John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

I read it over twice.

“Well?” she said. The girlish dimples. Puzzling beside what she’d written.

I said, “Hmm.” After a while I said, “Iona, you can’t be serious about all this.”

“Why not?” she said. No smile now.

“Because it’s silly. It’s philosophically naïve.”

She closed both hands around her cup, wounded, and I was sorry I’d said it. I should have guessed she’d taken her philosophizing seriously. (I had, in fact. Why do I excuse myself?) Her jaw was very sharp now. “I never claimed to be a philosopher. I just act.”

“I know. But according to Thaletes, the choice and the action are one.”

“I wouldn’t know what Thaletes says. Whoever he is.”

I sighed and let it stand. There were two squirrels on the porch, and I watched them, studying their unreasonably perfect balance. “You send these things to the troops?” I asked. Ironic, of course. They had only a handful of fighters.

“We don’t need to talk about it.”

I sighed again. How had we gotten onto these crazy spiderwebs? “You want me out of here, Iona?” I asked.

“Oh…” She glanced at me, smiled, touched my hand. “Let’s just not talk,” she said.

I asked, “Who do you talk to, Iona?”

She smiled, fond and distant, this time. “The gods.”

I must stop here. I feel curiously weak. It is possible that I am unwell.

We have a chance, I think. I fight the temptation to count on it, but I think we may really have a chance.

Not the ephors. That’s become clear. They came yesterday, just the usual three, this time, with their usual retinue and pomp. My heart leaped when I saw the tall one striding across the field toward us, almost ahead of the guards who are supposed to precede him. When he arrived at the cell door he smiled at me, unmistakably friendly, his head high, as always, shoulders only slightly stooped, as if from politeness or kindly interest in our welfare. “How’ve you been?” he said, soft-voiced, very dignified. The others — the fat one and the square, mulish one — tipped their perspiring heads toward me to listen.

“I’m OK,” I said, “but Agathon’s awful.” I drew away from the bars so they could see. He was sprawled on his back in the bed, with his feet up on the wall because he felt faint.

“My goodness,” the tall ephor said, and frowned. He met my eyes in the penetrating, attentive way he has. “How long has he been like this?”

“For days,” I said. “He gets up sometimes and wanders around like he’s looking for something, and sometimes he sits down at the table and—” I was going to say writes, but something made me check myself. They would want to see what he’d written. He never gave them the stuff, himself; it would be wrong for me to do it for him. The ephor watched me. He caught the pause and read it, no doubt rightly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Just sits. Sometimes he comes over here by the door and sits leaning on it, trying to get air. The heat really gets terrible sometimes, and the smell in here…” The ephor nodded; he’d registered that already. I said, “His mind’s funny. Almost like he’s delirious, at times. He’s got a really bad fever. I have to keep washing his forehead with cold water the jailer brings. Sometimes Agathon doesn’t seem to know me, but then other times he’s as lucid as anything. A doctor gave him some medicine, but he’s still getting worse. It’s serious.”

“This is not a good atmosphere for a sick man,” the ephor said, looking the cell over, noting details.

“The rats bite his fingers and toes,” I said. “That’s where he got the disease, I think. A couple of the rats have died. The jailer can tell you.”

He turned his head and glanced at the jailer. The jailer nodded.

“Is he eating properly?” the ephor asked, watching me.

I shook my head, serious, though the question seemed odd — stupid. I said, “Hardly at all.” While he seemed to reflect on that, I said, “You said there’d be an investigation. Has it come to anything?”

He considered, watching me with his pale eyes. “Is an investigation what Agathon really wants, Demodokos?”

It reeled me. I thought it had been going on for weeks. “You haven’t started it?” I said. I hung onto the bars to give help to my knees.

“The question is whether Agathon really wants an investigation,” the ephor said gently.

I glanced at the jailer and he looked away. He too was amazed, I had a feeling.

“Let me understand this,” I said. “You said there would have to be an investigation — but you haven’t even started it?”

He cleared his throat and tipped his head slightly, meeting my eyes as if thinking out what would be best for me. “You realize what’s involved here, Demodokos. Before I can move an inch I have to have some reassurance that an investigation is what Agathon himself prefers.”

“But that’s crazy,” I said. “You’re an ephor and he’s just a sick old man. What’s the difference what he wants? Who knows what the crazy old bastard wants? He’s going to die in here. You think that’s what he wants?”

The tall ephor continued watching me, not moving at all except for the quiver of one eyelid. “I’ve assured Agathon that he’s perfectly safe as long as I’m around this place. I think he knows that.”

I shook my head, jerking the confusion away, and wiped the hair back out of my eyes. “OK,” I said, trying to penetrate the talk, the fatherly gentleness — trying to start over. “OK, never mind,” I said. “Start all over. Agathon will be dead in a week if he doesn’t get out of this stinking cell. Is it possible for you to get him loose?”

The ephor studied me, thinking. He really did have a kind face: I hadn’t been wrong about that; and you could see the speed of his thought: I’d been right about that too. And he was honest. Liars can mask their lies, but no man can put on the look of simple honesty. Then what was wrong?

“Is it possible to get him out?” I said again.

The ephor cleared his throat and pursed his lips. At last he said, “No.”

“No?” I whispered it.

Now the three ephors said it at once, the little fat one wringing his puffy white hands in dismay, the stern one gruffly, as if the decision was nobody’s but his. “No.” The tall one shook his head decisively. It was entirely out of the question.

I went over to the table and sat down. They talked with the jailer.

“Demodokos?” the tall ephor called. I refused to answer. Eventually they left.

I don’t get it. I’ve given up thinking about it.

But a little before dawn this morning my new hope came. I don’t know where the jailer was — sleeping in his hut, probably. Anyway, I woke up with a start when something bumped my arm. I looked down: a clod of dirt. I thought it fell from the ceiling, but then I heard the hiss from the door. It was the boy, the one that brought the letter to Agathon. He waved me toward him. He was scared as hell, his eyes rolling back and forth like a chased dog’s. The jailer hadn’t put up the planks the boy had hid under last time. Agathon was asleep, half off the bed, whimpering, very sick. I crawled over to the door, jerking my head, trying to shake away sleep.

“Three nights from now. Midnight,” the boy whispered. “Have the old man ready.”

“What?” I said. “Ready for what?”

But he was gone.

Three nights, then.

If only the perverse old bastard will stay alive. He may. He’s almost like normal today, feisty and impish, jabbering about the beautiful glitter of the snow.