The Mask of Apollo

by Mary Renault

  When I coughed, he jumped a foot and went white. Reassuring him as best I could, I asked him in. He was a big-boned lad, with high hollow cheekbones and gray eyes, and the auburn hair of the north. Though scarcely past the awkward age, he knew how to manage his big hands and feet, and kept his head up. I invited him to share my breakfast, which my man had just brought in, and asked how long he had wanted to be an actor. As red, now, as if scalded, he answered, “Since first I saw a play.” He would not tell me his given name, saying no Athenian could pronounce it. “They call me Thettalos.”

  “Well,” I said, “you speak good Attic, which is right if you want to act.” Then, putting in the soft northern s’s, “When did you come from Thessaly?”

  “That was my father,” he answered. “I was born here myself, and we are citizens since last year.” But of course, while a metic, he had not been eligible for chorus work at the sacred festivals, so though now eighteen he was quite without experience, and had picked up all he knew from sitting in front, or in ways like this today. His father would do nothing to help; he had come south with little, in flight from one of his country’s oppressive local lords, and worked hard till he owned a riding school. He was waiting, none too patiently, for the boy to outgrow his nonsense.

  “It seems,” I said, “that you chose me to be your teacher. So why not have come to me, and asked for help?”

  “I meant to,” he said, as if I should have understood. “But I was waiting till I was better.”

  At these words I refrained from singing a paean, or embracing him, but asked where he went to practice. He just walked, he said, till he found an empty field. “Let me hear something,” I told him. “Do what you like.”

  I thought he would go straight into Electra or Antigone or Ajax, and tear himself to bits. But no. He gave me a speech for the third actor, young Troilos pleading to Achilles for his life. Not only did he know his limits, he turned them to account; he was the youth who would not see his manhood. There was no softness, nothing pretty, but under the pathos a muted terror as he read the doom in Achilles’ eyes. I could have sworn I saw the relentless figure standing over him; the placing of his gestures shaped it out of air. He would die with his scream unuttered, because he was a prince of Troy, and had despaired in time. When it was over, he sat back on his heels, a light sweat on his brow, and waited for me to speak.

  I forget what I first said. For just then I saw his eyes look up past my shoulder, caught and held. I had no need to turn. I knew where the mask hung in its shrine. It was just as if a look had passed between them, of recognition, or of complicity.

  They say that Daidalos, the first artificer, saw his apprentice would surpass him and threw him off the roof. In the soul of every artist the murderer’s ghost lives on. Some make an honored guest of him; some chain him, and bolt the door, but know that he is not dead. Well, I could not have been cruel to this boy. That was not in me. There are things, however, one can do and live on with the thought of them. One can say, “You show great promise, but it’s useless to start till you have more range. Come back when you are twenty.” That would have wasted his time and got him stale, and put back his career five years. But having seen him without the mask as he spoke for Troilos, I knew I could do better for myself than that: “My dear boy, I think you have a future, when you have lived a little. What you need is to feel, to know the passions. Come back at sundown. We will have a little supper, and talk it over …” There are more ways of killing a bird than wringing its neck.

  Once more he looked past me, and I saw that meeting of silent eyes. Though they only spoke to one another, they spoke to me. No good ever came, I thought, of robbing a god, and this one above all.

  “Well, Thettalos,” I said, “I think you have learned as much as you will manage from behind a wall. It’s time you got up on a stage. Tell me what kind of man your father is, and I will do my best with him. There’s not much time; I am taking a company to Epidauros a month from now, and I shall need an extra.”

  This, then, is how the god acquired his servant Thettalos, an artist seldom surpassed—at his best, unequaled in our day. It was a few years yet, though, before he knew himself, coming to the art so late. He was uncertain, scared often of his own force. It was like training a nervous blood-horse.

