by Tom Holt
‘Are those Aristophanes’ actors?’ I protested. ‘We could lock them up, and then—’
Philondes told me to be quiet, and threw each one of the prisoners out with his own hands. ‘They’d have done as much for me, I expect,’ he said, and sat down on the costume chest.
‘But, Philonides—’ I protested.
‘Now listen, you,’ Philonides replied angrily, grabbing me by the arm, ‘I have to work with these people, right? And with Aristophanes, come to that. So that’s an end of it, right?’
I nodded and he let me go. I went and stood in the corner of the room, feeling rather upset. But Philonides stood up and started to survey the damage to his property.
‘Since you let the son of Philip get away,’ he said, ‘I’m holding you liable for all this damage.’ He turned to the witness, who was looking thoroughly confused. ‘Have you got that? Eupolis son of Euchorus, of the deme of Pallene. And if I find out which one of you clowns smashed up my best chair, I’ll pull his head off.’
There was far too much for us all still to do for any of us to feel tired or elated; there were costumes to be assembled, masks to be lined, and (I’m sorry to say) lines to be learned. By the time the messenger arrived, sent on from my house, to tell me that I was to be called on that day, the Chorus had already assembled and was making one last desperate attempt to come to grips with the major dance routine. Philonides seemed to have put all the events of the early morning behind him, as if such things happened every day, and was frantically chasing after bits of wool and leather strapping for the masks, on which it appeared that the success of our entire enterprise now depended. He seemed to have no use for me whatsoever and finally ordered me to get out from under his feet; he was a busy man, he said, and greatly though he valued my friendship and society, this was neither the time nor the place for amateurs. So I withdrew in a huff, like Achilles, and went home to dump my breastplate and helmet and change my clothes.
The streets seemed to be full of people, some with cushions under their arms, others carrying their children on their shoulders, all apparently making for the Theatre. I thought I heard my name mentioned once or twice, and that made me feel as if I was the King of the Athenians on his coronation-day, or a politician about to be tried for high treason, depending on the tone of voice of the person I was listening to at the time.
Phaedra was looking out of the open door as I came up the street.
‘Well?’ she demanded, as I pushed past her into the house. ‘What happened? Did you get them?’
‘More or less,’ I replied, slinging my armour under a couch. ‘Like a fool, I let Aristophanes get away, but Philonides got the rest of them and sorted them out once and for all. I don’t think we’ll have any more trouble.’
‘Good,’ said Phaedra, and she put her arms round my neck.
‘Not now,’ I said. ‘Is there anything to eat in this house?’
She unhooked herself. ‘I’ll make you some porridge, if you like,’ she said. ‘You’ll need something—’
‘There isn’t time,’ I replied, ‘I’ll get a sausage or something at the Theatre. What I need now is some clean clothes. These are full of brick-dust.’ I poured some water into a bowl and washed my face, which felt as if all the silt of a Nile flood had accumulated on it, and dried my hands on one of the twenty-drachma Persian tapestries. While I was doing so, Phaedra came back in with some clean clothes; but instead of throwing them at me, she pretended not to notice what I was doing and said, ‘Here you are.’
I took off my old tunic and she gave me the new one. ‘I haven’t seen this before,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘And do try not to get it too filthy, because it took me weeks to make it and you know how much I hate weaving.’
I stared at it, as if it had been the tunic of Nessus. ‘You made it?’ I asked stupidly. ‘For me?’
‘No, for the bath-attendant, but he didn’t like the colour. Don’t sound so amazed, you ungrateful pig.’
‘Bet it doesn’t fit,’ I said, shoving my head through the collar. It fitted perfectly, and smelt faintly and surprisingly of roses. ‘Thought not,’ I went on. ‘Tight under the arms.’
‘Good,’ she said. ‘So I don’t suppose you’ll want the cloak.’
‘Far be it from me to give offence,’ I said. ‘I can always take it off when I get outside.’
She came close to me to fasten the brooch round my neck, and I kissed her without thinking. I was starting to lose count of the number of times I had kissed her. ‘How’s that?’ she asked.
