by Gary Corby
“Good afternoon,” I said to them, and smiled. They smiled back. They barely had thirty teeth between them.
“Sirs, I would like to buy you a drink.” I waved to the innkeeper, who had been watching me warily from within. I held up eight fingers.
He nodded. A moment later, a scowling slave appeared with eight clay cups which he set upon the table in front of the old men. The slave sloshed in wine from a small amphora. Almost as much hit the tabletop as went in the cups.
I paid the slave the going rate for tavern wine in Athens. He didn’t move, nor did he say anything. In the lengthening silence I realized what had happened; the innkeeper had taken the opportunity to sell me his most expensive wine.
I added coins until he had twice what I’d originally paid him. That was enough to make the slave go away.
The old men raised their glasses to me. “May Zeus honor you, young man,” one of them said in a croaky voice. Then they drank deep.
I said, as they drank, “Sirs, my wife and I are looking for a family. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. I can’t even tell you much about them.”
They looked at each other warily, then down at the drinks I’d just bought them. One of the old men said, “Well young man, I wouldn’t normally go telling a stranger about a local family—you can’t be too careful, what with the trouble that drifts into town these days. But seeing as you got your young woman with you”—he leered at Diotima—“I can tell you’re right enough.”
“Thanks.”
“So who you looking for?”
I said, “There used to be a boy who lived here, perhaps thirty years ago. A boy by the name of Lakon. We’re looking for his people.”
They nodded knowingly. One of the men sighed. The man who had thanked me smacked his lips and said, “Ah yes.”
Diotima and I shared a triumphant look. This was progress.
“You know him?”
“Everyone in Rhamnus knows of him! Talk of the town, he was. First lad from these parts ever to get in the Dionysia. In the chorus, he was.”
“Yes! That’s him!” I cried, excited.
“Then the tragedy struck.”
“What tragedy?”
“People were still talking about it years later. You’ll be wanting the mother, I suppose?”
“Is she still alive?” I said, startled.
“Certain sure she is, unless Hades took her since yester morn. Delivered her vegetables like I always do, every third day. I used to grow ’em. Now my son does that. Back ain’t what it used to be, you know.”
“Please, where do we find her?” Diotima asked.
“It’s Agne you want. Fine lady she is. In course, she has to mush up her vegetables, on account she don’t have many teeth,” explained a man with five. He pointed. “Go up that road and turn left at the place where Davo’s farm used to be.”
“Where did Davo’s farm used to be?” I asked, reasonably enough.
“Just up there.” He pointed along the road once more.
“That place burnt down, Patro,” another of the men said. “Thirty, forty years ago.”
“Did it?” Patro looked confused. “I could have sworn I was there yesterday.”
WE WALKED WEST into rough farmland. It had taken another round of drinks, but in the end we received perfect instructions.
Our way took us to an old, small farmhouse that was run down, but neat. At least, it was neat on the outside on the ground floor. The ground outside the door was swept. The bare walls were clean until about halfway up. The top half of everything was filthy and covered in cobwebs. The small barn beside the house was the same: beautifully neat on the bottom, a mess on the top. It was as if someone had taken two different buildings and stuck them together.
There was none of the activity you always see about a farm. There wasn’t a single animal we could see except for a few scrawny chickens. The fields about the farm were overgrown with weeds.
Diotima and I looked at each other. I wondered if we were about to find a house full of corpses.
I knocked on the door.
We heard soft footsteps on the dirt floor within. The door opened just a crack and the pretty eyes of a girl peeped out.
“Yes?”
This couldn’t be the mother of Lakon. The girl was barely older than twenty, if that.
I said, “We’re looking for a lady named Agne. Does she live here?”
“What do you want?” Her voice dripped suspicion.
“To ask some questions. That’s all. The men in the agora told us where to come.”
The girl looked to Diotima, then back to me.
“What men?” she said.
“Old men. At the tavern.”
“Describe them,” she ordered.
She was doing her best to defend her house. She didn’t realize I could easily push my way in. I hoped no serious enemy ever came here.
I described the old men, down to the number of teeth each had.
The girl nodded. “That’s Patro and his friends. He wouldn’t have sent you here if he thought you were trouble.”
She stepped back. The door opened.
She was holding a pot with a long handle in her right hand. She’d been prepared to hit me with it.
“I’ll see if my owner is in.” The girl went up the stairs.
This girl was a slave? She spoke primly, like a daughter in a fine mansion, but everything in this house spoke of poverty. The light that shone through the windows served only to expose a room with nothing in it. Not even dust. Just two old chairs and a table.
“My mistress will see you,” the girl said. “You’ll have to come up the stairs. Agne’s not been well of late.”
Agne hadn’t been well for the last twenty years, if the sight of her was anything to go by. She was old, with but a few gray hairs left on a head that was otherwise bald. She was thin as a stick, and she was propped up in a bed that was more termites than wood. Two blankets covered her, but weren’t long enough to reach her feet, which were swollen.
“Agne?” I said. “My name is Nicolaos. This is my wife, Diotima.”
Agne looked at me with uncomprehending eyes.
