The Wreckage of Agathon

by John Gardner

There was a stool beside the coffin. She motioned me to it. She herself never sat, apparently. She would have to stand to work at the high, makeshift desk, and anyway, she had some kind of demonic energy that gave her no chance to sit. She went around behind the coffin and leaned her elbows on it and again looked at me with her icy, drilling eyes. “We’re sending you away,” she said.

  I said nothing, waiting.

  “It’s not because you’re a nuisance,” she said, and again she freed from its chains, for an instant, the younger, softer smile. She said, “Agathon’s dead.”

  I started.

  “Sit still. He died this afternoon.”

  I cast about the room for some sign of him, and at last, though it wasn’t part of her plan, she said, “All right, this way.”

  I followed her to the dingy, pillared corner, once an altar niche, now a trash pile—torn canvas, old clothes, broken implements, worn-out sandals. She lifted a corner of the canvas, and Agathon’s dead face stared up at me. I bent down to close the eyes, but she touched my shoulder.

  “Plague,” she said. She dropped the canvas.

  “Then all of us—” I began. I felt nothing, yet, at his death. Only physical repulsion at the staring face.

  “Not necessarily,” she said, and gave a strange smile. “We talked, before he died. He says we’re to die in blood. It’s all very clear to him. The Spartans are pulling the army back home from the north, he says. Who knows if Seers really see?”

  “You should believe him,” I said.

  Again the strange smile. “I do.” Then: “In any case, the plague’s reached Sparta. One way or the other…”

  She showed no feeling—no fear, no anger, nothing. She touched my arm, gently for a half-cracked old witch, and guided me back to the stool. For a while she said nothing. Grieving? I wondered. When would I begin to grieve? She said, “We have something of his—and yours.” She handed me one of the parchment rolls from the coffin. It was the things we’d written in prison. I looked up, waiting.

  “I’ve read it,” she said. “Take it to his wife.”

  From hatred? I wondered. Was she sending the scroll to Tuka because it would hurt? Still no sign of feeling. Her face was dead.

  She said, “Have you any idea, Demodokos, how much of all this is pure fiction?” I must have looked flustered, because she said at once, “No matter, don’t think about it. One could do worse than become a caricature in a senseless, complicated lie.”

  “But it’s all so earnest,” I said. “He wrote as if he were driven.”

  “Am I the liar, then?” she asked, and smiled.

  I thought about it and felt a flash of anger. “I guess he really loved nobody but himself.”

  “Nonsense. He loved us all—and wanted us all. Even you, Peeker. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been driven to make us up.”

  She turned away and bent her head a little. Then, with no emotion in her gravelly voice, she said, “Take it. Tuka will want it.” And: “Go. Go to bed. When we’re ready to slip you out we’ll wake you.” Her right hand moved to the coffin; not for support, I had a feeling, though the fingers trembled. “Thank you for all you’ve done,” she said. “Good night.”

  I left with the scroll and closed the door behind me. After I’d lain down I began to cry, purposely and crossly, conscious of my consciousness of crying.

  A few hours before dawn we left. The blond girl was not one of the four who guided me down to the water and gave me to the boatman.

  33 Agathon (Last Entry):

  Sunlight, someone’s bed. I do not recognize the room.

  Someone told me, or perhaps I dreamed, a strange tale. Lightning struck Lykourgos’s crypt and split it end to end. Perhaps I saw it. The image, at any rate, is very clear. I am looking across a valley at a hill, a group of half-dead trees, a crypt, with lesser crypts below it, and above the door on this main crypt the name LYKOURGOS. It’s night, but the moonlight makes it almost like day. There’s a weird wind, not fierce but oddly charged, as though it were not wind at all but something alive and sentient, Time itself, perhaps. The crypt, placed exactly at the crest of the hill, is separated from everything around it by a low fence but also by something more, a severe, defiant dignity that the trees, the blowing grass, the lower crypts cannot come near. It commands the hill like a fort. But above it huge dark clouds are forming, piling up like mountains rising out of the sea to obliterate the sky, and the earth goes dark in sympathy until the trees, the grass, the fences, the hill, the sky are all one thing converging on the crypt. A sudden flash—a terrible three-pronged lightning fork—that turns the landscape white; then darkness and a shudder and a deafening crack as if not the crypt but the world itself were splitting. When my eyes adjust, the crypt lies still in the rain like the moonlit rib cage of a horse destroyed by fire.

