by John Gardner
“Like brothers.”
“Good. I’m so happy for you.”
Another long silence. Dorkis came in from his workroom and, when he saw me, smiled, holding out his arms. “Agathon!” The lamplight played over his shoulders and head as if he’d brought it with him.
“You’ve been working late again,” I said. “You’ll ruin your goddamn eyes.”
“You’re right” He laughed and rubbed his hands like an innkeeper. “It’s time for wine.—Iona?”
She nodded, and he ran in place, the way athletes do before a meet, showing his eagerness to serve, then went, bent over like a sprinter, to the next room for wine and cups. When he came back, swooping in with the cups all in one hand, the pitcher in the other, he poured wine for each of us—his own puissant, meticulously cured honey brew—then sat down on the couch with his cup, beaming. He talked’ of Lykourgos’s latest scheme, the brotherhoods. From now on each table at the eating halls would be made up of a company of “brothers,” four older men, six younger men, chosen by the vote of the whole company. The old men would train the young men’s wits, teaching them sententious discourse and seemly humor. A bad joke would be punished by a bite on the thumb.
We laughed, all three of us, but Dorkis was looking above our heads, like a contestant assessing a vault while he jokes with admirers. The Spartans were getting to him more and more. It was not exactly that they shook his calm, you would have said, but they were there; increasingly there, like omens.
“All this will pass,” I said.
He smiled. “In five hundred years.”
“Nonsense,” Iona said “Don’t be pessimistic!”
“Ah well,” he said, and smiled again. He fell silent.
“It’s a great adventure, Solon used to say,” I said. He looked vague, so I added: “Sparta. Who would have thought human nature would let it get so far?”
“We overestimate human nature,” he said. “I think about it sometimes, in horror.” He smiled. Horror, like everything else, he had learned to duck, shrug off, accept in peace. “You get in the habit of thinking you do things for certain reasons, but you don’t. All you can do is act somehow, and pray.”
“You think the gods hear you?” I asked him, noncommittal.
He grinned again. “Somebody has to be listening!”
“But suppose they’re not” Iona said, curiously feisty.
He gave a laugh and stretched out his hand toward her, palm up, his sharp black eyes on her face. “Are you ready to take life on without them?”
She said nothing—pouting, it seemed to me.
I looked at the ceiling, philosophical, maybe a trifle woozy from the wine. “But what do the gods do exactly, Dorkis?”
He thought. “Did you ever do anything in your life that wasn’t by impulse?” he asked.
I frowned, troubled by where he was going to lead me. “Never,” I said. Thinking: Don’t say it, Dorkis. For God’s sake! Solon’s kind of indignity I could take.
“And where do you think impulses come from?” he asked, gently triumphant. His absolute and simple faith filled the room like autumn light, like a sea breeze. Even when his ideas were crazy, the man had sophrosyne, as they used to call it in the old days. There are men in this world—wizards, witches, people like Lykourgos—who spread anger, or doubt, or self- pity, or the cold stink of cynicism, wherever they walk: the sky darkens over their heads, the grass withers under their feet, and, downwind of them, ships perish at sea. And then there are men, here and there, like Dorkis. God only knows what to make of them. Their ideas are ludicrous, when you look at them. Peasant ideas. Childlike. But what tranquility!
“That’s very interesting,” I said, resisting his mysterious effect on me—from guilt, maybe; my lust for his wife—and I pretended to think about it. “Do bad impulses come from the gods, or just good ones?”
He wasn’t put off. Benevolent. “There’s a sense in which there are many many gods,” he said, “and they’re not all in agreement. But what we call good, with our little minds…” His eyes snapped away. “There’s a sense in which nothing is evil,” he said, calm as spring. “To certain people, everything that happens in the world is holy.”
“Nonsense,” Iona said. It was her favorite word. “Is slavery holy? Is Lykourgos?”
He shrugged and looked down, unable to argue with her, but not because he was beaten.
