“The finest of fair,” mumbled Anakreon, pulling himself up on the bench.
“They’re all fair at the age of puberty,” whispered Xenophanes, still keeping his eyes on the courtyard.
“True, Xenophanes, but my soul sings for young Phidias, the son of Ptolemy, there!” He nodded toward the courtyard where a red-cloaked instructor had divided the boys into wrestling teams, setting an older pupil to instruct the younger ones.
“Do you remember our days here, Anakreon?” Xenophanes asked, glancing at his friend, who still watched the courtyard and his young eromenos. When Anakreon did not respond, Xenophanes asked, “Have you coupled with the boy?”
Anakreon shook his head and sighed. “I have showered him with gifts, told him of my love. His family knows, of course.” He redraped his blue cloak and glanced at Xenophanes, adding, “Life was simpler, my friend, when we were the loved objects, not the lovers. The boy drives me mad with his cleverness.”
“His coyness, you mean,” Xenophanes answered, laughing.
“True. True. I would not have him be a prostitute, but by Zeus, his passivity drives me mad. He’d rather be with his friends, at his games, instead of walking about the city with me. There is much I could teach the boy.”
“I’m sure there is, Anakreon,” Xenophanes commented, glancing at his friend, “but your time will come, it always does, doesn’t it?” Xenophanes whispered, leaning closer. “You have had your way with many of these palestra boys.”
“It is my poetry, I confess, Xenophanes, and not my gross flesh that keeps their interest. And yes, I have had my way with some. I know. Yet the wait is always maddening.” Anakreon sighed. “And my loins ache.”
“So meanwhile, you have your poems to keep you company, to sing your song: ‘For my words the boys will all love me: I sing of grace, I know how to talk with grace.’”
Anakreon smiled, pleased by his friend’s acclaim, then said in verse,” ‘Again I am in love and not in love, I am mad and not mad.’ ” He nodded toward the boys. “So goes my life. I’d rather have one moment with his flesh than a room full of papyrus poems or an olive wreath at the Olympic games.”
“The games! Come, come, your days of sports are over.”
“I am not yet thirty, my dear Xenophanes.”
“And they are not yet fifteen,” Xenophanes commented, with a gesture toward the young sportsmen.
Flute music began and at once the athletes threw themselves into their wrestling matches. A chorus of shouts came from the courtyard, and the dust from their trampling feet rose in clouds, obscuring the men’s view.
“We’d do better in the Agora, buying hares from Boeotia, than standing in this dust storm. Let us go to the baths. My skin is filthy. I spent the morning with a Sophist at the foot of the Acropolis, and even there, the dirt and dust from the Agora were awful.”
“My loins sing for the boy,” Anakreon answered, “that boy is my muse.”
He glanced back at the courtyard. The instructor had called a halt to the wrestling matches and the dust had settled. Anakreon could see his young eromenos, wet with sweat and oil. He stood with his hands on his bare hips, panting in the bright sun. The fine gray dust of the courtyard clung to his lean frame, glistened in the daylight. Then the boy looked up, saw Anakreon standing there beyond the colonnade, and smiled. His white teeth flashed in his face, his bright blue eyes gleamed.
Anakreon’s heart soared. Tentatively he waved back and then went gladly with Xenophanes, swelling now with joy, for he had been noticed. In time he would plan to visit the family again, shower the lad with gifts, and someday soon, soon
His heart ached with anticipation and he said to Xenophanes, buoyant with his good fortune, “Come, my friend, let us go drink some wine at the baths, and I’ll write a poem about you, sing of your long-gone days of glory at the games.”
“It was only for you, Anakreon, that I wanted to win,” Xenophanes said, pausing to look at the poet.
Anakreon stopped walking. The two men were in the narrow street outside of the gymnasium. Below them lay the wide expanse of the Agora, the Athenian market square, above them was the Scambonidai, where all the wealthy of Athens lived in two-story stone houses with wide porticos and courtyards, and gynaecea, rooms for the women.
“I never knew,” he said seriously.
Xenophanes nodded. “Ah, my dear friend, we, too, suffer who do not have Apollo’s gift for poetry.” He tightened his cloak on his shoulder, smiling sadly at Anakreon. His round, fat face was losing its shiny glow. He seemed suddenly older in the fierce Aegean sun.
His abrupt confession had stunned and silenced Anakreon, and the poet reached out and touched Xenophane’s arm, whispering, “I will go to Delphi and sacrifice a goat to Apollo, so that he will send me the muse to write a poem in your honor, Xenophanes. Soon, you will be known throughout the world, the great Xenophanes. Schoolboys and students at the academy will recite my poem of your heroic deeds.”
“I have no heroic deeds, Anakreon, except for the number of kraters I can consume at a banquet.” He was smiling, trying to shake the moment of melancholy, and the two men turned again to walk to the baths.
Together on the narrow street, jockeyed as they were by the press of people and animals going also toward the center of the city, Anakreon reached over and gently touched his old friend, saying, “We have had more than one moment of bliss, my dear Xenophanes. We have had a lifetime of shared brotherly pleasures. We heard Aeschylus together at the theater and saw Alkaios win the stadion at the Olympics.”
“I’d give it all up to have had you once look at me the way you gazed on young Phidias.”
“I didn’t know, Xenophanes. I did not know.”
“Ah, the pity of it, as you poets would say.” Anakreon looked up, and in the distance he could see the sea, blue and calm to the edge of the horizon. He thought of his current quest, the young Phidias, and recalled the look of his lean limbs, his bright eyes, that wonderful innocent smile, and Anakreon’s heart tugged in his chest. Then the lumbering Xenophanes brushed against him on the rocky street, and Anakreon felt the weight of the big man, felt his sweat and gross flesh, and he, too, whispered, “Ah, the pity of it.” Then he fell silent and the two aristocrats walked in silence down the steep Athens hill to their drinking club.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“I THINK IT’S TIME for us to try to discover who you really are,” Phoebe Fisher said, after she had listened to Jennifer’s account of her recent behavior. It was the first time that Jennifer had seen the channeler since she killed her attackers. It was early in the afternoon and the midwinter sun filled the rooms and reflected off the waxed hardwood floor. Again Jennifer thought how lovely and charming the apartment looked. She wished that she could bring this kind of warmth to her own Brooklyn Heights place. It was all the wall hangings, the fabrics and the exotic plants, she decided, that gave the living room its special quality.
Jennifer had not told Phoebe about the killings but did allude to the change in her behavior with Tom, how she was becoming increasingly more aggressive in her lovemaking.
“And was he upset?”
“No, I guess not,” Jennifer answered, laughing. “But I was! I mean, it makes me nervous to be that
way.”
“There’s no need not to enjoy your new intenseness. You are just experiencing what is truly you. Your essence.”