The Orpheus Descent

by Tom Harper

  Nobody had seen Agathon since he left a month ago. At least they didn’t seem to think he’d committed any crime. I came home after lunch, napped, and then dressed for dinner. The first guests arrived just before sunset.

  In Athens, the chief business of a dinner party is drinking. The meal is simply a foundation to give the evening some ballast. In Italy, they take the eating much more seriously. We had songbirds and gamebirds, five kinds of fish and three of eel, peppers stuffed with raisins and sweet almond cakes baked in the shape of the goddess. Well before the others finished, my stomach had bloated like a corpse. Euphemus, two couches away and in his element, couldn’t resist teasing me.

  ‘Not hungry?’

  ‘It’s too much.’

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered coming to Italy, if you’re just going to leave all your food on the table.’

  The men around us laughed. The man sharing my couch, a merchant, reached around and jabbed me in the ribs.

  ‘You Athenians need feeding up.’

  He was fat as an ass, and put away every plate that came near him. I faked a smile and replied to Euphemus.

  ‘Do you have to embarrass yourself, showing our hosts how greedy you are?’

  ‘I’m not greedy: you’re just a prig.’

  ‘You eat like a Pythagorean,’ the merchant told me. Hilarity ensued.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Euphemus. ‘He’s already obsessed with triangles.’

  Dimos found a wedge of bread and offered it to me. ‘Perhaps this would be more to your taste.’

  ‘Just don’t serve him lentils.’

  ‘If he farts too much it’ll break his concentration.’

  ‘He’ll come back as a flea.’

  I hated them, but Euphemus most of all. I lay on my couch, trapped by the man in front of me, and soaked up the insults. Looking back, I don’t suppose they wanted to be cruel. They expected me to join in. They kept tossing stones because they thought I’d find a stick and hit them back. That was what passed for entertainment in their lives.

  Eventually, they got bored and moved on to the drinking. Slaves came and cleared the tables, then washed our hands and feet and crowned us with wreathes of myrtle and rose. We offered libations, sang a hymn to the goddess, and performed the usual ceremonies. I mumbled along as best I could, unfamiliar prayers to unfamiliar gods. In Athens, we honour Athena and Zeus: cold wisdom, hard power. In Italy, they prefer Demeter and her daughter: ripe, soft and susceptible. Their mysteries yield to the touch like the petals of a flower, deeper and deeper until you lose yourself in the darkness.

  The others elected Dimos as symposiarch, though they grumbled when he suggested mixing the drink at three parts of water to one of wine.

  ‘Haven’t you got the stamina?’

  ‘Are you in such a bad way after yesterday’s session?’

  ‘He’s counting his pennies, the old miser.’

  Dimos waved them down with bad humour, and ordered the slaves to mix the wine at two to one. The cup they poured it in was a two-handled krater, broad-rimmed and deep.

  ‘Bigger than Nestor’s cup,’ the merchant cackled. I wondered if Homer was his way of trying to make nice to me. I had a different tag in mind.

  Unwelcome revellers, whose lawless joy

  Pains the sage ear, and hurts the sober eye.

  Dimos slapped the side of his couch for silence. ‘As Homer says, “Music and dancing crown the banquet.” Shall we have some entertainment?’

  ‘I’ve heard Diotima may grace us with her presence tonight,’ said the merchant in my ear.

  Cheers, catcalls and the thud of heels drumming on the couches. Everyone stared at the door.

  The sun had set by now, but the heat in the room kept growing. Every man there was stripped to the waist. The lamps shone on their smooth-oiled chests, on fat and muscle; on the polished tables, on the olives and chickpeas that glistened in their dishes. The perfume the slaves had splashed on us made the air almost too sweet to breathe. I could feel something about to snap.

  A slave opened the door. Four dancers came in: three young women and a boy of about fifteen. The boy wore a loincloth; the girls slightly less. A flute player followed them in and took a stool in the corner.

  The guests watched appreciatively as the dancers went through their routine, a little pageant meant to mimic the judgement of Paris. The three girls tugged the boy this way and that, trying to persuade him, while the flute music accelerated to a frenzy. By the time it was finished, all four of them had lost their clothes. Hera and Athena retreated to the sidelines, while Paris and Aphrodite engaged in an orgy of eye-popping gymnastics.

