John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

“I kept busy, helping Lykourgos.”

She laughed. A fine laugh like a girl’s. “I really believe it.”

I put my hand on hers and she smiled, shaking her head as if in disbelief. “You dear, good man,” she said.

“Not necessarily good,” I said.

“Everything’s good — holy, in fact. I just learned.”

“And you believe it?”

She lay back and looked at the ceiling. “It’s sad to find that a relationship you thought was very close and beautiful is not what you…imagined. I ached a lot, this last two weeks, and Dorkis never had an inkling. I thought we always knew each other’s feelings.” She was aching now. We’d switched again: I the father, she the little girl.

“He knew, all right,” I said.

She shook her head.

“What could he have done? Of course he knew!”

“No.” There were tears in her eyes, and I was startled. She loved him more than I’d admitted to myself, and I was jealous.

“So he missed it,” I said. “So he’s only another damn human.”

She reached up to touch my face and then, as if by impulse, drew me down to her, kissing me. “I know.”

I’d had too much wine. I could hardly focus her face. Even so, she was beautiful — as beautiful, in her separate way, as Tuka was. I had some vague thought about Dorkis’s conflicting gods, but I was too foggy to concentrate. I’d stayed too late, yes. There was no possibility now of hiding the visit from Tuka. I no longer cared. It was impossible to serve all the gods. Ride it out like a bird. I remembered the strange madness that had come over Tuka, the rigidity of every muscle, and I was grieved, hopeless. But Iona’s mouth tasted of wine, and the flesh of her hip under my fingertips was soft, naked under the loose robe.

“It’s strange that I can do this to Dorkis,” I said, brushing my lips across her cheek. “In theory, I’m an honorable man.”

“You don’t understand him,” she said very softly. She said nothing after that for a long time. Then, wistfully, “Do you think he’s lying awake, full of jealousy, suffering?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Would you, in his place?” A whisper.

“No,” I said, but doubtfully. Then: “Maybe.”

“Tuka would,” she said. She kissed my cheek. “You’re her life. I wonder if you can call it love at all, what she feels for you.”

“I don’t know.” I tried to think. Lying in her arms was like lying half asleep and half awake in the bottom of a big, safe boat. Her low, soft voice was as comforting as the click of oars or the thud of small waves against the hull, quiet as a heartbeat. It was not just the wine, this sensation of endless peaceful floating, fathoms of dark sea yawning below me, bottomless kingdom. I’d often felt the same with Tuka, the strange peace of the child in its first calm sea, or the peace of the grave. Could this, more than what Tuka felt, be called love? But I had never been afraid of Iona. I had been startled, now and then, by her temper, but I had never been, even for an instant, afraid of her. Now, because I had stayed too long, had come to Iona and abandoned hope, so that I was no longer afraid of Tuka’s wrath — wearily indifferent — I saw the fear I had felt before clearly. I’ve been afraid of my wife, I thought, surprised. And was Tuka also afraid of me? Maybe love, like the Just Life, was a mythological beast. But for all my questions, I floated on, serene. Despite her deeper love for her husband, I could love Iona’s gentleness and goodness. I was satisfied. I lay almost over her, her bosom my pillow. When I started to slide my hand under the robe to her breast she touched my hand lightly.

“I’m sorry, that was stupid,” I said.

She was silent, not disapproving, but she had decided, and she was right I felt like an ikon thief.

I kissed her one last time, long and gentle, then got up. Without speaking, I picked up my crutch and went to the door. My leg was throbbing, but I observed the fact indifferently. My own pain was the least of my troubles. Once, when I was younger, playing in the yard with a friend’s small child, I swung the child around and around, holding onto his feet. The child laughed, frightened and joyful, but I realized after I’d set him down that, much closer than I’d realized, there was a tree. If the child’s head had struck it, I’d have killed him. I remembered it now. To live at all is to be a threat.

She came to the door and took me in her arms and kissed me again. “I love you, Agathon.”

“I know.”

I walked home. It was a long way. When I arrived, there were friends there, childhood friends of Tuka’s, visiting from Athens for three or four days. They were all high on wine, hardly aware of what time it was, and whatever lie I made up to explain my lateness they accepted casually. We talked — Tuka, the friends, and I — until sunrise. Just like old times.

Three days later, Tuka learned that a year or so after our marriage I’d slept with a girl friend of hers, named Klytia. It was nothing, a meaningless night of “good friendship,” as we say in Athens. But Tuka was outraged, as much at the cruelly false friend as at me. She came into the room where I was talking with Lykourgos and three of his ephors and said, “Agathon, I need to talk with you. Now.”

I excused myself and we went to our room. She closed the door and told me what she’d learned. She was white. “How could you?” she hissed.

The hopelessness came back, the incredible weariness. “Nonsense, Tuka. It was years ago.”

“‘Nonsense,’” she mimicked. “That’s her word. Find your own!”

“I have no words of my own. Do you?”

“How could you?” she said again, and began to cry. “Every friend I ever had is another piece of ass to you. ‘Love,’ you say! You don’t know the meaning of the word!”

“That’s true. If you’re finished—”

“I’m not! Explain it to me! Explain how your fancy metaphysics teaches you to screw every goddamned whore that comes after you. Explain it!”

“They’re not whores. They don’t come after me. If you’ll quit ranting and think a minute—”

“Ranting!” She seized the pitcher by the bed and hurled it.

I let it hit. It bounced off my shoulder and smashed. “I’ll talk with you when you’re calm,” I said. I went to the door, went out, and closed it behind me. When I returned to the room where Lykourgos and the others sat, they fell silent a moment, glancing up. “It’s nothing,” I said. “Nothing serious.”

We talked. I teased Lykourgos a little more sharply than usual, but otherwise it was as if, in truth, nothing had happened. When I went back to our room, perhaps two hours later, Tuka was sitting motionless on the bed, staring at the wall I spoke to her. She didn’t move. I touched her. No response. It struck me that maybe she’d taken some poison. I couldn’t believe it, and I knew that it was more likely that this was the end of the thing I’d seen the start of several times before, the odd rigidity. But I was scared. “Tuka, are you all right?” I asked. No response. I pushed at her shoulder. She fell backward onto the bed. I straightened out her legs and looked at her, trying to think. I was convinced now that she’d taken poison. She lay still as a corpse, staring at the ceiling, and even when I slapped her face hard there was no response. A machine, I thought. Some muscle quits, the heart, say, and the rest of the muscles go limp, including the eyes. I knew I should call a doctor — the thing was beyond my knowledge of medicine — but I was afraid. “Tuka!” I said. “Come back! Wake up!” I tugged at her shoulders, shaking her. Nothing. I tried her pulse. It was faster than my own, but I couldn’t remember what that meant “Tuka, Tuka, Tuka,” I whispered. But her mind was far away, sealed up like a grave. She farted, or defecated — I couldn’t tell which and was afraid to look — but that too brought nothing human to her face. At last with the same weary hopelessness I’d felt before, when I abandoned her, I sent a servant for a doctor. He came in half an hour — a lean, middle-aged, bearded man with a long pointed nose — and examined her without speaking. “Shock,” he said at last. He bled her and forced a liquid down her throat. When he finished he turned his head to look at me, quizzical. “I’ve seen this in cases or rape. Was she raped?” “Not physically,” I said. He said she’d be like this for two days. He left.