The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

  I had gazed on him with awe; he seemed from another world. Now, discerning an infirmity which proved him mortal, I began to love him.

  I got up from the bier, keeping one hand on it to steady me. I was not much put-out at being drunk; after all, he had sent the wine. He was here in friendship, never, as any fool could see, having set foot backstage before. He must feel all at sea; and I was his host.

  “Thank you,” I said. “The best drink I ever had, just when I most wanted it. You saved my life, next after Apollo, who stood by me like the gentleman he is. I’ll give him a goat tomorrow. And I owe a grave-offering to my father, Artemidoros. Did you ever see him as Cassandra?”

  He half-smiled, looking easier, and saying, “Yes, let me think.” He put his word to nothing lightly, that was clear. “Yes! It was in The Troiades, was it not—not the Agamemnon? I was a very young man then, visiting friends at the Academy; but I have never seen it rendered so movingly. If I remember, Hecuba was done by Kroisos.”

  “Kroisos!” I said. “Then you saw me too. I was the child Astyanax.”

  He gazed at me intently, and said after a pause, “Then you have always been an actor? All your life?” He seemed surprised; yet it was clear he meant no discourtesy. I told him yes. “Why then,” he said, “there are some true words in Euripides, about the many faces of the gods. How does it go?”

  I said:

  The gods wear many faces,

  And many fates fulfill

  To work their will…

  “Was it that you meant?”

  He smiled, without stiffness this time, but like a serious boy. “Yes, and now I can complete it:

  In vain man’s expectation;

  God brings the unthought to be,

  As here we see.

  “Words of good omen, this time.”

  He paused, and looked about the skeneroom crowd, all breathing down our necks. His smile faded; he said formally, “We must talk more of all this. You will be needing rest now; but won’t you sup with me this evening? Come about sunset, or a little before.”

  “Delighted,” I said, more happy than surprised, for I knew we were ordained to meet. “But whose place shall I ask for?”

  I could hear the two sponsors cluck and suck their teeth; Anaxis gasped, and started making signs again. But I saw the man was not displeased. It is never bad to be liked for oneself, by anyone.

  “I will send my servant for you,” he said quietly. “I have rented a house on the bluff at present. My name is Dion, a citizen of Syracuse.”

  3

  BY EVENING, WHEN IT WAS TIME TO DRESS AND go, I would just as soon have got out of it. I had slept off the shock and the wine, and for what seemed hours had listened cold sober to Anaxis, telling me what to say and still more what not to. For of course my host was the envoy of Dionysios. Perhaps, Anaxis said, he would ask me to give a recital.

  “Don’t count on it,” I said. “He didn’t look the man to make a guest sing for his supper.” A citizen he had called himself, like any Athenian gentleman. Syracuse, one knew, still kept the ancient forms, but he could as well have said a prince, for it came to that. Such a man, if he is curious and has nothing else to do, may give supper to a touring actor, and will treat him with the breeding he owes himself; but that would be the end of it, as any fool could see. Very likely the place would be full of delegates and politicians, who, when they remembered I was there, would condescend with silly questions. In my heart, I cherished this meeting, sudden and strange like an act of fate; rather than spoil it with banalities, I would sooner we never met again.

  It would have been something to dress in peace, without Anaxis fussing like a bride’s mother. He even brought a barber to curl my hair. I nearly lost my temper, and asked what kind of monkey he meant to make of me, when my host had seen it that morning, straight as rain. Luckily the barber walked out, saying it was too short to work on. I had trouble to escape from wearing Anthemion’s party robe, red with embroidered borders, a love-gift from Anaxis. Like many actors who wear finery enough on stage, I like a rest from it. My spare robe was quite clean, a plain dark blue; one can’t keep white fresh on tour. Having got my own way I felt kindly to Anaxis. He would have given his ears for my chance, feared I would wreck all our fortunes with my careless tongue, and yet had not got spiteful. As the time drew near, I would gladly have changed places. Gyllis of Thebes was giving a party in her room, and I was the only one not going.