‘It’ll do,’ I said.
She had fastened the brooch, but she didn’t move away. ‘And when do I get shouted at?’ she said softly.
‘What for?’ I asked.
‘Oh, for telling Aristophanes about those stupid costumes.’ She closed her eyes and raised her head towards me.
‘Later,’ I said, ‘when I’ve got a minute.’
‘You’ve had your chance,’ she said. ‘Now, rather more important, when are you finally going to get around to thanking me? For saving the play at the last minute, like a Goddess on the flying machine?’ She stood on tiptoe until her lips were very close to mine, and I kissed her again.
‘Call that thanks?’ she said. ‘You didn’t even open your mouth.’
‘I did,’ I replied, ‘and that’s all the thanks you deserve. Now will you please stop climbing up me and let me get on?’
She pulled a face and let go of me. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘get out and stay out. I can’t stand the sight of you.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘So you won’t be coming to the Theatre, then?’
‘What, and miss you getting booed off the stage? I wouldn’t miss that for all the perfume in Corinth.’
I picked up my walking-stick and looked at my reflection in a polished bronze jar; an idiot, I told myself, but a talented idiot. Then I saw Phaedra’s face over my shoulder, and turned round. She pressed her nose against my chest and said, ‘Eupolis.’
‘Now what?’
‘Good luck,’ she whispered. ‘I know they’ll hate it, but I hope they don’t throw stones at you. I’m sick and tired of you coming to bed all over blood.’
‘Luck?’ I said. ‘Who needs it?’ I swirled my cloak round on my shoulders like a cavalry captain at the Panathenaea, and darted a sudden kiss at her, but I missed her lips and connected with her nose instead. She called me a clumsy idiot and giggled.
‘When you see me next,’ I said, posing in the doorway like a statue, ‘I shall be the greatest poet in all Athens, and then you’ll be sorry.’
‘I’m not exactly ecstatic now,’ she said, smiling.
‘I shall return,’ I continued, ‘like King Leonidas himself; with my harp, or on it.’ I strode magnificently out of the door, pretended to trip on my cloak, waved, and walked away.
‘Do I get a choice?’ Phaedra called after me.
As I bounced down the street, I pressed the collar of the tunic against my cheek, and I felt as Achilles must have felt, when he first went out to fight in the armour that the Fire God himself had made for him. Or perhaps I felt more like Hector, setting out on that day when Zeus promised him success so long as the daylight lasted. For although my body was on fire wherever the tunic and cloak touched it, and my heart as well, my soul inside me was still as cold as ice.
The Theatre was filling up when I got there, and after I had bought a sausage and a small loaf from one of the sausage-sellers, I sat down on the end of one of the middle rows and looked about me. There is no sound like the Theatre just before the start of the first play; like a hive of angry bees when they smell the first wisps of smoke from the beekeeper’s bellows. Away on the very back rows a drunk was singing a country song, something about the swallow bringing back the good times, and when he had finished, there was a ripple of applause and some cheering. The audience were in a good mood, and I lifted my head and thanked all the Gods.
Someone walking across the stage waved to me, and I saw
that it was Phrynichus, who I knew only by sight; a big man with a black beard, and his left arm in bandages. I waved back, just in case anyone was watching, for I didn’t want to be talked about as a man who bears grudges. Then I looked around for an omen; but no birds flew overhead, neither on the left nor on the right, and since the sun was sharp I gave up and ate my sausage, which tasted horrible. I decided to save the bread for after the first Tragedy.
I saw Callicrates and Little Zeus and my uncle Philodemus coming down the stairs towards me, but I signalled to them to go away since I wanted to sit among strangers. Philodemus seemed offended, but Callicrates said something to him and he nodded, and they sat down where they were. I could hear Little Zeus saying something in his loud, flat voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. I hoped he was praying for me.
Then I saw a bald head with a nasty-looking cut on it walking past a row or so beneath me, and I couldn’t resist calling out. Aristophanes stopped and sent on his friends to reserve him a place, and looked up at me, grinning like an ape.
