“Here, you’re a woman-”
“Yes, I’d noticed.” Diotima spoke through the mask. There were eye holes to see through and a mouth through which to speak. She looked very strange to me with the rigid mask covering her face.
“Acting’s not for women,” the stage manager said. “That’d be immoral.”
“Sir? Then who plays the women characters?” Socrates asked.
“The men do. That’s moral. If a woman was on stage, all the men would be ogling her, right?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Well, that isn’t right, is it? Would you want your daughter on stage, and a horde of men eyeing her? Thinking about her because they want to … well, do you-know-what with her.”
When he put it like that … “No, you’re right,” I said. “I definitely wouldn’t want my daughter on stage, if I had one.”
“Well then, there you are. Every woman is someone’s daughter. The only proper thing to do is not allow the ladies on stage.”
“It’s ridiculous,” Diotima said, in an irritated tone. “If women can be priestesses then they can be actresses, can’t they? Priestesses perform in public and everything’s fine.”
“It’s like this, young miss-”
“I am Diotima, the wife of Nicolaos.”
“If you got up on stage, a lady who looks the way you do-” He looked her up and down, then said, “If you were up there, we’d have to beat back the audience with shovels.” He shook his head. “It just wouldn’t work out. No one would pay attention to the play.”
The cast spent the next two days in intense work. And so did I. I didn’t take my eyes off the actors, the stage or the backstage area for a moment while the crew were there. Of course I couldn’t see all those things at once. I had to constantly run from the back to the front and then back again. I felt like a parent with twenty children. My constant movement irritated the actors and everyone who supported them, yet no one complained. They knew as well as I did that whoever was set to sabotage the play was still out there, waiting for an opportunity.
But I couldn’t be there all night as well. I went to see Pythax, to beg the loan of two of the Scythian Guard. There are three hundred of these guards, all of them barbarian slaves, their job to patrol the streets and keep the peace. My father-in-law Pythax was their overseer.
Pythax was good to me, as he always is. He arranged for two of his men, Euboulides and Pheidestratos, to be detached to my service. I ordered them to protect the theater at night. I specifically wanted two guards so that they would keep each other awake. A man on his own can easily doze. They took the moonlight shift and I relieved them each dawn.
Throughout the rehearsals, Romanos was a workhorse. He was first at the theater every morning. He was last to leave. There was no task too small that he wouldn’t lend a hand. There was no task so large that he was daunted. When anyone expressed doubt that the play could be ready on time, it was Romanos who encouraged them, or cajoled them, or did whatever was necessary to keep everyone at work. He had become friends with Akamas, which I suspected he had done with the assistance of some wineskins. The other stagehands took their cue from Akamas. They volunteered to work longer each day. Sisyphus was being carried by the sheer force of will of its second actor.
The new third actor, Kebris, proved to be a find. He was an old trouper, and looked it when his mask was off. He had thinning hair and deep lines in a face that seemed perpetually sad. But he picked up the lines with such speed that even Sophocles was pleased. “I’ve never known an actor to fall into a part so easily,” he said.
The truth was that Romanos had worked extra time outside the rehearsals to get Kebris ready, which Diotima and I knew perfectly well because we’d met Romanos that rainy night, leaving the theater after working with Kebris. Diotima and I discussed Romanos in low whispers as we sat in the stalls, out of earshot of the cast and crew.
“He took your advice,” I said to Diotima.
“What advice?” Diotima asked.
“Don’t you remember? Under the stoa in all that rain. You advised him to become as indispensable to the Athenians as your father. Well, he’s doing it. If he goes on like this, Sophocles will be insisting that they make Romanos a citizen,” I said.
Diotima nodded. “He deserves it.”
The morning before the Great Dionysia wasn’t a rehearsal day. Instead every single act-not only the play of Sophocles, but the other two tragedies as well, and the comedies, and the ten choral performances-everyone was due to arrive to set up their pieces. The Dionysia was held over five days. The people today would organize the logistics of moving their acts in and out in order.
Diotima and I arrived at the theater with Socrates in tow, just as Apollo’s light peeked over the east. We found both guards slumped against the back wall, sound asleep and snoring.
I kicked them awake.
“Get up, you idiots. What do you think you’re doing?”
They opened their eyes, but they were still sleepy. They stared up at me in confusion for a moment. Then their state of confusion turned to horror when they realized it was me staring down at them, and that they had fallen asleep.
They scrambled to their feet and stammered, “We’re sorry, master, we don’t know what happ-”
“Don’t bother,” I interrupted. “Pythax will hear of this.”
They trembled. Pythax was a stern disciplinarian. One of the toughest men in Athens, he expected every man he commanded to be his equal in application to duty. I foresaw many long disciplinary marches for these two, in full armor, through the day and night without rest, so that they could learn how not to fall asleep.
I myself had once drilled with the Scythians, at the insistence of my future father-in-law, so that he could teach me how to stay alive in a street fight. The memory of Pythax’s brutal training still haunted my nightmares, but I had never forgotten his lessons, and I hadn’t been killed yet either.
“Come with me,” I said. “We’ll have to check every tiny thing backstage, to make sure nothing’s been tampered with. And when the stage manager arrives, he’ll have to check it all again, because he might spot something that we’d miss.”
We did that, the two guards and Diotima and me. We picked up every prop and every mask. Not only the ones for Sisyphus, but the props and masks for the comedies and the other tragedies. I had to stop Euboulides and Pheidestratos from playing with the pig’s bladders that the comedians used. They made a farting noise that the guardsmen thought was hilarious. I thought it was funny too, but Diotima didn’t. Nor did I want the guards to be caught playing with the props when the actors and crew arrived, which would be at any moment.
I crawled across every part of the backstage floor in search of booby traps. There were none.
I stood up and dusted off my hands and knees.
“All right, that’s about it. You two can think yourselves lucky nothing went wrong.”
“What about that thing, sir?” Euboulides pointed at the machine.
We all stared at the mechanism, but none of us had any idea how it worked. There was a chock between two of the cogs, but it was easily visible and for all I knew it was supposed to be there.
“It looks all right to me,” I said hesitantly. “We’ll have to have Kiron check it before anyone uses it.”
Socrates said, “Nico, the machine’s not in rest position.”
“What?” I said, startled. “That’s impossible. Nobody’s holding it.”
Socrates pointed to the machine’s arm. “It should rest level. But the arm’s up and over the skene.”
So it was.
I walked over to the mechanism. It looked the same as always. Yet the short end was pressed down as far as it could go.
I found the answer at the hinge. Someone had pressed down the short end lever and then pushed a chock into the hinge. I’d seen Melpon the doctor do the same thing, when he wanted to lock his healing machine in place. I understood what had happened here. The arm was up because it couldn’t descend.