The Mask of Apollo (2 page)

I had already heard him, of course, lamenting with Andromache; but that is her scene, and I had my own part to think of. Now, the voice seemed to go all through me, making my backbone creep with cold. I forgot it was I who was being mourned for. Indeed, it was more than I.

No sweetness here, but old pride brought naked to despair, still new to it, a wandering stranger. At the bottom of the pit a new pit opens, and still the mind can feel. Cold hands touched my head. So silent were the tiers above us, I heard clearly, from the pines outside, the murmur of a dove.

I was not seven years old. I think I remember; but no doubt I have mixed in scraps from all sorts of later renderings, by Theodores or Philemon or Thettalos; even from my own. I dreamed of it, though, for years, and it is from this I remember certain trifles—such as the embroidery on his robe, which had a border of keys and roses—glimpsed between my eyelids. When I think of these dreams it all comes back to me. Was it Troy I grieved for, or man’s mortality; or for my father, in the stillness that was like a wreath of victory on Kroisos’ brow? All I remember for certain is my swelling throat, and the horror that came over me when I knew I was going to cry.

My eyes were burning. Terror was added to my grief. I was going to wreck the play. The sponsor would lose the prize; Kroisos, the crown; my father would never get a part again; we would be in the streets begging our bread. And after the play, I would have to face terrible Hecuba without a mask. Tears burst from my shut eyes; my nose was running. I hoped I might die, that the earth would open or the skene catch fire before I sobbed aloud.

The hands that had traced my painted wounds lifted me gently. I was gathered into the arms of Hecuba; the wrinkled mask with its down-turned mouth bent close above. The flute, which had been moaning softly through the speech, getting a cue, wailed louder. Under its sound, Queen Hecuba whispered in my ear, “Be quiet, you little bastard. You’re dead.”

I felt better at once. All I had been taught came back to me. We had work to do. I slid back limp as his hands released me; neatly, while he washed and shrouded me, he wiped my nose. The scene went through to the end.

In vain we sacrificed. And yet had not the very hand of God gripped and crushed this city deep in the ground we should have disappeared in darkness, and not given a theme for music, and the songs of men to come.

As the extras carried me off in my royal grave-clothes, I thought to myself, surprised, “
We
are the men to come.” As well as everything else, I had been responsible to Astyanax. His shade had been watching from the underworld, hoping I would not make him mean. What burdens I had borne! I felt I had aged a lifetime.

My father, who had been standing behind the prompt-side revolve and seen it all, ran up as they slid me off the shield, asking what had come over me. If it had been my mother, I daresay I should have raised a howl. But I said at once, “Father, I didn’t make a noise.”

Kroisos came off soon after, pushing up his mask. He was a thin man, all profile, like a god on a coin except that he was bald. When he turned our way I hid behind my father’s skirts; but he came towards us, and fished me out by the hair. I came squirming, a disgusting sight, as you may suppose, all smeared with blood-paint and snot. He grinned with big yellow teeth. I saw, amazed, that he was not angry. “By the dog!” he said, “I thought we were finished then.” He grimaced like a comedian’s slave-mask. “Artemidoros, this boy has feeling, but he also knows what he’s about. And what’s your name?”

“Niko,” I answered. My father said, “Nikeratos.” I had seldom heard this used, and felt somehow changed by it. “A good omen,” said Kroisos. “Well, who knows?”

Now, while the women wailed over the bier, a dozen such scenes from my childhood up came back to me. My father always got me in as an extra when he could.

Outside came a lull; Phantias the mask-maker had come to condole, bringing a grave-pot painted to order with two masks and Achilles mourning by a tomb. The women, who were getting tired, broke off to talk awhile. I was master of the house, I ought to go out and greet him. I could hear his voice, recalling my father as Polyxena, and turned over again, biting the pillow. I wept because the god we both served had made me choose, and my heart had forsaken him for the god. Yet I had fought the god for him. “What a house today,” I would say. “They must have heard the applause at the Kerameikos. That business with the urn would have melted stone. Do you know I saw General Iphikrates crying?” There was always something one could say, and something true. But the great things every artist hopes for, the harsh god closed my mouth upon, and pushed them back down my throat. He missed them; I know he missed them; I saw it sometimes in his eyes. Why not have said them, and left the god to make the best of it? The gods have so much, and men have so little. Gods live forever, too.

