At the end he waited awhile, in case I was stuck, not finished. This made me sure I had disgusted him. Then, seeing it was the end, he nodded two or three times. “Ah. There, now, is a voice.”
I felt as women must when told that the babe’s a boy. I just stood getting my breath. “Now tell me,” he went on briskly, “when is your father coming along to see me?”
I stared. I must have looked like an idiot yokel.
“Does he not think much of your singing? Never mind, he and I will talk.”
“Sir!” I cried, finding my tongue at last, “he doesn’t know that I sing at all. I could never sing before my father.”
He did not ask why; just said, “I see,” and stood in thought.
“I’ve run away, sir. I should be with the sheep; but I did leave them cared for. Please hire me. He only likes my big brother. He’ll never grieve.”
“Do you always mind sheep?” he asked after a while.
“No, I help with the vines and the olives. I have to do the work of the season. Like Works and Days.”
“Does he tell you so? He is not quite indifferent to the poets, then.”
“Indeed he won’t miss me, sir. It’s not that we’re poor. He has the hired men, and five thralls as well. And the house-slaves, of course.”
“Then, even though you Keans live plainly, you cannot have known much hardship. Do you understand the life of a minstrel’s boy?”
“It’s different, sir, if it’s what you want to do. I never heard a real poet before, I know that now. Now I have, I can’t bear it here any more.”
He smiled; I perceived that bards are human. Then he sank into thought again. Presently he said, looking up suddenly, “I can’t be sure I shall need a second boy, if Endios recovers. Perhaps you can tell me, since you know these hills; they say there is a yellow berry with leaves like spear-blades, which is a cure for this kind of fever. Is it of any use?”
“Not the one here, sir. Don’t you go picking that. One of our thralls had a child that died of eating them.”
I’d answered without a second thought; he did not own he had been testing me till five years later, when he himself had fever and I was nursing him. I remember saying then, “But what would you have done, if I’d recommended the berries? I would still have made the song.”
“I greatly doubt it,” he said with his dry smile. “The grape tastes of its vineyard. I daresay I should have advised your father to let you study somewhere; so much was due to you. But oh no, I’d have had you nowhere about me. Apollo’s serpent has a healing tongue. I am not seduced by the dance of the painted adder.”
At the time, however, he just put his hand upon my shoulder, saying, “Never mind, the doctor is coming and we will trust in him. Come in, Sim, and let us see if Hagias’ good wife will find us a few barley-cakes. What is the rest of your name, son of Leoprepes?”
He called upon my father the same day.
Seeing he had promised this, you’d have thought that, when I got home, I would have said so to escape a beating. But I was as tongue-tied as ever in my father’s presence, baring my back more readily than my soul. I had never yet defied him—that would have come with the first stirrings of manhood—but when, asked where I had been, I could only mumble, “Over to Hagias’ house,” he thought me a liar, and defiant along with that. Theas had known what would happen, and, having no help to give, had gone off so as not to witness it. Afterwards I had to carry my sore back up to the sheep-pasture, resume my duties and send back the thrall.
Thus I was ignorant that Hagias called in advance to announce the bard’s arrival. When I had folded the sheep at evening, and come back with the dogs, I was amazed to find the best cloths and covers set out as if for a guest of honor. My parents, and even Theas, were wearing their grandest clothes (grand, that is, for Keos, where more than an inch of borderwork is against the law); and my father, seated in the master’s chair, looked as aweful as a carved Zeus in a temple. When their eyes all turned to me, it was too late to run out and spend the night in the sheep-pen.
“Come here, Simonides.” Except when presenting me to someone of importance, which was not oftener than he could help, I had never known him use my full name before. I stood before him rigid with dread.
“Tell me,” he said, “have I ever behaved to you otherwise than as a father?”
Since he was my father, and had always behaved like himself, I answered, “No.”
“I have done my best to train you as a son of mine, who should improve, not waste his patrimony. It has been no pleasure to me; you have shown small diligence and less skill. Yet you have thought fit, for reasons you best know, to hide from me your aptitude for a respected calling, and confide it to a stranger whom, till yesterday, you never saw in your life. Is it too much to ask how I have deserved it?”
I was stunned; most of all by finding I had power to wound him. I was fourteen, and had lived as best I knew how. At last I said, “I thought, sir, that you wouldn’t like it.”
“Is this not Keos? Have you not been to the festivals like any other boy of decent birth? Have the Keans not their own lodge on Delos, for the singers and musicians we send to honor the god? Do you not suppose that if you had shown ability for anything at all, I would not have furthered it? Yet you have chosen to live like a sullen farm-hand, rather than my son; hiding from me all that would have encouraged my hopes of you, till you could send me news by a passing guest.”
I heard in horror. My former lot now seemed Elysium, compared with my promised future. I was to be trained under his eye for poetry, as I’d been trained for farming, works and days; I would have as much song left in me as a bird in the fowler’s net; and my muteness would be taken for defiance. I thought with longing of the lonely hills and the sheep.
“However,” my father said, “since this man is ready to undertake your schooling, and is of good repute, so be it. I hope you will do more credit to his teaching than you have done to mine.”
I had had a long full day, and a beating; my working chiton, which I’d put on to go shepherding, was stuck somewhere to my broken skin. While he was beating me I had hugged my secret and never cried. Now I’d had thrown at me, like a curse, the crown of my desires, it was too much. I cried out, “Oh, thank you, sir!” then clapped my hands to my face and wept.
I only did as I must; I had no thought to punish him. Now that I’m old, I see it would have been kinder to rail or curse him. He would have known how to deal with that. When he saw me greet with tears of joy the news of my escape from him, some truth pierced his heart. He lived long enough to see me held in honor; he accepted our friends’ felicitations when I won a prize. But I always knew that in the cup of his pride those tears still lingered, like drops of wormwood. To the day of his death, he never really forgave me.
3
NEXT DAY I WENT to my master.
My mother had brought out cloth from her chest, dipped in the famous red Kean dye, and had one of the women slaves make me a cloak. She even gave me a good copper brooch to fasten it, and two new tunics. Though she could not believe that any talent Theas lacked could be worth having, she had the family credit to think of. As I stood at the door with my bundle on my shoulder, she urged me to behave myself and obey my teacher; my father told me to work hard, and not try to do anything the easy way. To his mind, there was something wrong with any instruction a boy found pleasing. Theas ran after me, out of sight of home, and gave me a heavy silver double drachma.