The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

8

THE FOLLOWING DAY I SET SAIL FOR HOME, BY way of Tarentum. Dion sent for me again before I left, to give me a letter for Archytas, the chief man of the city, and leader of the Pythagoreans there. It was to urge him, Dion said, to join in persuading Plato, his guest-friend of long standing. I undertook to deliver it without fail. Something in Dion’s face assured me it was a forceful letter, and told me, too, that there lived on within the statesman, general and scholar a beautiful lordly boy who was not used to hearing no.

I had been lucky with weather on the outward journey. The homeward trip looked like being just as good. I hate even now to talk of it. Whenever I cross a gangplank it comes back to me. I have turned down good engagements, time and again, because it meant a crossing in the bad season.

Not to give you at length my shipwreck story, we capsized outside Tarentum, in a gale that blew down off the hills. Before this happened, I had felt so sick I thought I would welcome death; however, I found myself swimming. I was almost spent when some men, who had found the ship’s boat floating free, hauled me on board it. In the harbor mouth, that capsized too. I half-remember coming to on the wharf, feeling worse than dead, cold all through to the core, tilted head-down to let the water run out. I don’t know who did that for me. I went off again, and woke in a bed, with a young man sitting by me. After saying I was among friends, he went out to fetch a graybeard. There were heated stones wrapped in cloth warming the bed, and sweet herbs boiling somewhere. It turned out, when I was able to understand, that I was being tended by these same Pythagoreans whose leader I had come to see. It is their rule to succor the distressed, as an offering to Zeus the Merciful.

I had a bad chest, and fever, and nearly went my father’s way. I remember little of it, except some of the dreams. They played soft music to restore my body’s harmony, and dosed me with sweet hot syrup. The alembic’s blue steam danced all day before my eyes like a snake to the charmer’s flute. I sweated, or shivered, and they raised me on high pillows to let me breathe. Once I woke from a dream to see my own body propped in the bed, myself looking down upon it. A priest stood praying that I might be reborn as a philosopher. Then I dreamed I was beside some tomb or grave, holding a skull in my hand. It was clean, and I knew this was a play. Some flashes still come back to me: I was the son of a murdered king whose shade had cried me to avenge him; yet I was not Orestes. It would be nonsense, I suppose, like most dreams, if I could recall the whole.

When first I came to myself, the young man who was nursing me showed me my money belt with my gold; I was lucky it had not drowned me. I had only lost my silver, about a tenth of the whole. I asked at once after my letters; he said they were safe, but had had to be dried. They fed me on broths and pottages, meat being forbidden them; they will not kill, saying one should be as just to sensible beasts as to men. But my strength returned on their food. When next I asked for my letter bag, the young man begged my pardon. I had had no such thing when I was saved; but he had feared to distress me and bring my fever back again. I thanked him for his kindness and said he had done right. Presently he asked me why I was weeping. What precious thing had I lost? It was not that, I answered; but now I would have to do the letters’ work myself, and I was too tired.

When I could sit up by myself, and felt a little more like a man, I asked to see Archytas. They said his work and his meditations took up most of his day, but they would ask him. He came within the hour: a man of about fifty, with deep-set eyes, lean, wiry and active. He was a man much trusted by the Tarentines; though no one was supposed to hold supreme command for two years running, they had kept voting him in for seven, never doubting his good faith. I could believe it; he had a calm that filled the room.

He sat by me, heard me out, and thanked me with great courtesy, saying we would talk when I was stronger. I slept well that night, feeling half my burden lifted.

When I could walk with the help of the young man’s shoulder (I scarcely noticed he was handsome, which shows you how weak I was), they brought me to Archytas’ house. He was in his study, a large white room, all shelves and tables, with books, and dried plants, and geometers’ figures—cubes, prisms, cones and so on—carved in wood. There were pieces of complex tackle with ropes and levers; he was a great inventor, and some improved hoist he had devised was used all over Tarentum. There were also lyres and flutes and tuning rods, and a noble Apollo playing the kithara in a long straight robe.

