by David Malouf
‘“Because he is my brother.”
‘He frowns. Leans down till his shaggy head is level with my own. The huge paw comes down, an iron clamp on my skull, and I feel his hot breath in my face. Smell the rank meatiness of him. Glance up after a moment under the brute weight of his palm.
‘He is no longer glaring. But his smile! How easy it would be for him. Just a little more pressure of the fingertips, a turn of the hairy wrist, and my neck would snap.
‘I meet his eyes and see there a lightning flicker that is the urge to do it. Because he can.
‘“This is your brother?” he says, in a wondering tone. The small pig-eyes disappear in the muscled cheeks. “You’re sure? It’s really him?”
‘“Of course it is,” she tells him. “Wouldn’t I know my own brother? Of course it’s you, isn’t it, Podarces, my dear?”
‘I open my mouth but no sound comes.
‘“And you wouldn’t try, would you,” he says, my skull still locked in his grip, “to trick me? With a substitute?”
‘He leans closer. “Well,” he says playfully, “my little substitute, aren’t you the lucky one?”
‘He relaxes his hold and stretches upright. He looks, in his huge bulk, rather foolish. He is trying to please her by making a game of all this. And why not? She, too, is just a child. She is to go – another prize of war – as a gift to his friend Telamon, and he has told her she may have, as a gift of her own, whatever she chooses, anything her bright eyes light upon – expecting her to choose some gaudy trinket, a bauble to hang at her wrist or an ivory footstool from Punt, a bronze mirror to catch her smile in. But she is Laomedon’s daughter. She has led him down to the horde of filthy, tear-stained urchins and searched among them and chosen me.
‘“Well,” he says, his slow mind working, “I promised you your choice. If this is what you choose, take him, take the brat, and let him be whatever you say he is, your brother or some nameless substitute, what does it matter? But since he is to be my fine gift to you, and to show that I am a man of my word, let his name, from now on, be Priam, the price paid, the gift given to buy your brother back from the dead. So that each time he hears himself named, this is what he will recall. That till I allowed you to choose him out of this filthy rabble, he was a slave like any other, a nameless thing, with no other life before him but the dirt and sweat of the slave’s life. And in the secrecy of his own heart, that, for all the high titles the gods may heap upon him, is the life he will go on living day after day till his last breath.”
‘He narrows his eyes, sets his great meaty paw on my skull again, but this time with a deceptive gentleness, as if he were conferring a blessing. “Priam, the price paid. The substitute and pretender. A great one of the earth. But only by default. Because it pleases your fancy, little princess, to choose him, and mine to allow it.”
‘It was all mockery, you see. Young as I was, I knew mockery when I heard it, sneering contempt. That sort of low, back-handed nobility was all a Heracles was capable of. After all, he was a pretender himself. Only half a god, and that too by allowance and default.
‘But his allowance was enough. Little shadow that I was of a dead prince, I caught the second breath they offered me and was delivered, called back under a new name. The gods had relented. Set back on my father’s throne, I inherited his lands, his allies, married you, my dear – but a happy ending? Oh, I know what the story says. But after all those hours of being just one among so many – the ones for whom no miraculous turn would come, who would go on waiting in the dust and heat, and be carried off at last to a lifetime of slavery – I did not feel I’d been delivered. I had experienced something I could not un-experience and would never forget. What it means for your breath to be in another’s mouth, to be one of those who have no story that will ever be told. After playing with me a little, and showing me what it was in their power to do, the gods had relented. They would allow me, in their high-handed, half-interested way, to cough up my bit of wine-soaked poppy-cake. But I had gone too far, you see, on the downward path to get back. I had the smell on me, here in my head, but also – I can smell it now – in my armpits, on my hands …,’ and his fine nose wrinkles with distaste.
‘Priam, please,’ Hecuba puts her fingertips to his lips. ‘These things are so ugly.’
‘But they happen,’ he insists. ‘And not just to other people. What I have been telling you happened to me. I stood in the midst of these things.’
