Long after this, when I had made my name, someone from Keos asked how it was I had not come to hate my brother, to whom it must have seemed the gods had given everything, leaving nothing for me. I answered that next to having the gods’ gifts ourselves, it is best to honor them. If not, one must grow to hate them; and, Zeus be my witness, I have seen what can come of that.
2
I WAS UP IN the dark next day, before even the thralls were stirring. Going to the shed, I found the best of them just awake. He’d been a smallholder on Kythnos, the next island, who had pledged himself after a bad harvest, having no surety for a loan. Next harvest had been worse; the landlord had foreclosed on him, and, having all the hands he needed, sold him away. Even though he was getting a fuller belly from us than he’d had on Kythnos, I always pity a freeborn thrall. You only find them now in the backward places; in Athens, the good Solon freed them before I was born. I said, “Tell the master I shan’t be minding the sheep today.” The less he knew, the better for us both. I saw him eye my best tunic; he liked but rather despised me, thinking me poor stuff for a husbandman, and thankful no doubt that I was not the heir. He thought the world of Theas; whom I’d left sleeping, innocent of my truancy. It was only fair; even he was not immune from our father’s anger.
At sunup I reached the house of Hagias. He was up and about, and greeted me civilly with a cup of watered wine, boy-strength; though, knowing my father, he was clearly amazed to see me not at work. I had mother wit enough to thank him for the pleasure of his feast, as if sent with this message, before asking to speak with Kleobis the bard.
In this I could hardly claim to be my father’s envoy; and Hagias, of course, asked me what I wanted: adding that their guest was sleeping still, having sat up late with his boy, who was sick with fever.
“I know, sir,” I said. “So he’ll be needing a boy who’s well. I want to ask him to hire me.”
By now Hagias’ wife had come up; she had been bustling about with the women slaves, clearing up after the feast. They both stared at me as if I were off my head. Presently Hagias smiled and stroked his beard; he was a stout good-natured fellow, though rather pompous. “My dear Sim—for so I have heard your kinfolk call you, and I speak as a family friend—boys will be boys and have their fancies, and you’ll not find me a telltale. Why, at your age my fancy was to travel south, and fight for the King of Egypt. But my old friend Leoprepes would be grieved, you know, at this prank of yours. Because he trains you on the farm, so that you’ll prosper when you come to manhood, you don’t suppose he’d let you work as servant to another man? That’s all this boy is, no more; carries luggage, hires mules, looks after the lyre and so on.” My face must have brightened, for he frowned. “Just a menial, and you are son to one of the first men in the deme. What nonsense have you taken into your head? Do you want to be a poet?” And he laughed so heartily that the slaves all turned to stare.
“Yes, sir,” I said.
Till now, he’d just thought I wanted to run away from home, which could have surprised no one who knew our family. Now I had put him at a loss for words. He was still in search of them, when from the room behind him the bard appeared, wishing him good day.
Hagias nodded to his wife to be about her business, and asked after his servant’s health. He replied that his pupil seemed a little easier. Then he looked straight at me, and smiled; a spare slight smile, like that between men who will talk about business presently.
Did this amaze me? Not so. I had had my sign on the mountain. It is only to the wise that Apollo speaks with a double tongue.
So I waited while he had a few more words with Hagias; then he said, “Was this lad here asking for me? I was expecting him.”
Hagias’ face changed in a moment. He could hardly have been more civil if I had been Theasides. It amazed me, I don’t know why. That barelegged boy in his outgrown tunic seems as strange to me now as an Ethiop to a Thracian. Yet I was once within him, and his soul has passed into mine. These are mysteries.
“Let us walk,” said Kleobis, and led me over the meadow into the olive grove. The pale green flowers were falling, the early sun shone in the leaves. Hagias watched us from the house like a true Ionian. Curiosity is our birthright. What else has made us seek out knowledge and skill?
While I was wondering if he had the gift of prophecy, Kleobis said, “I saw you in the brush, swaying to the music like Apollo’s snake. I knew you would be coming. Who is your father?”
I told him, and he said, “I have heard the name. How long have you wanted to be a poet?”
“I don’t know, sir. Before I knew what a poet was.”
He plucked a spray of olive flowers and held it up to the light. “Go on. It was the same with me.”
I spoke as best I could. Not as if to a friend; I had had no friend but my brother; but as if to a god in some small mountain shrine, who I could believe would listen. “You know, sir, how little boys sing who can just run about, and mostly it’s like the birds. But I sang in tune, all the songs the women sang at work. Then when I was older and went to the Apollo festivals, I started to make songs myself. Please, sir, hire me. I’ll work for nothing, just for my keep. If your boy gets better, I’ll do the rough work, and sleep in the shed with the thralls wherever you’re staying. I’ve a sheepskin for cold weather, I’ll only need my food. I’ll not even ask for music lessons. Just let me hear the songs.”
We were now well away from the house. He said, “Sing me one of yours.”
For this at least I had come prepared. I sang my most ambitious ode. The temple at Koressia is a healing one, dedicated to Apollo of the Mice. He has his own sacred ones, white with pink ears. After pondering for some time how to make mice sound dignified, I had addressed them as “Bold plunderers of Demeter’s hoarded store,” which I thought pretty well of. Such was the man’s magnanimity, he heard me through without so much as a smile.
“You have grasped the form very well. A good beginning. Now tell me, do you ever sing for yourself alone?”
“Well, sir,” I said after a while, “one always sings keeping sheep.”
He looked round. Not knowing Keos, he must have found this occupation surprising in my father’s son. He only said, “Yes, true. Sing me a shepherd’s song, then.”
I hesitated, now overcome with shyness. “It’s not a real poem, sir. It’s just a song.”
“Good, let me hear it. I’ve found stuff in those songs that Homer must have heard. They’re like agates on a beach; one picks them up rough, and polishes. Come, sing.”
I thought if I warned him I’d made it all up myself, he might think less of it. “It’s very long. It’s about Perseus, you see.”
“Indeed, many things befell him. Give me some part you like.”
I had been most of a year at it; if I had ever finished it, I daresay it would have outstretched the Odyssey. Shoots have been coming up from it for most of my later life. However, I remembered he had not breakfasted, and spared him the Killing of the Gorgons. “Well, sir, this is what Perseus sings to himself when he’s working at the nets on Seriphos, and the King won’t let him go away.”
The form at least was old; the kind of thing women sing as they twirl the spindle, or tread before the loom. I had lifted it as best I could, to give it a bolder feel, more by ear than by thought. Perseus is longing for wings to take him over sea, to the lands of monsters and marvels. When I sang it on the mountain, I became a fair-haired kouros six feet tall; the sheep had always accepted this transformation. Now I was Black Sim and must make the best of it. The song felt very naked sung like this. I thought I should have dressed it up more, like the mice.