“Don’t let this man knock you about,” he said. “If he ill-treats you, come home. It will be one bad day with the father, and after that I’ll take care of you.” He was always a peacemaker, and not only when it saved him trouble. Even war, which he excelled at later, he never went into lightly. There are men whom Ares would have reaped on a bloody field, if my brother had not been.
At Hagias’ farm, my coming was hardly noticed, the doctor being there to physic the sick boy. When he had gone, Kleobis, who was in need of sleep, left me to tend the sickroom. Endios had been bled, and was looking white; I had heard him cry as the knife went in. When I gave him milk, he gazed for a moment at this new ill-favored face, but was too weak to be curious. He lay with closed eyes; I sat wondering how we would get on when he was better. Soon he began to vomit and purge; he said, as I sponged him, that it was from the physic. I told him, to cheer him up, that it would drive out the evil humors; I had heard the physician say so. But I could not see, myself, that he had got much good from it.
After supper, Kleobis sent me to my bed on the far side of the room, while he kept watch. At first the boy’s moaning disturbed me, but it quietened, and I slept with the soundness of my youth, till I felt myself shaken. I thought I was at home, with my father rousing me. But no one rebuked my laziness. Kleobis said, “Go out for a while, Sim. You can come back later.” There was a blanket drawn right over the other bed, and no movement in it.
I had never been near a corpse except at funerals. It seemed only a moment since he’d talked to me. Two slave-women came in to wash and anoint his body, since he had no kin there. I went out over the dry summer grass, tasting its freshness after the close air inside. Light slanted over the hill, touching the topmost olive-sprays. I said to his shade—it could not have gone far yet—“I did wish it; but only for a while, and I never prayed for it. Do not be angry.”
Later on, when I came back to Keos, I bought a carved stone for his stranger’s grave, knowing I owed it him.
Kleobis came out to me, by the flat rock where he had stood to sing. His face was yellow and drawn with watching; the boy had not died till almost dawn. He said, “I ought to have let him go.”
I remembered his good clothes, better than my brother’s. “But, sir, he wanted to learn from you, he wasn’t poor?”
“Only in talent. He should have gone home, to strum a lyre at the drinking, and give his mother grandsons. But he was strong, and useful, and willing. And his father ransomed me once from pirates. I could not turn him off too soon.”
“How old was he?”
“Fifteen, I think. He had a beautiful treble, before it broke. When the choir went to Delos, I heard him sing the solo. Everyone said he looked like the young Apollo. His parents had always heard him praised; I could not refuse to take him.”
In the house, one of the slave-women was wailing over the body, from kindness, or remembering grief of her own. Kleobis said, “When I saw in the brush your ugly face, my son, touched by the god, and beautiful, I thought, ‘Ah, now’s the time. I will buy Endios his passage home, in a good ship, and send word to his father that he has learned all I can teach him.’ But too late. The god did not require this sacrifice.”
I listened gravely, and ventured no reply. Later, I’ve asked myself if Apollo’s arrow was not shot by his son Asklepios. The doctor had been the best in Iulis; but it did seem to me that the evil humors in the boy had been expelled too forcibly, when they might have left of their own accord. Truly I owed poor Endios a tomb; he has saved my life many a time. Some of my best friends have been doctors, and excellent people they were, most knowledgeable about the minds of men, whom they see when poets do not. But doctors are taught their laws, and they keep those laws if it kills you. Some of them here in Sicily come asking how a wanderer like me has kept such good health to past fourscore. I tell them this or that. It would be uncivil to say that whenever in my travels I get a touch of fever, I go quietly to bed and send for the local wise-woman.
4
AMONG THE TROUBLES ALL men are heir to, I have had good things from the gods. I have been honored by kings and princes and cities, and by men of my own craft, and have been pleased with it, more I daresay than men with less need of esteem. I have rejoiced in what I made: in making it, in singing it, in getting paid for it, all delightful things. But brightest of all, after nearly seventy years, shines in my memory the day I sailed from Keos.
It was a clear morning, just wind enough to fill the sail and spare the rowers. The ship was new, the eyes on the prow fresh-painted; the cargo was clean, mostly pots and figs, and smelled as delicious to me as spices. I shouldered my master’s baggage with as much pride as a knight takes in his horse. It was the first mark of my new calling.
When the sailors had told me where to put it, and shoved me out of their way, I stood at the rail and looked back at the harbor. It seemed like a foreign port already. I was amazed to see Theas appear and wave. He jumped aboard, paid his respects to my master, and looked about him with wistful eyes. I saw, hardly believing it, that he envied me.
Getting me in a corner where they had finished lading, he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve never talked, not as men. I’m telling you now, never think you can’t come back here, and be somebody at home. When you’ve seen other cities, and how men live there, you’ll think we must be poor folk. Well, we’re not poor, Sim, and we never have been. Sometime I mean to see the world myself, and I’ll not need to work my passage. Nor you. You’ve chosen a calling with plenty of ups and downs, not that I blame you. But one day there’ll be enough for both of us, I promise you that.”
He had had thoughts like mine. Like me, he would not own to them.
“I must go,” he said. “I’ve the thralls to mind in the tenacre. If the father sees them idling, he’ll be asking them where I am. Here.” He undid a buckle at his belt. “This is for you. You’ll likely need it sooner than I would. Don’t you be the one to start, that’s all.”
He held out his dearest treasure, a good knife with silver studs on its horn handle. It had been a prize at the games, for throwing the disk and javelin; I had never seen him without it, except when without his clothes. He strapped it on my belt, and embraced me. Next moment we were both in tears. We had not much thought till now that we would miss each other: I a protector, a hero in whom to trust, and he a worshipper—what man is displeased with that? But we were young, we would not die of it. We wiped our eyes and parted; and Kleobis gave us the long look of a poet getting a phrase for a song.
SAMOS
1
YES, I OWED ENDIOS a tomb. In death he was my benefactor.
By Keos reckoning, Kleobis must always have been an easy master. But no one can travel without some hardship; being used to it himself, he had naturally supposed that what he could bear at sixty could not hurt a strong lad of fifteen. He took the death hard, the son of a friend and benefactor. On our voyage out, he kept going over the boy’s last days; his getting wet on the ship coming from Ephesos; his climbing up from Koressia in maybe too hot a sun, carrying a bag which was maybe too heavy; his sitting outdoors at the wedding when the fever must have been on him. The upshot of all this was that now when he had got a Kean shepherd lad, tough as a goat, he took all the care he wished he had taken before. I never once slept in an outhouse, unless by mishap he had to shake down there himself; when offered hospitality, he had me received as a guest as well. His own son could have lived no better; and my father’s son had never lived half so well.
People think the bond between poet and pupil is forged by the holy Muse. Quite true; but nothing forges it tighter than traveling among strangers. Friends met by the way will soon pass on; on the whole, there are just the two of you. If you are out of tune, it can’t last long. But if it wears well, it will be like father and son. Closer, for me. My bloodfather saw that at the start. Well, I could not help it.