  Whoever told me the story of the lightning believed that the gods had shown favor to Lykourgos. Favor? Blasting him to bits? Yet perhaps it’s so.

  Whoever told me cooled my forehead with her palm afterward.—Hers, yes. I remember that. I wanted to reach up and catch the hand, bring the stranger down to me, but all my body was inert. I could only reach up with thought, hungrily, laboring to identify the kind dark shadow above me. I strained to speak, but my mouth was as stiff as the door of a cell. Was it Tuka? Can that be possible? Yet it was, I think. It was my wife. The room grew darker. The stranger-wife bent closer, as if to whisper something in my ear, but I could hear nothing any more, couldn’t even feel the hand if it was still on my forehead. I strained every muscle of mind to seize and enclose her, own her. A searing anguish went through me; I lost consciousness. Hours later—there was sunlight in the room—I awakened, or else I dreamed I awakened, in a room filled with flowers.

  Dying. I understand my panic. No worse than that of a child poised on a diving board. Hike your skirts up, Agathon, love! Point your fingers!

  Whooee am I scared!

  I must think of some last, solemn, sententious word.

  Cocklebur.

  Ox.

  34 Peeker:

  And so, after three days on the river and at sea, traveling by night and fog, I arrived safe, with the gods’ help, in Athens. I was sick on the ship, and I believed I had the plague. But no fever developed, and now five days have passed since the death of Agathon, and I’m still without a fever; in fact, thriving. I begin to believe I have mysteriously escaped.

  A beautiful city—noisy with merchants’ splendid carts, booming with mingled languages, theologies, political persuasions, and bright as a pinwheel with canopies, tents, great piles of produce, baskets, trinkets, the swirl of dancing girls and jugglers…. But never mind that.

  I had a hell of a time getting someone to tell me where Agathon’s wife might be found. No wonder, of course. I was dressed in rags, my face still gray from my sickness on the boat, and I spoke with a foreigner’s cockled tongue and a strange store of words. But I was successful, finally. I found an old peddler, an escaped Helot with one arm, and after I’d followed him through the streets half the day while he hawked his wares, he saw fit to lead me to her house—that is, palace. The former home of Philombrotos, a shrine now. She keeps a few large rooms in back, helped by her two old servants. She has no slaves. Here too, at the steps of the palace, they tried to turn me away, and, when they failed at that, ignored me. At last I got one of her two servants to listen, not that I knew who the servant was at the time. “I have a message for Agathon’s wife,” I said. “—From Agathon.” The old woman-servant glanced at me, full of suspicion. She had a face like a broken hoof. I pulled the parchments from their protecting rag and showed her. I guess she must have thought I was crazy. A long message to be bringing from Agathon! She went away without a word, and I didn’t expect her back. However, she came. “This way,” she said. I followed her.

  We went what seemed miles down enormous sunlit hallways, chamber growing out of chamber—guards everywhere, government officials, janitors polishing the marble floors and the great, painte
d chairs where once Philombrotos and Solon and Pysistratos sat. There were busts of Philombrotos everywhere, dignified as all-wise Apollo, and there were documents he’d signed, implements he’d used, bas-reliefs of his life. Here in his own house he dwarfed even Solon and the great Pysistratos. We came at last to a closed door. The old woman lifted the iron hook from the wall, opened the door, and bowed, sending me in, then following. The door swung shut behind us like the door of a tomb. “Wait here,” she said.

  I waited an hour. A huge room beautifully furnished and, as far as I could see, never used. There was no dust, no decay. Only an aseptic lifelessness: motionless planes of light thrown over the gleaming floor from the alcove to the west where another small statue of Philombrotos stood, motionless carpets, chairs and tables draped in white, and over in the darkest corner of the room—I started as if at a ghost when I saw it—her harp: motionless, silent. I went to it, touched the wood. The gold and walnut shone as if with knowledge. It should be draped in protective cloths, I thought, like the tables and chairs. Did she sometimes still play it, all alone in the covered, abandoned room? I touched a string, just a brush of my fingertip, and the way the sound filled the room made me duck in alarm.

