The Praise Singer Read online

  “But now, today? He is lying here like a dog.”

  “That creature asked five drachmas for a bedstead. None of us had enough. He won’t give credit. He charges for water, too.”

  “I’ll go get my money from the lodge. Dressed like this, I expect some boatman will trust me.”

  “They burn the bed after, or so he claims … Yes, go, Sim.” As I was turning, he added, “And don’t take what Father said to heart. His mind’s half gone, or he’d have known you couldn’t do it.”

  “I know. Shall I see him first? No, tell him where I’ve gone, if he can understand.”

  I began to walk back along the foot-track towards the harbor. I was nearly there, when I heard a call, and saw the boy behind me, waving his arm. From pity for his deformity, I paused to let him come up. “Sir,” he called, “I think your dad has died. I just heard the ladies wailing.”

  As he spoke, I saw Theas running to overtake me. The boy waited and watched. He had missed the feast, but in the end he had had his moment. As Aischylos told me, in most tragedies the Messenger is a much-sought role.

  After a while, I remembered to take off my festal wreath. I wore one so often that I could forget it like my clothes. The boy picked it up from the ground, and, sitting down, teased out the braid from among the laurel.

  We had not gone far before we could hear the women. I said, “After I left, did he speak again?”

  “Not to make it out. I think once he said, ‘Sim,’ and I told him where you were. I don’t know if he understood. Soon after that his breath rattled, and then he died.”

  The child was sitting where the boy had been. His eyes were great with terror; he looked at us without a word. Theas picked him up and held him firmly, saying, “We are all going home soon. Be good now, and I’ll tell you about it later. Granddad is with the shades, where the heroes go.” The child was still silent, but I saw his face was soothed. Theas ruffled his hair, and set him down. Then we went on towards the wailing.

  They had closed his eyes, and bound up his jaw with Philomache’s hair-ribbon. He looked his own man once more. His mouth was straight again, keeping its own counsel. Whether he judged the gods, or us, or himself, was a thing he did not confide. I remembered Pythagoras, and wondered what life he would choose next time, if a choice was offered him.

  My mother and sister were beating their breasts as women do. Their wailing throbbed with the blows. I envied them. Had I been a barbarian, I too could have had my part. Women can float away upon lamentation, like birds upon the air, or fish in rivers. Later they must return and know their grief; but for a while they are freed, as the poet is by the song.

  If I had gone back before I left for the ferry, I would have seen his death. He named me; perhaps it would have told me something. As it is, I ask myself, even now, why it was not until I came that he asked for hemlock. Was it just that I knew Delos, and might be able to find it? Or did he think I would give it more willingly than the rest? Or to be humbled before me, was that the last stroke, too much to bear?

  We burned him at evening, on a platform near the death-house, whose stone is blackened with old fires. Shipmasters will not balk at carrying a funeral urn; but not even Laertes would have taken a corpse on board, his crew would have refused to sail. I went back to Delos to take off my choral robe, and put on what I had come in. We sheared our hair; even our traveling clothes were too gay for mourning, and we sprinkled them with dust.

  I had brought oil and incense for the pyre; its driftwood and flotsam crackled and sparked with salt. The flames turned blue, and did not hide the blackening body; but they were fierce and quick. Before long the core of the pyre fell in, and he fell with it, sticks of bone among sticks of wood.

  Something offended my nose, more than the burning. The warden of the death-house stood at my elbow. “If you have business to attend to, sirs, I can collect the ashes, and put them up for you nicely. The mourners before have always been very satisfied.”

  I must have whipped round on him like a snake, for he cringed away; then he yelped, as Theas got him in a wrestler’s lock. “You carrion crow! If you lay one claw upon our father’s pyre, I swear I’ll rekindle it and throw you on.” “With a rock on your belly,” I put in, “to hold you down.” As he went off, I divined that Theas had been as glad as I to drive out this scapegoat laden with our guilt. Theas had lived a blameless son, and his father’s pride. I expect that his need was no less than mine, and maybe more.