He sees her shudder.
She is bewildered. He has also frightened her. She resents having been brought so close to what she does not want to know or think about. That moment of standing beside him, even in imagination, in a crowd of dirty, wailing children – the spawn, as he himself put it, of pedlars, whores, scullery maids – he should not have asked it of her. Dragging her in where she too would have that stink in her nostrils.
Concealing the repugnance she feels, she once more gives him the whole of her attention, but with real fear now of this mood that is on him, and of the even darker places he may lead her into.
‘So,’ he resumes, but with an irony in his tone that she recognises (she has heard it many times before, but only now sees the force of it), ‘I was restored. When I slipped back into my old place in the world it was in a ghostly way and under a new name. As a substitute. For that little prince Podarces of whom nothing more would be heard or known. Except that I know him, I lived the first six years of his life. And many times over, in the darkness of my thoughts, as he predicted, I have made my way down into the underworld and sought him out, that small frightened child. To ask if he mightn’t have some message for me, since he suffered my first death.
‘A king, as you know, has to act in full assurance of what the gods have called him to, his high place in the world. He acts in the realm – that too is his kingdom – of the seen. But in my case the gift was a doubtful one. It was given then taken back again, and only in a joking, left-handed way restored. In me the assurance, the inner assurance, was lacking. Well, that is my affair. I have never spoken of it till now, even to you, my dear – though I expect you have sometimes wondered – and I hope that to others at least I have given no sign that there might be this, this lack in me. I have always, to the public view, been just what I appear to be. That is the discipline of kings. But to achieve it I have had to be more rigid than others. A little too punctilious, I know, in all that is due to ceremony. A stickler, as they say. For form, for the rules.
‘All that belongs to the outward view. But there is also an inward view,’ and he falls silent a moment, as if for this view there might be no words, as there is no visible form, and she must catch what she can of it from what she can feel out in his silence.
‘Well, as I said, none of that concerns anyone but myself and I’ve tried never to let it show. It’s of no account what I happen to be feeling at any moment in my actual person – whether I have the toothache, or a belly swollen from eating too many peaches, or am raging with anger or impatience or desire – so long as I sit still and fill a space towards which others may look in reverence. So long, I mean, as I create the proper illusion. Only I know what it costs to be such an object. To rattle about like a pea in the golden husk of my … dazzling eminence. Never for even a moment to wobble or look flustered, or let the impressive effect be shaken by so much as the twitching of an eyelid or – god forbid! – a yawn. Or, in these latter days of my old age, by the trembling of a hand. I’ve played my part, and tried to let nothing peep out of the real man inside so much empty shining. I did it out of defiance of the gods, as well as in fearful reverence for them. In defiance of the fact that their first choice, all those years ago, was against me, as perhaps they have chosen against me a second time in this business of the war, so that I have now to be ransomed a second time – to ransom myself, as well as my son. By going to Achilles, not in a ceremonial way, as my symbolic self, but stripped of all glittering distractions and disguises, as I am.’
He sits with his hands
clasped between his knees, suddenly weary. Hecuba too is silent. At last she sets her hand very gently on his shoulder and says, ‘For the moment we’ll speak no more of this. You go to your bath now. In the meantime I’ll send a servant to summon our sons and the wisest of your councillors. Explain your plan to them. Let us see what they have to say of it.’
An hour later, Priam’s sons, his many daughters and their husbands, and all his councillors and advisors are gathered in the inner court of the palace. They are abuzz, puzzled by the novelty of this late-morning summons and the news that the king has an announcement to make.
Only nine of the royal princes are Hecuba’s sons. The rest, among them one or two of Priam’s favourites, are the sons of other princesses, or they are bastards, though all bear the title of prince.