I could not lie there like a child. I got up and wiped my face, greeted Phantias, finished cutting my hair for the grave-wreath, and stood at the door to receive people. I was there when Lamprias called.

When he made his offer, my mother, without asking me what I thought, thanked him with tears. Lamprias coughed, and looked at me with apology, knowing what I knew. His great black eyebrows worked up and down, and he glanced away at my father. I too, as I accepted, half looked to see him sit up on his bier and say, “Are you mad, boy?” But he said nothing; what indeed could he have said? I knew I should have to take it. I would do no better, now.

At nineteen, one is good for nothing in the theater but extra work. To get into a company, even as third actor, one must have the range that will let one play not only youths and women but warriors, tyrants and old men. No lad of that age can do it; whereas a good man, who has kept his voice in training and his body supple, can wear juvenile masks till he is fifty, and do everything else as well.

So long as my father lived, I always got work, singing in choruses, carrying a spear, or doing silent stand-ins, when two roles played by one actor overlap, needing an extra to wear the mask and robe for one of them. Lately I had even gotten odd lines here and there, in modern plays where the rule of three is not so strictly kept, and the extra sometimes speaks. Though I knew little else, I knew the theater; and I was not fool enough to think that any more of this would come my way. Any actor good enough to appear in Athens has a son, or a nephew, or a boy friend training for the stage. From now on, I would be like the little orphan in
The Iliad
, who gets no table scraps. “Outside!” say the other boys. “
Your
father is not dining here.”

I reckoned I would need three years to make my way, at the very best, before I got parts in good productions; and even for three months my mother could not keep me idling. We had been left really poor; she would have to sell her weaving, my sister would have to earn her own dower or else marry beneath her. Somehow I must pick up a living at the only trade I knew.

Lamprias was pleased I agreed at once and said nothing to embarrass him. He would be getting something for money he owed outright, when cash down was what we needed. “Good boy, good boy,” he said, patting me on the back. “The choice of a real professional, and your father’s son. The range will come, we all know that; meantime, you’ve a head start over most lads I could get. You’ve lived backstage since you could stand, you know something of everything, from lyre-playing to working the crane. A tour like this will be the making of you. No artist knows himself till he’s done a tour.”

I did not tell him I had toured only last year, with my father, playing Samos and Miletos as extra in a first-class company, berthing aft and eating with the captain. I would make what was coming no better by putting on airs and being resented. It might have been worse. Boys left like me have had to choose between selling their favors to some actor in return for work, or going right to the bottom: the village fit-ups where, if they don’t like you, you can make your supper off the fruit and greenstuff they throw. At least Lamprias’ company played in theaters, though only in the little ones.

At sunset they buried my father. There was a very good turnout; it would have pleased him. Philotimos himself showed up, with a tale of some scrape my father had got him out of when he was young and wild. When it was over we went home and lit the lamps, straightened the room, and looked about as people do, not wanting to think what next.

I would be leaving within the month. I went out and walked about; everything looked strange. On my way I passed the door of an old hetaira I had had a night with when I was seventeen, because I was ashamed never to have tried a woman. I could hear her now inside, humming to her lyre. She was always kind to boys. But I owed my father more respect; and all I had really wanted was a little mothering. My first real love affair was still fresh in my heart, though it was three years since. An actor visiting from Syracuse had come for a month, and stayed another for love of me. We had had a beautiful parting, quoting from
The Myrmidons
; a whole year after, he had written to me from Rhodes.

Before we started rehearsals, I was asked to sup at Lamprias’ house and meet the company. We lived at Piraeus near the theater; he had lodgings on the waterfront. I walked there anxiously, picking my way over fishy nets and around kegs and bales.

“The scourge of a third-rate tour,” my father used to say, “is the second actor. He’s the failed one. As a rule he makes everyone pay.”

