Old Men in Love

4: DOMESTIC INTERIOR

Socrates, no longer soldier or mason, sat at home mending a sandal. Being skilled with edged tools he neatly sliced off the frayed end of a strap and cut threads binding it to the buckle. With an awl he pierced a line of holes in the strap’s clean new edge and prepared to stitch on the buckle, using a bone needle and strong thread from his wife’s sewing box. He knew the buckle should be both stitched and knotted to the strap, but how tie the knots? The other sandal would show. Bending to remove it from his foot he came face to face with a small boy playing under the table. The boy stared at him solemnly, a clay model of a little man in one hand, a model of a ship in the other.

“Boo,” said Socrates.

He placed the whole sandal on the table beside the other and studied the knots round its buckle, sighing slightly because they were intricate and because free Athenian males were not used to sewing. His wife, suckling their youngest child across the table from him, had been silent all day. He knew why she was angry, had not broken the silence between them because it would start an argument he could not win. He hoped to leave the house without argument, perhaps going barefoot, as many thrifty yet respected Athenians did. But that would provoke remarks from friends who thought him henpecked and knew he normally wore sandals. He gripped the needle and started stitching.

“You’re going out again,” said his wife.

“Yes, Tippy.”

“To the gymnasium again.”

“Yes, Tippy.”

“Where you will chat to a lot of pretty young men.”

“I talk to any who will listen Tippy, but beauty adds zest to conversations.”

“And from the gymnasium you’ll go to that prostitute’s house and mix with dirty sluts and foreign experts and rich young loungers like The Darling.”

“Yes, Tippy.”

“Get them to give you money!”

She stood, laid the baby in a cradle and put a bone ring between its gums. He murmured, “Surely the larder isn’t empty?”

“It will be tomorrow.”

“But market people trust you.”

“Yes, because I pay what I owe whenever I manage to screw money out of my famous, feckless, useless husband. O I hate being a poor man’s wife. Give me that.”

She sat beside him, seized sandal and needle and deftly worked with them, saying through clenched teeth, “I wish our slave had not died.”

“She was old, Tippy. You had to do more for her than she could do for us.”

“She stopped neighbours seeing that I am the only slave in this house. Their helpful little advices madden me even more than the worry of paying for food. ‘Get your husband into jury service! Get him into parliament — the pay is good and all he need do is vote,’ they say. ‘He’s pally with men who could get him a government job,’ they say. ‘A foreign embassy even. Think of the bribes he would get on top of his pay,’ they say. ‘He can’t do any of those things,’ I tell them, ‘his demon won’t let him. It wants him to do nothing but teach all the time.’ ‘What does he teach?’ they ask. ‘I don’t know,’ I say, ‘He doesn’t talk to me about it, I’m just a stupid woman.’ And I laugh as if our marriage is a wonderful joke. Which it is not. It is not. It is hell. What do you teach those pretty boys you keep meeting?”

“I teach them not to be so sure of themselves, Tippy.”

“They like you for that?”

“The reasonable ones do.”

“Put on your sandal!” she said, handing it over. “Go to your pretty, reasonable friends. Get money out of them.”

The child on the floor, upset by her tone of voice, made a mewing sound and folded its arms comfortingly round her leg.

“Tippy,” said Socrates beseechingly.

She looked and saw his face so full of misery and love that, after biting her under lip, her own face took on much the same expression. In a voice mingling tears and laughter she said, “They call you the wisest man in Greece!”

“They know no better, Tippy. I can’t teach you anything because you only know facts.”

“Yes. Women can never escape from those.”

He bent down and buckled on his sandal, telling the boy quietly, “Please be kinder to your mother than I am.”