The Mask of Apollo (26 page)

That day there was a glowing sky, with great wings of flame from the hidden east almost to the zenith. But when we opened, the wings were folded still; we had a subtle and somber glow, dusky-red, bronze and purple. Seeing this light, spellbound and lowering, which Euripides himself might have written in, Menekrates and I looked at each other, neither daring to say, “A lucky omen!”

They doused the cressets which had lit the audience to their seats. I pulled down my mask as the flutes began.

Dionysos opens alone. I have a bit of business I always use when the play starts early in half-light. I cross to Semele’s altar, where, as the dramatist directs, the fire is sinking; then, picking up a torch which lies there, I kindle it, lift it, and gaze around. I do the whole opening speech like this, walking here and there, looking at the royal house I shall destroy. The god must not seem like a mortal man plotting malice. He is curious, smelling out the ground, a stalking panther from the upland forests who snuffs at the walls of men, softly prowling, innocent of what he is.

I like this quiet start. Then when I raise my voice to call on the Phrygian Maenads, everyone jumps, which is good. In they come dancing, with their pipes and drums and cymbals, shattering the hush and stealth. There were young satyrs with them, doing a torch dance.

Coming off, I found Menekrates dressed, with the Hippolytos mask pushed up; his new one had not come. I said it was hard, the masks being so good, that only he should have an old one. “I’d rather, now,” he said. “I’m played-in with this. I was only afraid the other would come by a panting messenger while I was lacing my boots. I know these eminent artists; one daren’t offend them, the choregos always takes their side because he’ll need them again. I should have had to wear it, with barely a glance in the mirror. One can’t do oneself justice.” Grateful he took it so well, I went to do my change for the seer Tiresias.

When I went on, I found the sky growing blue. The highlands were in sun, and the dewy chill was lifting. This is right, when mortals take the place of gods.

One can work up Tiresias if one likes; some leading men do; but I had rather give this scene to King Kadmos, that old trimmer who will dance on the hills with god or mountebank, no questions asked, if it gives him status. I just did straight man for his laughs. It helps the play; for bigoted and stiff-necked as Pentheus is, one must point up his integrity. That is the tragedy’s core.

Tiresias has a blind-man mask; one sees through slits between the eyelids. Turning my empty gaze upon the house, I perceived the play had taken.

Menekrates started his shouting off, denouncing the Bacchae and their rites. Just at his entrance-cue, the first sunbeams struck the stage, one falling on the very door, all ready. I thought, Some god loves us today.

Into the light stepped Menekrates, a big upstage entrance with supporting extras. The bullion and gilt jewels of his costume flashed, the crimson glowed. And he had on his new mask. It must have come at the very last, while I did my change. Enough to unsettle any artist; but he was sound and would keep his head.

Then I started to hear the audience. There was a pause, a buzzing, an angry mutter, a laugh. Good masks get their best effects with distance. I peered through my blind-man slits, which are less good than proper eyeholes, trying to see what was amiss, while Menekrates came on in the mask of Pentheus. A good character mask: a harsh proud face for an enemy of laughter and the joyous god. What, then, was wrong with it? Then I saw.

It was a portrait mask, such as they use in comedy, only less crude; a caricature, but a subtle one, toned down to the tragic style. It was the face of Dion.

I stood rooted, wooden as a post, while Menekrates went into his long entrance speech. I recalled the delays, the mask maker’s excuses, then its coming at the very last, after I was on stage and would not see. And just as a man will stare at a spear in his flesh, as if asking what it is, till suddenly the pain begins, so it broke upon me that Dion must be out in front there, in the seats of honor, getting this full in the face. What could he suppose, but that I knew?

He had thought the worse of me, no doubt, only for playing; and now, how much would he think Philistos and his master had paid me to make this worth my while? A nothing in a mask, a seller of illusions, a poets’ whore, whose life is spent in the public show of those passions the philosopher lives to master; a stroller from town to town, without a household; such men are easily bought.

My stomach heaved. For a moment I thought I would throw up on stage. By now Menekrates was halfway through his speech.