Once there was a full fifty of them. Those that remain, save for Helenus, who is a dedicated priest, are what Priam, in his more critical mood, calls heroes of the table and the dance; plump and soft-bellied most of them, with the exquisite manners of the courtier and a courtier’s eye for the failings of others, along with a very practical talent for dropping into their father’s ear the innocent fact or fiction that will do their rivals harm. For they are divided, these princes, even with a common enemy at the gate, into factions, all very watchful of one another. Only part of this has to do with court politics. The rest arises from the rivalry of their wives. Eager now to see what sort of mood their father is in, they turn as usual to Hecuba.
She enters and immediately begins whispering to Helenus – a bad sign, this – then moves, as a diversion, from one to another of the wives.
Careful as always to give each one of them the same cool but unaffected attention.
The wives are afraid of her, and it amuses the princes, who know their mother and her ways, that women who at home can be demanding, even intractable, go to water when this small, straight-backed woman puts her disconcerting questions, giving no indication in her smile of what she might think of the reply.
Today, Helenus too is on the move, consulting briefly with Deiphobus, leading Panyamus aside, and looking back over his shoulder to see which of the others may be watching.
Meanwhile Priam stands isolated and very nearly forgotten, till Polydorus, who is still little more than a child, a high-coloured, athletic boy with coal-black tresses and eyebrows that meet in the middle, launches boldly forward and greets his father very warmly and unselfconsciously with a kiss, which Priam, when he has recovered, returns.
The others, one after another, follow, greeting their father and receiving his blessing, though they do not, like Polydorus, kiss him. At least outwardly respectful, they set themselves to listen.
But when they hear, with growing alarm, what the old man has in mind, they are filled with a misgiving that swells, as the questions spread among them, to outright consternation. How has he got hold of such a notion? It contradicts everything they have ever known of this grave and cautious figure who is their father. Challenges all they have ever demanded of the man, father or not, who is their king.
A king whose stable is the envy of every prince in the known world does not ride in a wagon drawn by mules. A king does not, in his own person, negotiate and deal. He has a herald to do that for him, in a voice that is skilled and trumpet-like, professionally trained in the laying down of challenges and the making of proclamations.
They turn from one to the other, all astir and eager to protest, but no one among them is willing to brave their father’s temper and be the first man to speak. It is Deiphobus, the most smooth-mannered and eloquent of them, who steps forward at last.
‘My dear lord,’ he begins, ‘you know what my brother Hector meant to me. How close we were. How of all my brothers he was dearest to me, as I believe I was to him. There is no danger I would not face to bring him home to your house, my lord, and to my poor mother’s arms.’
Yes, yes, Priam thinks, that is all very well, but what have you done more than the rest? Beat your breast, fouled your hair with earth, wept a little. You are young and hardy. Even an old man like me can do that much.
‘Sir,’ Deiphobus resumes, ‘Father, this plan of yours is not only new and unheard of, it not only puts your precious life at risk, it also exposes to insult – and this, I know, you value every bit as much as life itself – your royal image. Do you really imagine that a man who has no respect for the body of his enemy, for the laws of honourable behaviour before men and the gods, who in the frenzy of his pride and wrath, his madness, daily violates the corpse of the noblest hero our world has known, that such a man would not take delight in hauling down your kingly image and dragging that too in the dust? And what then of all you hold in custody? The sacred spirit of our city, the lives of each one of us. I say nothing of the treasure you will be carrying. That is mere earth-stuff, metal, however finely worked. It is dispensible. You, my lord, are the treasure we cannot allow to be lost. You are what matters to us.
‘Sir, you have for the whole of your life been a king. Ordinary desires and needs and feelings are not unknown to you – I know that, you are my father; but you have, you can have, in your kingly role, no part in them – they are not in your royal sphere. And are you now to wring Achilles’ heart by appealing to those very feelings of the ordinary man that it has been the whole business of your life to remain aloof from?
‘I beg you, sir, be patient like the rest of us. Can you really believe that Hector, who was so proud, who loved you and cared so much for your royal dignity, and fought and poured his life out to preserve it, would thank his father for clasping the knees of his killer in a merely human way, and laying all the glory of Troy in the dust? He would weep, my lord, as I do –’ and at this Deiphobus, unable to go on, dashes the tears from his eyes and turns away.
