The Praise Singer: A Novel

4

WE WILL SPEAK OF it later, he had said. Very well, let him send for me.

A day passed; then a second day; and I began to guess what it meant. He would never send for me, not about this. Time would go by, new things would happen in the city. Then one day he would send for me, and greet me as if none of it had ever been. In silence we were to agree that it was all forgotten.

I thought of Athens, the center of the world; of songs I’d made and would make, which foreigners would only half understand. I thought of Bacchylides, who now that Ionia was gone must be here, to hear the best. I thought of the victory chariot I’d become so used to mounting; of the tripod I had dedicated to Apollo. I thought of the man who had been my friend.

When next he sent for me, all the old charm would be back again—with just a feeling that it might be taken away, if one showed oneself ungrateful. I would drink and sing and talk with him, never speaking of what I knew; and when the next thing happened, I would have got into the way of it. Everything just the same; except that my friend would have become my master, with whom I must seem friendly to get my pay.

I had my men’s chorus to rehearse. There were some fine voices that year; while they sang I could forget the rest. But only then.

Bacchylides was my pupil, which gave him all a son’s right to know my mind. We were walking back from a rehearsal, which he’d come to hear, when I found myself saying, “After the festival, I shall have to see the man, whether he sends for me or not.”

He looked at me across the kithara, which he was carrying home for me. He was in no doubt what it meant. “Everyone thinks you stood up to him very well.”

“For me it was not enough.”

“You didn’t see yourself.”

“Who’s ‘everyone’? The boys from the gymnasium? It will mean very little, you know, to most people in the city. The majority will take it that the Archon knew what he was about. Many will be glad to see an oligarch’s daughter set down. Only a handful will know the truth. This is a matter between me and myself. And you.”

I knew that by now he was feeling desolate; but he said stoutly, “I’ll go wherever you go. Don’t worry about me.”

“Not even that. If I leave Athens, it won’t be like traveling to the festivals. I can’t sit down in Euboia and let my life go by. I shall take my chance in Thessaly. For a time, at least, you would have to go back to Keos. I owe that to your parents.”

“To Keos!” He almost shouted it. People looked round. “Uncle, I promise you, on Keos I’d go mad.”

“No, you would not. You would make some songs, to sing me when we meet again, and obey your parents, so that they think well of my instruction. As soon as I have a settled home, it will be yours wherever it is, as long as I live, or you want to share it. But I’m not taking you to a land without law like Thessaly.”

He looked round. “You said ‘if’ at first. Now you’re talking as if it were all settled.”

“Perhaps I was. You were there; you saw it all; you know the girl was innocent. What do you think yourself that I ought to do?” I was not exhorting him; I really wanted to know.

He saw it, and paused in thought “If you stayed, would it mean you had to tell lies?”

“In my songs, do you mean, or in my speech?”

“In the songs, of course.”

“No. He has never asked me to flatter him. If the compliments stopped, he is still too proud to demand them.”

“Uncle, you know that story about the man who was boasting of Corinth. And the Athenian said, ‘But we have Simonides.’ It’s true, you know. You do belong to the Athenians, and their heroes and their gods. Hipparchos is just one man.”

“True. And we could eat well without his bread. But if I go to him saying, ‘You are no longer my patron,’ I would have to leave the city.”

“He might kill you, you mean? Could he do that?”

“No. He’d do nothing to me. Or for me, either. At the festivals he would just get other men to sing, and make sure I felt it.”

“Then you would have to go, of course. But you know, I was there, I saw him. I think your friendship’s over, Uncle Sim, whether you speak to him or not. As it is, it’s a long time now since he asked you up to supper. But I think he’ll still call on you to sing for the Athenians, because if he stopped they would be angry. And it’s for them that you’ll be singing.”

“Yes, that might be. There’s Hippias, too. He has no ear, but he thinks I am respectable and bring the city credit; and it’s he who has the last word.”

“Will Anakreon stay?” His mind often ran with my thought.

“I’ve not asked him, it would only give us pain. He will say it was all an unhappy business, but love is a lawless god. He’s his own man, I am mine.”

He walked on awhile in silence, then said, “Thank you for talking to me. I didn’t like to ask. At any rate, it will all have to wait till after the Panathenaia. That does belong to the Athenians and their gods. It’s only three days now, and you’ve a great deal to do. After all that, something may come to you; things do, when you’ve been thinking of something else. Or I’ve found that, with a song.”

It was the first time in his life that I had leaned on the boy like this, and his strength surprised me; which itself surprises me now. On the other hand, I have never thought him a seer. That one time only, a god breathed in his ear.