The Praise Singer: A Novel

3

THERE WAS MUCH TO keep me on Keos. In two months, Theas was to be married. The girl he’d been betrothed to in childhood had died from fever a year or so before; and being now a man, he had claimed the right to choose this time. The maid, though not so well-dowered as our parents would have liked, was wellborn and not too poor, so they had given way with a good grace. When I was presented to her, she murmured a few shy words about my victory, eager to please any kin of his. I saw her eyes stray to him, wondering that he could be my brother and still so beautiful.

Everyone now thought I’d stay on till the wedding. I promised to be there with a wedding song, in time to teach the bridesmaids; but first I must go to Samos to see my master. He was alone, and I owed him everything.

Theas scratched his beard. It was now quite shapely, reminding me how long I’d been here. “Well, yes. It’s true you ought to care for him, now he’s old and past his best. But the father won’t be well pleased. He meant to take you to Euboia, to see the farm.”

“O Zeus!” I cried. “I must go. Can’t I breathe without doing him some injury?”

“Come, come,” said Theas. He thought this passion unbecoming; but offered comfort, just as when I’d squalled in infancy. “Things can be managed. Tell him it will dishonor the family if you neglect a benefactor. Say the old fellow is dying, and it will bring you into reproach if you’re not there.”

I made the averting sign, but did as he said. While I was a boy and feared my father, a stubborn pride had kept me from lying to save my skin. Now I was a man and afraid no longer, it came easily, and seemed mere good manners. After all, when I was born he could have put me out on the mountain.

Autumn was setting in; I had a rough crossing, and was glad to get into harbor. There was no one I knew on the mole, so I went straight to our lodging. The lyre-maker was at work in his shop below. At the sight of me he got up from his bench, putting his work aside. He was a cheerful man, as a rule.

“Ah, my dear Simonides, they said you would certainly be coming, and I never doubted it. He left you his goods, of course, and spoke especially of his kithara, which you have in keeping. Had he kin living, and do you know where they are? Is there anyone who ought to have his ashes, now his own city has fallen? Everyone said you would be sure to know.”

After a while he said, “But you have not heard, then? I am sorry, indeed. I thought you had come to settle his affairs.”

“I came to bring him home with me. When did he die?”

“Why, it would be the day you sailed he first took to his bed, or maybe the day after; and then it was four days, or maybe five.”

“When I left, then, he had it on him.”

“Don’t take it to heart, Simonides. He said to me, and even to the wife when she brought him a sup to eat, ‘I can lie up now like a lord. I told the boy it was nothing, or he’d have stayed and missed his chance.’”

I could not say to this kindly man, “I left him to die alone.” I just asked if anyone had come to visit him.

“I doubt if many knew that he was sick. There was that philosopher, though, that he used to see while you were at your singing; he teaches mathematics and such. He came most days; was with him at the end, and saw to the funeral. You’ll be wanting to see him; he has the urn in keeping.”

“Yes; who is he?”

“He’s a son of old Mnesarchos, who was a famous gemcutter in his day. You’ll find his house up the hill, just under the acropolis.”

I climbed the steep way to the ancient walls, remembering how Kleobis had said he would make an offering for my victory. He had offered his lonely death, while I was being welcomed in my own city without a care. People turned their heads now and then to see me weeping; but I had nowhere to go, and had to make the best of it. When the houses thinned, I sat awhile on a hillside boulder, and covered my face to have my grief out.

Even before I left, our paths had been dividing, mine to the Victory, his to the fallen lords, and only one thing had done it: poverty. Theas had been right. If either of us had had a steady livelihood, I would not be here now, seeking a stranger who had tended and buried my friend. If he reproaches me, I thought, I must bear even that.

I wiped my eyes and set off, and stopped some men on the road to ask the way. They pointed, but looked at me strangely. Next time I had to ask, the passer-by spat and made the evil-eye sign. “Oh, mad Pythagoras. His house is just over there.”

