Authors: Gene Wolfe
I had not, and I shook my head.
"I did, and so I thought you should know and write it down, just in case you should meet Hegesistratus again when I'm not with you."
"Aren't you coming to Rope?" I asked. To which she replied that she was, but that the Rope Makers are not nice people.
I could not recall the taller boy's name, but I remembered Polos from the second meal the night before, so I asked whether he would come with Io and me. He nodded, and so did the older boy.
We have a cart drawn by mules to carry our food. My chest is in it, and so are some things of Io's. Simonides drives the cart because he is too old to walk far. Themistocles has said that anyone who becomes tired may ride on the cart as well, but it sways and jolts. Only the Median boy rode this morning; Io and Polos walked with me. Now we have stopped at a farm for the first meal. I should add here that two of Themistocles's slaves are with us—their names are Diallos and Tillon. I am wearing my sword, though my helmet and the other things are in the cart. The road will be safe enough, Themistocles says, until we get to Bearland.
I have just read what I wrote this morning; I should finish it, though I do not believe I could ever forget the winged lion-woman.
When she asked me her question, I remembered Hegesistratus and how he had ridden the donkey—but at other times walks with a crutch. So I said, "It is a traveler, Gaea. When he begins his journey he rides a horse, but the horse dies, or is stolen, or must be sold for food. After that, the traveler has to walk for himself, and by evening he is footsore and limps along with a staff."
She smiled as she leaped from her pedestal to stand beside me. "That's a good reply," she said, "even though you lack the advantage of lameness. I've always thought it was his lameness that gave Swollenfoot his clue." Though she stood on four legs and I upon two, she was so huge that she still looked down into my face, as she had from the pedestal.
I asked whether my answer was a correct one.
Gaea only adjured me to follow her, in order that she might show me the palace. "Poor Mnemosyne's one of my daughters," she said. "She doesn't get a lot of sacrifices."
I asked who Swollenfoot had been.
"A man who was too good. His father maimed his feet when Swollenfoot was a baby; he was always a little lame thereafter. Yet he was a wonderful fighter, like you. Shall I tell you his answer?"
"Please."
"He said it was a mortal, crawling upon hands and knees in the morning of life, soon walking erect, then at last—like your traveler— with a stick. If you ever get to Hill, they'll tell you that in my despair at his response I threw myself from the wall of their fortress and perished on the stones below. You'll observe that I'm winged." She chuckled.
I ventured that the mere solving of a riddle, and a rather easy one, hardly constituted a basis for suicide. All this time we were walking side by side down the avenue of statues, which were of a thousand different kinds, and approaching the doors of the palace. These, as we neared them, loomed higher and higher.
"The truth is that I returned to my element. Doesn't it trouble you to find earth winged? I'm not often considered a deity of the air, like the Lady of Thought."
"No," I said. "The sophists believe that the earth is a sphere." I paused in the hope that she would confirm or deny it, but she did neither. "A sphere is the only perfect shape, or so I've been told, no doubt by Hegesistratus or Simonides. In other lands, people believe that the earth is flat and say that it floats upon an endless sea, or that it's supported on the back of a great turtle, who swims in such a sea."
"Continue," she ordered me.
"I hesitate to speculate in the hearing of one who knows the truth."
Gaea looked at me, and though her face was the face of a woman, her eyes were the eyes of a lioness. "She is eager to hear your speculations."
"As you wish. It is soon seen that such explanations fail to resolve the question. If I slap water with my hand, it does not remain in the air but quickly falls to earth. Thus though the sea exists, it too must be supported in some way. Besides, a man who swims in the sea finds that the earth lies below it. It is true that he comes at last to such a depth that he cannot reach earth; but if another comes, a better diver, this other diver reports earth still. Plainly, then, the sea is held like water in a bowl, deepest at the center, but hardly endless at the center. And in fact a bowl that was endless at any point could never be filled."
"Continue," she said again.
"If I continue, Gaea, will you tell me the significance of your riddle?"
"No, you shall tell me. But continue."
