The Praise Singer (10 page)

I could not say to this kindly man, “I left him to die alone.” I just asked if anyone had come to visit him.

“I doubt if many knew that he was sick. There was that philosopher, though, that he used to see while you were at your singing; he teaches mathematics and such. He came most days; was with him at the end, and saw to the funeral. You’ll be wanting to see him; he has the urn in keeping.”

“Yes; who is he?”

“He’s a son of old Mnesarchos, who was a famous gem-cutter in his day. You’ll find his house up the hill, just under the acropolis.”

I climbed the steep way to the ancient walls, remembering how Kleobis had said ?he would make an offering for my victory. He had offered his lonely death, while I was being welcomed in my own city without a care. People turned their heads now and then to see me weeping; but I had nowhere to go, and had to make the best of it. When the houses thinned, I sat awhile on a hillside boulder, and covered my face to have my grief out.

Even before I left, our paths had been dividing, mine to the Victory, his to the fallen lords, and only one thing had done it: poverty. Theas had been right. If either of us had had a steady livelihood, I would not be here now, seeking a stranger who had tended and buried my friend. If he reproaches me, I thought, I must bear even that.

I wiped my eyes and set off, and stopped some men on the road to ask the way. They pointed, but looked at me strangely. Next time I had to ask, the passer-by spat and made the evil-eye sign. “Oh, mad Pythagoras. His house is just over there.”

It was an old one, built of the mountain stone; not fancy-trimmed like the city ones, but cool and roomy. The courtyard door was opened by a Thracian slave, big-boned and red-haired, with a blue tattoo on his forehead. It surprised me that he did not speak in the slave-talk, but in excellent Greek. “Sir, you are Simonides of Keos? Please come inside, my master is expecting you.”

Courteous, not servile, he led me through a herb garden, aromatic in the autumn sun; there was a round pavement with an upright pole in its center, and figures carved round its edge. A long measuring-cord came down from the top of the pole and was wound about a cleat; I had seen such things among the Ephesian mathematicians, who claim they can measure mountains with them, or some such matter. The slave paused a moment to see where the shadow of the pole was falling. He was plainly dressed, but in a good fine cloth. In Keos, one could have worn such stuff oneself.

He scratched at a door and opened it. “Here is Simonides, sir, the friend of Kleobis.”

The room went right across the ground floor, and was full of things: shelves of books and scrolls and writing-tablets; tables of mathematicians’ toys, cubes and cones and spheres and cylinders. One wall was whitened, and drawn all over with figures, and with squares and triangles made of blocks of numbers. There was a stand with a great astrolabe upon it; and in the middle, getting the best light, a long table laden with musical instruments, at which a man was sitting tuning a lyre. He laid it aside, and rose.

He was very tall, his black hair and beard hardly touched with grey. Under his heavy brows were large eyes with brilliant whites showing all round the iris. One could not look away from them. I should think I could have counted ten while he stood there without a word, fixing me with these strange eyes; then suddenly he came around his work-table, and embraced me as if we were old friends meeting after many years. I remembered the man on the road, but could not feel that he was dangerous.

“Come, rest; we can talk when you have eaten.” I had taken no breakfast, in my haste to be off the ship, and nothing since, but had not known I was hungry. I took the chair he offered. His lyre was a fine old one of polished tortoiseshell, with arms of slender horn and a bridge of ivory. The slave, uncalled, brought wine and raisin-cakes; my host took them and served them to me himself.

“Rest,” he said again, and picking up the lyre played on it softly. The intervals were new to me, and strange, yet soothing. Presently he laid it down. “We often talked of you, Kleobis and I. Now that I see you, I no longer doubt that you were his son. A good son, too. You have no memory of it?”

I now saw why they thought him mad. “Certainly,” I said to humor him, “he gave me a father’s care.” He had suffered enough, I thought, without a lunatic to trouble his last hours.

“No matter. The Sight is rare. But the bonds of souls are for all men, as for every creature. Leave, when you can, your honorable grief. I foresee that you will live long. Even before your soul departs i?ts present habitation, his in its new one may return, and you can repay your debt to him, as he, you may be sure, repaid to you some ancient kindness. In such ways we lift each other towards the light.”