  When I went back to the Kean lodge, evening was falling, and the rocks of Delos glittered with sparks like fire. Theas was seeing to the urn, Midylos to the women and the child. Laertes would sail at first light, and I only went to gather my things together. I meant to sleep on board, rather than deal with scores of polite condolences. My boys would not know what to say, and my presence would spoil their holiday. The flute-player would look after them.

  No one was about; Delian evenings are merry. I had found my kithara safe, and was on my way out with my things, when a man came up dressed for a party. Having heard the news, he apologized for this unseemliness. When all that was proper had been said, he told me that after the dithyrambs were over, he had been sent to look for me by Hipparchos, to ask me to supper at the Athenian lodge. He and Hippias had expressed great pleasure with my ode, and with its praise of their honored father.

  “Please thank them for their kindness. Who won the contest?” He looked surprised. I said, “I have been on Rhenaia.”

  “Of course, of course; forgive me. As I heard, it would have been yourself; but you sent the judges word that you were obliged by piety to incur pollution. So they gave the prize to that young man, Lasos.”

  “They did well; he has a gift. I heard part of his piece and would have liked to hear it all. Wish him well from me, if I should not see him.”

  As I learned later, he got the message and was pleased. Nothing looks more foolish than a petulant loser.

  The man went back to his party. He must have had a friend among the judges, to hear that I could have won. I said in my heart, “He has wronged me, even in his death.”

  I walked towards Laertes’ ship, thinking how I might have gone home in the state galley, crowned with victory. As I walked along the jetty towards the mooring, an oldish man approached me. I thought, Another fool with whom I must exchange civilities; but I put on a good face, and waited for him.

  “My dear Sim!” I recognized the Kean accent. “I hear the good Leoprepes is dead. Give my sorrowful respects to your excellent mother, and all the family. You have lost an upright man, as I can myself bear witness. It was ten years ago, or maybe fifteen; at any rate, it was the year of the sheep-sickness. Before the start, I had bought fifty from your father; and when some thirty died, I was at my wits’ end. I had counted on the lambs, to pay off a loan; it seemed I would have to pledge myself in bondage. Then your father’s steward came. He brought word that fifty of your father’s flock had died, and he had no doubt that those he had sold me must have had the sickness on them. He would take back those that were left, and return me the price of them all. Then and there, his man paid it me. He did not even demand to see the hides of the dead beasts. Just the silver, paid in full. My luck turned soon after, and now we do pretty well. But I have often thought that but for your father, I should be a thrall today … Did he never tell you this?”

  “No,” I said. “Never a word.”

  “Well, well. I am glad I met with you. To think of that; never a word. He thought his uprightness not worth boasting of, because it was his habit.”

  I went on my way. I remembered the sheep-sickness; I had been still a shepherd. When the first few died, he had beaten me for letting them eat black hellebore. Later, when he knew the truth, he said, “Well, Sim, it seems you were not to blame.” I was angry that he said it so unwillingly, never counting the cost to his pride in saying it at all. This man had done him more justice. I had often been ashamed that he was known for a hard man; that he had never been known for a crooked one,
I had not considered; just taken it for granted, as he had brought me up to do. All in all, I thought, I had best stop pitying myself over the choral prize. The judges had thought me the best, and I should be content to know it.

  So I went to my mattress on the ship, with some bread and cheese bought on the way, and bedded down for the night. Some sailors were working late, shouting and hammering, so I lay awake. About midnight, I heard singing, coming along the waterside, and threw my blanket round me and went up on deck to look.

  It was a komos of revelers, waving torches, and singing a skolion to which they dance-stepped along. They were not far away, and I could see Hipparchos leading them. He had one arm over the shoulders of the youth to whom he had given the painted wine-cup. They made a handsome group, like Dionysos with a young satyr.

  The sound faded away; the sailors had turned in, and so did I. It had been a long day. As men count great events, nothing much had happened. The Delia had been celebrated; an old man had died in the way of nature, and his sons had put him on the pyre. Yet it had been a full day for me.