  Our play for the Epidaurian Festival was Iphigeneia at Aulis. From the first I let him understudy the third roles, which include the name part; with only a little more technique, he would have been better than the man I had. At first I took him through the lines once or twice alone. Soon I thought better not. He played it all from the heart, knowing no other way; he was so eager, mulling half the day over everything I taught him; his eyes were flecked with green, and his chestnut brows met in fine down above them; in a word, he was starting to break my rest. But he was using himself so hard, and was stretched so taut, that I dared not disturb him. Besides, he was both proud and honest, and his whole life, as he must see it, was in my power. I waited. Some god said to me that a time would come.

  We made a hit at Epidauros. What with the festival, the beauty of the theater, and his first appearance, he was quite drunk with joy; I was relieved that he kept his head. After the performance, I took him sightseeing. Going up to the portico of the Asklepeion, we met Dion coming out. He seldom missed these great occasions. Though men of note were pressing round him, he stopped and greeted me, spoke well of the production, and had a gracious word for Thettalos when I presented him. He, as soon as we were alone, said, “Who was that?” I told him Dion’s story, adding, “There goes the best man of our age.”

  He followed my eyes, then broke out suddenly, “Yes, and how he agrees with you.”

  “My dear boy!” I said, quite startled, for though frank he was never impudent. “What a thing to say. His modesty is proverbial.”

  “And he knows that too.” He kicked a pebble, and swallowed a curse when it hurt his toe. I could see no cause for this sudden anger, which was quite unlike him, but took it he was overwrought.

  “You mistake him,” I said. “He is shy by nature; but he is a man of too much pride to own it.”

  “Why not? Who is he to be proud with you? You’re just as great as he is. Why, the first time you spoke to me, I thought I should stifle before I could get my breath to answer you. Even now, if it weren’t that I—” He broke off, red to the ears, almost swallowing his tongue backwards, and looking round like a thief for somewhere to run. I just put my hand behind his arm, and quietly walked him on. In silence we said everything.

  So the god rewarded us. It may be that when I am dead, if he lives his span, he will hand on, to the young men coming after, small things I taught him. Since memories die with men, that’s as near as one gets to immortality.

  Success brought his father round; before long, he could leave home without discord, and live with me. Even before that, we were never long parted, and could do as we liked on tour. As I said, those were happy years.

  Young as he was, he could manage everything except the heavies. He was, and I think will always be, one of those actors in whom feeling works like intellect, so clearly it forms its concepts. They have it straight from the god; they give reasons if you ask, but those came later. But he was greedy for technique; born knowing why, he had to know how before he could bring it forth; and his reverence for me was touching. He would come to the end of it soon, I thought; what then? Meantime we read The Myrmidons, talked half the night, and taught each other; for the thoughts he threw off while we walked, or ate, or lay in bed were full of careless wealth.

  At about this time, Speusippos married a young wife, a niece of Plato’s. He seemed contented, and praised her to me. I don’t know how much she saw of him, between his work and his diversions. As for Dion, I met him often, as I had at Epidauros. I could never think without a smile of Thettalos’ betraying jealousy; Dion had come as our god of luck, as the lad himself admitted, adding that no doubt he had been unjust, for what could he know of such a man? To me it seemed that Di
on, though a king in exile, was still a king; he might lead no armies, but men would serve him with their minds, for by believing in him they could believe better in themselves.

  As I said, the people round him were of many different kinds—gentlemen, soldiers, philosophers, politicians. He joined the best supper clubs; and it was at one of these, I think, that he renewed his friendship with Kallippos, who had been his co-initiate at Eleusis. I myself had known the man rather longer; he was often about the theater. One met him at all the sponsors’ parties, and in the skeneroom after the play. He had often paid me compliments, which would have pleased me more if he had not been just as ready with them after a bad performance. It gives me no joy to be praised at the expense of a better artist, by someone who does not know the difference or who thinks me too vain to be aware of it myself. After a while, I used to acknowledge his civility, and leave him, so to speak, hung up with the other masks.

