Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

Now some words of comfort to you who want me dead. One day most of you will be sorry you voted for it, and when that time comes please don’t think you were very wicked or unusually stupid. Folk who think that are as mistaken as those who think they’re very wise and good. Just remember that when you thought you were freeing Athens from a dangerous enemy you were really losing a useful friend. And smile, rather sadly, at how ignorant you were but don’t get upset! You will only have “enthroned me” — as Homer says — “in death’s impregnable castle.” I think that’s all I want to say.

He turns round, sees two officials waiting to arrest him, turns back to the jury with raised arm.

SOCRATES: Stop! I’ve remembered something. Come here Aeschines. ( Aeschines, notebook in hand, approaches ) This worthy fellow has for years been trying to write down everything he hears me say — that young fellow Plato has started doing it too. They think they can become philosophers by studying my words, but they can’t. We can only be philosophers by studying ourselves. No great cleverness is needed, I proved that. What you do is look carefully into yourself and think hard about what you see there. The only help you need is the good-humoured conversation of friends who don’t want to flatter you. Men of Athens! Men of Greece! Men of the World, don’t let philosophy become a thing experts lecture on — if that happens it will lose all value, become just another tool people use to get money or social promotion. The only true philosopher is the honest lover. Remember that. No, DON’T remember it, discover it together with others. Goodbye. No! Stop a minute! ( scratches his head ) Jail is a bit like hospital and a whole month will elapse before my big operation. I will be delighted to receive visitors with a taste for dialectical conversations about truth, beauty and goodness. Handsome young men will be specially welcome of course, but I don’t need more than one in a company of five or six. Nobody will be turned away on grounds of age, appearance or low income. And as usual, there will be no charge. Thank you.

He turns and walks off stage between the officials followed by Aeschines, Plato and other disciples who surround and obscure his cheerful, animated person. The President mingles with the jurors who start drifting towards an anteroom where they will be paid. Anytus, having been congratulated by friends on the success of his action, sits for a while, brooding on how the issue of the trial will affect forthcoming elections.

Life with Zoe has been much nicer since I forbade her to bring dangerous people home. Nothing much is open in Glasgow after Hogmanay so yesterday, feeling we ought to be more companionable, I taught her after a late breakfast to play cribbage. 62 We played all afternoon and evening without once stopping to eat, though shortly before ten she insisted on going out and bringing back fish and chips from McPhee’s. When at last we went to bed she had beaten me several times and asked if more than two could play. Four, I told her. She suggested that later in the month she might bring back some pals for a game with us. I asked what kind of pals. She laughed and said, “Don’t worry — none that will pull knives on you.”

Is our life together entering a jolly new domestic phase?

An ominous start to unsatisfactory day. Wakened from dream of a Scottish Pope being Fascist President-Prime Minister of Anglo-America and making torture on television a popular entertainment. Every politician and cardinal in his government was a Scottish thug who spoke with a posh English accent. On way to library this morning saw on pavement at corner of Byres and Observatory Road a fat eight-foot high pillar topped by a black cupola, like a dirty big fungus with too thick a stalk. The sides were plastered with concert adverts under a narrow notice with these words which I copied down: THIS SITE IS MANAGED BY CITY CENTRE POSTERS WORKING IN PARTNERSHIP WITH GLASGOW CITY COUNCIL FOR A CLEANER, MORE ATTRACTIVE CITY. TO ADVERTISE CONTACT— I omit email address. This structure cannot make Glasgow cleaner, only makes it more attractive to lovers of adverts who don’t get enough from billboards, sides of taxicabs, buses, commercial vehicles, from newspapers, magazines, sound and television broadcasting and film shows. Paris has had similar pillars for over a century but her avenues have wide pavements, her posters were once masterpieces by Mucha and Toulouse-Lautrec, and Paris has no other displays of street posters. The French loved their architecture too much to disfigure it with billboards. I later saw more of these toadstools sprouting on Byres and Great Western Road, a new way to make money out of Glasgow while doing it no good at all.

For lunch today went to café in Creswell Lane, once a big sky-lit room built as sorting room of Hillhead post office, then an auction room, then the Metropolitan Café, a pleasant self-service restaurant in revived art deco style. It is now Bar Buddha, made mysteriously dark by blocking the skylight windows and having low table lights, intimate corners and waiters. One greeted me by saying, “How you doin’?” I asked for soup and a salad and he said, “No problem.” On placing them before me he said, “There you go. Enjoy.” A large television screen was showing a glamorous woman talking to a seemingly normal young man to the sound of laughter and clapping. I stopped looking by reading a cheap newspaper left on a nearby chair. Since British jails have more prisoners than they can decently hold (it said) the Home Secretary (a Scot) proposes to make a former RAF camp a jail, and use two naval vessels as prison ships, so Britain will get a concentration camp for civilians — as was first used by Britain in the South African Boer War and hugely emulated in Nazi Germany and USSR Russia — while locking up other civilians in off-shore hulks, as in pre-Victorian days. He also suggests police and judges do not press charges or jail people for crimes they think slight, thus contradicting New Labour’s past policy of tougher penalties for all crimes except fraud by businessmen and politicians. I recoiled from the newspaper to the television screen and found the ordinary young man is famous throughout Britain for surviving longer than anyone else in a reality show. Mastermind tells me all networks broadcast them, showing ordinary folk in a house from which they are one at a time, steadily, humiliatingly evicted by a popular voting system until only one is left. My nightmare about Britain was contemporary, not prophetic. Even so, I looked forward to a pleasant evening card-party with Zoe and pals.

At half past five she brought home Is, who I had not seen for five years, a girl called Mish, an Indian meal from the Ashoka and six bottles of wine. I thought that number excessive as I have not seen Zoe drink much alcohol since three years ago when she came here to seduce me, nor did she drink any tonight. Our guests drank it all with the meal and while playing cards afterwards, which did not improve their manners. To teach them the game Zoe partnered Is, I partnered Mish who became so flirtatious and come-hither that I could not treat it as a joke. She and Is gave the game so little serious attention that I was soon disgusted and went to bed. Zoe joined me much later, said I had been rude to Mish, refused to be cuddled. Today she stayed in bed all morning and afternoon, not touching meals I brought, snorting at suggestions that I call a doctor. Saw half bottle of vodka under her pillow — this is unusual. Assumed she was sulking. It is 7.35 p.m. and half an hour ago, heard the front door slam. She has gone out without a word. Everybody I love at last becomes a pain.