  And then at last there were footsteps, far away, then nearer. They paused, outside the small door to the left of the harp, and after what seemed a long time, the door opened toward me. She remained in the heavy shadows of the doorway, examining my rags. At last she said, “I’m Tuka.”

  “I’m Demodokos,” I said.

  I thought about her voice. It was shy. Soft. She seemed somewhat younger than the others—Agathon, Iona.

  “I don’t think I know you. Should I?”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve been Agathon’s disciple these past three years.”

  A pause, then: “How is he?”

  “He died three days ago.”

  In the shadows I saw her white arm move, pressing her hand to her chest. Then she said simply, “I see.” And, after a moment, as if for my sake, “I’m sorry.”

  Another long silence. It came to me at last that she had no intention of coming into the room, into the light, where I could see her. She was right I looked awful, and I was prying. I said, “I brought you this,” and held out the scroll.

  She hesitated, then extended her hand to accept it. Her fingers showed no sign of distaste for the foul rag that covered it. “Are the others lost?” she asked.

  I had to snatch a moment before I connected. I said, “It’s not part of the book he had. That was destroyed. This is something he wrote in prison.—Along with, I’m afraid, some shit of mine.” As soon as the word was half out I wanted to grab the back of my neck and punch myself. I hurried on: “I would have separated my part out—I should have, I guess—but I thought…” What did I think?

  “Don’t apologize. Thank you.” She half turned, about to leave. “Have you eaten?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Don’t think about it!”

  “No. Wait here, if you don’t mind. I’ll send Persaia.”

  She withdrew, leaving the door open, and I waited. In a few minutes the old serving-woman returned, more suspicious and hostile than ever. She nodded and ushered me through the small door and down another long hall—this one bare, uncarpeted, unfurnished except for a bust of Philombrotos and a statue of the goddess of cities, Pallas Athena. We came to a large white room that overlooked the garden and, beyond that, the vineyard. I could see the little slope, the stone tables and benches, where Tuka, half a century ago, had hurt the child on the wagon. It was a smaller and much more gradual slope than I’d expected. Beyond the vineyard, where the hill fell away, the sky was so blue it looked dyed. The old man, her second servant, looked up toward me from the hedge. He looked angry.

  “She wants you to stay here,” the serving-woman said, and before I could stop her she left. Stay for food? I wondered. Stay for the night? I could only wait and see. I looked out, hunting for familiar signs, but except for the slope of lawn, the tables, and the vineyard, nothing was where it should be. Klinias’s hut—it should be beyond where the gardener pruned the hedge—had apparently been torn down long ago, and I could see no sign of the roundhouse or the well that Agathon had talked about I sat down. The room was bare except for a couch with heavy, musty-smelling pillows, two carved chairs, once very fine but now in disrepair, and a table with a pitcher and a bowl. It was weird. Philombrotos must have been rich as Kroesos. What had she done with all the money?

  After a while the woman reappeared with food—fresh fruit and wine and some finely spiced kind of meat I couldn’t identify—and again before I could question her, she was gone. Seeing them against the fruit I realized how dirty my hands were. I ate. The servant- woman appeared when I finished as if she’d been watching all the time from some chink in the wall. I said quickly, for fear she might escape again, “Thank you very much. It was excellent. But now I’d better be leaving.”

  She shook her head, alarmed. “You mustn’t do that!” And again she was gone. It was beginning to get amusing. Or it would have been except for this: I kept having the feeling that that tricky old bastard Agathon had set the whole thing up. He couldn’t have, I knew; but the feeling stuck with me. I suppose the feeling will be with me all my life, from time to time. I could see him hobbling from view to view. “Wonderful! Charming! Bless me!” Then, playing the other part: “We’re so pleased you like it!” He was as real as ever, in my mind: volatile as a small sunlit whirlwind. His rags flew out as he inspected the walls, found dust on a chair back, pretended to be horribly embarrassed. My eyes filled with tears. How could he possibly be dead?