  The merchant who was sharing my couch nudged me. His buttocks pressed against my groin.

  ‘I bet you don’t get a show like this in Athens.’

  ‘In Athens, we usually entertain ourselves with conversation.’

  Euphemus disagreed. ‘Maybe at the parties you go to. I once saw—’

  But Dimos had heard me as well. ‘I’m sure we wouldn’t want my little brother to go back to Athens thinking Thurii was any less civilised than Athens.’ He snapped his fingers. The dancers gathered their clothes and left the room.

  ‘What should we discuss?’

  A thin man three couches to my left – an aspiring playwright, I think – said, ‘All this music and beauty makes me think of love.’

  ‘So we see.’ This from the doctor, an older man with bushy eyebrows and thick white fleece covering his chest like a ram. He pointed to the bulge under the playwright’s tunic. ‘It obviously stimulates you.’

  Before the playwright could reply, there was a knocking at the door of the house, as if some revellers had decided to crash the party. Dimos told the slaves to go and see who it was.

  ‘If it’s friends of ours, invite them in. If not, say they’ve missed the drinking and we’ve gone to bed.’

  The laughter and ribbing subsided as we all listened to see who it was.

  A breath of cool air washed in. A woman entered, barefoot, wrapped in a long cloak and carrying a double-barrel flute, an aulos. A sigh went through the men in the room.

  Diotima.

  I won’t try to describe her. I could pile up words like bricks, but they’d be a wall, not a window. I could try chiselling her out of adjectives, but the best they’d give you is a statue – and that would be worse than saying nothing, for Diotima was more alive than anyone I’ve ever known. Like a reflection in water or on polished stone, the image you saw was never the same. Unless, if you watched so long that you no longer noticed the movement, you might eventually catch sight of the deep stillness at her core.

  She shrugged off the cloak and gave it to a slave. Underneath, her dress was thin and clear as moonlight, trimmed with silver thread. It hid nothing.

  I felt the mood change – like being among wolves when a lamb wanders into the cave.

  ‘You’re late,’ said Dimos.

  ‘I was with someone else.’

  She didn’t belong in that fleshy, sweaty room. In fact, it was hard to think where she could belong, except possibly in a temple precinct, where she might have kept company with the goddess. Any other woman would have shrunk under the scrutiny of those men. Diotima was cool and adamant.

  She took the flute out of its wrapping. ‘Shall I play?’

  The men agreed.

  The moment she put the reed to her lips, the room changed. The world changed. I could feel the wine coupling with the blood in my veins; I believed Pythagoras, when he said music is the language of the universe. But at the same time, I knew he hadn’t got it right. This wasn’t music in the key of reason, a mathematical construct laid out like a grid of streets. This was the music that maenads play on the mountains in spring; music that makes you crave warm flesh and oblivion; music that Orpheus might have used to play his way out of the underworld.

  The last note died away. Diotima sat on the edge of Dimos’ couch, eyes closed, practically naked yet utterly untouchable.

 
A gust of air hissed through the room as we remembered to breathe again.

  ‘Is there anything better than getting drunk to the sound of the flute?’ the playwright rhapsodised.

  Diotima eyed him like a sphinx. ‘Be careful. It’s a dangerous pastime.’

  ‘How?’ I asked. It wasn’t a considered question. I just wanted her to notice me.

  She turned her eyes on me and I trembled. The music’s enchantment still echoed in her gaze.

  ‘Flutes have magic. Drop your guard, and they can bewitch you almost without your noticing. Remember the Sybarite horses?’

  ‘No.’

  She looked surprised. ‘I heard you were a Pythagorean.’

  Where did she hear that? ‘I’m not.’

  ‘When the Crotonians came to attack Sybaris, they knew the biggest danger was the Sybarite cavalry, so they put their flute-players in the front row. They played, and the Sybarite horses were so enchanted by the music they abandoned their riders and trotted across the battlefield to join the Crotonians. Without their horses, the Sybarites were doomed. That’s a true story,’ she added with quiet authority, as if she’d witnessed it herself.

