John Gardner - The Wreckage of Agathon

“A wise solution,” he said. “What matters in the world, my dear young friend, is not so much what is true as what is entertaining, at least so long as the truth itself is unknowable. So Homer understood. The question is, will it still entertain us tomorrow? Will we change our minds and hoard these writings in some secret place and offer the ephors only, say, obscene drawings of women? — Why not?”

And so I gave up. It’s plain that my master has no respect for my opinions and no concern about my safety. The hell with him. I begin to suspect that a Seer is not someone who sees more clearly than other people, but merely a man who is forever looking in the wrong direction. I am going to figure out a plan of escape. If I think of one, see if I tell him!

Strange developments! “Magic is afoot in these woods,” in the words of Alkman. I must begin at the beginning.

It was dusk. The first stars were beginning to appear above Mount Parnon and the wind was turning bitter cold when, pausing in the little song with which I was warming the cockles of my heart and entertaining my fellow prisoners for a mile or so on either side, I heard my jailer coming down the row of cells to the right of mine, feet crunching in the crusted snow, dragging a plank. He appeared at my door and glared at me, his bearded lips pursed to a kind of pout, steam blowing from his nostrils. I put aside my melody, rubbed my freezing hands together, and tried to look apologetic — for I do understand his problem. My very existence, for him, is criticism. My paunch condemns his asceticism; my timid, wholly irrelevant grins deny the iron- chained order of his soul. He went on glaring.

“Dear jailer,” I cried, snatching at my crutch and rising from my table to welcome him. “Bless you! Always alert,” I cried, “like a rabbit!”

His black eyes grew violent, and I corrected myself: “Like a bear.”

I was too late. He spit, only vaguely in my direction, and set up the plank and turned away to get another. I spoke to him again when he returned with the second plank—“Any news of the wars?”—but he ignored me. When he came with the last plank he paused and looked at me a moment, not yet dropping it into place, and I believed he was struggling against a temptation to speak. For a man of stone, he was in agony — a brute straining toward thought I said nothing, of course. There are times when even humor is out of place. His mouth worked, his underjaw twitched, and for an instant I had hopes that his eyes would cross the way Peeker’s do when he’s intense — but he looked away, instead, and I was disappointed. What was it he wanted to say to me? Some word of animalistic rage? Some news of how horribly I’m to die? Strange to say, I think not. His iracund, muscle-bound face was like a child’s — it made me remember my own poor son Kleon, back in Athens. Without thinking, I stretched out my hand to him, and suddenly, with animal fury, he slammed the plank into position, shutting me in. He left then. I caught only a glimpse of his legs cutting the dusk like huge, slow stones, a statue walking.

So much for the evening’s beginning. It was an omen, clear as an eagle carrying flowers above your left shoulder.

Darkness settled. I fed my rats the portion of our supper Peeker and I had saved for them, and after that, feeling in no mood for art or talk with Peeker, I took my constitutional, walking around and around my table, deepening the trench my crutch end has cut in the hard-packed earth of my floor. Every few rounds I would pause at the cell door to look out, watching for revolutionists’ fires, listening for the outbreak of a riot or the noise of an execution. There was nothing. It did not calm me. Quiet nights are the worst. You keep waiting, wondering which direction the trouble is going to strike from. (I can seldom foresee any troubles that involve me directly. That’s how it always is, people say. Tieresias. Kassandra.)

Somewhere near midnight as near as I can tell, I was startled by a hint of movement outside the bars but inside the lean-to of planks. I stopped, trembling like a leaf, clutching my heart (Even as a younger man, I was never up to this kind of thing.) Peeker’s eyes were open, bright as an owl’s. Nothing stirred. For a long time I waited, trying to see past the glow of the lamp on the table between me and the door. It was no illusion; that I knew. A wolf, some young Spartan here to murder me — I could not guess. Then there was another movement and something fluttered to the floor inside the bars. A minute later a dark, bony hand came through the bars and the index finger pointed at the scrap of thin parchment. Some trick by my jailer! I thought. Is it possible? Sucking my cheeks in, slow and wary, I moved closer to the scrap and, four feet from where it lay, I reached out with my crutch to drag it toward me. The rats in the corner watched, torn between snatching the note for dessert and keeping clear of the creature behind the bars. I stooped then, keeping my eyes on the dark doorway, picked up the parchment and glanced at it in haste. My glance caught and stuck. All the unreasonable pleasure in life I thought I had abandoned years ago churned up in my chest as if to drown me, and I reached out to steady myself on the table. The messenger behind the bars stirred, and I whispered, “Wait!” He stayed.

The message was from a woman — a girl — what should I say of a sixty-year-old child? The note was from my beloved Iona. I was in no condition to read it just then, but I would know that furious, childish scrawl if I found it carved on the moon. I taught her how to write, I’m ashamed to admit. I am ordinarily an excellent teacher, and Iona was a brilliant student; but Iona learns what she chooses to learn, especially from me. I stared at the writing without reading it as I used to sometimes stare at her mouth, not listening to her words. It came to me then that the light from my lamp made the messenger vulnerable: the jailer, if he were to look from the side, would see the shape crouched under the planks and would sooner or later realize it was somewhat too large for a frog. I turned and blew out the lamp, then went to the door and peered out.

“Hah,” I said, stroking my beard. It was a boy I had seen before — no more than nineteen, I would guess. It’s hard to tell a Helot’s age, especially of late. The war’s been hardest on the Helots. Malnutrition stunts them in their youth, labor and flight make them old before their time. He had slanted eyes, like Iona’s, and a face too much like a skull. His eyes flicked continually from side to side, the eyes of a boy who’s spent most of his life on dark unpeopled streets or sprinting up lightless alleys in the city of his enemies.

“Iona’s all right, young fellow?” I asked.

He nodded. It meant nothing. They always nod, eyes flickering away.

“She’s not sick? She hasn’t got the piles? Her stools are normal?”

“No, not sick.” I had to read his lips.

“Not in prison, either?”

“No.”

“Good. I take it she’ll get out of Sparta, then, as I’ve always so wisely advised her?”

“No.” This time he spoke aloud. I raised my hands to hush him.

“Tell her she must,” I said. “Tell her if she doesn’t, the consequences will be dire.”

He smiled and, seeing his smile, I knew him. Her grandson. So she’d brought him into it too. She was crazy.

“Young man,” I said, “your grandmother is crazy.” I began pacing hastily back and forth in front of him. “We must try to help her, poor thing. I know how you must suffer, seeing her wander about like a lamb some horse has kicked, hearing her babble her curious language — but we must be patient and kindly and do what little we can to give her comfort. Could you tie her up in the cellar, perhaps wall her up someplace, with a hole to pass in food through?”