I began to understand him. At the tavern I’d heard of such beliefs, though only by way of joking. I just said that the landlord had spoken of his goodness to my master, for which I would be forever in his debt.

“It was a new bond to me. But now it is tied, the threads will cross again. I shall be the better for it, and I hope he also.”

“I was told, sir, that you have his ashes. It troubles me that the barbarians have his city, and I cannot give him a tomb among his kindred.”

“It does not trouble him, you may be sure. But take for friendship’s sake, if you wish, what remains of his outworn garment. He himself will have come already before the Judges, and heard their counsel; and knowing his soul’s needs will have chosen his next life.”

“He must be honored somewhere with a tomb. You have more right than I to bury him; do you wish to do it?”

“No, for his tomb would be untended here, which would cause you sorrow. I am leaving Samos, and shall not return; at least, not in this body.”

I asked if Polykrates had exiled him. “That would have come, I think. Till lately, the Tyrant hasn’t troubled himself about mad Pythagoras.” For the first time he smiled. “But now he begins to hear that I and my friends are studying harmony.”

“So? But he prides himself on being a patron of the arts.”

“Not ours. We look for music, first in the heavens”-he pointed to the astrolabe-“then on earth in the laws of its creatures, chiefly in man; in himself, in his dealings with his fellows, in his body politic. That is as displeasing to tyrants as a doctor’s advice to a drunkard. Well, we have work to do, which we need to pursue in peace. There is a piece of coastal land in Italy, good land unused; I traveled there to find it. My students are coming with me. He will be glad to see us go.”

“That’s a long way.” It seemed to me the further edge of the world.

“This is an age of tyrants. They warn each other about men like me. In Kroton they will not trouble us.”

“But, if you are founding a colony, what will you do for women?”

“Why, bring my students; there will be enough of each kind. The women have been men and will be men again, as you and I have been women. What is that, but a station along the way?”

“If you are selling up,” I said, “and want a buyer for your slave, I shall be glad to hear your price. Don’t fear I shall give him rough work, I can see he is above that. I promise to treat him well.”

“That I do not doubt. But I am giving Zamolxis his freedom, to return to his own people. He has been a good pupil; it is time he began to teach. Besides, it is in my mind that his time of penance is over.”

His eyes had fixed in his head, the white gleaming round the iris; bright eyes, not blind, and yet unseeing. With any other man, I should have thought it was a fit, and called for help. As it was, I would have gone away quietly, but had not been given the urn. I waited, wondering how long these turns might last with him, and whether I should tell the slave, so that he could be looked after. I was afraid to wake him myself. However, the shadows on the floor had hardly moved, before he came calmly to himself, and smiled at me.

“Forgive me. The Sight chooses its own time. When the door opens, even on the same day of the same life, there is always something new. Just now I tasted the food he shared with me.”

He paused, and I was afraid he would go off again. “Yes?” I said.

“I mean Zamolxis. That is one of my strongest bonds. I was an Egyptian, a child - I know Egypt in this life, and much came back to me. My father took me on his ship to trade in Tyre. We were seized by pirates; Zamolxis was the captain. My father fought and was killed, escaping slavery; they threw him dying overboard. I ran to the one man I saw taking no part in this, not knowing that only his rank prevented him. I clasp?ed his knees and begged him to save me. He was pitiful, and chose me for part of his spoils; for his pleasure, the others thought, but he did no harm to me. Once, in a calm, I taught him the common writing, and once in a storm he comforted me. In the end he put me ashore, in a place that is now unknown to me, where I had kindred. Someday I may come upon it.

“Well, that is the cause of his present life. For the blood he had shed and the people he had enslaved, he had to make reparation; he was enslaved as a boy, to a hard master in these parts. I passed by-not by chance, you can be sure, although it seemed so-and heard him crying under the whip; and the Sight came to me, and I knew my debt. For ten years he has shared my studies; I took him to Egypt with me, when I went to the temple schools. He knows the motions of the stars, and the properties of plants. In all these years, he has not shed the blood of a living creature; he knows they are souls which have been men, or will be. Now he shall go to the Getai, from whom he came, in the country north of the Ister. As in his former life he brought death and darkness, in this he will bring life and light.”

