Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

The sun had set when Pericles reached the yard before Aspasia’s house and turned round. The sausage-seller fell as silent as the watchful crowd behind him. Pericles looked thoughtfully at the dark sky overhead. A servant came from the house and stood near him.

“The moon won’t rise for another hour,” Pericles told the slave.

“Fetch a lantern and show this citizen home.”

He turned his back upon a great explosion of laughter and applause and entered the house. The sausage-seller also turned and, facing the jeering mob, stroked his beard for a while then raised his hand in the parliamentary gesture requesting permission to speak. An interested silence followed. To the slave he cried imperiously, “Lead the way, boy!” and advanced upon the crowd with a grotesque expression of lofty disdain and a swagger that caricatured the stride of Pericles. The crowd, laughing, parted to let him through, a few humorists bowing low on each side.

Inside the house Pericles embraced Aspasia and stood a while with closed eyes and his cheek against hers, sighing sometimes because the past quarter hour had been a strain. She murmured, “A bad day?”

“A good one till near the end. Now I will wash. And then enjoy, please, you. And then can we eat and be intelligently entertained? Who comes tonight?”

“Heavenly Reason. And our greatest artist and greatest playwright and wisest man.”

“Our wisest man. You mean Socrates.”

“That’s what the Priestess of Apollo called him.”

“I wonder why. He was an honest though not great stone carver. He is certainly a brave soldier and talks amusingly, but he has done nothing else I know toward the welfare of the state.”

“You think The Oracle should have mentioned you.”

“I do.”

“You’re jealous of poor old Socrates!” she said, laughing.

“Yes. Thanks for letting me admit to a weakness. You’re the only one I can do that with. Anyone else coming?”

“The Golden Mean, High Anxiety and Critias.”

“Rich men should not come here,” he said wearily. “If The Many find out they’ll think The Few are plotting against them. And The Many will be right.”

“The Few are worried about Cleon. They say he’s now too popular, too powerful.”

“I wish they would leave their political worries to me who knows how to handle them. Please come to bed. I’ll wash afterwards if you don’t mind.”

The evening was less agreeable than Pericles wished because Alcibiades arrived and insisted on talking politics. Pericles listened with an air of polite attention that his nephew vainly tried to make serious attention. Socrates and Aspasia watched them from across the room. Aspasia said, “You love our Darling?”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe you can help him — I can’t because he doesn’t trust women. Yet he won’t grow up properly without the love of someone he admires. He knows it, too. Most of his lovers have been intelligent older men of good character, but he shatters them. After a week or two they grow servile and pathetic. So the only man he can admire is Pericles.”

“Who can only love Athens.”

“And Heavenly Reason,” she suggested.

“And you.”

She smiled, smoothing the dress over her breasts and murmuring, “I think so. I wish more women would come here, my girls are too few. I’ve asked our cleverest men to bring their wives but they won’t.”

“Housewife talk is mostly limited to household matters.”

“Yes, because Athenian husbands treat them like slaves. When a man’s friend calls on him, even during a meal, the wife retires to a back room with the children. Which is barbaric. No wonder the men here prefer boys and prostitutes.”

“In Sparta,” said Socrates thoughtfully, “boys and girls are educated by the state.”

“Educated to wrestle and fight! So Spartan women grow up as harsh and brutal as their husbands. But in Aolia the women walk the streets in brightly coloured gowns and meet in colleges where they practise every beautiful art from embroidery to poetry and love. Which is why the greatest Greek poet is an Aolian woman.”

“Sappho?”

“You disagree?”

Socrates said gently, “Some think highly of Homer.”

“A killer’s poet. The pains and glories of warfare are the best things he knows. But Sappho sang of the wounds love inflicts and love is the best thing of all.”

After a pause Socrates said mournfully, his eyes still on The Darling, “Yes.”

“Listen,” said Aspasia urgently, “His talks with Pericles always end badly. When that one stops he will go to the wine table to make himself drunk. Can you prevent that?”

“I’ll try.”

“Let me tell you how to woo him. You must — ”

“No no no. If my little demon won’t tell me how to do it nobody can.”

“The Oracle at Delphi says our war with Sparta will last thirty years,” said Alcibiades urgently.

“For once the Oracle may be right.”

“You cannot deny that the Persian Empire is in decline.”

“Maybe,” said Pericles.

“Not maybe. Certainly. A nation that conquers beyond its own natural boundawies must keep spweading and spweading because if it calls a halt it inevitably shwinks. Our people have halted Persian expansion so it’s time for a new world empire to awize. And if we twy we can make it — ” (he hesitated and with an effort said,) “ — Grreek. Because Gweek technology and social organization is better than anywhere else and Athens has the biggest fleet in the world!”

“You’re quoting one of my speeches.”

“Our democwacy can send an iwesistible fighting force against any countwy in the world!”

“Only one country at a time.”

“But with all Gweece behind us Athens could wule the Meditewanean — though not while we are fighting each other! A master strrroke of policy is needed to weld us into unity under Athenian leadership. A stwoke that must first take in Sicily because. .”

“My dear nephew,” said Pericles placing a hand on the young man’s shoulder, “That bright idea is a very old one. I had it when I was your age.”

“I wish I had known you when you were worth talking to,” said Alcibiades icily, shaking off the hand.

He went to the wine table and lifted a full flagon.

“You mustn’t drink that terrible stuff,” said a voice at his elbow. Startled he looked sideways and saw nobody at first, being a head taller than the speaker who, with a surprisingly strong grip, took the flagon from Alcibiades’ hand, tilted back his head and emptied the wine down his throat in one long continuous swallow.

“Now then,” he said, placing the flagon on the table with no sign of breathlessness and the air of someone getting down to business, “You look at yourself a lot in the mirror I hope?”

“Yes I do,” said the young man coolly. “Why do you hope that?”

“It should help you to become what you appear to be.”

“Which is?”

“Good.”

“You believe beauty encouwages virtue?” said Alcibiades incredulously.

“Yes! A soul that doesn’t fit its body is as uncomfortable as a foot that doesn’t fit its shoe.”

“And ugliness?” said Alcibiades, staring at the hairy face with the broken nose.

“Ugliness encourages virtue even more. If we don’t cultivate our virtues nobody will talk to us. . will they?”

Alcibiades smiled and relaxed a little. Socrates raised a forefinger saying, “Listen! Beautiful people envy your beauty, brave men admire your courage, clever folk respect your intelligence. This city dotes on you. Everything you do has become fashionable, from lisping to horse racing. And if you thought you would be like this for the rest of your life you’d kill yourself.”