Just Myrto

by Laurie Gray

  “And in the meantime?” I asked.

  “He’ll remain in the state prison,” replied Lamprocles.

  Korinna nodded. “The guards put him in the largest cell. They said that we can visit whenever we like. Crito was still with him when we left.”

  “Then I will go see him now,” I said.

  “Now?” cried Lamprocles and Xanthippe in unison.

  “At this hour?” Xanthippe asked.

  “Wouldn’t it be better to wait until tomorrow morning?” asked Lamprocles. “He’ll be there for days, maybe even another month depending upon the winds.”

  “Good,” I replied. “I can take Sophroniscus to see him later.” I turned to Korinna. “Would you prepare a satchel of wine and food for me to take with me while I put Menexenus in a sling and get ready to go?” Korinna nodded and went off to do as I asked.

  Once I was ready, I turned to Xanthippe. “Do you wish to see him tonight?” I asked.

  “Not tonight,” she said. “I will go with Lamprocles tomorrow.”

  Lamprocles looked torn. He was exhausted and his mother needed him, yet I could see that he wanted to go with me.

  “Let me walk with you,” said Korinna. “I will carry the satchel and a torch.”

  Lamprocles nodded his approval. “At least let Korinna walk with you. The night is too black for you to walk alone in the darkness.”

  33

  SOCRATES DID NOT seem at all surprised to see us. I greeted him with a kiss. He embraced me and Menexenus in a single hug.

  He turned to Korinna. “Thank you for bringing them to me safely.” Korinna’s eyelids looked heavy. Socrates asked the guard if there was a bed where she might sleep. He seemed anxious to accommodate Socrates in every way. Korinna and Menexenus were soon nestled snugly into a bed in the guards’ quarters.

  Socrates’ cell was actually quite large and well-furnished. “I’ve never heard of anyone having a couch or a table and chairs in prison,” I said.

  “Isn’t it lovely?” said Socrates. “Crito had them brought in.”

  “Are you hungry?” I asked. “Korinna packed some food and wine for us.” I felt hunger in my own stomach from not having eaten all day. I began to spread out a meal on the table for us.

  “I think I’m going to like it here,” said Socrates. He breathed in deeply and stretched his arms out as if embracing his prison cell. “It’s very conveniently located near the Agora, don’t you think?”

  I sighed. “Very convenient.” I seated myself at the table. Socrates pulled up a chair and joined me.

  Socrates talked as we ate, telling me not about his trial, but instead about a conversation he had with a young man named Euthyphro outside the court shortly before his trial began.

  “Imagine this,” he said. “Just as I was contemplating for myself what piety really is, I ran into Euthyphro who understands piety so well that he had just filed murder charges against his own father.”

  “Against his own father?” I asked. “How can that be pious? His father must have killed his mother or grandfather for a son to bring such charges!”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Socrates. He drank from the wineskin and then offered it to me. “But Euthyphro said it makes no difference whether the victim is a stranger or relative. Justice demands that the murderer be prosecuted.”

  I shrugged my shoulders and kept eating. Socrates continued his tale.

  “In fact, the victim in this case was a servant, and a murderer himself. Euthyphro’s father had him bound and held after the servant had killed a household slave in drunken anger.”

  “How did Euthyphro’s father kill him?” I asked between bites.

  “He didn’t,” Socrates replied. “He sent a messenger to ask the priest what he should do with the servant, and the servant died of neglect before the messenger returned.”

  “I can’t imagine a son bringing murder charges against his own father in those circumstances,” I said. By this time I had eaten my fill, and my body was aching to lie down.

  “By Zeus, that’s what I thought!” Socrates exclaimed. “So I asked him, ‘Are you so confident in your knowledge of the divine, and of piety and impiety, that you have no fear of bringing such charges against your own father?’ And do you know what he said?”

  I shook my head.

