Amber and Clay
Page 25
He didn’t finish. Or maybe he did;
I’d stopped listening. Looking back,
I hate to think of all the times
when Sokrates spoke and I didn’t listen.
Somehow I was standing in the river.
I cupped a hand of foaming water
and rubbed the dirt from my scars.
They gleamed under the wetness.
“Rhaskos. Be your own master.”
He’d said that before, the day he made me angry.
This time I wasn’t angry. I looked at him.
I felt the air against my teeth;
I must have been grinning like an idiot.
I was Thracian, but I could be a dog, not a wolf;
my scars were not shameful,
and my soul was mine to master.
2. THE AKROPOLIS
Phaistus was in the courtyard when I went back.
He frowned at me as I passed.
“You take your sweet time.”
I didn’t answer back. I unloaded Phoibe,
brushed the dirt from her coat.
I went into the shed
and took out three figures:
the pig,
an owl,
and my best horse so far.
I held them behind my back.
I stood before Phaistus and waited.
“What is it?”
“I made these,” I said. My voice came out strong.
“I thought we could sell them. We’ve never sold toys,
but other potters do.
They wouldn’t do it if they didn’t make money.
You’re always saying times are hard;
and the best pots, the ones made for banquets,
don’t sell. Not because they’re not good,
but because they cost too much.
I thought, if we had cheap things to sell,
we could make money. I even thought of selling beads.
Black beads, with red designs —
I never saw beads like that, but they’d be handsome.
The mistress could paint them. She’s good at fine work.
And I could make toys.
When times are hard, men don’t buy gold or silver,
but they might buy clay beads for their wives . . .
or those women who bare their breasts in the Agora,
they’ve got money. Some of them have children.
Even when times are hard, people buy trinkets,
if the trinkets are cheap enough:
trinkets for women, and toys for children.”
I held out the toys. “I made these.
I know I’m no good at the wheel —
but look at these.”
He took them.
The pig made him smile.
He said under his breath,
“We could make a mold from this . . .”
I almost said, What’s a mold?
That’s how ignorant I was.
I didn’t know what a mold was.
But then he looked at the horse
and frowned. “Pyrrhos —
the neck, the shape of the head —
the horse is good. But it won’t survive the kiln.
It’s too delicate. The ears will break off.
The body’s too thick. There’s moisture and air trapped inside.
It’ll burst. Or crack.
All the same, the modeling’s good —
you must have practiced.
And you’re thinking. You’re thinking about the business.”
He spoke those words as if they were praise.
I made up my mind to defend myself.
“Before, what you said —
I wasn’t wasting time.
I saw Sokrates in the middle of the road;
he was in a trance, and I stopped.
I thought he might be struck down, or dying. He’s my friend.
We talked, but I worked the whole time.”
He was back to looking at the pig.
He said, under his breath,
“He needs friends.”
I was curious about why Sokrates,
the wisest man in Athens, should need friends.
But we were talking, Phaistus and me,
and so far, he wasn’t angry.
“I’ve heard that’s how he acts when his daimon is with him.
Some god talks to him, I don’t know which one.
Half of Athens knows about it. Some people think he’s lying,
but he’s an honest man.
Once Athens was proud of him.”
He was still studying my figures,
stroking them with his thumbs:
“These are good. It’s not true, what you said,
that you can’t throw a pot on the wheel.
The wheel’s difficult. You haven’t caught on to it yet.
I haven’t given you time.
. . . The way you’ve shaped this head,
I’ve never seen a nobler head on a toy horse.
It reminds me of the horses on the Parthenon,
the sun god’s horse . . .”
“I’ve never seen the Parthenon.”
He looked up then. He’d told me
again and again
not to speak unless I was questioned,
but his look was a question: his eyes narrowed.
“I’ve never been up the Akropolis.
The guards would see my hair;
they’d know I wasn’t Greek;
they’d guess I was a slave.
They wouldn’t let me in.”
He spoke to the sky. “Mighty Hephaistos.”
He shuffled the toys against his chest
and stabbed one finger at me. “Stay here.”
Into the house he strode, shouting for Zosima.
He came back in an instant, empty-handed,
Zosima flip-flapping behind him,
Kranaos hobbling after her. “Look after the shop.
I’m taking the boy up the hill. He’s never seen the temples.
By the deathless gods, he’s never seen anything!”
He struck out a hand like an oar,
beckoning, drawing me along in his wake,
and I followed him: through the streets
taking the shortest path upward.
“You have to see this, Pyrrhos.