  It is a strange thing to recall; but as I fell asleep, I was wondering how it might feel to be courted for one’s beauty. I expect Pythagoras would have told me that in some past life, as youth or woman, I had been cruel to my lovers, and had chosen to make amends. In my time I have talked with many philosophers, who have expounded to me the ways of the gods with men. Out of them all, Pythagoras’ belief seems to me the most just, supposing it is true. But then, if it is, and all these things befall us, unless we have the Sight we shall never know.

  3

  WE GAVE OUR FATHER the very best funeral the laws of Keos allow. No wailing, even by wife or daughter; one lamb and one goat to offer at the tomb; no incense. They measure even the libations of wine and oil. Had we had his body, his grave-clothes must have been as simple as in life, and his grave-wreath only of origan. We draped his urn with fillets of fine wool, and tied our hair into his mourning-wreath. (But for Midylos, Theas and I would have left our shearings forgotten on Rhenaia.) We put the urn on a bier hung with a linen cloth; and Theas and I carried it to the tomb in the silence the laws prescribe.

  Later, to the scandal of half Iulis, we had a small carving done on his grave-stele, in the Athenian style, by an artist from that city. Of course he had never seen our father; but that is usual. He just asked his age and how he wore his hair and beard. He was done leaning on a staff, with Theas bidding him farewell. He, at least, was there to be copied.

  To the very end of the rites, Theas was just what he had always been, the eldest son of Leoprepes. It was as though our father was still watching, as Homer tells it, on the hither shore of Styx, awaiting his rite of passage. After the offerings at the tomb came the funeral feast, given in the Kean style he would have approved. After that, if Patroklos’ ghost spoke truly to Achilles, Leoprepes son of Theasides, of Iulis, had made the crossing.

  We went home, and slept; next morning the sun was shining, and the birds sang their spring songs. Our mother went briskly about the house, with well-water and hyssop. Theas rode into town, saying he had business there; and came back clean-shaved.

  “I’d have as soon kept it up after that time in Samos,” he said quite coolly, “but the father would never have stood it. Athenian dandies—you know what he used to say.”

  So that was how the sculptor did him on the grave-stele, standing with our father. He forgot to mention it, and once the outline was chiseled, it was too late to change. I kept quiet about it, and so did he.

  Looking back, I can’t think why I was so surprised at the change in Theas. If I had been less taken up with myself, I could have expected it. I, the unwanted one, had long since had my freedom. Theas, the beloved, respected, cherished, had never been free at all. Now he was like a vine that bursts with green shoots in a single day of sun.

  Not that he plunged into riot and revelry, like some heirs of strict fathers. That was never his style. But when next Laertes put to sea, with a cargo for Sidon and Naukratis, Theas was with him. He wanted to learn the trade of shipmaster; then he would hire a good pilot, and buy a ship.

  Nowadays, men of good birth seem to think sea-trading beneath them. It was different when I was young. Laertes had inherited a big estate, grew his own grapes for wine and raisins, pressed his own olive oil, and pastured the flocks whose wool he sold. But he never gave up the sea till he was past sixty and his joints got stiff, though by then he was one of the chief men of Iulis. When Theas joined him, he was in his prime: had traded as far north as the Euxine, for furs and corn and Hyperborean amber; south down to Naukratis for faience and alabaster jars and ivory and incense; and bought purple in Tyre to sell in Athens. The Ionian ports were open to trade again under their Persian satraps; once more in Miletos you could get lapis and embroideries from Sardis. Laertes had started out, like many another landowner’s son, just selling his father’s spare produce; now he was richer from trade than land. For years, as I might have guessed, Theas had been dying with envy. It had never soured their friendship; Theas had been born without sourness in him; but I remembered, now, how he’d told me in my boyhood Laertes’ sailor tales, dwelling on the fights with pirates.

  He finished all this business before he said a word; when he came back from Koressia harbor, he was like a boy again. Our mother was much dismayed; she had never thought, she cried, that he would be a wanderer. He replied that she had plenty of kin in Iulis, and Midylos close at hand. He was kind, but firm as rock.

  When we were alone, I said to him, “Theas, what would you have done if Father had lived to fourscore?”