‘Hello,’ he shouted, ‘and how’s the cripple with the nasty rash this morning?’
‘Couldn’t be better,’ I replied. ‘And how is our two-obol Odysseus getting on, after his bungled shot at stealing the Palladium?’
He broadened his smile until I thought his face would crack. ‘This is a very historic occasion,’ he said. ‘The very last time Eupolis ever leads out his Chorus.’
Just then, I couldn’t think of a good reply (I thought of plenty later) and so I threw a nut at him instead. He walked on, laughing at his own joke and waving to somebody important in the front row. I scowled, and it occurred to me that Dolon would have been a neater comparison than Odysseus, but my soul told me to forget it, and I shifted up to make room for a fat man in a leather hat.
I soon found out a great deal about my neighbour, for he told me himself. He was a stranger in town, he said, here on business, but he had brought his wife with him to see the show, and she was sitting over there with the other women, but she had a cushion, so that was all right, and her name was Deianeira, by the way, and he was Pericleidas son of Bellerophon, and his home town was Catana, which was in Sicily but an ally of Athens of course, and very proud of it, too, and he was in the dry-fish business, which was why he was here in Athens, since back home folks were always telling him how Athens was the biggest market outside Persia for dried fish, especially now, with the war and all, although for some reason the Athenians just now seemed to get most of their dried fish requirements from Pontus, which was very strange and hard to believe, since he couldn’t think why the Athenians should want to pay two obols a quart over the odds for an inferior product instead of buying from honest-to-God Greeks, especially since there were such strong ties of loyalty and affection between Catana and Athens, which were very important to a man like him, who was just mad about the Theatre, which was really the reason he was over in Athens this time of year, when the best time for dried fish was really later on around the time of the Lenaea, but of course foreigners weren’t allowed to go to the Lenaea, which of course he could understand, what with it being a very special and meaningful religious occasion here in Athens, but which was a pity nevertheless for a man who was just wild about the Theatre, like all Sicilians were, although there is no domestic Theatre in Sicily, because most of the cities in Sicily were Dorian foundations, not Ionian, and the Dorians worship Dionysus in a different way, although it didn’t actually seem to make the slightest bit of difference to the wine yields, because if old Dionysus got it into His head to make it a bad year then that was that, or so he reckoned, and what did I think?
‘My name is Eupolis,’ I replied. ‘Welcome to Athens.’
Then the herald called on the first Tragedy, and Pericleidas quietened down a bit, once he understood that I knew the story of Oedipus quite well already. I don’t remember anything else about that Tragedy, or the others after it, except that I wanted them to go on for as long as possible, provided that they did it quickly. And then the herald called out, ‘Eupolis, bring on your Chorus,’ and I put my hands in front of my eyes and took them away again quickly for fear of missing anything, and Pericleidas leaned across and whispered, ‘Is that you?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘isn’t that just wonderful?’ and he slapped his knees with the palms of his hands for pure joy.
And the actors said their lines and the Chorus danced, and Aristobulus got the Cleon scene right for the very first time, and not one member of the Chorus forgot to do his rowing motions during the Hymn to Poseidon, and when it was all over and the Chorus had danced out again, Pericleidas leaned across to me and whispered, ‘Well anyway, I liked it.’
For once, I seemed to have no trouble getting out of the Theatre, for the other people seemed to melt away in front of me, as if they were ghosts. But I could hear them chatting away, as Theatre audiences do, and they were all saying, ‘Never mind, we’ve got the Aristophanes to look forward to tomorrow. Now he really does know how to write a Comedy.’ And instead of crowding round me as I passed by them, the sausage-sellers stood aloof and let me go by, as the gate-keepers shrink back from lepers.
Philonides tried to cheer me up, but I could see that he was furious at having backed a loser and made a fool of himself, while the Chorus were pulling off their costumes and flinging them back into the costume chest as if they were afraid of catching something from them. So I made my excuses and left, and strolled back into the Theatre, which was now quite empty, with only the slaves sweeping up the rubbish ready for the next day. I sat myself down under the big statue of Dionysus and burst into tears.