“It’s not as easy as you think, Iona,” I said. “Dorkis could be right. Suffering’s bad, but sometimes the effects of suffering…” Why did I say that? Guilt again? Defense of his thought because his wife’s smile filled my mind from wall to wall?
“That’s dumb,” she said. “Tell me that after you’ve ended people’s suffering. Then I’ll believe you.” She drained her cup and held it out to Dorkis. He filled it for her. I too took more, though I shouldn’t. She said, “What people like us need in Sparta is men. All we get is pious philosophers. If you were men you’d act first and then make up theories.”
“You sound like Lykourgos,” I said.
“But it’s true.” She was petulant. In fact angry. She even looked like Lykourgos now.
“Maybe,” Dorkis said. “But dead men don’t make up theories.” He grinned, palms up in a helpless gesture, as if accepting human impotence along with the gods’ other gifts.
“Better a living fool than a dead philosopher,” I said. A dullard’s observation, needless to say. Did I sound ironic, shifting loyalties?
She ignored me. “It is practical. We could overthrow them. You personally, Dorkis. We control all the food, all the clothes, all the work—everything that supports their life—and you have all the contacts.”
And why, I wondered, was she suddenly so full of revolution? It was a thing she hadn’t mentioned for a long time. Did his calm force her to thoughtless opposition? Because of me? Because of guilt?
His eyes widened and he laughed. “Iona, you’re crazy!”
It hit me that this was the first time she’d mentioned her theory to Dorkis. I wished she hadn’t.
“Do you realize what would happen to us if we failed?” he said. “You’re simply crazy.” His eyes were full of light a husband’s pleasure in the girlish foolishness of a now more than ever precious wife. Yes, she could work men. He would have second thoughts on the scheme. Inevitable as sunset.
“It’s true,” I said. “Crazy as a loon. A pity.”
She said nothing. We drank. It was late now. I should have left long ago. At last Dorkis got up, grinned, and announced he was going to bed.
“I’ll be along,” Iona said.
I sat still, rubbing my sore leg and casting about for reasons to go or stay. He waved and left us.
We both sat in silence for a long time after that. At last she rolled up the scroll and her copy and tossed them up onto the couch. She lay on her side with her head on her hand and looked at me. Nothing moved but the lamp flame, flitting in and out through the wall paintings, making the stiff leaves and artificial flowers of Iona’s decorations quiver and stir as if alive. No sound came in from the street. “I never knew two weeks could be so long,” she said. “Was it long for you?”
“I kept busy, helping Lykourgos.”
She laughed. A fine laugh like a girl’s. “I really believe it.”
I put my hand on hers and she smiled, shaking her head as if in disbelief. “You dear, good man,” she said.
“Not necessarily good,” I said.
“Everything’s good—holy, in fact. I just learned.”
“And you believe it?”
She lay back and looked at the ceiling. “It’s sad to find that a relationship you thought was very close and beautiful is not what you…imagined. I ached a lot, this last two weeks, and Dorkis never had an inkling. I thought we always knew each other’s feelings.” She was aching now. We’d switched again: I the father, she the little girl.
“He knew, all right,” I said.
She shook her head.
“What could he have done? Of course
he knew!”
“No.” There were tears in her eyes, and I was startled. She loved him more than I’d admitted to myself, and I was jealous.
“So he missed it,” I said. “So he’s only another damn human.”
She reached up to touch my face and then, as if by impulse, drew me down to her, kissing me. “I know.”
I’d had too much wine. I could hardly focus her face. Even so, she was beautiful—as beautiful, in her separate way, as Tuka was. I had some vague thought about Dorkis’s conflicting gods, but I was too foggy to concentrate. I’d stayed too late, yes. There was no possibility now of hiding the visit from Tuka. I no longer cared. It was impossible to serve all the gods. Ride it out like a bird. I remembered the strange madness that had come over Tuka, the rigidity of every muscle, and I was grieved, hopeless. But Iona’s mouth tasted of wine, and the flesh of her hip under my fingertips was soft, naked under the loose robe.
“It’s strange that I can do this to Dorkis,” I said, brushing my lips across her cheek. “In theory, I’m an honorable man.”