  ‘A warning not to get carried away.’ Dimos clapped his hands as if to break a spell. A look passed between him and Diotima. ‘Before you arrived, my dear, we were about to move onto the speeches in honour of our Athenian guests.’

  She slipped onto his couch and leaned against him. He stroked her hair.

  ‘What’s the topic?’

  ‘Love.’

  The cup had come around to me. I drank deeply. Thasian wine – almost the best. Wasted on me.

  Diotima hugged her arms under her chest. ‘I’m waiting.’

  ‘We’ll let the Athenians start us off, show us how it’s done.’ He nodded to Euphemus. ‘You must have something clever to say about love.’

  ‘Euphemus has something clever to say about everything,’ I pointed out.

  Euphemus propped himself up on his elbow and took a sip from the cup.

  ‘To understand love, you have to understand human nature. And to grasp that, we have to go right back to the dawn of time.’

  Was it my imagination, or did he keep staring at Diotima’s breasts?

  ‘In the beginning, primeval man was round. His back and sides made a sphere, and he had four hands and four feet, one head with two faces, looking opposite ways but identical; and four ears, eyes and all the rest.’

  ‘What about his private parts?’ asked the doctor – inevitably.

  ‘He had both, male and female. And he could walk upright like we do, backwards or forwards, and when he wanted to run fast he could roll over and over at a great pace, spinning on all those hands and feet like a gymnast. And they were so strong, these early men, that they planned to scale heaven and overthrow the gods.’

  ‘Does this have anything to do with love?’

  ‘Listen and see.’ Euphemus straightened the wreath on his head. ‘Zeus devised a plan: he cut them in two, just as you might split an egg with a hair. After the division, each part longed for his other half, hugging each other in hopes they could grow back into one. And that’s the ancient desire we all have, to reunite our original natures. We’re always looking for our other half: without them, we’re like a flat fish, or a figure on a frieze which is only half carved. And this intense pursuit of wholeness, even though we only dimly understand it, is what we call love; and when we find our other half we want to melt into them, to live every minute together until even death can’t divide us.’

  I would have liked his speech, if I’d trusted him. I kept waiting for the punchline. But he finished with a slight bow, and a quick glance at Diotima. She gave no sign of having heard a word.

  There were other speeches, though all I remember from them is looking at Diotima as often as I dared. Both times the cup came around, I drank more than I should.

  When it came to the merchant’s turn, he was seized with a fit of hiccups from overeating and couldn’t speak.

  ‘Hold your breath.’

  ‘Try sneezing.’

  ‘Gargle.’

  ‘He can’t get a word out. Let Pythagoras take his turn.’

  By Pythagoras, of course, they meant me. I’ve never had a gift for speaking. Part of me would happily have stayed in the corner, hiding behind the merchant, who was holding his nose while hanging off the couch trying to drink a cup of water upside down. But I was tired of listening to the sound of their voices – the sort of men who’d held the stage ever since they got rid of Socrates. And I had something to say.

  ‘I don’t know much about love,’ I said. ‘Certainly nothing I can put into words. You can make jokes about it, or discuss its effects and the crazy things it makes men and women do. You can describe the physical act.’

  Lewd cheers, and shouts of ‘Do, do.’

  ‘But what it really is, I couldn’t tell you, any more than I can tell you what fire or light or truth really are.’

  ‘Don’t get philosophical,’ said Dimos. ‘We’re talking about love.’

  Diotima took an almond from the bowl and popped it in Dimos’ mouth. ‘Isn’t love a sort of wisdom?’

  Dimos squeezed her breast. ‘In my house, it’s a technical subject.’

  More laughter. Diotima let his hand rest there a moment, then pirouetted out and slid to the floor, leaning against the foot of the couch. Dimos’ arm twitched.

  The cup had come around again. I took it by both handles and drank deeply. The wine was heavy as lead. I didn’t notice the water.

  On my right, the merchant started trying to say his piece, but Dimos cut him off, pointing at me.

  ‘Let him finish.’

  ‘Let Pythagoras have his say,’ the others chorused. ‘Otherwise he’ll make a stink.’

