The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

5

HECTOR’S RANSOM WAS PASSED BY THE SELECTORS and booked for the Lenaia, a rich Syracusan resident standing choregos. Everything went as planned, except for one hitch over the casting. Leontis, our sponsor, had drawn third turn to choose his protagonist; and the man before chose me. He said he had seen my work at Delphi. There was a hasty conference, and the other sponsor changed his mind. I don’t know what he got for it, but there was no cheese-paring in that production. When we heard who were doing the masks and costumes, painting the skene and training the chorus, and for how much, even the Persian-backed play at Delphi looked like a fit-up.

Phileas was a chorus-master who, if he had had to stand the chorus upside down, would still have achieved faultless grouping and each syllable crystal clear. I used to sit in front often just for the pleasure of watching him work. You may ask how I felt, playing lead and directing where Aischylos once did it; where Sophokles danced as a chorus boy and, later, had only to walk on as an extra in one of his own plays to bring the audience up standing. Well, the place was my second home. I could not remember a time before I had known it. It was like being the son of a great house, who has come of age. I don’t know when I have been happier.

I had lived with the play by now; I knew what the verse would give the actor, and where it would need heightening or throwing away. Just as I’d feared, Anaxis had got over-keyed and was ranting terribly as Achilles. “My dear,” I said at length, “you were splendid today, but you showed up the lines a little, if you understand me. We must cover for the old man here and there. Don’t forget that to get us to Syracuse, it’s the play that has to win.”

He took this pretty well, but complained that the third actor, Hermippos, was always trying to upset him, which was only too true. This was the man Dion had wanted instead of him. I had agreed he was a sound artist; and so I did not like to object, when Dion put him forward, that it might not answer to have a well-known second man playing third. The fee was big; there was also the golden lure of Syracuse; Hermippos had sunk his pride and accepted, but needed to show us he was somebody in case it was forgotten. This he did not by being pompous, which was not his style, but by playing the fool. He was one of the few actors to do well in both tragedy and comedy, and it was the latter which seemed to have shaped his face, which was round, with a big mouth and a button nose. On stage he behaved perfectly; but he was one of those men who, once having learned their lines, can do anything they like up to the moment when they go on. He would crack jokes with the mechanics, lay bets on races, clown about in masks from other plays, to let us all know he thought as well of himself as ever. For myself, my father taught me to think what I was about, but not to be put off by trifles. I had met Hermippos’ sort before. But Anaxis, who thought it proper never to put his mask on till he had brooded before it like an actor carved on a gravestone, was driven mad and had not the sense to hide it. This was all Hermippos needed to egg him on. It was tiresome having to keep peace, when I wanted my mind on Priam.

Sometimes I got anxious about the role. I had turned down Achilles because it was too easy; I could have got the effects in my sleep. Perhaps I ought to have taken it, and proposed for Priam some good old actor who had done the role in this or that play more times than he could count and could get the effects in his sleep, too. That would have been the safer thing. I had wanted the part because it was something new for me; it was testing; I had thoughts about it; in a word, I had pleased myself. If I was not to break faith with Dion, and throw my own chance away, I had better be good.

I have never been the sort of actor who blusters about while rehearsing Herakles, smolders for Medea, and so on. But this time I swear my bones would ache when it rained, and when I got out of a chair I leaned upon the arms. I read the Iliad through and through, coming back to the passage where Priam tries to keep Hector from the death-fight. You are our last defense, he says; when you are gone, I shall see our house in ruins, Troy sacked, the women ravished, the children dashed on the stones, before I am cut down to he where I am thrown until my own dogs eat me. A young man fallen on the field, rent with sharp bronze, looks seemly even in his blood; death can lay nothing bare that is not beautiful. But an old man’s corpse flung down, his gray hair and his beard and privates torn by curs, ah, that is the most wretched sight in all mortality. These lines always came into my mind, when I played the scene with Achilles.

Then came the day for the Presentation of the Poets, which always makes the contest seem very near. We went to the Odeion in our festival robes and garlands, to make our bow while the subjects of the plays were given out. Our poet being in Syracuse, some sweet-voiced orator deputized, no doubt a good exchange. I was anxious lest our robes might be overdone—it is, after all, a ceremony, not a performance; one appears as oneself, without a mask, and should dress without hubris. But we were fitted out with sumptuous elegance; if our sponsor did not have good taste, he knew where to buy it.