“You don’t understand him,” she said very softly. She said nothing after that for a long time. Then, wistfully, “Do you think he’s lying awake, full of jealousy, suffering?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Would you, in his place?” A whisper.
“No,” I said, but doubtfully. Then: “Maybe.”
“Tuka would,” she said. She kissed my cheek. “You’re her life. I wonder if you can call it love at all, what she feels for you.”
“I don’t know.” I tried to think. Lying in her arms was like lying half asleep and half awake in the bottom of a big, safe boat. Her low, soft voice was as comforting as the click of oars or the thud of small waves against the hull, quiet as a heartbeat. It was not just the wine, this sensation of endless peaceful floating, fathoms of dark sea yawning below me, bottomless kingdom. I’d often felt the same with Tuka, the strange peace of the child in its first calm sea, or the peace of the grave. Could this, more than what Tuka felt, be called love? But I had never been afraid of Iona. I had been startled, now and then, by her temper, but I had never been, even for an instant, afraid of her. Now, because I had stayed too long, had come to Iona and abandoned hope, so that I was no longer afraid of Tuka’s wrath—wearily indifferent—I saw the fear I had felt before clearly. I’ve been afraid of my wife, I thought, surprised. And was Tuka also afraid of me? Maybe love, like the Just Life, was a mythological beast. But for all my questions, I floated on, serene. Despite her deeper love for her husband, I could love Iona’s gentleness and goodness. I was satisfied. I lay almost over her, her bosom my pillow. When I started to slide my hand under the robe to her breast she touched my hand lightly.
“I’m sorry, that was stupid,” I said.
She was silent, not disapproving, but she had decided, and she was right I felt like an ikon thief.
I kissed her one last time, long and gentle, then got up. Without speaking, I picked up my crutch and went to the door. My leg was throbbing, but I observed the fact indifferently. My own pain was the least of my troubles. Once, when I was younger, playing in the yard with a friend’s small child, I swung the child around and around, holding onto his feet. The child laughed, frightened and joyful, but I realized after I’d set him down that, much closer than I’d realized, there was a tree. If the child’s head had struck it, I’d have killed him. I remembered it now. To live at all is to be a threat.
She came to the door and took me in her arms and kissed me again. “I love you, Agathon.”
“I know.”
I walked home. It was a long way. When I arrived, there were friends there, childhood friends of Tuka’s, visiting from Athens for three or four days. They were all high on wine, hardly aware of what time it was, and whatever lie I made up to explain my lateness they accepted casually. We talked—Tuka, the friends, and I—until sunrise. Just like old times.
Three days later, Tuka learned that a year or so after our marriage I’d slept with a girl friend of hers, named Klytia. It was nothing, a meaningless night of “good friendship,” as we say in Athens. But Tuka was outraged, as much at the cruelly false friend as at me. She came into the room where I was talking with Lykourgos and three of his ephors and said, “Agathon, I need to talk with you. Now.”
I excused myself and we went to our room. She closed the door and told me what she’d learned. She was white. “How could you?” she hissed.
The hopelessness came back, the incredible weariness. “Nonsense, Tuka. It was years ago.”
“‘Nonsense,’” she mimicked. “That’s her word. Find your own!”
“I have no words of my own. Do you?”
“How could you?” she said again, and began to cry. “Every friend I ever had is another piece of ass to you. ‘Love,’ you say! You don’t know the meaning of the word!”
“That’s true. If you’re finished—”
“I’m not! Explain it to me! Explain how your fancy metaphysics teaches you to screw every goddamned whore that comes after you. Explain it!”
“They’re not whores. They don’t come after me. If you’ll quit ranting and think a minute—”
“Ranting!” She seized the pitcher by the bed and hurled it.
I let it hit. It bounced off my shoulder and smashed. “I’ll talk with you when you’re calm,” I said. I went to the door, went out, and closed it behind me. When I returned to the room where Lykourgos and the others sat, they fell silent a moment, glancing up. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing serious.”
