My tasks were a game to me, compared with what I had done at home. Kleobis, sensible man, always traveled as light as his purse, only gathering stuff when he could afford to hire a donkey. We never went without clothing for heat or cold, and best clothes for a performance; but it did not weigh so heavy as a three-month lamb on the mountain.
Had I been serving only a craftsman or a merchant, I would have found things to enjoy: steep islands, still and dark in a laughing sea; white harbors full of strange ships; a road creeping small into dark blue mountains; a pleasant inn in a poplar grove by a river; the terrible filthy inn where they tried to rob us, and I pulled out Theas’ knife. After that, Kleobis treated me like a man.
I only missed one thing from my former life: for a long time I hated to sleep alone. My mother took against me from the moment the midwife held me up to her; once I was weaned, if I cried in the night her remedy was a slap. But Theas, who was no more than six or seven, would creep up softly and take me into bed, as he might have done a squeaking pup. Soon I would climb in of my own accord, and like a soft-hearted child with a growing pup, he let me be. So there I stayed, feeling safe with him like a dog. For months I felt restless and strange without him, and would wake in the darkness wondering where he was.
All this was the daily bread of my life. The meat and wine were the songs.
Excellent men, concerned with the training of youth to virtue, have begged me to declare that art is the child of labor. Well, labor must bring it forth, like everything else that lives. As I tell these people, there are women one can’t get without taking pains, or boys if you prefer them; but first you must fall in love. After that, the pains take care of themselves. So don’t bring me, I say to these worthy men, some youth who wants to know what kind of song is likely to win the crown this year; or what everyone else is singing, lest he should feel lonely. If that is all he wants, I’ve no time left to waste on him. Take him away, and apprentice him to a lyre-maker, where he may even be of use. But if you come upon someone who grabs at song like a child at a bright stone on the shore, who shapes and reshapes like a child building a sand-castle, deep in his act and lost to all around—then, never mind if his sand-castle leans sideways, just give him time. Don’t tell him that this year people are doing, or not doing, or no longer doing, this or that. Send him to me, who will protect him from fools like you, will show him the great shell-beaches and watch him at his play.
Oh yes, I worked. Yes indeed. Looking back on my father’s last instruction, not to do things the easy way, I used to laugh aloud. In our calling, once you know where you’re going, there is no easy way; you get there, or not. Even if you aim to go no further than four lines on a dog’s tomb. Well, for that matter, I have gone a good way in four lines, and further still in two.
However, at that age it still took me ten lines at least to say “Good dog.” All I was fit for was to learn, but at least I knew it. I gorged like a calf in a spring meadow; not only Kleobis’ lessons, but anything I could browse on along the way. Like every bard who will not let his repertoire go rusty, he would go over it quietly as we walked; and by the time he was ready to give me line by line, I had much of it in my head. I did not know, till he told me, that I had a better memory than other people; I thought one would naturally remember what one had liked to hear. To this day, there are pieces of Homer, or Sappho, or Stesichoros, which I can’t recall without some bit of road, or courtyard, or stone fountain-rim coming to mind along with them.
This cornel-wood staff of mine—the old man’s third leg, as the Sphinx said in her riddle—when Kleobis owned it, I felt it many a time. If I spoke to him when he was composing, he didn’t interrupt himself, just gave me a rap. If I was fool enough to start begging his pardon, he hit me again, to teach me the virtue of silence. I would then mind my own business, of which I had quite enough. You don’t master the Iliad in a month, or in a year; but every day I added my few lines, like a bee bringing wax to the hive.
I soon learned I have a certain gift of nature: that what I have learned by heart, I can call back all at once, just as one does a prospect seen with one’s eyes, not one stone or tree after another. Some philosopher, it must have been Herakleitos, once tried to explain to me the nature of this whole, which my memory hears in a moment though it would take an hour to speak it aloud. But Herakleitos would make a mystery of anything.
Of course, a man like Kleobis did not live like some wandering minstrel, singing in markets for a supper. We never even slept at inns, unless benighted between towns. In any city, some house was always open to us, often two or three in rivalry; he had guest-friends everywhere. If he sang at a sacred festival, we might be lodged in the temple precinct. Besides all this, Kleobis had a home.
His patrimony was at Ephesos; a farm let to a tenant, and a city house kept ready for his return by an old Karian slave-woman. She doted on him, but scolded him so freely that it was clear they’d been bedmates once. She was not yet past jealousy, though not of me; me she favored, because I was too ugly to be a rival. Getting me in a corner she would give me a fig or apricot, and try to make me tell tales. I thanked her prettily, and kept my tales to myself.
Kleobis had a moving little song, about an old man bidding farewell to Aphrodite. I have known it make wrestlers cry. But if they thought he spoke for himself they were much mistaken. From time to time he would tell me that this evening, to reward my progress, I could play upon the kithara instead of my practice lyre; he was going to visit friends and I need not wait up for him. It did not take me long to observe that this happened in cities polite enough to have some clean amusing hetairas. He was a fastidious man. I can’t recall his ever visiting a common stews. Happy to get my hands upon the kithara and sing to its seven-stringed voice, I wished him a pleasant evening, with no thought that such things would ever be my concern.
In those years, I hardly knew that I was made like other men. I had married my art, and kept all my love for my master. I daresay I had Bouselos’ little daughter to thank, for keeping me out of the street of the women. As I grew from boy to youth, of course I was importuned as all travelers are. But each of them in turn I thought would endure me for the pay, mocking me after with some fellow whore; she must indeed be the lowest of her calling, to seek my custom at all. I had no need to master desire, while I had such thoughts to quench it, and felt only shame at these solicitations. Returning to my lyre, I would sing of royal maidens, chosen by gods to bring forth heroes. One of my lays pleased Kleobis so well that he let me sing it at an Ephesian supper-party. I got a ring of worked bronze from the host. My first fee. I have it still.
Nowadays, friends and fellow poets will talk of my ugliness as easily as of my clothes. Mostly it is done as a kind of courtesy, meaning that I can afford it; and I take it so. Sometimes malice creeps in, but envy does not hurt a man like scorn.
When I had been about two years with Kleobis, he urged me to visit Keos, compete at the Apollo festival, and show them what I could do. By this time I had sung several times in public, and even my own songs had been well received. My voice was well over breaking, settled into a middle tone with a good range; I performed with a growing courage. But still, at the very thought of singing before my father, the soul of a ragged shepherd boy possessed me. I said I was sure to lose, and be shamed before my kindred; and besides, if I went back too soon I might find myself betrothed again. He did not press me. The world was wider in those days. We scarcely knew how fast it was closing in.