As Anaxis had foretold, the name of Dionysios got no booing; but Hermippos was greeted with a few laughs, because he had last been seen in comedy. A comedian, in the nature of things, gets more typed and known by sight than a tragedian; and if audiences remember you waving a string of sausages, with a great stuffed phallos bouncing about, it takes more than a gilt wreath to make them forget it. If Hermippos was displeased he did not let it show, but bowed as if to a tribute. He was a stout-hearted man; even when he was tiresome, I could not keep from liking him. I said to Anaxis, later, that it was a good thing he had been there to keep the public sweet.

“That clown! Let me forget him while I can. Dionysios took second prizes here while he was much more disliked than now. I can’t think why you should be so anxious.”

I was about to deny it, but had a better thought and said, “My dear, you must bear with me; the truth is, I’m strung up like a lyre with this trouble between you and Hermippos. It’s amazing you put up with him so well. But the fear of your being put off on the day, with so much depending on it, keeps me awake at night.”

“My dear Niko!” he said at once. “I trust it would take more than Hermippos to do that to me. We are in the hands of the god. It may start to snow, the Chief Archon’s wife may go into labor in the seats of honor, or the Thebans cross the frontier. These are real evils, which we may pray Iakchos to avert. But as for Hermippos, let us keep our minds on serious things.”

At dress rehearsal, therefore, he was all graciousness; and Hermippos, like the good artist he was at heart, found no time for foolery. “It’s going too well,” I thought. “The bad luck will come on the day.” Then at my chariot entry after Hermes, one of the horses stretched its neck, picked up Hermippos’ mask by the wig, which I suppose it took for straw, and plucked it clean off his head. We laughed ourselves sick and felt better.

Now came the fateful draw for playing order. It was raining that day, but we joined the crowd of artists and sponsors waiting in the theater colonnade to see the lists go up.

The first days would not concern us; comedy is king at the Lenaia, and always opens. After that there were trilogies with satyr-farce finales, one day for each. Then came the single plays. The list went up, the word went around. Leaving out the comic closure, we were on last.

Now if this happens at the Dionysia, it is plain good news. But at a winter festival like the Lenaia, you can’t tell if you are blessed or cursed till the very day. If it is showery, or there is a bitter wind, the older people, and the sickly, and those with thin cloaks, start going home. The rest get restless, going off to stretch their legs or relieve themselves; their minds are half on hot soup at home; they are getting sulky and fidgety and hard to please. On the other hand, if it turns out fine you have the best of the billing and of the day as well. The mildness and sweetness of the theater on such afternoons is an artists’ proverb. No wonder Zeus, and Dionysos, and Apollo Helios do so well for offerings beforehand.

On the eve of the festival, I lay listening to the noise of the midnight rites—the cries of the women trying, as they ran about the streets, to sound like maenads on a mountain, playing at danger in safety, as they do at the Lenaia, and garlanding King Vinestock to placate him for being pruned. Their hymns, and their squeals of “Iakchos!” and the red light of torches sliding across my ceiling, would wake me whenever my eyes had closed. Towards morning, I heard a huddle of them go by with their torches out, shivering and grumbling, and complaining of the rain.

Next day opened cloudy—not the rank bad weather that gets the show put off, but gray and threatening. During the first of the comedies it looked so black that people stayed at home, and the theater was half empty; if the cast had been less discouraged, I think the play might have won. Later it cleared a little; the theater filled; a play no better was well received, and got the prize.

On the day when the contest of tragedies started, the wind got up. The audience came muffled to the eyes, their cloaks pulled over their heads, and with two cloaks if they had them. The wind snatched at the robes of the cast and chorus; the flute-player, who had to use both hands to play, had his skirts flung up till they showed his naked backside. This did not help the protagonist, playing Bellerophon and doing a solemn bit of recitative. In the next part of the trilogy he had to be flown in riding Pegasos. My heart bled for him as he swung to and fro, with the audience squealing or laughing. Of course the play was sliced in half; but it was middling work, which I doubt stood a chance in any case.

Next day started even windier. The chorus of women had trailing scarves, a stupid thing at the Lenaia; during a choral dance they got tangled up together and had to unwind. They were quite young boys, and started giggling; I don’t suppose they sat down for a week, after the trainer got his hands on them. The play was uneven, the poet having put into the first part all he had to say, but being resolved upon a trilogy. During the last part the wind dropped and the sun came palely out; but by then the audience was bored, and waiting to see the slapstick.

The following day was ours.

I could not sleep. I thought of taking poppy syrup; but it leaves one dull, and one would do better tired. Just as I was going off, a wedding procession passed, singing and shouting; there is one nearly every night in that month of marriages. I tossed and turned, and put out my hand at the window, and felt the air still, but very cold. Dim light from the sky showed me Apollo in his wooden frame. Since I was up, I lit a small clay lamp and stood it before the mask. The flame moved faintly in the air from the window; the eyeholes looked at me; they seemed searching, but calm. I went back to bed with the lamp still burning, and lay in thought. Suddenly I awoke to daybreak. The lamp had burned out; birds were chirping. The sky was clear.

I jumped up and looked out. A mild white frost furred the edges of the oleander leaves and the black fingers of the courtyard vine. My breath lay unstirring on the air.

I threw my blanket round me, and did my practice at the window. My voice sounded true and flexible. A ruffled-up bird in the vine whistled so like a flute that I did a bit of recitative as well. I blew up the embers in the hearth and mulled some wine, breaking some eggs into it and adding white meal and honey—an old-fashioned posset which suits my stomach at these times. I sopped some bread in, knowing I would eat nothing later. Then, having scattered the crumbs outside as my flute-player’s fee, I said an invocation before Apollo’s mask and poured him an offering.

By the time I went out I felt warmed and brisk. My landlord and his wife, who seldom noticed me except of an evening to see whom I brought home, called out to wish me luck, which I took for a good omen. The sky was getting quite blue. My feet and fingers tingled still, but I could feel the cold grow less.

I stopped at the barber’s, and found Hermippos being finished. As soon as he could talk, he offered me a bawdy tale about two girls he had met last night returning from the rites. I was in a mood for quiet, but could see that under it all he was on edge, and this was his notion of keeping up both our spirits. So I gave him his laughs, and in return got his company all the way, since he waited till I was done.

When we got to the theater, the public benches were full of people bundled up in all they had, with hats pulled down on their ears. In the side seats, where actors sit to hear what they can of other plays, Anaxis had kept us places. Beside us sat the cast of the second play; they would have to leave halfway through the first. A little way below were the cast of the satyr-farce which would end the day, Silenos and the Gorgons. They greeted Hermippos as a lost brother, and asked when he would come back to comedy. Above us, right to the top, were the chorus men and boys, gossiping among themselves or swapping boasts and jokes.

Down below, in the seats of honor, ambassadors and archons, priests and choregoi and their guests were coming in, their slaves all laden with rugs and cushions to make them snug. Then came the greater priests and priestesses: the High Priestess of Demeter, the High Priests of Zeus and Apollo and Poseidon and Athene. Presently drums and cymbals sounded; the image of Dionysos was carried in and set down facing the orchestra, where he could see his servants play; his High Priest took the central throne; the trumpet sounded, and ceased. The theater hushed. Out of sight, beyond the parodos, were heard the first notes of the flute playing in the chorus. Whether you are behind or out in front, there is nothing quite like this moment.

The first tragedy was an Amphytrion by a poet whose name escapes me, a new writer, who was never heard of again. He must have written himself out with this one, for it was far from bad. He had had his ear to the ground, and not missed one new effect, or bit of business, which had hit last year. It was polished like a racing chariot. Though everything had been lifted from something else, you felt the poet had hardly noticed this, it was done with so much confidence. The choral interludes were very striking, with Lydian obbligatos for the flute—what, in those days when it was newer, we used to call belly-music. Even today, it puts me in mind of the wailing for Adonis. The flute-player was not quite up to such a tricky score, but I doubt if the audience noticed it. It was a brisk, sharp, neat piece, and was going down like hot spiced wine. Hermippos, I saw, was quite out of laughter. I said to Anaxis, “This is a hit.”

He nodded, more calmly than I expected, and said, “The judges are an elderly lot this year.”

I craned over to look at the tribes’ ten representatives. A man has to be of sober years to get onto the ballot, and this year, true enough, there were some solid granddads. They did not look the men to relish that sobbing flute; and some were sure to take the wrong notes for modern music. I could picture the poet biting his nails each time.

However, the play had taken; the audience shouted, stamped, waved hats and shawls. The judges kept their own counsel. I was somewhat dismayed to meet such a challenge from this first play; it had been the second one I had had fears of. Anaxandrides, the author, was a prizewinner from the Greater Dionysia; such poets seldom trouble to enter at the Lenaia at all. Perhaps he had something sharp to say; people prefer hearing the City criticized when winter has closed the roads and seaways, keeping foreigners out of earshot. In any case, he would be a strong contender; and besides, his sponsor, winning first draw, had got Eupolis, who had been getting actors’ prizes for twenty years.

The opening chorus had some fine lines, yet was patchy, and not in Anaxandrides’ latest style. I began to suspect this was some old discarded play worked over, which he had not cared to risk at the greater festival. But he still had Eupolis, who now came on as Telemachos, son of Odysseus, moving beautifully, as he always did. I thought, “What crazy hopes have I been feeding? We shan’t even be placed.”

Hermippos leaned over to me. “I thought he had more sense. He should have cast himself as Penelope.”

I raised my brows. Eupolis was famous for his juveniles; he was not much over forty-five, and graceful as a boy. Then he started to speak. I was amazed. He sounded twenty years older than he had last summer.

“Has he been sick?” I whispered.

“No; he’s had three teeth pulled. He’s been in torment with them half the year; at last his doctor warned him they’d be his death if he kept them longer. Hadn’t you heard? But to think of his trying Telemachos!”

I have much to thank my father for, not least that he had strong teeth which gave him no trouble all his life, and passed on the same to me. Each actor, I am sure, who heard Eupolis that day shivered as if he had seen an owl in sunlight. It might happen to any of us next year. Once an artist is finished as an all-round man, he is mostly done for. It is rarely you get a play like The Troiades, where the lead is old and need never change to a younger mask.

Our chance now looked better. But I could not rejoice, when I heard a fine player sing his swan song, and the whole theater knowing it. When Anaxis nudged me and said we should be going, I knew it was too soon. But I got up; I had not the heart to stay and listen.

Down in the skeneroom there was the usual quiet scramble. I had known it since I was so small that I came and went like a mouse in a busy kitchen, scarcely seen if I troubled no one. After that I had been a chorus boy, one chirping bird in the flock, giggling and gossiping and showing off and mocking each other’s suitors; then carrying a spear, delighted to get some bit of business; then standing in for some real actor, sitting in front at rehearsal to study how he moved; at last, third man, the foothill one scales in triumph, to see from there the real mountain all to climb. Then second lead, where one may live and die unless one gets the chance and can take it. Now, for the first time, I came here as protagonist; here in the First Men’s dressing room was my table, the dresser waiting, my costumes on the wall pegs, my masks and props laid out.

I put on the robe of Zeus for the prologue, a lovely thing, purple worked with golden oak leaves. The dresser rubbed up the great mirror of smoothed bronze. It showed me at my back the other end of the room, with Eupolis’ table. In the quiet, I heard clearly his voice on stage, and the audience coughing. From the sound of the lines, he would soon be due for his last exit. I picked up my scepter, pushed back the mask on my head by its august beard, and said to the dresser, who was fidgeting with my girdle, that I would be back shortly. I expect he thought my bowels were griping, which is a common trouble with actors just going on; he did not keep me, and I got away in time. Eupolis had nowhere else to go between his exit and his bow, and in his place I would have liked the room to myself.

I don’t know where I went to wait; the next thing I remember is sitting enthroned down center on the god-walk, eagle on left fist, scepter in right hand, Anaxis in the mask of Thetis coming on towards me, and all the eyes of Athens skinning me to the bone.

As I sat, right foot advanced upon my footstool, in the pose of Olympian Zeus, it was as though I had sleepwalked here, and only just found out where I was. Suddenly I was gripped by terror. My first five lines sounded in my head, turning round on themselves, leading nowhere. When I was through them I was going to dry. You can’t be prompted up there without the whole theater hearing it. With a god it always gets a laugh. If this happens, I thought, I’ll be a wreck all through the play. I thought of Dion; I was going to fail him; of Anaxis, whose hopes I would destroy. Here he came. In an instant I had lived an hour of fright. Daughter of Ocean, I thought, Daughter of Ocean … My hands felt icy cold. I thought, My father would die of shame. He never dried. He was twice the artist I am.

At once my lines came back to me. I started my speech, taking care of the little things about which he was exacting. I could scarcely believe he was not in front. Soon I got into the part; and when I came on as Priam I felt no more fear than at rehearsal. But all through till the end I was aware of him, as if he had never been away.