  Presently came the slave and led me to Dion’s house, which stood beyond the town, on the spur above the Pleistos valley. The sun was sinking, and Delphi had on its tragic robes. A blood-red light dyed the pale steeps of the Phaidriades, and filled the gorges with cinnabar and purple. From somewhere high up I heard hallooing, as if the maenads were running there. But it was long past time; it must be the young men, still hunting Meidias. They would have some light, for the moon was rising. I thought, “He must be in Thebes by now. Poor wretch, let him go.” If he had really lurked somewhere to watch his triumph, I reckoned my score was paid.

  The square white house faced outward; its terrace hugged the edge of the bluff; beyond was space and the red sky. It was half dusk; on the terrace a torch in a gilded sconce burned with an upright flame. There were urns of trailing flowers, sweet-scented shrubs between the flagstones, a trellis with a vine. A young boy was singing somewhere to a kithara. The music ceased; my host rose from the shadows and came to meet me, his tall head brushing the vine above.

  “Welcome, Nikeratos.” On his own ground, not stared at, he seemed ten years younger. The faded light showed him smiling; he touched my arm to lead me in. “I am glad to see you. We are out here to catch the last of the day. But we will go in when the cold begins.” It was a mild evening; I remembered he came from Sicily.

  The terrace was paved with colored marbles. The low rush couches had cushions of white linen, whose embroidery looked like Egypt. There was no sign of a party; it was a good thing I had turned down Anthemion’s robe. Only one other guest was there, a man of about sixty, gray-bearded, with a heavy brow and deep-set eyes. He was squarely built, but not fleshy with it, in good hard shape for his years, like an old athlete from those days of the gentleman amateur they talk about. There were white battle-scars on his left arm. Hoplites with shields don’t get wounded there; he must have been a knight. Indeed, even standing by Dion he still looked quite distinguished. Not a Sicilian—Athens was written all over him. Not a politician—he looked too honest, and was too graceful when Dion presented me. But by accident both spoke at once, so I missed his name, and did not like to ask.

  “We saw the play together,” Dion said. “Do you know that neither of us had ever seen it performed before? But we had read it … of course.”

  He looked across, smiling. One could not miss it. I suppose The Myrmidons is least acted and most read of all great plays. Lovers meet at it, as if it were a shrine like that tomb in Thebes. However long ago that had been, something of it hung about them still.

  “Indeed, we have,” said the other. I understood this must be a thing the whole world knew about them; there is a certain air which tells one so; but it seemed to me, too, that it had surprised him to see Dion so unbend. As if to hide this, he added, “And then the mind hears an ideal rendering, which reality seldom equals. But you, on the contrary, enriched the play for me. I shall be many times your debtor.”

  We walked over to the terrace balustrade. The sunset was rusting away, but Delphi seemed still to glow from the light it had drunk before.

  “I have been making Dion envious,” he went on, “by telling him how I saw you as Alkestis, last year at the Piraeus. The death scene was very fine. Her steadfastness, her loneliness … a voice receding, it seemed, with every line, as if already on her journey—that was memorable, far beyond the pathos most actors aim at.”

  I was pleased, yet for some reason answered, “Who wouldn’t be lonely, dying for a wet stick like Admetos? I’m always glad to change masks for Herakles and the drunk sce
ne, even though I do have to play it on three-inch lifts.” He made me nervous. I don’t think he meant to; some men are used to distance. It had not stopped him from giving me, once, a certain glance which said that if I had been five years younger it might have been a serious matter. I don’t think he meant to do that either. He had the nature he was born with, though he might never slip its leash.

  I could tell my answer had disappointed him. But Dion smiled. One seldom saw him laugh aloud; but he had a certain smile, with the head thrown back a little, which was a laugh for him. There are men hard to be at ease with, whose walls one breaks by some stroke of chance; this was my good fortune here. And it comes, I thought, through a man who tried to kill me. Somewhere a god is working.

  After more talk about the play, we went in to eat. The food was excellent, but simply cooked, and two courses only, not at all the Sicilian banquet of the proverbs. The flowers came in, small yellow roses, and the wine, the same he had sent me at the theater. He had given his best. He was always all or nothing.

  A splendid lamp-cluster hung from the ceiling, Etruscan work, a sunburst with outward-soaring nymphs whose arms held up the lampbowls. You don’t get such things in a hired house unless you bring them with you. There was nothing in the room which did not serve some use, but what there was, was royal. I found it hard to take my eyes off him long enough for manners. Reclining wreathed on the supper couch, cup in hand, he could have modeled for a vase-painter drawing a feast of gods. His bare arm and shoulder were like fine bronze; he could not make an awkward gesture; the dignity actors train for was bred into his bones. And his face passed the test of motion. Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask; but here each change, like a change of light, brought out new quality.

  Presently he sent out the slave, saying we would serve ourselves; the krater was set in the middle, the dipper laid on a clean cloth, our couches pulled up nearer. “Now tell us, Nikeratos,” he said, “about your escape this morning; and if I am intruding on your mystery, forgive me; for I am a soldier among other things, and I never saw such coolness in the face of death. Were you inspired? Or do you prepare for such things in training?”

  He spoke as if to a guest of honor. I paused to think. “Well, no,” I said. “After all, a theater is a sacred precinct. It’s a crime to strike a man there, let alone shed blood. We don’t train for such things, though we do reckon not to be put out easily; I’ve known a man who fell off the god-walk to change masks and play on with a broken arm. But today, I think … You saw the mask of Apollo. It’s not a face one would care to make a fool of.”

  He threw a quick look at his friend, as if to say, “I was right,” then turned with his grave eager smile. “Not without cause, then, these words were in my mind: Do you think I have less divination than the swans? For they, when they know that they must die, having sung all their lives sing louder then than ever, for joy at going home to the god they serve. Men, who themselves fear death, have taken it for lamentation, forgetting no bird sings in hunger, or cold, or pain. But being Apollo’s they share his gift of prophecy, and foresee the joys of another world …” He broke off, and said to his friend, “I speak without the book.”

  “Near enough,” he answered, smiling.

  “No. I forgot the hoopoe.”

  I had been listening with all my ears, and could hardly wait to exclaim, “What marvelous lines! Who wrote them? What is the play?”

  They looked at each other. I seemed to have made them happy. Dion said, “There is the poet. They are from Plato’s dialogue Phaedo.”

  The name amazed me. These were the people whose story I myself had told Anaxis! All those years ago—near twenty it must be—and here they were still meeting. But I had thought this Plato was some kind of sophist.

  “The words are mine,” he was saying. “The thought was a better man’s.”

  “But the words!” They were still sounding in my head. “Sir, have you more like that? Haven’t you ever thought of writing for the theater?”

  He raised his brows, as if my little compliment had startled him. At last, however, he said half-smiling, “Not lately.”

  “Plato!” said Dion. “What is this?”

  “Strange to say, in my youth it was my first ambition. I was full of images and fantasies; they had only to knock and I would open; only to ask, and I would feed and clothe them … oh, yes, Dion, surely I told you that?” I noticed again his expressive voice, like a low-pitched aulos played by a master. But no volume with it. With that chest of his, he could have overcome it in a month, if I had had the training of him. Forcing would make it thin; it seemed he had learned that and no more. “I assure you it is so,” he said. “I once wrote a whole tragedy, and brought it as far as the Theater Bureau, to enter it for the Dionysia. From what I saw at the contest, it might have been considered; I cannot tell. But by chance, as men say who are content with ignorance, I met Sokrates in the porch—the friend, Nikeratos, who brought me to philosophy—who asked to see it, and put some questions, all too much to the purpose. I saw I had a lifetime’s work before me, to find the answers I had given so glibly. Everything was there but truth.”