Diotima greeted Agne as she might a senior priestess. She took over the conversation. “Lady Agne, we would like to ask you about your son.”
Agne brightened. “My son!”
“Yes.”
“My son was in the Great Dionysia.”
“Yes, we know,” Diotima said patiently. “We’d like to ask about what happened after.”
Out of sight of her owner, the slave girl was jumping from one foot to the other in anxiety.
“We came home,” Agne said. She sounded sad.
“But your son returned to Athens,” Diotima said.
“Did he?” Agne asked, as if this was news. She suddenly sat up and smiled. On her ancient, ravaged face the effect was disturbingly skull-like. “I must have forgotten. Did he send you?” she asked, excited. “Is my son coming home?”
“Is there a reason why he might not?” Diotima countered. “Is there something that keeps him away?”
Agne was confused. “I … I don’t think I can remember,” she said. Agne looked to the slave girl, who turned away her head.
Diotima said, “What we want to know, Agne, is whether anything happened here in Rhamnus? Anything that might not reflect well on Lakon?”
Agne groaned. “No, that was a mistake. He didn’t mean it.”
“Mean what?” Diotima asked.
“There was so much blood.”
She began to cry.
“Agne, about your son—”
A sudden change came over Agne. She looked blankly at Diotima. “Who?” she asked.
Diotima tried for a long time, but it was no use. Agne had forgotten that she’d ever had a son. The pressure of the questioning had driven her back into whatever world she inhabited in her mind.
We had come on a fool’s errand. This poor old lady’s wits were completely addled. Even
if she told us something that seemed to make sense, we could never trust it.
I was angry, deeply angry, with Lakon, for allowing his mother to live in such squalor. It was none of my business, but I intended to tear strips off him when I returned to Athens. I would shame Lakon in public if I had to, until he took proper care of his parent.
SO MUCH EFFORT, so much travel, and it had all been for nothing. I wondered how I was going to explain this to Pericles.
“What’s your name?” Diotima asked the slave girl, after we had taken our leave of Agne. We spoke in the downstairs room. The girl hadn’t offered us refreshments. We understood why.
“Lysine,” she said.
“You look after this place all on your own?”
“Yes.”
That was why everywhere was neat and tidy, up to the point that she could reach.
“Aren’t you tempted to run away?” I asked.
I shouldn’t have said that to a slave, but it was patently obvious that Lysine could walk any time she wanted.
Lysine looked horrified. “And leave Agne to die? I couldn’t do that. Besides, I never want to leave here.”
I found that hard to believe. This was the most squalid farm I had ever seen.
I said, “What could be worse than looking after a demented old lady on your own?”
“My father sold me to a brothel when I was a child.”
“Oh.”
Lysine shrugged. “He needed the money. A few years later I ran away. The owner caught me and beat me black and blue. When I was healed I tried again. The owner chased me to this place. I was hiding in the barn when he found me. He swore he was going to kill me. Then this crazy old lady with a broom appeared and threatened him. It was Agne. She wouldn’t let him take me. She hit him with the broom until he gave in. She paid him coins, and he went away.”
“That was good of her.”
Lysine shrugged again. “She was old even then. I think she realized that soon she’d need someone to look after her. I didn’t mind.”
“This is outrageous,” I said. “I promise you, Lysine. I’ll make Lakon shoulder his share of the responsibility for Agne if it’s the last thing I do.”
“That’s impossible,” Lysine said softly.
“Why?”
“Shh! I can’t tell you here.” Lysine looked about. “I’ll show you.”
Lysine led us outside. She walked past the barn, going out the back. Lysine walked through the backyard, past the rotted posts that had once held up a fence railing. She took us another hundred paces, to a low hill that overlooked the sea far away.
Sculpted stones jutted out from the ground. On each was engraved a picture and some words. Lysine pushed away the weeds to reveal the closest one.
“Here it is,” she said. “This is the grave of Lakon.”
SCENE 29
ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS
“SOMETIMES SHE THINKS he’s still alive,” Lysine said. “In her lucid moments she knows he isn’t. She’s happiest when her mind is gone.”
We sat upon the large stones that were scattered amongst the weeds of the field. It was uncomfortable, but Lysine insisted we talk far from the farmhouse.
“How did Lakon die?” Diotima asked.
I could tell from her tone of voice that Diotima had as much trouble believing this as I did. Yet there was no doubt about it, we had seen a funeral stele engraved with the name Lakon. Beside it was the gravestone of his father. This was the family plot, overgrown with weeds. There was even a bush growing out that must have been there for years.
“It happened long before I got here,” Lysine said. “Agne doesn’t like to talk about it. They tell me it was after Lakon died that she lost her mind. But everyone else in Rhamnus, they talk about it all the time. And—this is the terrible thing—they say that Lakon killed his own father with an axe. They say he slit his own throat.”
There was only one problem with Lysine’s statement. Lakon was alive and well in Athens.
“Are you sure he died?” I asked.
Lysine looked at me as if I’d asked a stupid question. “Didn’t I just say the tragedy was before I arrived? This happened decades ago. I don’t even know if I was born then.”