As I sat there, I heard a voice above me, and I knew that it was coming from the statue.
‘Pretty bad, Eupolis,’ it said, ‘but there’s worse to come. No, don’t look round; you’ll see me soon enough, in the walled orchard, as I promised you. It was a bad play, son of Euchorus. Show me something better next time, if ever you get a Chorus again.’
I listened, but there was no more, and I got to my feet and set off home. The streets were as quiet and empty as they had been that day when I escaped from the stable during the plague, and the only living creature I saw was a dog, who followed me for some time until I threw a stone at it.
Phaedra was waiting for me when I got home, with a cup of wine with herbs and cheese. She tried to put her arms round me, but I pushed her away and sat down by the fire. I needed warmth. Phaedra came and knelt beside me, offering me the wine. I pushed it away, and the cup fell out of her hands and broke on the floor.
‘Please don’t be upset,’ she said. ‘It was a good play, really.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ I shouted. ‘It was the worst play ever written.
‘All right then,’ she said) and her voice seemed to come from a long way off, ‘you may be right, I don’t know. But even if it was, you’ll learn from it, and you won’t make the same mistakes again. And next year.
Her voice was irritating me, like the buzzing of a fly, and I turned my head away. Had Aristophanes started celebrating already, I wondered, now that the prize was as good as his? Lord Dionysus, I prayed, if you love me and are my patron, let Phrynichus win, not Aristophanes.
‘Look,’ she said, ‘it’s not the end of the world, I promise you. Really, you are a good poet, I mean it. Just because this time—’
Suddenly I felt hot, and I pulled at the cloak round my neck so hard that the cloth tore all around the brooch. I wrenched it loose and threw it on the ground.
‘Can’t you just shut up, for God’s sake?’ I shouted. ‘Why don’t you just go away and leave me alone?’
She made a grab for my hand, but I pulled it away. After a moment, she got up from where she had been kneeling, said, ‘The hell with you, then,’ and went into the inner room, slamming the door behind her.
I didn’t go to the Theatre next morning, but in the evening Callicrates came by and said that Phrynichus had won, with Aristophanes coming second, by u
nanimous vote of the twelve judges. By then I was feeling all stupid and Spartan, and I said something idiotic about thanking the Gods that Athens had two playwrights better even than me. Callicrates very sensibly didn’t reply, and he got up to go.
‘By the way,’ he said, ‘we got a message from Phaedra this morning. She says to tell you she isn’t coming back till you apologise. I don’t know what she’s done this time, but if I can help in any way…
I frowned, feeling as if I were drunk. ‘Coming back?’ I said. ‘I didn’t even know she had gone.’
‘She’s at her father’s house,’ he said, ‘she’s been there all day. Do you mean to say you hadn’t even noticed?’
I started to laugh, and Callicrates, who had been very patient with me, finally lost his temper. He told me to stop acting like a child, and slammed the door behind him. I called after him, but he didn’t come back; it was hard to make him angry, but, like everything else he did, he did it well. I sat down by the fire, which had gone out long since, and listened hard to my soul; but nothing came.
The next morning I had two visitors. One was a messenger from Phrynichus, inviting me, as is usual, to his Victory party. I can’t remember what I threw at him, but whatever it was I missed. The second was Phaedra’s father, dragging Phaedra along behind him like an unwilling dog.
‘She’s your problem now,’ he said, pushing her at me like a man returning rotten fish to a fishmonger. ‘I’ve got guests staying, I don’t need her banging about the house. A man should be able to keep his own wife under control.’
He had scratch-marks on his left cheek, just like a set I had seen in my mirror one time. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘it won’t happen again.’
‘It better hadn’t, that’s all,’ he said. ‘And let me make this clear, young man; I’m not having her giving birth in my house, and that’s final. You can clear up your own mess yourself.’
He stormed off, shutting the door quickly behind him, as if he was afraid Phaedra would slip out after him. She stood there looking at me for a long time.