John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

But except for the time we righteously set aside for their instruction, or for play with them — somewhat better times than the times of instruction, but also less frequent — we saw very little of our children. We had various circles: some friends we “sat up with,” as Tuka put it, meaning that I talked philosophy or politics with the husband while Tuka gossiped with the wife; other friends with whom, as she put it, we cavorted. With a curious, obscurely destinal regularity we got into difficulties with the latter. I must reluctantly set down some facts.

First, though no one would believe it who has seen me ranting in the Spartan hills in my later years, winking and sneering and spelling dark spells, prophesying plagues and trepidations of the earth and stars, my hair flying wildly, my eyes like a frog’s, my arms stretched out as Lykourgos stretches his, forming with the fingers of each hand V’s for Victory, I was once a handsome and sweetly poetic young man. Weak-chinned, admittedly, and given to grand pontifications, but lovable, all in all. I was, moreover, an ambitious person, but ambitious in ways still uncertain, undirected. I’d taken a few students and was gaining a reputation of sorts; but my heart wasn’t in it I was employed off and on by Lykourgos and the ephors, sometimes as a sort of informal adviser, sometimes (by Lykourgos, not the ephors) as an envoy in delicate matters where messages transmitted or discussions held were not to be mistaken for official positions of Sparta. I was, in effect, a high- class odd-jobs man with a company horse; I was the voice of all things tentative or tendentious. “Do so-and- so,” I was instructed to say, “or, between you and me, Sparta will have — in my personal opinion — no possible course but war.” It was stupid work, though at times dead serious. Those I talked to — after the endless preliminaries (the boat ride, the tour, the entertainment by the poet-harper and his acrobats) — those I talked to understood as well as I did that we were playing a perhaps meaningless game: the ephors do all official diplomatic work for Sparta. Even the kings have no final say in foreign affairs, except as generals in war. Yet I’d been sent at state expense, with the seal of Lykourgos on my introduction, which meant that something might conceivably be possible, a meeting with the ephors in the future, perhaps, or some secret, gentleman’s agreement; and on my side I knew that, though they knew I meant nothing, they were talking with me, so the game we were playing might at any moment turn earnest. There was a further complication. At the heart of the game, we all knew, lay one question: would Sparta’s role in and around Lakonia be defensive or aggressive? The ephors favored aggression — extend the borders and establish a buffer of subject city-states. Lykourgos favored a defensive, isolationist posture. One meant immoral imperialism, an extension of suppression like that which had already deracinated all Helot pride; the other would produce a city of warriors, state- supported killers, spoiling like overtrained watchdogs for a fight. They would have no choice but to occupy their time as warriors do, fighting one another or murdering scapegoats, some passing Helot drudge. I’d have chosen neither, if that choice were possible; but Sparta has always been the plum, with her wheat and cattle and beautiful hills of olive trees and vineyards — a city the gods created to entertain them with endless invasions. So I favored Lykourgos’s view, the lesser evil. I was morally bound to it hand and foot, in fact, as Lykourgos understood. Why else would he send his most obstinate critic, “pet democrat,” as he used to say, on missions aimed at thwarting the will of the ephors and imposing his own despotic will? Not, of course, that I was ever out of sight of his secret police (but neither were the ephors), and not that, if I had made some mistake, he would have troubled to rescue me. Nevertheless, for almost four years the curious partnership of enemies worked. I was born, no doubt, to be caught, my whole life long, in double binds. But enough of all that. The game I played with those I met in the cities of the sons of Hellen was a tricky, devious free- for-all, in which Lykourgos, through unofficial agents like myself, worked every city against every other, and all of them against the ephors. Except for allies I could win in the playing, my only ally on earth was Lykourgos, whose values I detested and whose power gave me no sanction. There are doubtless envoys who would have scorned the canescent unrealities I manipulated like Sardinian pieces on a playing board, but I have always clowned and mocked, played games, in the hope of discovering the real. While we toyed with fictions, picking our way through the vague potentialities that littered our path like shadowy rocks and moray eels, my hands and armpits ran with sweat, and my hind end went numb from sitting still to dramatize my indifference.

When I returned from these missions, I would, after copying what I’d gotten for my book (this was before Klinias’s book arrived and I began adding to it), drink myself to stone for a week, then plunge with renewed vigor into the idiocy of parties, wild night rides through the countryside with friends, or, sometimes, pointless verbal duels with Lykourgos. Invariably, when we went to expatriate Athenian parties, I would deliberately, solemnly get drunk. Occasionally scenes ensued.

One night, very drunk, Tuka and I stayed late at a party given by a young Athenian couple we’d been seeing off and on for a year or two. The man, Hamrah, a man of Egyptian stock and comically proud of his Athenian citizenship, was a black-market king who dealt in Asian ornaments and jewels, especially ivory figurines of gods and goddesses. He was a very tall, stern-minded man who had curiously direct and simple theories. All life, he said, was based on the principle of advertising pressure and response — a phrase he’d picked up from some Phoenikian peddler. That was the basis of his financial success, his perfect understanding of his wife, his success with young ladies of heretofore impeccable morals, and so forth. I rarely troubled to argue with him. He had a fine sense of humor, at least about everything except himself, and he was an excellent horseman. I couldn’t afford to be too fussy. There were few enough in Sparta who rode as I rode, hellbent, indifferent to arm or skull. Also, he seemed a good father — jovial and rowdy with his sons. His wife, unluckily, was a gentle, sensitive girl who could easily be raped (and eventually was) by music or poetry, who cared for moment-to-moment feeling, and whose friendships — with Tuka, for instance — were as close and oblivious to purpose as the friendship of the earth and sun.

And so, as I was saying, one night we stayed late. For me, the party was murderously dull. Tuka’s wit was, as usual, flashy, but I knew the stories. Hamrah drank heavily, as usual, and as usual showed no sign of drunkenness. He talked with his Athenian friends of the “art of business.” It was characteristic of all of them to abstract real transactions to theory: even among fellow maggots it would have been awkward to talk of what they really sold, or where, or how. They all talked in the same way, holding forth loudly while they had the floor, gazing off into the corners of the room like ill-arranged statues when they had to give way to some other’s oratory. I listened absently, moving my eyes from group to group, picking up without interest, like shopworn trinkets, bits of their inflated language—“customer extinction,” “impetus diffusion”—and I drank. On the wide stone terrace opening out toward Hamrah’s large pond, a group of Helot instrumentalists played lugubrious dances, and couples drifted past the open doorway embracing, moving vaguely in time with the music.