David Wishart - Parthian Shot

‘Also, Rufia Perilla,’ — Phraates turned back to her — ‘I do have something a literary scholar like yourself might be interested in seeing, which you could perhaps examine while Corvinus and I have our talk. The manuscript of Euripides’s Helen. ’

Pause; long pause. Perilla’s ears had gone pink. Finally, she said: ‘The..ah…original manuscript?’

Ladies don’t drool, but I could see she was coming pretty close.

‘Oh, yes. It’s quite authentic. I bought it in Athens some years ago from a direct descendant, and it has some fascinating marginal notes in the poet’s own hand. But of course if you’ve made other arrangements for this evening then — ’

‘No! Oh, no!’ I don’t think I’d ever heard the lady squeak. She did it now. ‘No arrangements! None at all! Certainly not! No!’

‘Well, that’s excellent.’ Phraates beamed. ‘We can all go in my carriage, naturally — it isn’t far, just the other side of the Agrippan Bridge — and you can use it to return home. Corvinus, perhaps you’d care to leave your wife here while you instruct your litter-slaves.’

‘We’ll instruct them together.’ I was grinning from ear to ear. I wasn’t going to miss this; no way was I going to miss this! I took Perilla’s arm and pulled. ‘Come on, lady. Instructing the slaves time. Back in five minutes, Phraates.’

I hustled her towards where we’d left the litter and accompanying lardballs parked, further round the curve of the theatre.

‘What happened to the “straight home to dinner”, then?’ I said.

Perilla sniffed, but her ears were still pink and it spoiled the effect. ‘Don’t be silly, dear. Your Prince Phraates is perfectly charming and it was a very gracious invitation. How could we refuse?’

‘Easy, lady. I was just about to. You were the one who sold out, and you did it in spades. For a bit of smarm and a look at a second-hand bookroll. I’m ashamed of you.’

She looked at me like I’d suddenly come out in purple blotches and sprouted feathers. ‘Marcus, that is an original manuscript of a Euripides play! Do you know how many of these are extant?’

‘No.’

‘Well, neither do I. But I’ve never seen one, nor am I ever likely to otherwise. I am not passing up the opportunity.’

I shrugged. ‘Fine. So you explain things to Meton. He’s been slaving over a hot stove all afternoon and when we roll in at two in the morning the guy is not going to be greatly chuffed.’

She stopped. Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, gods!’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten all about Meton!’

‘Right. Your job, lady. I’m staying out of this one.’

‘He’ll be absolutely furious!’

‘Yeah. Blazing.’ I kept my face straight.

‘He’s probably…making…the sauce…right at this minute.’

Our eyes met. I don’t know which of us actually started laughing first, but ten seconds later we were hugging each other helplessly and getting scandalised looks from the other theatregoing punters.

‘It’s not really funny, you know,’ Perilla said at last, when she could breathe.

‘Uh-uh. Not in the slightest. We’ll be living on boiled cabbage for a month. Still, it’s done now.’

‘Let’s hope Phraates gives us a good dinner, then.’

We instructed the litter-slobs to carry the glad news to the Caelian and went back to where Phraates was waiting.

On the way to the Janiculan we postmortemed the Medea , or at least Phraates and Perilla did. Me, I looked out of the window and thought.

I was impressed with Phraates, seriously impressed: slice it how you will, in comparison with just having yourself made Great King of Parthia bringing Perilla all the way round from freezing-daggers-drawn to pink-eared-and-squeaking in thirty seconds flat takes some doing. Phraates had managed it without breaking sweat. It hadn’t been a spur-of-the moment thing, either: he’d obviously done his homework in advance, finding out the lady’s full name and family background and choosing just the right bait to hook her. Which was interesting. Me, I wouldn’t bet the guy hadn’t set the whole accidental meeting up from the start, including the business of the handy carriage; and that took careful planning. Geriatric, nothing: Phraates was a very smart cookie indeed. In which case -

‘Wouldn’t you agree, Corvinus?’

I turned round. ‘Hmm?’

Phraates smiled. ‘Forgive me. I’ve broken your train of thought. I was just saying to your wife that for me the intriguing thing about the Medea is how it manages to oppose so successfully two very different but equally cogent moral systems.’

‘Yeah? I thought it was just about a witch who murdered her own kids.’

‘Marcus!’ Perilla snapped.

Well, maybe it had sounded a bit crass at that, and we were his guests after all. He was only trying to bring me into the conversation. ‘I’m afraid I don’t know much about literature,’ I said. ‘And plays aren’t really my bag.’

‘Indeed?’ The old guy didn’t seem all that put out, or maybe it was just good manners. ‘A pity. I always think, myself, that the theatre can teach us a lot about life. Certainly as much as true history or philosophy. I’m quite a devotee myself.’

‘Never mind Marcus,’ Perilla said. ‘Do carry on, Prince.’ The lady sounded almost gooey. Jupiter! This was Perilla?

He turned back to her. ‘Well, if you’re sure. You see, where your sympathies lie in the Medea depends on your choice of standpoint.’

‘In what way?’

‘According to his own moral code, Jason is completely justified in what he does. On the other hand, Medea is also correct, morally, in condemning him because in terms of her code his marriage to Creon’s daughter is a total betrayal of herself.’ He was still smiling. ‘So which of them is right in the end?’

‘Surely they both are,’ Perilla said. ‘That’s the essence of the tragedy. But by murdering her own children Medea sets herself beyond the pale.’

‘To the Greek mind, yes. Although the Greeks themselves put a high value on avenging treachery. And to even the score the poet is careful to dignify Medea’s chain of reasoning. Myself, I feel that Euripides was trying very hard to send his audience home a little more open-minded than when they sat down.’

‘Oh, come on, pal!’ I said. ‘The bitch was a murderess!’

Phraates shook his head. ‘No, Corvinus. I’m sorry, you’ve misunderstood. I’m not justifying her actions totally, and I don’t believe that Euripides was, either. However, I do think that the play’s intention was to make us think…less in blacks and whites, as it were. Jason and Medea come from completely different backgrounds and, as I say, they follow different moral codes. The instinctive reaction is to favour Jason’s and regard Medea’s with horror. However — and this is the point — that does not make hers any less viable. Nor does it make her — judged by her own standards — a less moral being than Jason is.’ He shrugged. ‘Well. Perhaps we’re getting a little too serious here for a pre-dinner chat. That’s the Agrippan Bridge ahead. I’ll apologise in advance for the meal; I eat quite simply when I’m at home, and I’m afraid you’ll have to take pot-luck. It’ll be nothing like the banquet poor Zariadres put on for us a few days ago.’

I didn’t answer, just settled back against the cushions. I may not be a literary buff, but I’m not stupid, either. And I’d bet a barrel of oysters to a pickled walnut that whatever the devious, smart-as-paint old bugger had been talking about there it hadn’t been Euripides.

I don’t get over to the Janiculan a lot. Not many city guys do, for much the same reasons: barring the heavily-built-up tenement area in the bulge west of the Sublician where the city proper has spilled across the river, most of it’s either commercial ground heavy on warehousing and storage or — on the slopes of the hill itself — real upmarket residential; what the property marketeers call urban villas. Mega-rich country, in other words, although most of the money’s new: businessmen, entrepreneurs, grain- or oil-trade speculators, that sort of thing. The old families tend to stick with their ancestral mansions built in the days when the other side of the Tiber was nothing but fields and virgin woodland, along the Sacred Way or on the slopes of the Quirinal or the Viminal. Getting the Fabii or the Cornelii to pile their bits and pieces onto a mover’s cart and shift west of the river after three or four hundred years would take a major earthquake, at the least.