It was an old one, built of the mountain stone; not fancy-trimmed like the city ones, but cool and roomy. The courtyard door was opened by a Thracian slave, big-boned and red-haired, with a blue tattoo on his forehead. It surprised me that he did not speak in the slave-talk, but in excellent Greek. “Sir, you are Simonides of Keos? Please come inside, my master is expecting you.”

Courteous, not servile, he led me through a herb garden, aromatic in the autumn sun; there was a round pavement with an upright pole in its center, and figures carved round its edge. A long measuring-cord came down from the top of the pole and was wound about a cleat; I had seen such things among the Ephesian mathematicians, who claim they can measure mountains with them, or some such matter. The slave paused a moment to see where the shadow of the pole was falling. He was plainly dressed, but in a good fine cloth. In Keos, one could have worn such stuff oneself.

He scratched at a door and opened it. “Here is Simonides, sir, the friend of Kleobis.”

The room went right across the ground floor, and was full of things: shelves of books and scrolls and writing-tablets; tables of mathematicians’ toys, cubes and cones and spheres and cylinders. One wall was whitened, and drawn all over with figures, and with squares and triangles made of blocks of numbers. There was a stand with a great astrolabe upon it; and in the middle, getting the best light, a long table laden with musical instruments, at which a man was sitting tuning a lyre. He laid it aside, and rose.

He was very tall, his black hair and beard hardly touched with grey. Under his heavy brows were large eyes with brilliant whites showing all round the iris. One could not look away from them. I should think I could have counted ten while he stood there without a word, fixing me with these strange eyes; then suddenly he came around his worktable, and embraced me as if we were old friends meeting after many years. I remembered the man on the road, but could not feel that he was dangerous.

“Come, rest; we can talk when you have eaten.” I had taken no breakfast, in my haste to be off the ship, and nothing since, but had not known I was hungry. I took the chair he offered. His lyre was a fine old one of polished tortoiseshell, with arms of slender horn and a bridge of ivory. The slave, uncalled, brought wine and raisin-cakes; my host took them and served them to me himself.

“Rest,” he said again, and picking up the lyre played on it softly. The intervals were new to me, and strange, yet soothing. Presently he laid it down. “We often talked of you, Kleobis and I. Now that I see you, I no longer doubt that you were his son. A good son, too. You have no memory of it?”

I now saw why they thought him mad. “Certainly,” I said to humor him, “he gave me a father’s care.” He had suffered enough, I thought, without a lunatic to trouble his last hours.

“No matter. The Sight is rare. But the bonds of souls are for all men, as for every creature. Leave, when you can, your honorable grief. I foresee that you will live long. Even before your soul departs its present habitation, his in its new one may return, and you can repay your debt to him, as he, you may be sure, repaid to you some ancient kindness. In such ways we lift each other towards the light.”

I began to understand him. At the tavern I’d heard of such beliefs, though only by way of joking. I just said that the landlord had spoken of his goodness to my master, for which I would be forever in his debt.

“It was a new bond to me. But now it is tied, the threads will cross again. I shall be the better for it, and I hope he also.”

“I was told, sir, that you have his ashes. It troubles me that the barbarians have his city, and I cannot give him a tomb among his kindred.”

“It does not trouble him, you may be sure. But take for friendship’s sake, if you wish, what remains of his outworn garment. He himself will have come already before the Judges, and heard their counsel; and knowing his soul’s needs will have chosen his next life.”

“He must be honored somewhere with a tomb. You have more right than I to bury him; do you wish to do it?”

“No, for his tomb would be untended here, which would cause you sorrow. I am leaving Samos, and shall not return; at least, not in this body.”

I asked if Polykrates had exiled him. “That would have come, I think. Till lately, the Tyrant hasn’t troubled himself about mad Pythagoras.” For the first time he smiled. “But now he begins to hear that I and my friends are studying harmony.”

“So? But he prides himself on being a patron of the arts.”

“Not ours. We look for music, first in the heavens”—he pointed to the astrolabe—“then on earth in the laws of its creatures, chiefly in man; in himself, in his dealings with his fellows, in his body politic. That is as displeasing to tyrants as a doctor’s advice to a drunkard. Well, we have work to do, which we need to pursue in peace. There is a piece of coastal land in Italy, good land unused; I traveled there to find it. My students are coming with me. He will be glad to see us go.”

