I thought it was just the play for him, all hate and vengeance. Then I was approached by a group of young actors, all eager to get out of Syracuse, and was busy till it was time to find an inn. My former one was still standing. They gave me the room that had been Axiothea’s.
I had refused evening invitations, meaning to be up early, and was going to bed when my host announced a visitor. It was Kallippos.
He was now a man of importance here; it would have been natural, if he wanted to see me, to invite me to wait on him at his house. With some men, I should have thought this unassuming; with him I thought that he would take more care, if it were not near the time.
He was just as I had remembered him at home, when he came sniffing about backstage, except for a certain tautness which he was trying to hide. He asked after my career, and I thought as usual that he was waiting for me to relate some harm that had been done me, so that he could be angry, and that for having no grievance he liked me less. However, this time he did not much care; he was hurrying through the civilities. To help him on, I told him how sorry I was for the artists of Syracuse in their hard times. It was sad, I said, to think they had done better under a tyranny than now with enlightened rule.
At once he began to feel his way with me. It was the only time I have been approached with such a purpose, and I hope the last. It was like some suitor who disgusts one, starting to stroke one on the supper couch, beginning as if by chance. There however one can move aside, whereas I had to pretend to like it. He began with faint praise of Dion, going on to disappointment and faint excuses. I replied that all this confirmed what I’d heard; I did not say of whom. Then, casting off all disguise, he said it was certain Dion had brought war to the city only to take the tyranny for himself. “We of the Academy”—I could picture Speusippos white with anger—“have been most bitterly deceived.”
I said this was terrible news; that if he wished, I could see Speusippos in Athens and tell him; or would he like me to carry a letter? I was anxious to see if this frightened him; if it did, his plans might not be too far advanced.
“I should welcome it,” he said. “You, with your knowledge of Syracuse, would be believed. You have watched this man’s career; you have seen the tyrant within the egg tap on the shell and crack it, and start to look about for food. You have seen the beginning … are you staying with us long?”
He did not ask idly. I felt my hands grow cold and damp, for he had meant me to understand. His pale eyes waited. I knew, as if I saw through his clothes, that he had a knife on him, in case I showed he had said too much. Why did he think he could kill in the city and not answer for it? That told more than all.
I now had to act for my life; to seem well disposed without seeing his purpose. He wanted me to justify him to the Academy. If I seemed to consent, he would be encouraged. I could think of nothing a man like me could say to him which might persuade him to delay.
So I became full of my own affairs, which surprises no one in an actor. I told him about a play I had just read, how I would direct it unless I changed my mind, what Syracusan actors I might take on, consulting him about each. I told him I had meant to call on Dion on behalf of us artists, asking him for his patronage, but now could not make up my mind to it after what I’d heard; I must sleep on it and think again. He soon had enough of this, and got ready to go. To see him off smoothly, I commended his reviving that fine old play, The Offering Bearers. He paused at the door with a meaning smile. “It was a comfort, I think, to those who mourned for Herakleides. And it reminded them that the mourners for Agamemnon did more than weep.”
I scarcely closed my eyes all night. Knowing Dion always rose at dawn, I got up in the dark so as to lose no time. He had gone back, as I knew already, to his old house in Ortygia.
The gatehouses were still manned. The guards were civil, though, and only asked my business; one did not need a pass. No one had followed me there. I must have persuaded Kallippos he need not trouble.
Dion’s house looked the same as ever, well kept, simple and clean. This time no lively boy came peeping. I looked at the roof; on the side where the slope fell away, it was a long way down.
At the door the porter told me I had just missed the master. He had gone up to the palace, to start the business of the day.
In the porch, between the red lions of Samian marble, a sturdy Argive with polished armor saluted and took my name. He led me in, though I had no need of it. I knew the way so well my feet could have taken me by themselves.
The clothes racks were gone from the searching room. It was just an antechamber, with a few people waiting already, early though it was. I remembered the faces one had seen hereabouts in the old days: frightened, or insolent, or cunning; faces that watched each other, eager faces of flatterers. They were gone; but the new ones were not those of happy men. Worry, resentment, impatience, long-suffering duty, all these I saw. I did not see hope or dedication. I did not see a smile, or love.
However, I had not long to look; almost at once a clerk came out to say the Commander would see me. I went in, hearing angry mutters from those who had come first. The gilt bronze grille stood open. I entered the room I had not seen for a dozen years.
All the gaudy trimmings had gone. It was almost bare; there was only one bit of furniture that I remembered. Dionysios couldn’t take that off to Lokri; it would have sunk the ship. It stood in its place, on its bronze winged sphinxes, solid as a tomb, just where it had been when its first owner sat at it to write Hectors Ransom. Behind it, in a good plain chair of polished wood, was the master of Ortygia.
I would hardly have known him. His hair was almost white. He had never carried spare flesh, but his body had had the athlete’s hard smoothness. He was lean now; the loose skin on his arms dragged about his battle-scars. He might have been sixty; but he had shaved his beard, perhaps to try and look younger, as aging leaders must if they can. Between his strong cheekbones and the fine arched brow above, the skin of the eyelids looked brown and creased, with blue shadows under; the inner ends of his eyebrows were drawn together in a fixed frown he no longer seemed to feel. His dark eyes looked at me with a kind of hunger—for what? For old years, for some simple comfort of man to man, for a message of good tidings? I don’t know; he put the need aside, whatever it was, with an air of habit. He had been weak in sending for me first, and was angry with himself, but too just to turn it on me.
He stood up. I was from Athens, where citizens are not kept standing before seated men. It was the courtesy of a king to one who had been his host in exile. We were going, I suppose, through the formalities of greeting. I remember only his face. A king, I had said; he will be king at last; the gods ordained it. Well, now I looked on it; the name was nothing, here was the thing. Always, when I had pictured it, I had seen him as on that day in Delphi long ago, when he came into the skeneroom like the statue of a victor. I had seen his face like the antique masks of Apollo, which stamp on youth the wisdom and strength of manhood. Now I stood before a king—an old king weary of the burden, stained by the sins that power forces men’s hands to when they dare not lay it down, bearing their shame with his other cares in a stubborn fortitude, the familiar of loneliness, forgotten by hope.
The godlike mask was off; as with the lover of my boyhood, it was I who had put it on him for my own need. Who does not dream of clear water when the springs are brack? But I had only dreamed; he had tried to bring the dream to pass. Now he had all which if he had sunk his soul to evil could have made him glad. Old Dionysios had had it and died content. He suffered because he had loved the good, and still longed after it. And I thought, I too am marked with my trade. Next time I play Theseus in the Underworld, I shall remember him.