  His real interests were political; politics were the first thing he looked for in a play. One that was only true to man’s nature, bad and good, he found insipid. He was a sand-colored man, with eyes like shallow sand-pools, which he would fix on one as if to say that he read one’s soul. Knowing, as I did at home, what such a gaze is really like, I was hard put to it sometimes not to laugh in his face. I don’t know what he read in me; his readings of others were often out, but when this appeared, he put it down to dissimulation, a quality he saw everywhere.

  I had a good deal of attention from Kallippos, because I had been in Sicily. Actors and hetairas, in different ways, hear about affairs if they have time to listen, and Kallippos knew it. Charissa the Delian, an old friend of mine, told me he never chose a girl for looks or erotic skill, but according to her clientele, which he took pains to learn beforehand.

  Actors and whores, though he found them useful, were passing concerns for him. He had more serious business at the Academy, where he hung on the fringe, attending the lectures and discussions on political theory, but (as Axiothea told me when I asked her) finding no time for those upon philosophy, or the nature of the soul. Such being his interests, he was sure to seek out Dion; and though I was sorry to see him in the company of anyone so much beneath his quality, I could understand it. Kallippos took color from his company, if it sufficiently impressed him. And he was a true hater of tyrants. In this he did not dissemble. He was a hater of many things, beginning I think with himself; but tyrants he had made a study of, and could tell you all their histories, right back to the Peisistratids and Periander. Dion, as I have said, had become for all Hellas the symbol of resistance to all tyranny. He was as a god, therefore, to Kallippos, who showed him a true face, whereas he only made use of men like me. Even fulsomeness, when the heart is in it, does not disgust the just man like sycophancy. I have no doubt, too, that the information Kallippos had picked up in the skeneroom or the stews was believed by gentlemen and philosophers to be the fruit of insight and logic. As for his adulation, Dion was used to that. It met him everywhere.

  Meantime, a year as third actor had been enough for Thettalos. Within three years of his joining me, I took him on as second, not just for love, but because I could have done no better. Often I felt like Arion; after the song, after the splendid dolphin swims up at call, comes the breathless sea-ride, feeling the creature’s power curbed by its tenderness, yet awaiting the moment when it knows only its own strength and the grace Apollo gave it, and with some great leap or dive is gone into the glassy green, leaving one to swim. He was obedient always. When he had talked me round to his own way of thinking, he would say how wonderful was our harmony, and so I am sure he saw it. When I insisted on my own interpretation, he supported me with all he had. His loyalty was perfect. But there is a curse on him who holds back the messengers of the gods. In the depth of night, the moon at the window would show me his face intent upon a dream. I would think, He will outgrow me and excel me, and leave me to love him still.

  In the fifth year of Dion’s exile, news came that the war in Sicily was over. It had dragged to a standstill, and ended in a draw. I think the Carthaginians, who are unloved by all their neighbors, had trouble at home in Africa. At all events they got tired, and there was a patched-up peace.

  That same year, as soon as sailing weather opened up the sea roads, the Sicilian ambassador called at the Academy. He had a letter from Dionysios, entreating Plato to visit Syracuse.

  As you may suppose, Plato asked at once whether Dion, then, had been recalled. The ambassador said that no doubt during Plato’s visit there could be fruitful discussions of all such matters. On this Plato declined with thanks, and went back to his studies. As Speusippos said, he detested the very thought of Syracuse. He was now rising seventy, not an age when men lightly go on voyages, with their stale food, bad water, hard beds and the chance of storms. At that time of life a man must take some care of his body, to get the best from his mind.

  The peace, though troublesome to Plato, was good news to theater men, and many tours were being planned. For myself, I too had seen enough of Sicily, at least without Dion there. The Bacchae had been a bellyful which still lay heavy. So Thettalos and I went east; we played in Ephesos, Lesbos, Samos, Halikarnassos and Miletos, and toured the chief cities of Rhodes.

  The old mask-box went with us. I never left it behind. But each time I hung it up on the wall, it seemed that the face within was saying, “Nikeratos, you have something of mine. I have been your friend; but do not tempt me.”