We talked. I teased Lykourgos a little more sharply than usual, but otherwise it was as if, in truth, nothing had happened. When I went back to our room, perhaps two hours later, Tuka was sitting motionless on the bed, staring at the wall I spoke to her. She didn’t move. I touched her. No response. It struck me that maybe she’d taken some poison. I couldn’t believe it, and I knew that it was more likely that this was the end of the thing I’d seen the start of several times before, the odd rigidity. But I was scared. “Tuka, are you all right?” I asked. No response. I pushed at her shoulder. She fell backward onto the bed. I straightened out her legs and looked at her, trying to think. I was convinced now that she’d taken poison. She lay still as a corpse, staring at the ceiling, and even when I slapped her face hard there was no response. A machine, I thought. Some muscle quits, the heart, say, and the rest of the muscles go limp, including the eyes. I knew I should call a doctor—the thing was beyond my knowledge of medicine—but I was afraid. “Tuka!” I said. “Come back! Wake up!” I tugged at her shoulders, shaking her. Nothing. I tried her pulse. It was faster than my own, but I couldn’t remember what that meant “Tuka, Tuka, Tuka,” I whispered. But her mind was far away, sealed up like a grave. She farted, or defecated—I couldn’t tell which and was afraid to look—but that too brought nothing human to her face. At last with the same weary hopelessness I’d felt before, when I abandoned her, I sent a servant for a doctor. He came in half an hour—a lean, middle-aged, bearded man with a long pointed nose—and examined her without speaking. “Shock,” he said at last. He bled her and forced a liquid down her throat. When he finished he turned his head to look at me, quizzical. “I’ve seen this in cases or rape. Was she raped?” “Not physically,” I said. He said she’d be like this for two days. He left.
Later, when the servant brought the children home from school, I took Kleon in to see her. He was ten, a thoughtful, moody child, and it was better that he see her than wonder.
“Is she dead?” he asked.
I shook my head. “She’s all right. She just can’t move right now. She’ll be herself in a day or so.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, watching me to see if it was all right.
“Touch her hand if you want,” I said. “She knows you’re here. She just can’t talk.”
It was true that she knew he was there. There were tears in her eyes. He touched her hand. “What’s wrong with her?” he asked.
/> I thought. “She’s unhappy. So unhappy she can’t move. She doesn’t believe I love her, though I do.”
“Will she know in a day or so, when she gets well?”
A logician, poor child. A philosopher. His life was going to be hell. “No,” I said. “Once you ask that question—does he love me?—you ask it forever.”
He patted her hand, full of sadness. I believe he understood.
I stayed with her, watching for a sign. When I woke up in the morning, two days later, she had turned her face toward me and was looking at me. When I realized what it meant, I kissed her. She returned the kiss, gentle, full of sorrow.
“I do know you love me,” she said. “But I have to go. I’ll go back to Athens, with the children.”
“Don’t talk,” I said. “Later.”
She was quiet for a while, and I lay with my cheek on her shoulder. At last she said, “No one should have as much power over another person as you have over me. There’s nothing I can do to you. If I sleep with another man, it doesn’t bother you. If I ever tried to fight you, you’d break my neck. I’m helpless. You have no feelings.”
“I do,” I said.
She rolled her head back and forth on the pillow. “No. I’m not criticizing. It’s just a fact. There’s nothing I can do to hurt you the way you hurt me. It’s not fair.”
“Don’t think about it,” I said. I kissed her shoulder. “Go to sleep.”
She did. She slept until late afternoon, and when she awakened she looked as if she hadn’t slept in days. She looked old. “Agathon,” she said, “I can’t stand leaving you.”
“Then don’t.”
“I have to. But not Athens.”
“Whatever you say.”
“You have to help me. I’m too tired to think. Where should we go?”
I shook my head. “Why should I help you do what I don’t want you to do? Work it out yourself.”
She stayed that night, putting it off until tomorrow, and I made love to her. The next morning I said, “Put it off for a week. If it’s serious it will still be serious a week from now.”
She looked frightened. “You know what will happen. I’ll stay.”