They tell me that a stranger out of Lydia

Has come to Thebes …

Dionysos, in whose mask I would soon be entering. I thought of that opening speech by torchlight, promising vengeance on the man who forbade my worship. Dionysos, god of the theater. A perfect buildup—for this.

As when I was a naked child on a Trojan shield, I longed for an earthquake to swallow up the skene. But that came later. I was a god, I would be giving the cue for it. I could have sat down, at that, and laughed until I cried.

Just let me get him here within my walls;

He’ll swing his thyrsos no longer, nor toss his head …

Menekrates came forward, gesturing threats. Poison was everywhere. I thought, What does
he
know?

The mask came late. But one always finds time to stand back and look. Perhaps he had not; did not want to confuse his interpretation, and would rather just clap it on. But, I thought, what is Dion to him, to offend a powerful sponsor for, except that he is my friend? If he saw, he’ll never own it; who would? He lives in Syracuse; what free Athenian dare reproach him? So there will be this between us.

Ha, this is
your
work, Tiresias
…

He had crossed down towards me. At the end of this tirade came my cue, for a speech about twice as long. I could not remember a line of it.

You are greedy for burnt-offerings, you scent

New fees for divination …

I should be reacting to all this. Already he felt my numbness and was losing force. I was giving him nothing. My hand came up for the affronted seer, and tapped my staff on the stage.

Well might Tiresias be angry. I thought of that vain young fool in Ortygia, sitting like a clerk at his great, wicked father’s desk; of jolly Philistos with his gentlemanly manners, the fat old spider shaking his web; and of Dion out in front, keeping a philosopher’s straight face (the good man bears pleasure and pain with an equal mind) in the hour of fallen fortune, bitten even by the stray he had fed from his own dish. There had been no time till now for anger.

One is finished if one loses one’s temper on stage; so it was lucky I had learned young to master it. If, at nineteen, you have had to keep going when you find the inside of your mask has been smeared with turd, you never really forget it. Poor Meidias had never, right till the end of the tour, given up such attempts to make me lose my lines. So, now, I grasped the weapon that had served me when I had no other. I was here to honor the god, in the precinct where if a man meets face to face his own father’s murderer, still he must hold his hand. One seldom thinks of these sacred laws; one seldom needs to; but they are bone of one’s bone. I could only fight within them. These people had tried to take the play from me, and turn it into a third-rate satire. If it cost my last breath, I would take it back.

I went into my speech on cue, living from line to fine; once I saw Menekrates’ eyes blinking within his eyeholes, and wondered how much I had just cut. Luckily, it’s the dullest speech in the play. I shook my staff, or rather held up my hand, which was shaking of itself; but Tiresias is very old, and angry. It was a ham performance; at all events it warmed Menekrates up again, and I did get his cue line right.

When I exited with young Philanthos, who was doing Kadmos, we were hardly off before he lifted his mask and gaped at me, so full of words they jammed his mouth. I raised my hand, saying, “No. We will get through this performance first. And nothing to Menekrates either.”

In my dressing room I had just started to strip when Menekrates came straight in from his exit. “What happened, Niko? What was the matter with the audience? Do you know you cut twenty lines, and ad-libbed half the rest? This mask has wretched eyeholes, too.”

I did not say, “You need not act to me, my friend.” It might well be the truth. Even with good eyeholes, one can’t see much more than straight forward; to see sideways one must turn one’s head. Anything might have happened, for all he knew, beyond his sight-line, to cause the stir.

“My dear,” I said, “leave it till after. It’s politics; but let’s keep to our own business while we are doing it. If you do find out, don’t be upset; the play’s the thing. When I’m dressed, I shall sit with my mask awhile.”

Some actors swear by this rite, and it is much beloved by wall-painters and sculptors. For myself, I get my masks home beforehand (or I make trouble) and consider them there in quiet, with no witness but the god. Yet it is a good tradition of the theater that an artist who sits before his mask should be left in peace. It gives one the chance to compose oneself, if anything has put one out. I could hear my dresser at the door, turning people away in whispers. The voices of the chorus boys rose and fell down in the orchestra as the dance brought them near or far. Chin on fist I sat, looking at the leopard eyes of bland fair Dionysos, thinking about the immortal hunter and his prey.