I thought to myself that he talked like a poet, and wondered what he sang. As to his tale, I could tell that he believed in it; but it seemed a waste of a good slave. He’ll just be one more cattle-raiding tribesman, I thought, within half a year.

However, I replied as I thought he’d wish; and shortly after, he gave me the funeral urn; a beautiful piece, Corinthian, painted with lions and flowers. Later, I made a tomb for it in Euboia, carved with this epitaph: I was Kleobis of Ephesos, till my city was possessed by the longhaired Mede. But my songs remain, and will abide his going.

From time to time, I heard news of Pythagoras and his school in Italy. Lately, when I was traveling to Syracuse, my ship put in at Kroton. He was dead by then, but I talked to some citizens, who honor him next the gods and keep all his laws. They live more plainly even than Keans, but from devotion rather than harshness; to me they were very courteous, and brought me to some old men who had known the founder well. I asked whether they’d ever heard anything of a freed slave called Zamolxis. Yes indeed, they said; he was still alive, and honored by the Getai as their greatest sage. Two kings in turn had appointed him prophet and counselor to the people. He lived in a cave, keeping his master’s laws and preaching his philosophy. The Getai, who had been great hunters, now killed no living thing, and were known to the tribes around as Milk-Eaters.

ATHENS

1

I LIVED THREE or four years in Euboia, before my father died.

Every month or so, I used to cross over to show him the farm accounts: so many horses sold in Attica, the yield of olives or oil or barley. The steward told me, and I wrote it down; my memory is for words, not numbers. I would bring my father his half-share, and give him the mainland news; and, if he asked me, would tell him where I had performed.

I came, if I could, to the chief Kean festivals, and the games. One year I had my wish, and made Theas a victory song when he won the wrestling. At first I was still just Leoprepes’ son, home on a visit. Later, things began to change. He let it be seen that I no longer disgraced the family; but I don’t remember his ever praising a song.

The farm had had a wing thrown out, for Theas and his wife and their two handsome children, boy and girl. Philomache and her Midylos were still childless. His father Bacchylides, who had been a great athlete in his day, fretted about it more than he did. “We’re both young yet,” he said. “I don’t believe she’s barren.” He had too much courtesy to tell her brother that he’d sired healthy bastards himself. “And even if she were, I’d sooner have a woman who pleases me than a fool farrowing fools.” She had a bloom on her, and it seemed he suited her too.

Each year I traveled to the greater festivals as they fell due, the Isthmia, or the Olympics, the Nemea, the Panathenaia; sang? in the contests, and sometimes hymned the victors. I have always enjoyed the challenge of a victory hymn. One can’t know beforehand who the victor will be of any event, nor which victor is going to hire one. Besides which, only one bard can win a singing contest, and one may have one’s work for nothing but applause; but a victory ode means money.

The rest of the year I shared between Euboia, where I had my house, and Athens, where I had my hopes.

In these first years, it was Euboia mostly. It is a god-frequented land, with woody gorges and chestnut-shaded hills. In the mountain villages, or along the shore away from the big harbors, old men will tell you tales which Achilles may well have heard at Cheiron’s knee. They have that smell of great age one can’t mistake, like old green bronze. I made my Lament of Danae there, because of a song I heard a woman sing as she turned the quern.

The land had been in our family time out of mind. We had been Euboians, till two generations back, when my great-grandfather was on the losing side in the Lelantine War. He’d been a great landowner down in the plain; when that was gone he retired to Keos, and lived on the place which had been his Kean wife’s dowry, and where I was born. My father used to say the Euboian land I farmed was just a smallholding, compared with the ancient glories. But I wanted a living, not a fortune, which I hoped to find for myself; and I lived there very well.

The farm is in the hills near Dystos, east of Swallow Lake, on a slope that faces Attica. It’s a short ride down to the coast, where any boatman will run you across to Rhamnos. From there it’s an easy journey to Athens, between the heights of Parnes and Hymettos. I used to keep a mule stabled with a Rhamnos farmer; starting early, I could be in Athens by noon.