"One who observes the sun at evening sees that it moves no more slowly at the horizon than it did when crossing the sky at noon. Similarly, it rises in full career. Where, then, does it halt? Plainly it does not halt, but circles and recircles the earth without cease, as do the moon and the stars, of which the same things might be said. If the sea proposed by some existed, the sun, the moon, and the stars would plunge into it and their lights would be extinguished; but that doesn't occur. All these things show that the proposed sea, upon which the earth is said to float, doesn't exist. As for the sea on which we sail, it's supported by the earth, and not the contrary.
"I said that water falls to earth. What doesn't? Birds, clearly; otherwise they would be killed. If you startle a bird from a bush, it may perch upon another—but it may not. And anyone may see for himself that eagles and vultures need not alight except to eat and drink, for they remain upon the wing without effort. What supports the earth? What supports these birds? The earth flies; Gaea is winged."
"Well reasoned," she said. She remained silent after that until we reached the stair that led to the entrance arch of the palace; then she asked, "Why do you think I said I devoured all who could not answer my question?"
I ventured to say that the earth devoured all men at last.
"Not those who understand my question, Latro. Isn't your traveler upon the journey of life? Say yes, or I'll devour you at the end of your days."
"Yes," I said as we mounted the stair.
"Explain."
"In the morning of life," I said, "a young man goes forth as though mounted, because he is carried upon the shoulders of his parents. By midday their support has vanished, and he must walk for himself. In the evening of life, he can hold up his head only because he is supported by the memory of what once he was."
As I spoke the final word, Gaea's vast wings roared behind me and I felt a wind as violent as a storm at sea; by the time I turned, she was already very far above me. Higher she rose, and higher still as I watched openmouthed, until she was little more than a dark speck against the overarching azure dome, and I felt certain she would soon disappear into the cloudless sky. But at last she settled upon a cornice of the topmost battlement, where she remained motionless and appeared to have become again a mere figure carved from the reddish stone, as she had been when I had first seen her.
Alone and wondering I entered that great palace. Its rooms were spacious indeed, but filled with little more than light and air. While I wandered from one to another, seeing here, perhaps, a single red-glazed urn displaying the capering black figures of satyrs, and there an iridescent enameled beetle rolling a great golden sun toward some corner of an empty chamber, I sought the meaning of Gaea's riddle. Why had she asked it of Swollenfoot? And why of me? Why had she offered to show me this palace of memory, yet deserted me as I was about to enter?
When I had walked through many empty rooms, I came upon a statue of a young woman dancing naked among daggers, her marble limbs so delicately poised that I hesitated to touch her for fear she might fall. At length I did, and she fell, shattering upon the many-figured floor.
I looked up from the ruin of this statue and found that I was staring into the wrinkled face of Simonides. His hand was on my shoulder. He asked if I was well.
I apologized for having nodded, and added, "That was a very strange dream!" The truth was that the desert palace seemed far more real to me than the windy night or the rocky hilltop where we sat about our fire. Hegesistratus and Simonides urged me to recount my dream, which I did.
That is everything I have to write about it, except that this morning a slender young woman Io had not named for me took me aside and told me she had dreamed of me the night before. I was flattered (as no doubt she intended I should be) and asked to hear her dream.
"I was dancing in an empty hall," she said, "watched by no one but you. At the end of my dance, when I stood on one hand surrounded by my daggers, you pushed me, and I fell on one and died." I gave her my word I would never do such a thing. Her name is Anysia.
Today, as we walked, I told Io about my dream—although not about the dancer. Io was excited, most of all (I think) because I still remembered so clearly all that I had seen and said. She asked what Hegesistratus had said about it, but the fact is that he had said next to nothing.
I have not yet told this to Io, and perhaps I will not; but while writing of my dream, I have thought of yet another answer to Gaea's riddle, and perhaps this one is more nearly true (for me, at least) than any of the rest. It is that a young man such as I am undertakes the journey of life as if on horseback, ever hurrying forward. As he grows older he comes to realize that it is but a pilgrimage to the grave and walks more slowly, looking about him. When he is old, he may take up his stylus and begin to write of what he has seen; if so, unlike other men, he is not devoured by the earth in which his body lies when life's journey is done, for though dead he still speaks to the living, just as it seemed the shade of Simonides still spoke to me outside that vast building in the desert.