My call came; I was led by the guards before angry virtuous Pentheus. The god is disguised as a human youth; but all have felt divinity somewhere about him, except the King, to whom he gives soft answers, speaking truth darkly, smiling.

The audience had quieted now; but I could feel them on edge, rustling like mice in the wainscot. I must get hold of them now or never, for this passage is the axis of the play.

Pentheus denounces the god as a juggling charlatan, crops his long hair (the wig is a trick one), then orders him to give up his thyrsos. He, however, stands still. “Take it yourself,” he says quietly. “This belongs to Dionysos.”

This line I spoke with its meaning; and Menekrates, who was a sensitive actor, played back to me, holding off a moment and pausing, before he snatched angrily at the wand. I turned to the maenad chorus, and made the gesture which says, “It is accomplished.” There was a hush, fraught, as I meant, with fear.

The thyrsos is the madness of the god, which the man must choose for himself. Thus each fulfills his nature.

The god came kindly at first to Thebes, saying, “Bring me all that wildness in your hearts; I understand it, it is my kingdom. My gift is the lesser madness which will rest your souls and save you from the greater. Know yourselves, as my brother Apollo tells you. You have need of me.” The Theban women answered, “How dare you? Would you make wild beasts of us? We have laws and live in the city. You insult us; go away.” That’s why they have the madness of the god without his blessing, and run on the mountains tearing wolves with their nails.

Then comes Pentheus, saying, “You dirty foreigner, debaucher of decent ladies, don’t try your tricks on
me.
I am master of myself; don’t deny it, or I shall be angry. I am pure; I can’t rest for thinking of those women’s lecheries in the woods. To prison with you, out of my sight. Let me hear no more of you.”

It is from the man’s own soul that the god with the smiling mask will draw his power, enchanting Pentheus with the hubris in his own secret heart. Once drunk on this sweet poison, he will know himself the one sane, righteous man in a wicked world. He has refused the little madness, to choose the great.

Yet the god warns him, as gods do before they strike. One can play it mockingly; indeed, I had rehearsed it so. But suddenly, now, it seemed to me the mortal veil should be lifted here, for the man to see if he would. The line,
You know not your own life, nor what you are
, I spoke softly, pitching it at the echo chamber. It was a lucky try. I nearly frightened myself.

Menekrates played back, recoiling. I had asked a good deal of him, changing the tone like this, but he had caught it. Well, I thought, when one sits with one’s mask, one calls the god. I must take what he sends.

When we went off, the audience shouted and stamped, as people do after tension—another gift of Dionysos, I daresay. There was no such release for me. I did not lift my mask, though the sweat was pouring down my face. Menekrates put his hand on my shoulder, saying, “Niko, this is a great interpretation. This is truly Euripides, I am sure.”

He has found out, I thought, if he didn’t know before. I loved him for his kindness, but could do with nobody just then. I said, “We shall do, my dear,” and went away.

The chorus were lamenting their gracious leader in his chains. In my dressing room I could not rest, but paced about. The sun was well up now; on stage the mask helped shade one’s eyes, but one felt the heat. I wondered where Dion was sitting. The one thing I dreaded like death was that someone might come and tell me.

It was time to command the earthquake. I was so wrought-up, I felt a shiver, like a sailor when someone whistles at sea. Well, let it come, I thought, as I ran backstage to the sounding board and made a noise like doom. The effects were tremendous; they can do anything at Syracuse—thunder far and near, whole columns falling, lightning that nearly blinds you.

Out steps the god, delicately, from his broken prison, a human youth again, chaffing the maenads for their fright, while the fire effects smoke up behind him. Pentheus comes on enraged, his captive free, his roof on fire, his herdsmen in flight from the mountain maenads. He has learned nothing. He curses the smiling god, and orders his army to fetch the women. Even then Dionysos gives him one more warning. “Don’t fight the gods; it would be better to offer sacrifice. If you ask it of me, I will bring the women home in peace.” But Pentheus knows best; no smooth-tongued Lydian shall trick him. He calls for his armor. He is like the mouse that runs about before the crouching cat. And now the paw comes down.