I had to concede that was a fair point.
Lysine said, “Look, if you want to know what happened you’ll have to ask someone who was there. Ask any of the old men. Ask Patro.”
“Are there any other men in the family?” Diotima asked. She was still searching for a way out of this paradox.
“None.” She waved her arms to encompass the entire property. “Look at this place. Does it look like there’s been a man here for decades?”
Diotima and I both shook our heads.
Lysine said, “One day there was Agne, her husband, and her son. The next day the son killed the father and then suicided.”
“You’re the true mistress here, aren’t you?” Diotima said.
“No,” Lysine said firmly. “That is Agne. I merely help her.”
“What will you do?” Diotima asked gently.
“I’ll look after her until she dies,” Lysine said. “The old men from these parts bring us food. It’s not much, but we get by. I have to grind up Agne’s food and feed it to her. But we get by.”
“And then?”
“I don’t know.” She looked about her, worried. “Last year Agne said I’m to be free, not a slave. She went to the local archon and declared it and everything. The archon said yes. Agne said to the archon that when she dies I’m to have her farm. I never want to leave here. But I don’t know anything about farms. Maybe some man who wants a farm will marry me,” she said. “We could grow food and maybe even have animals and we wouldn’t have to be hungry.”
Any man who married this girl would get something more valuable than a farm. I hoped for her sake that she could find a good man who wouldn’t misuse her.
“There’s the rest of the world,” Diotima said. She pointed to the sea beyond Rhamnus, to the island of Eboea on the other side, clearly visible.
Lysine shivered. “No. It’s terrible out there. Terrible.”
WE THANKED LYSINE profusely. She had given us more than we had any right to expect. We declined the offer to say farewell to Agne; it was too uncomfortable, knowing what we did.
We returned to the agora at Rhamnus as fast as we could. Patro and his friends were exactly where we’d left them. I had the impression they never moved.
I said, “Patro? You were right, what happened at Agne’s farm was a terrible tragedy.”
Patro smacked his lips. “That it was.”
“What happened, exactly? May I ask?” I could afford to put it nicely. If Patro didn’t tell me, someone else would.
Patro was silent for a long time before he answered. “It was that Dionysia that did for them. They went there for a holiday. They wanted to show their son some city culture, do you see? Young Lakon got chosen for a chorus and when they returned to Rhamnus they were full of it. Proud parents, you know?”
We nodded.
“Young Lakon never forgot. He talked all the time about how when he was older he’d return to Athens and be an actor. His dad let him talk. That was his big mistake.” Patro paused, remembering. “Ten years later Lakon wasn’t a boy any longer. He was a young man who declared he was off to Athens to be an actor. His dad said no. Who’d look after the farm if Lakon didn’t? Acting was all very well for boys, but it was no job for a proper man.” Patro spread his hands, as if in apology. “Well, the father had the right of it, didn’t he? But he shouldn’t have let Lakon grow with such an obsession, you know?”
“I know.”
I’d had my own problems with a father who didn’t like my choice of profession. But I’d been lucky, my father was a reasonable man.
“Did Lakon run away?” Diotima asked.
I already knew the answer to that. I shook my head. “It wouldn’t do him any good. The father could go to Athens and drag his son home. The courts would support
the father. No, Diotima, while his father lived, Lakon was a legal child …” My voice trailed off as I realized the implications of what I’d said. “Oh no.”
Patro nodded. “That’s what happened. I reckon in a fit of madness Lakon decided to become his own master. He took an axe to his dad, in their own house. A single blow to the chest. I saw it. The axe went deep. Only the Gods know how much hatred there must have been in that boy. He must have come to his senses then, realized the enormity of what he’d done. I heard tell from the slaves who saw it. He walked outside, and the next thing they hear is a gurgling scream. When they went out, Lakon had sliced his own throat.”
“Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad,” Diotima whispered.
“You got the right of it, young lady.”
Agne had seen this happen. No wonder her wits were gone.
Patro wiped away a tear. I carefully didn’t notice that he was crying. Patro said, “That Dionysia destroyed their lives.”
I said, “Patro, I know this is going to sound strange, but is there any chance that the man you buried wasn’t Lakon?”
Patro did me the honor of not telling me I was crazy. Instead, he shook his head. “I knew Lakon, boy and man. It was me who put the torch to the funeral pyre. I saw them lying side by side. Him and his dad. It was Lakon I torched. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
SCENE 30
THE LAKON IDENTITY
“IF LAKON IS dead, then who is the man back in Athens?” Diotima said.
It was a good question. But I had no answer for my wife.
We spent the entire trip home talking about it. In the end we could come to only one conclusion.
From Salaminia we went straight to the home of Lakon. I banged on the door, hard. When the slave opened it, I pushed my way in. Lakon was sitting in his courtyard. I stopped in front of him. Diotima stood behind me with arms crossed and looking angry.
Lakon stared up in surprise. I said, “I’m going to tell you a story. You don’t have to confirm or deny it. Frankly, I don’t care what you say.”
Lakon put down the scroll he was reading. “I’m listening, and I’m not admitting to anything.”