  I waited on and on. It was ridiculous. He would have loved it. Finally the servant-woman appeared again. She did not like me, did not believe I belonged in Philombrotos’s house. She stood stiffly at the door. “She wants to know do you want a bath,” she said.

  “I could use one,” I said meekly.

  She took it decently, considering. “This way, then.”

  Again I followed her. I was tempted to mimic her walk, clump clump, but I was nice. We went down some stairs and along a hall and came to a beautiful tiled room with high, small windows, and on the back wall faucets in the form of golden lions’ heads. I’d never seen such a room before. She lit the lamps, grudgingly, I thought—it wasn’t really all that dark—and turned the faucets on above the…pool, like. Regular water came out of one, and steam came out of the other. She went away and closed the door and I undressed. While I was bathing she sneaked in and stole my clothes. Hours later, feeling guilty, I suppose, she brought in some new ones.

  “She wants you upstairs,” she said, and left with a jerk.

  So I hunted around in the cellar for a couple of hours and finally found my way upstairs. Agathon’s wife was waiting in the room with the harp, and she wasn’t alone. The covers had been taken from the chairs, and the room was warm with lamplight. The sky to the west was deep red, the sun glowing like a coal on the rim of the sea. The three of them were all dressed to the nines. So was I, come to think of it In Athens they do things right.

  The tall, middle-aged man who looked like Agathon gone sane came over to greet me. “So you’re Demodokos,” he said. It sounded like a put-down, though very genteel.

  “Sometimes,” I said. “Sometimes Peeker.” I grinned, to be polite.

  He looked at me harder. “You remind me of him,” he said, and smiled, a little stiffly. Suddenly, for no reason, I liked him. He looked like a man who did things. Business, politics, expensive funerals, something.

  “You remind me of him too,” I said. “You’re Kleon—his son?”

  He nodded. “And this is Diana, my little sister.”

  I bowed. She was pretty. Blond hair, a dimple, a double chin. Unmarried. Insofar as possible, I made a point of not imagining her soft, fat tits.

  “How do you do?” she said, and, as if in panic, made a smile.

  I do horrible, I wanted to say, wringing my hands and wincing. I beg from
door to door, I kill people to steed their sandals, I rob oats from stalls for horses. Tine,” I said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.” She extended her hand, palm down, as she’d no doubt seen her mother do, and I did not drop to the floor and kiss it, merely touched it, lightly, politely, with my fingertips. I loved her passionately. I thought she was the funniest lady I’d ever seen.

  Kleon said, “You and Mother have already met, I think?”

  I turned to her, bowing. I’d been watching her from the moment I first came through the door—I would have said so if I could have thought of a way to write it and still cover all this other stuff I was walking through. She was seated, with her eyes on me from the first instant, neither kind nor unkind, neither suspicious nor trusting: watchful, like someone at a play. The statue of her father watched me from just above her left shoulder. Though she must be seventy, I knew, her hair was black as night except for one white streak. It stood out like lightning. And it was real, you could see; not art. Below the white, at her temple, she had a scar. By rights, whatever made the scar should have killed her. The scroll was in her lap, lying on her black wool cover.

  “Sit down, Demodokos,” she said.

  Kleon pushed a chair toward me. When I seated myself, they too sat down, Kleon and Diana.

  A silence. All of us were nervous except the old woman.

  “Mother tells us Father passed away,” Diana said.

  I smiled—I’d lived too long with the critical old bastardy—then covered my mouth quickly and shot a glance at Agathon’s wife. She’d caught it.

  “You loved him, didn’t you,” she said. Coolly, flatly. Merely an observation. “So did we.”

  “I’m sure you did,” I said politely.

  It was Agathon’s wife’s turn to smile. Holy Zeus but she was fast. No wonder she scared him.

  Diana leaned forward with her dimpled hands folded. Kleon sat like his mother, just waiting and watching, but he wasn’t as self-possessed. Diana said, “Could you tell us how…it was?”