When he talked with me this morning before Cimon's house, he asked first about the statues. I described that of Gaea to him, but when he asked what it signified, I could not say. He said that by that image, which at any moment might take wing, I was to know that my thoughts would be lost if I failed to give each into the guardianship of some image within or without my memory palace.
We have stopped here for the second meal, and here we will pass the night. I have taken the opportunity to read all that I wrote during the past three days. Of Cimon's banquet, and our offering to Mnemosyne after it, I recall nothing; yet the memory of the palace remains before my mind's eye, more vivid even than that of the house in which I was born. I see the man-faced lion with
Latro
cut in its foreleg, and the now-empty pedestal where once Gaea crouched, the mighty doorway, the strange, bare rooms, and all the rest. It would be remarkable indeed if a man could remember only his dreams, but the truth is that I can remember no other dream than that.
THIRTY
Tower Hill
ADEIMANTUS'S CITY IS THE FINEST in all Hellas, according to Io. Simonides confirmed it as we sat over wine with Adeimantus and his sons. Themistocles laughed and told Adeimantus that when Simonides was staying at his house in Thought, he liked nothing better than to rail against the citizens of Tower Hill, seeing only greed in the fine marble, silver, and gold everybody else admires. "And yet," finished Themistocles, "this man who can't bear to see others living in a beautiful city has had his own ugly old face painted by Polygnotos."
Simonides laughed as loudly as anyone. "I've done no more than follow the course of wisdom I profess to teach. All of you will concede, I think, that when other things stand equal, the best-looking man will get the most support from his fellows and the most votes in the Assembly."
Everyone nodded.
"Well, then," Simonides continued, "it must follow that the finest city will get the most support from the rest as well—if other things stand equal. And since Tower Hill's a rival of my friend Themistocles's city, and I can't malign its wide streets and imposing buildings, I criticize the morals of its citizens. That I can do with perfect justice even though I know so little about them—the morals of citizens everywhere being atrocious. As for this face of mine, I can't do a thing about it. But in time to come, I'll be judged not by my face but by my picture, which is perfectly beautiful. Fifty years from now everybody will say I was the leading figure of the age."
Adeimantus commanded the ships of Tower Hill at the Battle of Peace. It was he who opposed the ships from Riverland, which everyone says were the best the Great King had. The walls of his house are adorned with captured shields and weapons, and the figureheads of ships he destroyed. The wrecks washed ashore at a place called Crommyon; he had his men saw off the figureheads there. He presented one to every captain who served under him, he said, and kept the rest for himself.
Because these weapons and figureheads looked familiar to me, I asked Io whether we have ever been to Riverland; she says we have not. Adeimantus said he had never visited that country either, but that people are mistaken to envy the Great King his possession of it, though it is the oldest and most revered in the world. "The men who fought so hard for a foreign king will fight against him harder still," he told us. "The whole nation rose against the Medes after Fennel Field, you remember. And it will rise again."
If the hearts of the men of Riverland are as dark and proud as their crooked weapons and painted shields lead me to believe, I feel sure Adeimantus speaks no more than the truth. The black man confirms this, if I understand his gestures, saying that men like himself—his own nation, in fact—held sway over Riverland for a long while, but eventually its populace drove them back to their own country. He says also that he has been there, but he and I did not know each other then; it is a fine place.
There will be a play tonight. All of us, even Io, are to have seats.
A man with one hand has come to speak with Themistocles.
Io came to warn me of this man—thus I wrote quickly that he had come, then stopped to hear her. His name is Pasicrates. He fought me in the Troad, Io says, and it was I who cut off his hand. I tried to explain to her that war is war. A soldier rarely hates the men he fights, and when the fighting is over, he is happy to sit down and hear how things were on the other side.