You like horses; I’ll show you a bronze horse —
gigantic, with life-sized men crawling out of his belly —
I’ll show you a statue of Hermes, carved by your friend Sokrates —
his father was a stonemason.
I’ll show you statues and pictures and pulleys and cranes!
I’ll show you the gods, boy!
It’s a strange thing; I’ve often wondered:
the gods made men, but few of us worth looking at;
most men are plain as rats.
When men make the gods, we do them justice!”
I ran to keep up with him,
he was so eager. He made me stop
and pick wildflowers: an offering for Athena.
We zigzagged up the hill. He told me how the temples were built,
how oxen hoisted the great stones up that mighty hill.
It wasn’t as hard for them as you might think.
The oxen climbed the hill unburdened;
the stone blocks were on ropes, at the bottom of the slope;
when the oxen reached the top,
they circled round a post
and dragged up the stones as they went downhill.
Phaistus knew some of the stone-carvers;
some were slaves,
but they were paid good wages, same as free men.
He explained to me about levers and cranes,
and the guards let us pass at the gate.
Through the crowd
I glimpsed sun-glazed bronze
greeny-gold
golden-brown
the goddess Athena, talle
r than six men,
grave and fierce,
about to hurl her spear.
Phaistus had his hand on my shoulder.
He pulled me back
into a room with marble walls:
a whole room full of pictures
gaudy and gorgeous with color,
each picture telling a story: Perseus, Odysseus, Akhilleus —
I could have stood before each one
and stared all afternoon.
But beyond that room, there was more —
so Phaistus steered me on.
You must have seen what I saw that day —
stone that glows like honey through cream,
the triumphant gods,
centaurs and caryatids —
the deep, rich colors;
the shrines:
red-lipped goddesses tickling the air with ribbons,
boyish gods crowned with flowers.
The march of shining columns toward the sky;
a march of glistening white and glorious blue;
the dark inside the temple, the flicker of torches,
and another Athena, taller than the first,
her ivory skin so lambent
she seemed to have no edge:
it was as if I gazed at her through tears.
Then back outside,
the sharp light,
the fragrant smoke of temple fires,
borne by the ceaseless wind.
I could look down on the Agora —
Phaistus pointed out our house:
the size of my smallest fingernail.
He showed me the giant Trojan horse
and told me the whole story;
how far-off Troy was taken
and how the bronze was cast.
I’d never heard him talk so much.
His hands were restless,
pointing,
outlining,
stroking the stones that were too high up to touch.
It was as if he’d made those temples.
He came from Thebes,
but up here, on the Akropolis,
he was an Athenian;
He belonged to the world
of men who made things. He made me feel
that I belonged, too. There I was
with my Thracian tattoos on my arms,
but in that hour, I was Athenian, a maker.
The sky was red with sunset
when we came down the hill. I kept looking back;
the stones of the temples were bathed in gold.
I had been changed. Sokrates once talked about how beauty
draws forth the soul. The things I had seen
astonished me,
dazzled and humbled me —
but also, there was Phaistus:
we climbed that hill together,
and when we came down, we were changed.
EXHIBIT 15
Klepsydra, terra-cotta, fifth century BCE.
This vessel was part of an ancient Greek water clock, holding approximately 6.7 quarts of water. The klepsydra was made up of two containers, as shown here. The top basin was filled with water, and the wax spigot at the lower rim was plugged with wax. When the wax plug was removed, the water trickled from the upper basin into the lower one, measuring a unit of time.
In Athenian law courts, speakers were allowed to speak from the time the wax was removed until the upper basin was empty and the lower basin was full.
Klepsydra: a Greek word coming from kleptein, “to steal,”
and hydor — that is, “water.”
The Greeks knew that water is life,
and time is a thief. Now, I am God of Thieves,
and when I want to play fast and loose with time
I do. Let’s go splashing in the river of time!
Last time we met, it was autumn.
Now it’s spring, more than a year later. The sun-chariot
careens round the earth, while the wandering planets
somersault in circles, panting to keep pace —
What? You think the earth goes racing round the sun?
So does Aristarchus (another Greek!) —
but he hasn’t been born yet.
Give us another hundred years to sort out the solar system.
Give us Time, that best of teachers!
Oh, Time will steal from you, my mortal child,
will trickle away, liquidate your precious hours —
a grave situation in more ways than one.
Yet time brings the spring,
gilds the green apple and ripens the grape.
It’s not all bad.
Let’s take a tour around the city. I’ll bring you up to speed.