This time he was wrong. Old Demochares had had his taste of honey, and it had kept him sweet. More than once he had worn the victor’s ivy crown; he had come down through serving Dionysos all too well in a crown of vine. When I got there he was pretty drunk already; and in the end, to keep him from falling in the harbor, I helped carry him home. He was as jolly in his cups as Pappasilenos, except when we were putting him to bed; then he clasped my hand and cried a little, and quoted
O fair young face, sorrow and death pass by you
, in a voice that still showed some beauty through the fog. As we walked back after, Lamprias coughed, referred to his past triumphs, and gave me to know I would be expected, along with my other duties, to share the common task of getting him on stage sober.

The third actor, Meidias, had gone home already in a pet, if you will believe it, because I, rather than he, had had compliments from an old drunk who could not see straight to walk. My father had been half right; here was the failed man; not six and twenty, yet he had outlived his hopes. Some mocking god had given him a handsome face, the one beauty an actor can do without; it had brought him some success offstage, to which he owed his start, and made him think the world was at his feet. Now he was learning that feet are to stand upon, but did not want to know it. We had barely filled the first cups when he began telling me what splendid roles had been offered him if he had cared to sell his honor. He was as free with great names as some old madam showing the girls her jewels. Though young-looking for my age, I knew enough to guess he had gone through whatever his honor would fetch before he signed on with Lamprias. I fear he saw this in my eye.

Next day we started rehearsals. We had a repertory of two or three modern plays, without chorus, and a couple of classics in case some sponsor hired us for a festival.

Of course we were bypassing Corinth. Corinthians know what is due to them, and throw things if they don’t get it. We were opening at Eleusis, then on through Megara and south around the Argolid. When Lamprias went on, as he did every day for both our good, about the fine experience I would be getting, what he meant was that we would hardly see a bit of modern equipment from first to last, or, probably, a sponsor; we would cart along our own costumes, masks and props (stuff bought secondhand after the Dionysia, when richer companies had had their pick), fix up the skene with whatever we found when we got there, and practice making do. Though I never thought I would five to say so, one can make worse beginnings.

It seemed a pity that in the last week of rehearsals I had to knock Meidias down. Even though he took against me from the first, I had tried to get along with him for the sake of peace; but that day he thought fit to quote me a piece of envious bitchery about my father, from one of his fancy-friends. He was bigger than I, but had not troubled, as my father had made me do, to go to a good gymnasium where one learns how to stand and move. One also learns some throw-holds. We had been rehearsing in the Piraeus theater and were walking up the steps between the benches when I hit him and tipped his knee; so he did not fall very soft, and rolled a good way down. Some little boys, who had perched at the top like sparrows to watch us act, were glad to get so much for nothing, and cheered the scene. Luckily he broke no bones, and his face was no one else’s business. So Lamprias said nothing. I knew I should be made to pay; but that could not be helped. Little I guessed, though, how far along my life that blow would cast its shadow.

The day of departure came. My mother saw me off by dawn and lamplight, shed a few tears, and warned me against temptations, which she did not name, guessing no doubt that I could have instructed her. I kissed her, shouldered my bundle, and went whistling down the twilit streets where half-wakened birds replied. The shouts of the night-fishers, bringing in their catch, rang far over the gray water. At the meeting-place I found that Lamprias, to show we were a troupe of standing, had hired a handyman for the baggage-cart, asses and mules. This cheered me; I had thought I might have to do that too.

It was a chancy year for touring, he said as we moved off. It was—like most other years. Lately the Thebans had amazed the world by throwing the Spartans first out of their citadel and then out of their city. They had run them clear of Boeotia; we Athenians had beaten them at sea; all over Hellas men stretched, and breathed more deeply. However, with all this, troops were forever marching about the Isthmus; Lamprias said he would be glad to leave it behind. No doubt Megara would be quiet; they are apt there to mind their own business; but in the Peloponnese the cities were working like a pan of yeast, throwing off the dekarchies the Spartans had set over them. We might run into anything.