines, nicknamed The Golden Mean, being a moderate politician who kept changing his political allegiances on grounds of political principle. Nicius, nicknamed High Anxiety, dealt largely in slaves. He was a cautious, successful general and diplomat whose wealth and political success had not incurred the envy of The Many, who regarded him with genial condescension because he was as full of superstitious fear as an ignorant peasant. Critias, a younger man, had inherited a big estate and was not yet eminent enough to have a nickname. He said, “Think of it! A stinking skin-merchant like Cleon leading the Athenian empire! It could happen.”

  “He’s a free citizen like you and me,” said the Golden Mean mildly. “If he won’t see reason we should bribe him.”

  “Bribing a demagogue is like pouring sacks of salt into the sea,” said High Anxiety glumly. “Twenty-five years ago The Few could get rid of Cleon through a quiet little street accident –” (he made an upwards stabbing gesture) “– The same thing today would start a revolt. Nobody’s property would be safe.” “We’re more civilized nowadays,” said the Golden Mean cheerfully.