Having asked how I was, he questioned me closely about affairs in Syracuse. Dionysios, he said, had often made war in southern Italy, but through Dion’s good offices had never attacked Tarentum. What kind of man was his son? I told him all I had seen myself, then repeated, as near as I could remember after all this, what Dion had said to me, and why he wanted Plato there.

At the end he said, “You have caught the very tone and pitch of Dion’s voice. You must have heard him with great attention.”

“I did, sir. But also I am an actor; one falls into it without thinking.”

“Indeed?” he said, looking at me with curiosity. “Your ear must be very true.” He picked up his lyre, and struck some notes for me to sound; but soon said I looked tired and should be in bed. “Rest,” he said, “and fear nothing. I will give you a letter for Plato, recommending you as a man who has my confidence. I daresay, too, he will remember you himself. He seldom forgets a face.”

“And you’ll ask him,” I said, “to go to Sicily?” He smiled. I expect I sounded, as Homer says, like a child who drags at her mother’s skirt and whines to be carried.

“Indeed I shall. You have been Dion’s living letter; paper and ink could not have pleaded with such power. No doubt you and he have been linked in your former fives, in love, or kinship; or he gave you true teaching, or your life, or some great benefit for which your soul is still grateful. These ties can be many times renewed, in many births. You are both souls, no doubt, in the series of Apollo. Eat well of pure food; hear the proper music to wake and sleep; take your physic; pray to Apollo and Asklepios. The future is only with the god. Rest in his hand.”

All this I did. My strength increased, and in the mirror I saw my face less gaunt. I had dreaded the voyage home, but now was content to let what would be, be. Archytas, who was weather-wise from much observing the heavens, kept me back from the first ship I would have taken; when I sailed, the passage was as good as summer.

Whereas the first part of the voyage had nearly killed me, the second did me good. Nonetheless, when I got to Athens, having been kept up half the night with my friends calling to learn what had become of me, I could not face the long walk to the Academy, but hired a riding ass.

Plato’s private rooms looked out upon scythed grass and rose-trees. An old decent slave woman opened; I did not trouble her with my name, but said I came from Archytas. She came back and led me in.

The study was tight and sparely furnished, with few but perfect ornaments. Like Dion’s, I thought; then saw it must be the other way about. In the window was a great table full of a scholar’s litter: cubes, cylinders and spheres, a model of the planets’ courses, music rolls, books, compasses, and a writing board with a scroll taped out across it, before which Plato sat, copying in ink from a wax tablet.

As the slave left, he got up, and, gazing at my face with his deep overhung eyes, said slowly, “You are the actor, the tragedian of Delphi. Nikeratos. It was you whom Dion meant.” These last words puzzled me. “You look ill,” he said. “Be seated.” I told him my business, and what had delayed me in it, and gave him Archytas’ letter. He took it in his hands, seemed about to open it, then called the old housekeeper instead and told her to make me a posset to warm me, since the wind was cold. Still he did not break the seal, but asked me about the shipwreck, and my health. Then, like a man making up his mind to something, he excused himself, and read.

When he had done, he said, “Archytas tells me here that Dion saw you in Syracuse, and told you the substance of his letter. Now all is clear to me. I have heard from him since, you understand—a formal letter, supporting an invitation from his kinsman Dionysios. The postscript said, ‘I recommend to you Nikeratos, who as you may know is back in Athens. He has done good work here.’ I had seen no one of the name, and could not tell what he meant.”

Nowadays, when well-known artists are sent openly upon state embassies, this would seem slow in a man of Plato’s position. But at that time, the practice was just starting, coming about almost by chance, since actors must travel, and meet all classes, and no one thinks anything of it. It was all undercover business at first, like this of mine. I had never supposed I would be Plato’s notion of an envoy.

“Sir,” I said, “I won’t trouble you with Dion’s words. You know him and how he speaks. This was the substance. In the letter I carried, as in the formal one, he urged you to come to Syracuse. But he added that it should be soon, while young Dionysios’ mind is still pliable. As Dion told me, his private message was his estimate of this young man. And he wanted me to tell you I had audience twice at Ortygia, if you would like to hear about it. He seemed to think it would confirm what he had written.”