  I could have ridden it out until they got bored. But as I tried to ignore them, I noticed Diotima watching me from the floor, a faint smile parting her lips. Not sympathetic, certainly not inviting, but … curious.

  I sat up, and raised a hand until they had no choice but to pay me attention.

  ‘I’m going to talk about the only man I ever loved.’ Inevitable, obvious jokes. ‘His name was Socrates.’

  Suddenly, I was a celebrity.

  ‘Did you know him?’

  ‘The Socrates?’

  ‘Were you his lover?’

  ‘Is it true he corrupted little boys?’

  I sat up on the couch, dangling my legs over the edge. I could feel them watching me, Diotima most of all, but that was nothing more than background noise, like waves crashing on a beach. I stared into the flame flickering from the lamp-spout, fixing on the clearest part, until I was back in the agora, twenty years younger. He stood among the placards and handbills posted on the Heroes’ Memorial, looking like a man who’d lost his way. Old, even then, but with an intense playfulness, like a child.

  ‘It’s not easy to describe Socrates. Most men, you describe them by comparing them, either to someone you know, or to characters from literature or history. Socrates was unlike anyone who is or ever has been.’

  I paused, working out an idea I’d had once before.

  ‘If I describe him, it’ll sound like a caricature. But it’s the truth.’

  ‘Just get on with it.’

  ‘In Athens, the shops sell little busts of Silenus the satyr, with pipes and flutes in his mouth. Do you have those here? On the outside they’re grotesque, all hair and squashed features, but there are hinges. Open them up, and inside there’s an image of the god.’

  Some of them seemed to know what I was talking about.

  ‘Socrates was like that satyr. The face the world saw was the carved head of Silenus. His nostrils flared, his eyes bulged, his hair grew wild. He had a snub nose, and fat lips like a donkey. He always went barefoot, so his feet were cracked and calloused. The best thing you could say about his clothes is that sometimes his wife washed them.

  ‘And the things he taught were the same. Outwardly, common to th
e point of being ridiculous. He didn’t show off his learning. He didn’t illustrate his points with ancient heroes and poetic quotations. They didn’t interest him. He dressed his arguments in the skin of the everyday: pack-asses and smiths and cobblers and tanners.’

  I heard a few chuckles around the room.

  ‘Ignorant people laughed at him. They didn’t understand – you had to open the door and look inside. And if you did, if you got close enough to open it, you’d see golden images of such fascinating beauty you couldn’t stop looking.’

  ‘He was a subversive rabble-rouser,’ said Dimos.

  ‘He was subversive,’ I agreed. ‘In the best, most dangerous way. He made me realise that I shouldn’t live the way I had done, feeding the expectations I thought other people had of me. Everything that society teaches you to respect, wealth and honour and power, he despised. He brought me to the point where I could hardly endure the life I was leading.’

  ‘You’re supposed to be talking about love,’ Dimos scolded me. ‘This sounds like hard going.’

  ‘No,’ said Diotima. ‘That’s exactly what love is.’

  ‘The more I heard him, the more I wanted him to speak. And when I finally got close enough to open him up, to see what he really meant, I would have done anything for him.’

  ‘Anything?’ In case I’d misunderstood the question, the playwright illustrated it by waggling his bottom in the air.

  ‘Were you there when he …?’ The Syracusan made an imaginary cup with his hand and mimed drinking, then tipped back his head and pretended to choke.

  Diotima frowned. I just stared, and imagined throttling him for real.

  ‘I was ill that day,’ I lied, with great effort.

  ‘I think it’s my turn,’ said the merchant. ‘Sneezing did the trick.’

  No one cared. At that moment, careless as a cat, Diotima uncurled herself from the foot of Dimos’ couch and stood.

  ‘Shall I tell you about love?’

  ‘Will you give a demonstration?’ the doctor asked.

  She fixed him with a mocking smile that would have stopped a Gorgon. ‘You couldn’t keep up.’

  The lamplight caught the golden skin of her face, her bare arms and the skin at her throat. A gold chain sparkled around her neck, dangling a gold pendant between her breasts. I was reminded of those moments in Homer when the goddess shrugs off her disguise and lets the hapless hero see who she really is. Her grey eyes looked at me, and I felt I’d turned to water.