John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

“Who is that person?” Kharilaus said.

“A messenger and friend,” I said, and looked obsequious, panting in short breaths that went ssew, ssew.

“Who?” he said.

Arkhelaus raised his hand and said, “Be still, brother.”

I put my finger to my lips and winked.

Lykourgos glanced at the saner of the kings and got a nod. “Leave, Agathon,” he said.

“Ah, woe!” I said. Ssew, ssew. “Poor Agathon is no longer with us. His soul was snatched at the pinprick of midnight, and now, praise heaven, his leastmost fart is a wind from the great god Apollo.” I clutched my chest and panted harder. It burned my throat.

“Agathon,” Lykourgos said quietly, “leave us.”

“Apollo?” Kharilaus said.

“He’s mad, your majesty,” Lykourgos said.

But Kharilaus was uneasy. “Have him come nearer.”

I hurried close.

Kharilaus looked more uneasy yet. “He smells, this man.”

“Odors deceive us,” I said, and wagged my finger at him. “A thing which is unusual may seem at first unsavory, as, for example, a child’s first olive, or a lady’s bush, or idiocy in a monarch. But on closer inspection and greater familiarity, we learn that olives are fashionable food, however disgusting, and even one’s own blessed mother has a bush, and idiocy in a king gives the ship of state ballast.”

“Get him away,” Kharilaus said. “He stinks.”

Lykourgos’s jaw was working. “Go,” he said.

I stood before them, smiling, wringing my hands, puffing, looking pitiful.

“Arrest that man,” Arkhelaus said. But Kharilaus said, “Is it true that he’s a god?”

I bobbed my head. “Sure as day,” I said. “I’ll prove it. I’ll cause an earthquake.” I raised my arms.

“No, no, no!” Kharilaus cried. “No earthquake, please!” His tiny eyes widened to roughly the size of a pig’s.

I grinned. “I was just kidding.”

Two guards stood beside me, waiting to arrest me. They didn’t smell so heavenly themselves.

I said, “I don’t want to keep you from your naked girls or your whip, games, so I’ll give you my message at once, and then I’ll be gone.”

Arkhelaus waited and poor fool Kharilaus bit his soft lips.

“O Kings, O mighty Lawgiver, I stink to teach you the smell of your mortal flesh. I hobble on a crutch to teach you the awful arrogance of your soldiers’ strutting. I cower and tremble like a new-caught slave to teach you the emptiness of puissance and power. And now, worst of all, I shall reason with you, to teach you the perfect foolishness of reason.” I began to hobble back and forth in front of them, gesticulating, winking, twitching. “Why does a man become a lawgiver? For fear that, if somebody else does it, he may be given laws which run counter to his nature. And what is the nature of a man who becomes a lawgiver? It is the act of giving out laws. But ah! Here’s the hideous problem, then!” I stopped and cowered, as if pressed down by the weight of the towering sky. “What is the nature of the laws a lawgiver gives out?” I pretended to wrestle fiercely with the question, pointing my toes in, knee against knee, and counting off the difficulties on my fingers. “Are they the laws of somebody else’s nature? No! Otherwise somebody else could give them out. Are they the laws, then, of anybody else’s nature? No again, for if anybody else could give out the laws, we would have no discreet and official position called Lawgiver. But then we’re forced to a terrible dilemma! Either the laws which a lawgiver gives force all men to be lawgivers, which is ridiculous, or else the laws which a lawgiver gives are the expression of a nature foreign to all but the lawgiver himself, which is unthinkable. For if the latter were true, the lawgiver’s laws would force all men into the nature of the lawgiver, each man sadly abnegating his real nature, that being outlawed, and all men would be lawgivers, which situation we call by the name of anarchy. Terrible! Repulsive! How do we resolve this dreadful dilemma? Ah! I see light in your majesties’ eyes. You have solved it — and rightly, I may as well mention, for as a god, I know your thoughts! The strongest lawgiver in the country gives laws to the next strongest, yes! and he gives laws to the next, and so on, down to the least and feeblest of all men. Yes, yes!” I clapped my hands, delighted. “And who does the least and feeblest give laws to, since by law he must be a lawgiver? Of course! Obvious!” I leaped to Kharilaus as though he’d thought of it. “He reverses the chain and gives laws to the man just above him. Wonderful! Wonderful! And this reversal we call by the name of Revolution. I bid you adieu. Dance prettily! Whip stingingly. Tra la!”

I left them abruptly, moving as quickly as I could, listening in pounding terror for the footsteps of the guards behind me, but no one followed. When I glanced over my shoulder they were standing, undecided, watching my retreat, frowning like crocodiles. That night I lay in my hut sick with fear, sick to the point of vomiting, but no one came to get me. I thought myself a very lucky man and resolved to flee at once to the safety of Athens. Yet I didn’t leave. Within three weeks I was at it again, wheedling, grimacing, banging my crutch on the pavement. It was like some kind of addiction. I couldn’t help myself: I would see some new absurdity — now from the Spartans, now from the Helots — and an impression would come, and the clowning despair would rush over me, the total indifference to anything but the monstrous foolishness of human beings, and in a flash — or a giggle — I was at them. As my idiocy became familiar, it became safe. Children began to mock my eccentricities, or follow after me, mimicking my hobble. At last I had taught them something.

So it was that, for better or worse, I had found my Destiny. I picked at my clothes with my fingers, as if nervously, and winked at my beloved Iona. “‘Be something,’” I said. “Maddening as it is, love — to you and, ah! to me as well — I am Sparta’s Seer. I’ve called myself a silly fool, a coward, and I am. But I’m also something more, and conceivably better. I’m the absolute idea of No. No, I will not come and help you murder Spartans, and with me or without me you’ll fail, die in blood, as even the Spartans will eventually fail, and as we all will die, eventually, become dinner for worms. But I will die with a certain worthless dignity: I did not simplify.”

“Pompous, pompous, pompous!” she screeched. “You’d mock it in anyone else.”

“I am pompous. It’s true! O miserable, miserable beast! I hate myself!” I stamped my foot.

“In the name of the gods,” she hissed. She was clutching the bars as if to snatch the door off.

“But you see how it is,” I said, funereal. “I told you to run. It’s your only decent choice, but you refuse to run, because you’re dead set on killing — because of guilt about Dorkis, or hunger for revenge, or because you’re caught up in Thaletes’s ideas, or anyway your version of them. You think like a Spartan: it’s filthy, vulgar to submit. You must rule them, destroy them. I understand. I understand! Creative destruction is the first law of the universe. But I say No to the universe. ‘Fuck it!’ saith angry Agathon. I’ll have no truck with it. And so I refuse to be rescued from my cell.”

She shook her head, tight-lipped, and there were tears in her eyes. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Agathon, you’re dying.”

Peeker was watching me. Solemn, strangely good- looking, I thought, with those deep sad eyes of his.

“So kiss me good-bye, Iona,” I said. “Come, come!” I pushed my face into the bars and leered.