Sweet spring in Athens, and not yet dawn!
Windflower, clover, and violets!
Rhaskos is curled up in the shed, sleeping like a cat.
If we were to brush a finger over his jaw,
we’d find it softly bristled, like a sage leaf.
He’s entered his teens. He’s not much taller,
but his muscles are well formed. Strong hands.
To make pots is to work hard.
Slumped against the wall is Melisto;
she’s not looking well. Of course, she’s been dead a while,
which is unwholesome,
but even allowing for that,
her shade is sickly.
To Rhaskos, she’s like a shadow on the retina;
he’s learned to see around her.
He’s lost interest in why she’s there to haunt him.
It’s hard on her. Haunting is taxing for a ghost;
being ignored makes it worse. She’s not where she belongs;
I’ve offered to escort her downstairs,
but she’s obstinate. No, she’s cursed,
and she’ll stay cursed
until she does what she’s bound to do.
Let’s move on to something cheerful: there’s Phoibe,
and nuzzling at her flank
is a little hinny — half donkey, half horse.
Phoibe escaped from the shed one night
to tryst with a rich man’s stallion;
twelve months later: the hinny!
Phaistus is thrilled. Something he can sell,
and he didn’t have to work for it. Phaistus is lying awake, poor man,
worrying. The city is poor;
the toys were too cheap to make a profit.
The beads were a success, but a man can’t live off beads.
He’s always in a lather,
fretting over money,
the fear of failing his wife,
the fear of losing his freedom.
He’s a good man, Phaistus,
but not amusing.
Even less amusing is Kranaos,
who is snoring. Openmouthed, wet-sounding snores,
with pauses in between,
as if he might
stop
breathing. Wait!
Was that it? Is he gone?
No such luck. Oh well! It won’t be long
before I lead him off to
the House of Hades.
Half of him’s gone already:
that is, his mind.
He was struck down by a god
and has guzzled the waters of Lethe.
Weak and witless, he tries to tend the kiln.
his memory is riddled with holes.
The pots are dull and smoky.
He kept his secrets about the kiln. Now they’re lost to Time,
and the kiln god is disgruntled.
It’s curious. Kranaos was a slave,
and — between you and me — a pill,
neither good nor amusing,
yet he is sheltered, fed,
missed by the Kiln God,
respected by Phaistus,
fussed over by Zosima.
An unexpected ending to a long hard life.
Enough about him. Let’s follow Zosima,
/> who’s on her way to the fountain house;
she stops to puke in the bushes. Ick.
She has morning sickness
but you think she minds? Hardly.
Every time she loses her breakfast
she chants a hymn to the gods.
She gazes at the courtyard through a veil of joy: There’s the home
where she lives with her beloved;
there’s the shed
where Rhaskos sleeps —
Rhaskos, whom she loves. And she loves the little hinny;
she’s silly over baby animals;
she’s tempted to go inside
to fondle its ears. Instead, she lifts her water jar
and makes her way through the streets,
stopping for a funeral procession.
(That’s a Greek thing: you have your weddings at night,
your funerals before dawn.)
She tries to feel sad, because someone is dead;
she murmurs a prayer to wise Persephone,
but her lips keep curving upward.
She reaches the fountain house
and greets the other women. She finds her dearest friend
and whispers her happy news. The friend whirls to face her;
they embrace,
rock
(women always rock when they hug),
lean back, throw out their hands,
embrace again. Other women encircle them,
lose their place in line:
whispering, squealing, laughing.
It’s a pretty sight:
the women in their pleated robes,
chattering, relaxed, their veils slipping.
The water foams and chuckles;
the jars are overflowing.
Soon Dawn will daub the sky with finger paints,
watercolor tints of saffron and rose;
the women will sashay home, balancing their jars.
I wouldn’t mind following. I like women. Love gossip;
but we have to get back.
I have to take old Markos down to hell.
Remember that funeral parade? Markos was the man who died.
Who? you say, and there’s life for you:
someone turns up his toes, and someone else says, Who?
The death of Markos is key to our story.
Markos was a citizen, protector to Phaistus.
An ex-slave must have a citizen to protect him. That’s the law.
Without a protector, the freedman is at risk.
And while we’re talking of matters at risk . . .
let’s pause a moment here,
in the Agora. This is the place where a man we know,
a man I find both good and amusing,
will stand trial. He will be accused
of corrupting the young
and refusing to honor the gods.
Here he will defend himself
while the klepsydra measures out his words;
here his time will trickle away