  “He assured me that piety demanded a good son to prosecute his father to the fullest extent allowed by the law,” Socrates replied. Socrates took my hand and walked me from the table over to the couch to lie down. He extinguished the lamps before lying down beside me.

  I yawned and stretched. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “Nor do I,” Socrates admitted. “Apparently, I don’t understand piety at all.” He sighed. “But that’s one good thing about you and me—at least we know that we don’t know.”

  Socrates was still talking about Euthyphro and piety as I drifted off to sleep.

  I dreamed that I was sitting alone in a dark prison cell. I could hear Socrates voice behind me and see his shadow on the wall in front of me. I tried to turn around, but I could not move. I called out to him to come and sit beside me, but he did not come. I called out again, this time more loudly. A jailer came and told me to quiet down.

  “Where is Socrates?” I asked him.

  “Socrates is dead,” he replied.

  “He can’t be!” I exclaimed. “I just heard him. I just saw his shadow on the wall before me.”

  “Your mind is playing tricks on you,” said the jailer. “Go back to sleep.”

  “I cannot sleep,” I cried. “I must find Socrates.”

  “You are dreaming,” said the jailer. “Socrates is dead.”

  I awoke with a start. I was dreaming. Socrates was alive, right there beside me. But for how much longer?

  A streak of sunlight streamed into the room through a tiny window near the ceiling. I could see Socrates still sleeping beside me. I got up to check on Korinna and Menexenus. I lifted my child from the bed. Korinna stirred.

  The jailer peeked his head in the room and asked if everything was all right.

  “Yes, thank you,” I replied. “Are jailers always so kind?”

  The jailer smiled. “We have never had a prisoner like Socrates. He is the noblest, the gentlest and the best man who has ever come here.”

  Korinna and I walked back to Socrates’ cell together. Crito and several others were already beginning to gather there.

  “I must go now,” I told Socrates. “Xanthippe and Lamprocles will be here later, and I’ll bring Sophroniscus to see you as well.”

  Socrates nodded and kissed me goodbye.

  “He seems awfully content for a man just sentenced to die,” said Korinna as we walked home together.

  Over the next several days we settled into a routine. I spent the days at home and the nights with Socrates. Usually I would take Menexenus with me, but occasionally I would not. Lamprocles spent every day with Socrates. Xanthippe and Korinna would take Sophroniscus for a short visit every couple of days.

  Socrates had very little time to himself, but when he did he occupied himself by composing poetry. Most of his poems honored Apollo, but some transformed Aesop’s fables into verse. My favorite went something like this:

  The Dog and the Bone

  One day a dog was digging for a bone,

  And came upon the best he’d ever seen.

  So greedily he snatched it for his own.

  He held it in his paws and licked it clean.

  Head high and trophy safely clenched in jaw

  He trotted homeward, fully satisfied.

  But as he crossed a bridge, beneath he saw

  Another dog and bone that walked in stride.

  That bone below—the grandest of them all!

  Our hero barked and leapt in to the stream,

  The bone he had forgotten in the fall,

  The bone he sought a hopeless, splashing dream.

  The one who chases treasure out of greed,

  May
soon wake up to find himself in need.

  “You should write your poems down,” I told him.

  “You know, Myrto, writing shares a strange feature with painting,” he replied. “A painting stands there looking as if it were alive, but if you ask it anything, it remains silent.”

  “It’s art, Socrates,” I replied. “A good painting communicates the inspiration of the gods.”

  Socrates shook his head. “The highest form of art for me is philosophy.”

  “So write about philosophy,” I suggested.

  “But if I write about philosophy and my words appear to have some understanding, what happens when someone wants to learn more? My words would just say the same thing over and over again like an imbecile.” Socrates made a funny face and tilted his head back and forth like an idiot.

  “That’s true,” I conceded, “but think of all the people who might read those words and learn from them.”

  “Yes, but my words would roam about everywhere reaching indiscriminately those with understanding and those without,” said Socrates. Socrates walked his fingers up and down my legs.