Just then the housekeeper scratched on the door, bringing my posset. He assured me it would do me good; he had had the recipe from a priest in Egypt, who had nursed him through a fever there. It tasted odd, and rather nasty; but it was warming and I sipped it up. While I took it, he went back to the letter. Once, while I was looking out of the window as I drank and thinking my own thoughts, I felt him looking at me, and turned. I had been prepared, I suppose, because it was important business, to find him making sure of me, weighing me up. But he was thinking—thinking through me, you might say. He looked away, from courtesy; but for a moment I had felt him, as it seemed, going right through to whatever appeared to him the causes of my being, as if I were a cube or a star. Not for my sake, but for something beyond. He was suffering, and perplexed in mind, and had to break the surface somewhere. I happened to be there, opposite. All that I knew in an instant; it is only finding words that’s slow. I finished my drink, and thanked him.

Suddenly he smiled, the same smile, I daresay, which had conquered Axiothea. “Well,” he said, “I can interpret Dion’s postscript now: Trust Nikeratos, as I do.’ Tell me then, about your meeting with him, how he was looking, and all he said. We shall agree, I think, in giving him precedence over Dionysios.”

Once or twice he interrupted me, to ask if Dion seemed in good health, and what his house was like. Of course he had never been back to Sicily in all these years, but it seemed odd to be telling him. In due course I came to Dionysios, the Eulogy and the toy chariots. He questioned me closely, and often beyond what I knew. What had Dionysios read, did he study geometry or music? I said I did not know, but Dion considered he had had no education. It had seemed to me that he longed to be valued, but was not much concerned whether it was fairly earned or not.

“So many begin with that.”

I looked at his face, and this time it held no enigma. I found in it something I could understand myself. It was just the face of a good professional, measuring a piece of work and feeling the call of the god.

I went on talking; ad-libbing, really, till he felt ready to speak. While I talked of Dion, and his feelings were engaged, his face had been a courteous mask; now, as I have said, it was open to a man like me. He was tempted. It was a great role, worth taking; but he was an old hand who had played, so to speak, Sophokles in Boeotia, and been hit with half an onion. He could remember the Athens the old men talk of: war, defeat, despair; tyranny, rebellion; revenge, injustice, hope gone sick. As I spoke and he sank into himself, I could see the weights going into the balance, this side and that.

He looked at the table, with its tablets and open scroll, just as I have seen a man look at a favorite dog he had to leave behind. Then he said, trying to throw it away, “Well, Nikeratos, you have endured a good deal, but not for nothing. I daresay I shall go to Sicily.”

It was plain he wanted no speeches, so I just said it would be happy news for Dion, who had set great hopes on it.

He said rather drily, “Too many are doing that. My art, unlike yours, does better without spectators.” He paused and added, “But one does not want to end by finding one has been only a thing of words.”

As it happened, I was not long ignorant of his meaning. I had scarcely left his garden-close after taking leave of him, when Axiothea and two young men ran out from the olive trees where they had clearly been waiting. After the briefest greeting she said, “You have seen him? Did he say anything? Will he go?”

My surprise at their knowing seemed to amaze them. Nothing else, they said, was talked of here. Didn’t I know the invitation had been public? In short, Dionysios had not just sent letters by an envoy, but—as I suppose I might have expected—a kind of embassy to the Academy. All was now clear: Plato’s calm, his lack of eagerness for Archytas’ letter. I had supposed I brought him news. All this time, he had had a crowd of philosophers, students of law and civics, sophists and geometers and historians, his young men and no doubt many of their fathers, all breathing down his neck, to learn if he would go and prove his theories by demonstration. I suppose most of what I had told him of Dionysios, too, he had picked up already here and there. I admired his courtesy. Maybe I had shed some new glimmer of light upon the work ahead; but mostly I had just loaded on him the Tarentine philosophers, pushing like all the rest.

Certainly, I thought, Dion means to have his way. But I suppose that’s what makes a king.