The door stood open; but when I tapped with my stick, nobody came. He must have fled already, I thought; I should find the place forsaken; so, without ceremony, I walked in.
The room was in confusion; stuffs thrown about, vases and scrolls tumbled upon the table; an open chest with a blanket half out of it, and the wall-hanging inside. Had he been murdered, then? But the place would have been looted. The street was noisy outside; and it was only now that I heard a moan, or a whimper, from the room beyond. I ran in. It was a dog that had been crying, a little white one, the kind they breed in Melita. It was standing on tiptoe to paw the knees of Anakreon, who sat on the bed with his head clasped in his hands, his fingers buried in his uncombed hair. As I looked, he picked the dog up blindly into his arms, like a distraught mother with a wailing baby. He was weeping himself.
“Anakreon!” I cried. He sat up looking desperate, as if the entrance of any stranger must portend something dreadful; yet not as if frightened for himself. When he saw who it was, he cried out my name, even then remembering to put the dog down gently, and came running to me. While I tried to soothe him, the first words I could hear from him were, “So horrible! Oh, horrible, horrible! Is he dead, Simonides? Tell me he is dead!”
I guided him to a chair in the outer room, found wine—it was plain the disorder had been no one’s work but his own—and gave him some. He threw it down like water, and, starting to command himself, begged me to drink too. The little dog, beseeching with its dark child’s eyes, jumped into his lap and licked his tear-stained face.
“Poor Blossom,” he said, and looked about him as if seeing the place for the first time. “Simonides, what are you doing here?” Without giving me time to answer, he ran on like a man in fever, “I am ashamed of the house. I am packing, you see, Simonides, that’s what it is. I would put you up, my dear, but it’s better not to stop here, if I were you I should go away at once. We might find a ship together. Let me get you something to eat; I know where everything is, it won’t take a moment. The cakes were here …” He went scurrying about, picking things up and putting them down, rather like some flustered dame whose daughter is giving birth before the time. Blossom ran busily to and fro behind him. “I don’t even know where I shall be going. Ah, here they are.” He brought the crock, and started looking for a place on the littered table.
I took it from him and put it down, and laid my hands on his shoulders. “I can tell you, my dear friend, where you are going. You’re coming with me to Athens, where the Archons will beg you to he their guest for life. Our ship is in harbor, waiting just for you. It’s true, Anakreon. I’m telling you, you are the first poet for whom a king ever sent a warship. I don’t think even for Orpheus anyone did that.”
He quietened and looked at me. There crossed his face, drawn though it was with sleeplessness, the shadow of his charming smile. The life he knew had come in sight on the skyline, and he began to be Anakreon once again. He even said something pretty about my coming to fetch him, and the pleasure he would have in being my neighbor.
“But,” I said, “didn’t you know all along you could come to Athens? We tried hard enough to get you there.”
“I know. I know. It has been like the whole world ending … horrible! I can’t tell you now. You don’t know yet, do you? I’ll tell you, but not now. I must put a few things together.”
I began to help him wrap his precious vases, and asked where his servant was. “I let him go. He came to me scared to death, saying the Samians would tear any Persian they saw to pieces. Poor boy. I daresay some would. I gave him some journey money; I suppose he has found a ship. Oh, don’t trouble with all that, this is all I need, and a change of clothes, that’s all. Then we can be going. Blossom, be quiet.”
“No, take your time. You can’t throw such good things away. The streets are quiet, so far as I could see. Presently I’ll find some porters.”
“I only want to be gone from here. When you come back I’ll be ready.”
I did not protest; the bitch’s shrill yelping hurt my ears, as she jumped from one to the other; she had the nose of her kind for catastrophe and change. I left them together, and found porters without trouble at the harbor; already ships were avoiding it. When I came with them, Anakreon had strapped up his baggage. He put Blossom under his arm, and we went down to the ship.
Meantime, some of the soldiers had been let ashore to the taverns and came back with the latest news; by the time we cast off, I knew what had been done to Polykrates. They would have liked Anakreon to fill out the tale for them, and were disappointed that he sat silent, muffled in his cloak, in the darkest part of the deckhouse.
As it happened, the wind turned contrary, and the nearest harbor was Koressia. So I brought him up, the two of us soaked with spray, to Theas’ house. It was plain, before we reached the door, that he’d asked in some friends to celebrate his good fortune. I saw Anakreon wince when he heard the singing. It could not be helped that Theas greeted us with a shout of pleasure, and bade us change our wet clothes quickly, and drink level with the rest. However, he had never been thick-headed. When he’d heard Anakreon’s name, and taken a second look at him, he said he must be tired out with the journey and the gale, and would want to eat supper in quiet.
It was a big house now, our father’s old place run together with Theas’ new one; Anakreon’s room had the women’s quarters between it and the feast. I left him awhile to meet my brother’s friends, all eager to hear the news. Few were much moved at Polykrates’ fate; such things happened in Persia. As soon as I could, I went back to Anakreon. He had fed Blossom, but scarcely touched food himself. I’d brought him a warm posset with a little poppy, which one of the women had brewed for him, and begged him to eat something with it, to help him sleep. He picked up a morsel, but put it back on the plate. “Did they know down there, did anyone tell you, whether he is dead?”
“No. Nobody here knew that.”
The little dog crept into his lap, and nestled there softly, gazing up with its liquid eyes. I remembered hearing somewhere that these lamblike dogs of Melita have the power to take away pain.
He said, “Did you ever see it, Simonides?”
“No. My old master saw it once. I think it was in Karia.” I put the lid on the posset-bowl. It was time he talked, if he was to get any sleep that night. “Have you seen it, then?”
“In Phrygia. Fifteen, twenty years back. One could travel about in those days. The man had offended the Satrap, I don’t know how. I didn’t see it being done. We came by two days after. Two days he had been sitting there, on that iron ring, at the top of the mast. The vultures were coming; one lighted on his head, you know they go first for the eyes; then it squarked and flapped off again, and I saw that his hand had moved. And the bird came back …” He was shaking all over; the dog in his lap gave a little whine, and patted him with one paw. I too put a hand on his shoulder; he seemed glad of a living touch. Presently he said, “They used to set them up beside the road. There would be one every stade or so, the old skeleton sitting on the iron wheel, up in the air. And when the birds had picked them clean, you could see the spike up the middle. It’s the spike, you see, that holds them there so long.”
I could hear his teeth chattering, and pulled up the blanket round his shoulders. “You can be sure,” I said, “that by this time he is dead.”