  He looked a little surprised, either at my asking, or not having asked before. “I’m thirty-three. I was giving it two more years. Half a man’s life, and the best half, I reckon is all one owes.”

  “That’s fair,” I said. “But I prophesy the best is still to come.” I was right in that. But I thought, too, that it would have destroyed our father; and that after all he had had a lucky death.

  Remembering the knife Theas gave me when I left home, I went to Khalkis, whose swordsmiths were famous then as now, and bought him the best short sword that I could find. He was delighted with it; in after years he told me it served him well, though before they got to close quarters he had done pretty well with javelins. I expect that in all those years when he had exercised with them at home, he had dreamed of using them in battle. At any rate, before he was thirty-five—the age when he’d planned to claim his freedom—he had picked off the captain of a Cretan pirate, and sailed on to Naukratis with the captured ship, and his own cargo of Corinthian helmets for the Greek soldiers in Pharaoh’s pay.

  As for me, I went back to my land in Euboia, now truly mine. No one could say my father had been a harsh landlord. He did not like my absences, but kept to his word and never told me so. If he grumbled at my accounts, it was not from avarice—he might do it in a good year—but because I had altered something on the farm. It was true that since old Phileas knew the work so well, I had begun to give him his head. His changes were for the better; the farm ran smoothly; he did not take free men in thrall for debt, or ill-treat the slaves; so, my mind at rest, I was free to walk out in the woods and hills and by the shore, following the rise and fall of words as one might chase a bright bird that teases one by flying out of view or perching in hidden branches, then of a sudden comes swooping in perfect plunge, its colors flashing, the whole curve of its path clear to enraptured eyes.

  I trusted Phileas, and he did not betray me. If he kept a few pickings for himself, which would have been only human, he never exceeded. I think he feared Dorothea more than me. She was a personage in the village now, and took a pride in it; even if my ship came early into port, I always found things just so.

  All in all I had been living very well; it had been foolish to let my accounting to my father hang over me for a month beforehand. He had a way of fidgeting while I spoke, so that I felt something was coming without knowing what. I had sometimes lied to h
im, but only about small things for the sake of peace; and to his profit, not his loss. Yet these trifles had oppressed me, almost as if I were a boy who could still be beaten, even when I had just come from Athens with gold in my belt and praise in my ears. I went home after the funeral feeling as if a heavy mortgage had been paid off.

  But now in Athens a long day was ending, which had dawned in storm and fitful sun and returning gales, then passed into a fine untroubled afternoon and a mild evening. Now twilight was here and it would soon be dusk.

  Not, like my father, with a single stroke, but little by little every day, the strong old master was failing. Often in those days he sent for me, or Hipparchos sent me to him, saying my songs refreshed him when he was tired. He was getting to be like ancient Nestor, who used to dwell on the days before Agamemnon was born, let alone Achilles. I would sing to him from the Sons of Homer, or sometimes make a song for him myself, about his early deeds in the Salaminian War. There, when he had thanked me with his regal courtesy, he would often set me right; he was not silly, just clearest in his memory about the past, as I am getting to be. About the present, he was apt to be forgetful. Sometimes when a man had been acquitted in his own court, he would order his arrest, not from injustice, but because the judgment had slipped his mind. No harm was done; Hippias would always oversee his orders and put things right. He did not even need to conceal it; Pisistratos, when reminded of the mistake, would thank him kindly, and praise the gods for giving him a good son to prop his age.

  One night he had a few friends to supper, old men like himself who had been in his party since early days. He asked me too, because he had meant that I should sing. I was well prepared for his forgetting all about it, as in fact he did. It was a kind of compliment, that I should seem to him like any one of his guests. I enjoyed the good food and wine, and did not put myself forward; but I could feel, as the meal went on, that the company had disappointed him. His mind was sharp still, if not his memory; most of the others were maundering on about old men’s trivial concerns, or deploring the manners of the youth—which, I think, had never been so good as they were then, and certainly have not since. He tried to lead the talk, but it would fall away in trifles. He did not, as Polykrates would have done, get up and go to bed; but, when the eldest made his excuses, graciously included all the rest. I, of course, went up last. He made a gesture for me to stay.