  “And what if I learned that something I wrote was not entirely true?” Socrates said, walking his fingers up my arm. “My writings would still say the same things over and over, true or untrue.” He walked his fingers up my neck and tapped my head. “Think about it,” he said. He kissed my head where he had tapped. “No, thank you. I’ll leave the writing to those who are convinced of their knowledge or inspired by the muses.”

  34

  SOCRATES AND I spent every night together knowing it could be our last. We didn’t talk about people or politics. We didn’t talk about the past or the future. We talked about virtues and ideas— wisdom and goodness and justice in all of their forms, and whether any single virtue could stand apart from the others. We lived only in the present, enjoying the presence of one another.

  I was a mother by day and a wife by night. Only when I was alone with Socrates in prison, I never thought of him as my husband or of myself as his wife. He was just Socrates, and I was just Myrto. We were friends and lovers and soul mates.

  We spent hours sitting together on the couch talking about life and love. Socrates held me close in his arms, but our closeness was in mind and spirit as well as in body. “I love you,” I whispered. He kissed me tenderly.

  “What is love, Myrto?” he asked.

  “Love is the way I feel about you, Socrates.”

  “Is love only a feeling, or is it more than just a feeling?” he asked.

  “It’s more than just a feeling,” I replied. “It’s also knowing and being known.”

  “And what is it that you know?” Socrates asked.

  “That our love cannot be contained in your body or mine, or even in the bodies of our children,” I said. “And that even when your body is no longer here with us, the love will live on in my heart.”

  Socrates nodded. “So is love mortal or immortal?”

  “Perhaps love is the one immortal thing that a mortal animal can do,” I said.

  Socrates stroked my hair. “Do all mortal animals seek to be immortal or is it only humans who dream of becoming gods?”

  “Don’t all animals seek immortality?” I asked. “Isn’t that why wild animals mate and nurture their young, even to the point of dying to protect their weaker offspring?”

  “I suppose it is,” Socrates mused. “Are you suggesting that immortality is a cycle?” He kissed me on the forehead and motioned for me to have a seat at the table. Each day a new abundance of food and wine and delicacies appeared in Socrates’ cell.

  I followed him to the feast. “For the gods immortality means always being the same in every way,” I said, “but for us, life perpetuates itself in cycles. Immortality is more like aging and departing, but leaving behind something new in our place.”

  Socrates tore a leavened barley cake into two portions and gave me one.

  “Even our bodies are constantly growing and aging,” I continued. “New skin replaces old skin; new hairs replace the hairs that fall out.”

  Socrates nodded. He poured us each a cup of wine and took a drink.

  “Just look at this old body,” he said. “I was once an infant like Menexenus, and a toddler like Sophroniscus and a strong young man like Lamprocles. Now I am older than my father or his father before him. Yet I have always been Socrates, even as I’ve grown and changed.”

  I took his hand in mine. “That is the Socrates I love,” I told him. “Your spirit—the essence of who you really are.”

  I broke off a small piece of the barley cake and chewed it slowly. I washed it down with a sip of wine.

  “That is the Socrates that will live forever in my heart and in the hearts of all those who know you and love you,” I said.

  “And yet there are many who don’t find me very lovable,” said Socrates.

  “They are afraid of you,” I replied. “Your questions unravel the stories they tell themselves and everyone else.”

  “So are those who don’t love me unlovable?” Socrates asked. He unfolded a cloth filled with dried fish.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I ate several of the fish, enjoying their saltiness and the thirst they created in my mouth.

  “But I don’t think it’s worth my time and energy to hate them,” I said. I poured some water into my wine and swirled it with my finger before taking several large swallows.

  “It’s one thing not to hate them,” said Socrates, “but are they lovable?”

  “Surely someone loves them,” I replied. I lifted my cup toward the lamp and watched the flame’s reflection dancing on a sea of redness. “When I first met Xanthippe I thought she was unlovable,” I reflected.