Priam lowers his head. When he raises it again his look is grave but his eyes, for all the power of emotion in him, are dry.
‘Deiphobus, you speak to me as a son, and I am sorry if what I have it in my head to do offends or shames you. I have had a good sixty years now to consider the splendour and limitations of what it is to be a king. You speak, too, as a brother. I know how much you loved Hector, and how deeply affected you have been by the loss of a man we all cherished and depended on. You ask me to stand, as I have always done, at a kingly distance from the human, which in my kingly role, as you say, I can have no part in. But I am also a father. Mightn’t it be time for me to expose myself at last to what is merely human? To learn a little of what that might be, and what it is to bear it as others do? I know I am an old man, feeble in body and ill-equipped to go venturing out at this late date into a world of change and accident. But as you know, I am also stubborn, and I have not survived this long without a certain degree of toughness. Perhaps this –’ and he glances quickly in Hecuba’s direction – ‘is the time to show it.’
Cassandra is there, pale and distracted-looking, only half-attentive. Her brothers turn to her now in the hope that their father, who is fond of the poor deluded creature, will listen to her.
But Cassandra has nothing to say. Her god has withdrawn. He no longer visits and inflames her. Numb with grief for her brother Hector, she feels only a dulled indifference to what is happening around her; even to what is happening, or about to happen, to herself. As if it had already occurred, and too long ago now to be of any consequence. When her brothers look towards her – those brothers who once mocked her searing visions – she shakes her head and remains dumb.
At last, since no one else seems willing to speak, Polydamas comes forward. Not one of Priam’s sons, or even a son-in-law, but one of the wisest of the Trojans.
‘My lord Priam,’ he begins, ‘you know the reverence and great affection in which I hold you. Firstly, on my friend Hector’s account, because I thought of him always as a brother and of you, therefore, as a second father. Even more, because for the whole of my life what I have chiefly cared for is order, and for as long as I have had experience of the world, you have been the gr
eat upholder of order among us; none more pious, none more punctilious in what is owed to the gods, but also to us, your subjects, who look to you as the fountainhead of all that keeps Troy civil and just. But that, my lord, is the limit of what we have a right to ask, and all that the gods too can demand. They made you a king. A proper kingliness of spirit and presence is all that they, or we, can require of you, my lord, and all, in these sad times, that you need properly ask of yourself.
‘I beg you, spare yourself this ordeal. Do not, for the affection we all bear you, expose yourself to the hazards of war and of the road, or to the indignities that Achilles and any other Greek who happens along might heap upon you. Be kind to your old age. Relieve yourself of this unnecessary task.’
Priam considers the man. He is pleased with what Polydamas has said. Pleased too that it offers him something to say in return that will make clearer his reasons for what he has determined on.
‘Thank you, Polydamas. You are too generous in your tribute, but I am grateful. What you have to say of order and kingliness does you credit. If I reject your advice, it is not because I do not value it. I do. And I value you, not least because you were my son’s dear friend and I know he loved and listened to you.
‘It is true that the gods made me a king, but they also made me a man, and mortal. Gave me life and all that comes with it. All that is sweet. All that is terrible too, since only what we know we must lose is truly sweet to us. The gods themselves know nothing of this, and in this respect, perhaps, may envy us. But not in the end. Because, in the end, what we come to is what time, with every heartbeat and in every moment of our lives, has been slowly working towards: the death we have been carrying in us from the very beginning, from our first breath. Only we humans can know, endowed as we are with mortality, but also with consciousness, what it is to be aware each day of the fading in us of freshness and youth; the falling away, as the muscles grow slack in our arms, the thigh grows hollow and the sight dims, of whatever manly vigour we were once endowed with. Well, all that happens. It is what it means to be a man and mortal, and as men we accept it. Less easy to accept is what follows from it.