  “Well, sir,” I said, “even Euripides was a beginner once. Truth to nature can’t all be learned in the study; it comes half the time from getting out in front to listen. The actors will soon show you if a line speaks badly. From what I’ve just heard, I should think you’ve let your friends put you off too easily. Believe me, the theater is crying out for good new tragedies; just look at all these revivals. Why not get it out and go over it, and this time get it read by someone in the business? Would you care to let me see it, and tell you what I think?”

  “Why not?” said Dion. “Then I can read it, too.”

  “I burned it,” he said, “as soon as I got home.” Seeing my face he smiled—he could be a real charmer when he chose—and said, “My friend, Apollo does not ask us all for the same offering.”

  Dion filled my cup. The bottom was painted with an Eros playing the lyre, pretty, flowing work, heightened with white, in the style of Italy. “Well, Nikeratos, if Plato has no play to give you, some other friend must step in as best he can. I intended asking you, but was diverted by the pleasure of our talk—”

  He broke off short. We all started bolt upright. From the sky, as it seemed, outside, had sounded a scream that stopped my breath. In all my life, I don’t think I ever heard a sound so dreadful. As a meteor plunges trailing light, so plunged from some great height above us this shriek of terror, then ceased as if cut with a knife. I put down my cup, which was spilling in my hand. It was Dion who, calling the slave in, said, “What was that?”

  The man beamed, like a good-news-bringer sure of his welcome. “Why, sir, that must be the godless fellow they’ve been hunting since this morning, who tried to pollute the precinct with this gentleman’s blood. The young men were saying, before they went up after him, that if they caught him they’d throw him off Aesop’s Rock.”

  The wine went cold in my belly. Dion said, “Aesop’s Rock?”

  “It’s called, sir, they tell me, after some old blasphemer who was sent off from there. It’s above those great white cliffs, the Phaidriades. They go all the way down.”

  “Thank you,” said Dion. “You may go.” He turned to me. “They have done justice, and avenged you … What is it? You look pale.”

  He is a soldier, I thought. Does he think I should have been up there, lending a hand?

  “I was avenged already,” I said. “He was an artist once.”

  I thought of the long hunt, the quarry stumbling and thirsty like a wolf run down; and then they must have dragged him a long way to the place, knowing what he went to.

  Both of them were staring. They did not look scornful; but then I was a guest. Dion said, “He tried to take your life; yet you would have spared him?”

  “I would have spared him that. After all, here I am, alive and feasting. Do you think me poor-spirited?”

  His ey
es opened. I have never seen such dark eyes so light a face. “You are surely joking. Poor-spirited, after what we saw today? By Zeus, no! It is greatness of soul that spares the enemy in the dust. Better than vengeance is not to share the evil.” He leaned forward glowing like a man in love. I did not fool myself; honor was his darling. My head was not fooled, at least.

  “It is an old bad proverb,” he said, “that one should outdo one’s friends in kindness, and one’s enemies in cruelty. No; I have seen …” He paused, and turned to Plato: “… too much.”

  Well, I thought, Sicily must be the place for that. How does such a man come out of it?

  “Believe me, Nikeratos, as much as for your courage I honor you for taking no joy in vengeance.” Being shaken and sick, I could have wept at his kindness; but that he would not have honored. I said something or other, about having enough, in my work, of other men’s revenges. I saw Plato stir at this; but after all he kept silent.

  “Surely,” Dion went on, “to crave revenge is to fall down before one’s enemy and eat dust at his feet. What worse can we let him do to us? In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul. The man has more profit who beggars himself for a whore. The mind neglected; the soul starved of its true food; condemned at last to some base rebirth, if, as I am persuaded, Pythagoras taught us truly. Who in his senses would give that triumph to the man who wronged him?”

  These words impressed me. I had never thought of any of it, and said so, adding, in apology, “I was thinking about this wretched Meidias. All his life he wanted to be somebody, but without having to pay for it, which is always death to an artist. Now this. I couldn’t have done it to a dog. But of course you are right about the soul. You have shown me the riches of philosophy.”