  “And now?” Socrates asked.

  “And now I love her,” I said. The words surprised me as they passed my lips, but I knew they were true. “She is part of Lamprocles, part of you, and part of the life I have come to love.” I looked deeply into Socrates’ eyes and felt the strength of his love—a love for all that is good inextricably bound to a belief that the good lives in all of us. “Xanthippe is part of me now,” I told him.

  “Only now?” asked Socrates.

  I shook my head. “Not only this present moment. Always.”

  “Always goes in both directions, you know,” replied Socrates.

  “What are you saying?” I asked.

  “Always has no beginning and no end. Always just is.”

  “Like now,” I said smiling. I took another drink of wine.

  “Exactly,” said Socrates.

  “That must be your secret to happiness, Socrates,” I said. “You always surround yourself with love by loving everything around you.”

  “It’s true,” he replied. “People can never be unlovable if we choose to love them.”

  “And it doesn’t matter if they love us in return?” I asked.

  “What do you think?” asked Socrates.

  “Maybe love does not come from being loved, but from loving,” I said.

  Socrates nodded. “That would be true love—divine love.”

  “A love that reaches beyond human bodies and human understanding,” I said thinking aloud. “Could it be that love is the spirit that comes from the gods and bridges the gap between mortality and immortality?”

  Socrates smiled. “Where do you suppose our desire for immortality comes from?” asked Socrates. “Do we really desire to be forever unchanging like the gods?”

  I leaned back in my chair and ran my hands through my hair. Aspasia appeared in my mind’s eye. I stood and walked over to the couch as if I were attempting to escape my own thoughts. I shook my head and sat down. “Sometimes I think that we have created the gods in our own image because we cannot even imagine a world where everything stays the same.”

  Socrates came and sat beside me. “My own thoughts scare me sometimes,” I confessed. “Could it be that all of our images, everything around us that we believe to be real, are but illusions?”<
br />
  “What is real, Myrto?” Socrates asked. “What do you really know for sure?”

  “I know that I am Myrto,” I replied. “I am real, and I choose to love.”

  “That is enough to carry you through this world and into the next,” said Socrates.

  35

  I WALKED TO the prison at sunset and back home at sunrise. I was always walking against the crowds. At first people stared at me. I could feel them pointing and talking. After a while, the people disappeared into clouds of fog, the fog that I walked through each morning to get to my children and each evening to get to Socrates.

  One evening as I walked to the prison, I heard a voice calling me from the fog. “Myrto! Wait!”

  It was Plato. I did not want to wait. I wanted to continue walking through the fog to Socrates.

  Plato caught up to me and walked beside me. “Please, Myrto, I need to talk with you.”

  I kept walking. “About what?” I asked.

  “About the future,” he said.

  “My only plans for the future are to spend this night with Socrates,” I replied. I walked faster.

  “I know,” said Plato, keeping pace with me. “But it’s been nearly a month since …” His voice trailed off. “I mean,” he began again, “the ship will be returning from Delos any day.”

  “But it did not return today, did it?” I asked in a tone more assertive than inquiring.

  “No,” replied Plato softly. “The ship did not return today.”

  “Then I will spend this night with Socrates and worry about tomorrow when the time comes.” We were approaching the Street of Marble Workers in the southwest corner of the Agora, almost to the prison.

  “But I need to talk with you before the time comes,” Plato said. He reached for my hand and held me back. “Please,” he said. “Just sit and talk with me for a moment.” He guided me over to a fountain and sat me on a wooden bench. “We need to make proper arrangements, Myrto.”

  I covered my face with my hands and shook my head. “No,” I said looking back up at him. “Lamprocles and Xanthippe will make all of the necessary arrangements.”

  “I’m not talking about Socrates’ funeral, Myrto.” Plato placed his hand under my chin and slowly lifted my head. I did not resist. Soon my eyes met his. I felt a lump forming in my throat and tears gathering in my eyes.