“That’s a long way.” It seemed to me the further edge of the world.

“This is an age of tyrants. They warn each other about men like me. In Kroton they will not trouble us.”

“But, if you are founding a colony, what will you do for women?”

“Why, bring my students; there will be enough of each kind. The women have been men and will be men again, as you and I have been women. What is that, but a station along the way?”

“If you are selling up,” I said, “and want a buyer for your slave, I shall be glad to hear your price. Don’t fear I shall give him rough work, I can see he is above that. I promise to treat him well.”

“That I do not doubt. But I am giving Zamolxis his freedom, to return to his own people. He has been a good pupil; it is time he began to teach. Besides, it is in my mind that his time of penance is over.

His eyes had fixed in his head, the white gleaming round the iris; bright eyes, not blind, and yet unseeing. With any other man, I should have thought it was a fit, and called for help. As it was, I would have gone away quietly, but had not been given the urn. I waited, wondering how long these turns might last with him, and whether I should tell the slave, so that he could be looked after. I was afraid to wake him myself. However, the shadows on the floor had hardly moved, before he came calmly to himself, and smiled at me.

“Forgive me. The Sight chooses its own time. When the door opens, even on the same day of the same life, there is always something new. Just now I tasted the food he shared with me.”

He paused, and I was afraid he would go off again. “Yes?” I said.

“I mean Zamolxis. That is one of my strongest bonds. I was an Egyptian, a child—I know Egypt in this life, and much came back to me. My father took me on his ship to trade in Tyre. We were seized by pirates; Zamolxis was the captain. My father fought and was killed, escaping slavery; they threw him dying overboard. I ran to the one man I saw taking no part in this, not knowing that only his rank prevented him. I clasped his knees and begged him to save me. He was pitiful, and chose me for part of his spoils; for his pleasure, the others thought, but he did no harm to me. Once, in a calm, I taught him the common writing, and once in a storm he comforted me. In the end he put me ashore, in a place that is now unknown to me, where I had kindred. Someday I may come upon it.

“Well, that is the cause of his present life. For the blood he had shed and the people he had enslaved, he had to make reparation; he was enslaved as a boy, to a hard master in these parts. I passed by—not by chance, you can be sure, although it seemed so—and heard him crying under the whip; and the Sight came to me, and I knew my debt. For ten years he has shared my studies; I took him to Egypt with me, when I went to the temple schools. He knows the motions of the stars, and the properties of plants. In all these years, he has not shed the blood of a living creature; he knows they are souls which have been men, or will be. Now he shall go to the Getai, from whom he came, in the country north of the Ister. As in his former life he brought death and darkness, in this he will bring life and light.”

I thought to myself that he talked like a poet, and wondered what he sang. As to his tale, I could tell that he believed in it; but it seemed a waste of a good slave. He’ll just be one more cattle-raiding tribesman, I thought, within half a year.

However, I replied as I thought he’d wish; and shortly after, he gave me the funeral urn; a beautiful piece, Corinthian, painted with lions and flowers. Later, I made a tomb for it in Euboia, carved with this epitaph: I was Kleobis of Ephesos, till my city was possessed by the long-haired Mede. But my songs remain, and will abide his going.

From time to time, I heard news of Pythagoras and his school in Italy. Lately, when I was traveling to Syracuse, my ship put in at Kroton. He was dead by then, but I talked to some citizens, who honor him next the gods and keep all his laws. They live more plainly even than Keans, but from devotion rather than harshness; to me they were very courteous, and brought me to some old men who had known the founder well. I asked whether they’d ever heard anything of a freed slave called Zamolxis. Yes indeed, they said; he was still alive, and honored by the Getai as their greatest sage. Two kings in turn had appointed him prophet and counselor to the people. He lived in a cave, keeping his master’s laws and preaching his philosophy. The Getai, who had been great hunters, now killed no living thing, and were known to the tribes around as Milk-Eaters.