  The grapes were trodden; winter came; we went by torchlight to bright rooms, then home to lie warm and discuss the party. The Lenaia came, then the Dionysia. It was one of the years I got the crown.

  On a warm spring evening, two days after the feast, we sat on the grass by the riverbank, upon one cloak. A thrush swung and sang in the hanging willow. I said, “Do you love me as before?”

  He said, “What? Niko, how can you ask me such a thing? What has made you doubt it?” I could not bear to see his look of guilt, so undeserved.

  “My dear,” I said, “I have never doubted less. You gave good proof at the Dionysia. But there are proofs love dies of giving; it is better to keep hold of love. So you must join another company.”

  His eyes were like those of a sick man who hears from the doctor what he already knew. He wanted to be angry; it crossed his face and he let it go. When he spoke, it was as if we had been talking of this an hour already. “No, Niko, it’s no use; I can’t do it. How can I go? We should be forever parting, for half the year. Besides, it’s too soon. It’s not in reason I can be ready.” It was not with me he was contending; I might have known the god had been hounding him as well. “It’s you who can get the best from me. Who else would push me on as you’ve done? Wherever could I do better?”

  “Henceforward, anywhere. You know it. Name me one other actor, one, for whom you would have underplayed as you did this time.”

  “Now you’re absurd,” he said, pulling up grass by the roots. “In a contest, nobody steals from the protagonist. I should hope I know that. I am sure you never did so.”

  “Not so as to get pointed at. But one shows what one could do. Come, my dear, you understand me.”

  “Say I don’t wish to. In the name of the god, Niko, what do you want to make of me? From you I have had everything. If at last I’ve something to give, don’t you think I want to give it? Before I can even begin, you start saying no. You make me angry.” He made an angry gesture, to show he meant it. I had never loved him more.

  “What was yours I have taken gladly. But the time has come, and you have seen it, when you are giving me what is his.” I had only to move my head towards the room behind us. We had shared that secret from early days. “He will punish it,” I said. “There is no escaping him.”

  “He owes you something. Is he less grateful than a man?”

  “He cannot change his nature, which can light or burn. We are scorched already, my dear. You have felt it too. All through rehearsals, through the contest, all through the victory feas
t, you give and give, you behave perfectly. Then later your oil flask is mislaid, and it enrages you. So it will be; and in two years we shall have nothing. Let us obey the god and keep his blessing. The time is now.”

  This had come hard to both of us. Having braved it, we were both in pain; but it was the pain of the cautery, not the poison. In our hearts we both knew it would be worth the cost. We disputed a little longer, both knowing the outcome now but offering it as a mark of love, then talked of the past, sharing our memories. But the thing must be finished clean, so presently I said, “Summer tours will be starting soon. You must be looking round.” To tease him I added, “What about Theophanes? You’d have the heart to steal from him.”

  He laughed; we were laughing easily now, as people do after strain. “Theophanes would never let me within a mile of him. He likes his supports made of solid wood.”

  “To be serious: Miron is getting no younger, and he feels his limits. He is looking for a second who can take more work. Of course all his plays will have some big oldish role, for him, but you will get some very good parts which are past him now. He’s a man of the old tradition, but you’ll fare no worse in the end from knowing how Kallippides did it in the ninety-third Olympiad or Kleomachos in the hundredth. He is quite well liked, if you can put up with his superstition and eternal omens.”

  “I don’t mind other men’s omens,” he said. “I watch my own.”

  “His greatest virtue in my eyes is that he only likes young girls.”

  “I don’t mind his likes. I know my own.” He added softly, “I’m not one to go drinking vinegar after wine.”

  So we talked, and slept, and next day he signed his contract. They were soon rehearsing; he would come home full of talk; we were happy, like autumn grasshoppers, living from day to day. Then Miron fixed up a tour to Delos and the Cyclades. All of a sudden they had sailed, and his absence lay everywhere, like a fall of snow.