John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

“I thought I’d never see you again,” she said.

“Not possible,” I said. I realized for the first time that my bad leg was on fire from all that walking.

“Is Dorkis home?” I asked absurdly, maybe pretending I’d come to see him.

“He’s in there, working.” She moved her head in the direction of his workroom, prepared to lead me there.

“He works too hard,” I said.

There was a silence. I went over to her and, with difficulty, got down on the floor beside her and studied the scroll. I made no comment. She expected none. At last, after a deep breath, she said, “Well!”

I smiled.

“How’s Tuka?”

“Fine.”

“You still get along with Lykourgos?”

“Like brothers.”

“Good. I’m so happy for you.”

Another long silence. Dorkis came in from his workroom and, when he saw me, smiled, holding out his arms. “Agathon!” The lamplight played over his shoulders and head as if he’d brought it with him.

“You’ve been working late again,” I said. “You’ll ruin your goddamn eyes.”

“You’re right” He laughed and rubbed his hands like an innkeeper. “It’s time for wine. — Iona?”

She nodded, and he ran in place, the way athletes do before a meet, showing his eagerness to serve, then went, bent over like a sprinter, to the next room for wine and cups. When he came back, swooping in with the cups all in one hand, the pitcher in the other, he poured wine for each of us — his own puissant, meticulously cured honey brew — then sat down on the couch with his cup, beaming. He talked’ of Lykourgos’s latest scheme, the brotherhoods. From now on each table at the eating halls would be made up of a company of “brothers,” four older men, six younger men, chosen by the vote of the whole company. The old men would train the young men’s wits, teaching them sententious discourse and seemly humor. A bad joke would be punished by a bite on the thumb.

We laughed, all three of us, but Dorkis was looking above our heads, like a contestant assessing a vault while he jokes with admirers. The Spartans were getting to him more and more. It was not exactly that they shook his calm, you would have said, but they were there; increasingly there, like omens.

“All this will pass,” I said.

He smiled. “In five hundred years.”

“Nonsense,” Iona said “Don’t be pessimistic!”

“Ah well,” he said, and smiled again. He fell silent.

“It’s a great adventure, Solon used to say,” I said. He looked vague, so I added: “Sparta. Who would have thought human nature would let it get so far?”

“We overestimate human nature,” he said. “I think about it sometimes, in horror.” He smiled. Horror, like everything else, he had learned to duck, shrug off, accept in peace. “You get in the habit of thinking you do things for certain reasons, but you don’t. All you can do is act somehow, and pray.”

“You think the gods hear you?” I asked him, noncommittal.

He grinned again. “Somebody has to be listening!”

“But suppose they’re not” Iona said, curiously feisty.

He gave a laugh and stretched out his hand toward her, palm up, his sharp black eyes on her face. “Are you ready to take life on without them?”

She said nothing — pouting, it seemed to me.

I looked at the ceiling, philosophical, maybe a trifle woozy from the wine. “But what do the gods do exactly, Dorkis?”

He thought. “Did you ever do anything in your life that wasn’t by impulse?” he asked.

I frowned, troubled by where he was going to lead me. “Never,” I said. Thinking: Don’t say it, Dorkis. For God’s sake! Solon’s kind of indignity I could take.

“And where do you think impulses come from?” he asked, gently triumphant. His absolute and simple faith filled the room like autumn light, like a sea breeze. Even when his ideas were crazy, the man had sophrosyne, as they used to call it in the old days. There are men in this world — wizards, witches, people like Lykourgos — who spread anger, or doubt, or self- pity, or the cold stink of cynicism, wherever they walk: the sky darkens over their heads, the grass withers under their feet, and, downwind of them, ships perish at sea. And then there are men, here and there, like Dorkis. God only knows what to make of them. Their ideas are ludicrous, when you look at them. Peasant ideas. Childlike. But what tranquility!

“That’s very interesting,” I said, resisting his mysterious effect on me — from guilt, maybe; my lust for his wife — and I pretended to think about it. “Do bad impulses come from the gods, or just good ones?”

He wasn’t put off. Benevolent. “There’s a sense in which there are many many gods,” he said, “and they’re not all in agreement. But what we call good, with our little minds…” His eyes snapped away. “There’s a sense in which nothing is evil,” he said, calm as spring. “To certain people, everything that happens in the world is holy.”

“Nonsense,” Iona said. It was her favorite word. “Is slavery holy? Is Lykourgos?”

He shrugged and looked down, unable to argue with her, but not because he was beaten.

“It’s not as easy as you think, Iona,” I said. “Dorkis could be right. Suffering’s bad, but sometimes the effects of suffering…” Why did I say that? Guilt again? Defense of his thought because his wife’s smile filled my mind from wall to wall?

“That’s dumb,” she said. “Tell me that after you’ve ended people’s suffering. Then I’ll believe you.” She drained her cup and held it out to Dorkis. He filled it for her. I too took more, though I shouldn’t. She said, “What people like us need in Sparta is men. All we get is pious philosophers. If you were men you’d act first and then make up theories.”

“You sound like Lykourgos,” I said.

“But it’s true.” She was petulant. In fact angry. She even looked like Lykourgos now.

“Maybe,” Dorkis said. “But dead men don’t make up theories.” He grinned, palms up in a helpless gesture, as if accepting human impotence along with the gods’ other gifts.

“Better a living fool than a dead philosopher,” I said. A dullard’s observation, needless to say. Did I sound ironic, shifting loyalties?

She ignored me. “It is practical. We could overthrow them. You personally, Dorkis. We control all the food, all the clothes, all the work — everything that supports their life — and you have all the contacts.”

And why, I wondered, was she suddenly so full of revolution? It was a thing she hadn’t mentioned for a long time. Did his calm force her to thoughtless opposition? Because of me? Because of guilt?

His eyes widened and he laughed. “Iona, you’re crazy!”

It hit me that this was the first time she’d mentioned her theory to Dorkis. I wished she hadn’t.

“Do you realize what would happen to us if we failed?” he said. “You’re simply crazy.” His eyes were full of light a husband’s pleasure in the girlish foolishness of a now more than ever precious wife. Yes, she could work men. He would have second thoughts on the scheme. Inevitable as sunset.

“It’s true,” I said. “Crazy as a loon. A pity.”

She said nothing. We drank. It was late now. I should have left long ago. At last Dorkis got up, grinned, and announced he was going to bed.

“I’ll be along,” Iona said.

I sat still, rubbing my sore leg and casting about for reasons to go or stay. He waved and left us.

We both sat in silence for a long time after that. At last she rolled up the scroll and her copy and tossed them up onto the couch. She lay on her side with her head on her hand and looked at me. Nothing moved but the lamp flame, flitting in and out through the wall paintings, making the stiff leaves and artificial flowers of Iona’s decorations quiver and stir as if alive. No sound came in from the street. “I never knew two weeks could be so long,” she said. “Was it long for you?”