By now it seemed I had been up there by myself for days. It was quite strange to have everyone grabbing me backstage and asking me how I felt. “Later,” I said. “Just let me change.”
Anaxis rushed up to me, his boyish Patroklos mask shoved back, his beard and eyebrows staring; he had gone quite pale. He pushed a wine cup at me, but after one swallow I put it by; I was afraid of throwing up. “Can you go on?” he asked. “Would you like Anthemion to stand in for you?” I pulled my face straight just in time. “No, thank you. In the name of the gods, get out on stage; nobody’s there.”
My dresser unharnessed me, and strapped on my panoply for Achilles, clucking and chattering. Mikon came running, the frayed rope in his hands, waving it about. “Later,” I said.
Achilles has a good while to sit sulking before he consents to speak, which would give me a rest; but when he does break silence, he has to be worth hearing. My blood was still stirred up, I felt ready for anything; I remember thinking, “This is just how one feels when acting badly.” However, when I got to the lines where he chooses glory before length of days, suddenly a burst of applause broke out and stopped the play. I had never thought of that; I think it was the nearest I got to losing my lines.
At last it was over. The noise seemed to last forever. Even after I went to change, I could have taken another call; but of a sudden I felt hollow as an emptied wineskin, sick, and deathly tired. Even the applause seemed empty; it would have been the same for some juggler who had jumped through a ring of knives. I thought with loathing of my performance, which I was sure had been ham all through. Stupidly I stood while my dresser stripped me, trying to be civil to the people who had come behind. Presently Mikon brought his rope again, and showed it round.
“I checked it overnight, every foot.” He pushed it under the noses of two sponsors, who had come behind to complain. “Look here, at the cunning of it. The strands were opened, and a hot iron laid inside. With filing it would have frayed, and I’d have seen it as I ran it out. This was done in the night. That drunken loafer, the painter’s man—I’m told that he was seen here.”
Hagnon said, “I saw him, round about midnight. I thought nothing but that he’d picked up some odd job. Well, I hope they find him. The young men were off on the mountain trails; they reckoned he might have gone up there, to watch it work.”
“Maybe.” I could not feel concerned. Nearby was the bier of the dead Patroklos; I pushed off the dummy corpse, glad of something to sit on.
Krantor said, “Where’s that wine jar?” He poured, and held out a cup to me. I would have swallowed anything; but the rich Samian fragrance told me this must be the best in Delphi. It ran through me like new warm blood.
Anthemion tittered. “It’s a gift from some admirer in the audience. It came round before the end of the last chorus; the message just said, ‘To honor the protagonist.’ But you’ll be hearing his name, I’m sure.”
I put it down. “You fool! Someone’s just tried to break my neck; and now you give me wine from you don’t know who.” I wondered if I ought to take an emetic. It seemed less trouble to die.
“No, no, Niko.” Old Krantor patted my shoulder. “Drink it up, my boy, I saw the slave who brought it. Groomed like a blood-horse; born and bred in good service, that one. It must come from a sponsor.” He looked at the two who had come behind; but they coughed and looked elsewhere.
He filled my cup again. The wine, though neat, was so smooth it went down like milk. On an empty stomach—I can never eat before I play—I pretty soon felt the difference. I started floating on air, needing no crane. Everything was golden, everyone kind and good and beautiful. I turned, the cup in my hand, and saw on my table the mask of Apollo, propped in its box. My dresser had plaited the hair and bound it, as I had shown him, in the style of Perikles’ day. As the wine lighted me up, it seemed about to utter prophecies. I swayed to my feet before it. It was never I who had made that speech; the mask had spoken, I thought, while I hung like a doll in Apollo’s hand. I tilted the cup, and poured him a libation.
“You do well,” said a new voice. “Truly, the god must love you.”
I turned. The skeneroom crowd had parted, just like extras for a big upstage entrance.
A man stood there who might have stepped straight off a statue plinth in the Street of Victors. Six feet and a hand-breadth tall; dark curly hair, the temples graying, but the face still young; a face of the gravest beauty, austere even to melancholy, yet keen with life. Surely a face of those days Hagnon had talked about, when men deserved their gods. His eyes were dark, and fixed on me.
I don’t know, with so much having come between, what I felt then. Only that he had come, as if sent, when I poured the offering.
All this, and the wine, had slowed me down. My answer halted; and Anaxis rushed in, all talk and civilities. The sponsors had come back and were edging up. I saw this was someone to everyone, not just to me.
While Anaxis talked, I had time to look. He was dressed very quietly for a feast day, with the severity almost of a philosopher: a long robe, no tunic under it, the left shoulder bare. There was a great battle scar running half the length of his upper arm. His robe was simple, barely an inch of border. But the wool was fine-combed Milesian; his sandals, stamped Carthage work with gold clasps. This was the plainness of a man who only knows one shop, the best in town.
He spoke upper-class Attic, yet with a touch of Doric somewhere, and some other accent mixed with that, which I had no chance to define; for his answer to Anaxis was so short and formal that the compliments all dried up. Then, with his face still set in this sternness, he looked back at me, and swallowed. I don’t know what cleared my eyes; I expect it was the truth of the grape; but I thought at once, “Why, he is shy. But too proud to own it.”
I had gazed on him with awe; he seemed from another world. Now, discerning an infirmity which proved him mortal, I began to love him.
I got up from the bier, keeping one hand on it to steady me. I was not much put-out at being drunk; after all, he had sent the wine. He was here in friendship, never, as any fool could see, having set foot backstage before. He must feel all at sea; and I was his host.
“Thank you,” I said. “The best drink I ever had, just when I most wanted it. You saved my life, next after Apollo, who stood by me like the gentleman he is. I’ll give him a goat tomorrow. And I owe a grave-offering to my father, Artemidoros. Did you ever see him as Cassandra?”
He half-smiled, looking easier, and saying, “Yes, let me think.” He put his word to nothing lightly, that was clear. “Yes! It was in The Troiades, was it not—not the Agamemnon? I was a very young man then, visiting friends at the Academy; but I have never seen it rendered so movingly. If I remember, Hecuba was done by Kroisos.”
“Kroisos!” I said. “Then you saw me too. I was the child Astyanax.”
He gazed at me intently, and said after a pause, “Then you have always been an actor? All your life?” He seemed surprised; yet it was clear he meant no discourtesy. I told him yes. “Why then,” he said, “there are some true words in Euripides, about the many faces of the gods. How does it go?”
I said:
The gods wear many faces,
And many fates fulfill
To work their will…
“Was it that you meant?”
He smiled, without stiffness this time, but like a serious boy. “Yes, and now I can complete it: