John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

He shook his head, his lips trembling. He found it all very tragic, but also infuriating. He said:

“And later when, inevitably, the lady turned on Lykourgos in rage, threatening to kill both him and the child, and crown her brother Leonidas, it did not so much as occur to Lykourgos to strike out at the queen mother. (She was of royal blood, and wife to his own dead brother.) He packed his trunks and set out to study the legal systems of the world, avoiding Sparta till his nephew should come to marriageable years and, by having a son, secure the succession. Again, nobody laughed. They followed him to the edge of the city, with deep respect for his virtue. He traveled to Krete, to Asia, to Egypt, to Athens. Wherever he went he stood watching, listening, brooding like angry stone. Most of what he saw (as you could guess, my boy) repelled him. When he found things that might be of use to the new Sparta he had in mind, he was repelled by the admixture of good laws with bad.”

My master was beginning to shake, now, in his indignation.

“He wrote himself notes: A species originates, and a type becomes established and strong in the long struggle with essentially unfavorable conditions. On the other hand, it is known by the experience of breeders that species which receive superabundant nourishment are fertile in prodigies and monstrosities (also in monstrous vices). Consider the hearty eating of peasants, the sparse fare of born aristocrats. His suffering made him a wolf.”

He turned from the doorway with these last words and glared at me like a madman, trembling all over. He’d pulled his beard all out of shape in his agitation. He looked like a tree full of seaweed after a hurricane.

“More wolf than you are, master?” I said. “He he he!” It was a dangerous thing to say, no doubt, but his anger was infectious. Anyway, I can outrun him. I could put the table between us, and if necessary I could brain him with the lamp.

“Yaargh!” he said, or something like that, and took a step toward me. I jumped out of bed and snatched up the cover and held it out like a bullfighter’s cape. His neck swole like an adder’s, but he realized his disadvantage and merely shook his finger, sucking his mouth in.

“Look at you,” I said. “Supposed to be so wise, supposed to be so full of sophrosyne!* You’re like everybody else!”

“Not so!” he roared. “It’s because you broke my jug!”

“It was empty,” I roared back.

His face moved slowly together like a square knot tightening, and he thought about it “That’s true,” he said. His voice cracked. “That’s what I like about you, Peeker. Even in this freezing weather, you care about the Truth.” He smiled and took a step toward me, but I was no fool. I put the table between us.

Agathon sighed and his face came loose again. I thought he would cry. “Ah well,” he said, as usual. The jailer came, just then, with two plates of food. It was overcooked cabbage.

“We only eat onions,” I said, to make up with my master.

The jailer said nothing.

We sat down, on opposite sides of the table, and ate.

Agathon was still shaking. “They’re all alike, these Spartans,” he whispered.

I nodded and went on eating.

He smiled politely at the guard, then whispered again, fiercely, “ I am not one of these crazy people. I’m Athenian. Fact! A scribe by profession, originally; once chief scribe to the Lawgiver Solon himself. I am educated, civilized to a fault! I conceal it, of course. I’ve done so so long it’s no longer easy to keep in mind. Even with respect to simple things, my mind wanders like a blind man tapping in the grass with his stick. But I manage. Yes! I remind myself by the fact that the rats in my cell — like you, dear Peeker — are not morally offensive to me, though they frighten me, of course — incredibly furry in their brown winter coats.” (“Summer,” I mumbled.) His eyes burned darker, fuliginous. “They materialize as if by witchcraft at the edge of the glow my lamp sends out or near the embers of my paltry hearth, and they come straight at me, hurrying, their shadows sneaking up on them like cats. Their close-set, coal-black idiot eyes never move, not even to blink. A Spartan would kill them at once, without thought, in righteous loathing. ‘For superior men,’ Lykourgos says, ‘evil is not what is bad by some theoretical system, but that which disgusts him as inferior to himself.’ ‘He he ho ha,’ I answer. — But though I have resided in Lakonia a long time, I have not lost all capacity for philosophical objectivity and amusement, especially amusement at my own inferiority. Though I am larger than the rat, and armed (I have my crutch), I climb up on my stool and draw my tattered skirts around my knees and cry, eyes wide, my huge beard shaking, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’—This partly for the jailer, partly for the rat. Only the rat notices, and, being a Spartan rat, he keeps on coming.” (I have never seen my master do any such thing.) “In Athens,” he continued with great feeling, “the rat and I would sit down over black bean soup, with side dishes of olives and nuts, white napkins at our necks, and we’d talk of metaphysics. The rat would perhaps not be good at it, but we Athenians are a cheerful people, infinitely tolerant, always hopeful. Nevertheless, though I joke, Peeker, I’m afraid of them. I’m frightened by everything, worshipful toward everything, like any decent Seer.”

Our plates were empty. I gave them back to the jailer and he went away. Agathon watched me, then belched once, softly for a Seer, and went to sleep. His snores drowned out the irenic buzzing of the flies.

If ever I have to become a Seer, I mean to be a gentleman about it.

* From σαóøρων, opposite of σλοóøρων. ED.

Ah, Peeker, Peeker, poor miserable wretch! He has no understanding of anything! He sits across the table from me, writing and writing — his opinions, I trust, or his youthful memoirs — and he hasn’t an inkling that he’s falling into their trap. Does he ever inquire of himself or of me why the ephors give us parchment? No! They come, look us over, and leave a great gray stack of it — it’s worth a small fortune — and as soon as I hand him his third of the stack (he writes smaller than I) he begins to spill out his opinions like logs down a flume. I should stop him, if I were an ethical person and cared for my fellowman. But alas, I am a sensualist who takes frivolous delight in the way he leans forward and clamps his tongue between his teeth and crosses his eyes, preserving his soul in fustian. When I try to peek at what he’s writing, he shades the parchment, blocking my view, with a hand as big as a shovel. Well, I am resigned to it. As I watch each new day’s prisoners brought in, lifting their feet unnaturally as they labor through the drifted snow, or when I hear the roars of an execution, I think back fondly to my onion patch and the beautiful women who made me what I am. At times the thought of their gentleness, fitful and dubious as it was, awakens my soul to civilized guilt, and I do what I can to distract him from self-destruction.

“Time for lessons!” I say. “All play no work makes Jackie a jerk!”

His shoulders shrink inward, his head droops like a frond. “For the love of God, master, take pity!”

I fulminate. That too takes up time, after all: delays his pen. When his eyes glaze and I know he’s no longer hearing my rant, I descend to pedagogical harassment. “Young man, do you want to be a Seer or a stupid-shit pig?” His choice is predictable and not as amusing as he thinks. “We will speak of Lykourgos,” I tell him. He puts down his pen and the blood drains out of his face. I tell him with fulgent rhetoric things of no interest, the nature of his doom.