The doctors looked worse than the dying. My wife would feed these scarecrows, growing more gaunt each day herself. Soon the search for remedials became supplanted by the quest for drugs to blunt the pain, then, whispered, merciful means of dispatch.
People drank bull's blood or swallowed stones. I myself became recruited to this dolorous trade. I scoured the sailors' markets for morphia and dogbane, hemlock and belladonna. My sister instructed me in the concoction of potions to carry off the dying.
Soon these became too costly to secure.
My infant son took ill. His cries, heart-scoring, ceased not night or day. My wife rocked the babe, crooning, as she, too, weakened.
When their pain became unbearable, Meri dosed them with nightshade, the last she had, to bear them away.
My cousin Simon, now a captain in the cavalry, had come to stay with us, bringing his wife Clymene and infant twins. Then his brow, too, began to burn. He fled one night, taking only his horse.
Within days Clymene began to fail, crying for him; I scoured all his haunts, even those we shared in childhood. One midnight, despairing, I determined to seek out Alcibiades, at his town estate on the Hill of the Knights.
The streets then, even those of the wealthy, had become corridors of horror. Neighbors had perished, abandoning their pets; others who could not feed their animals or grew too sick to care had let them loose. Now packs of dogs ranged wild. These would not go after corpses, their beasts' wisdom enjoining, but hunted the living, even indoors, clawing at shutters and pouring in over thresholds while their howls and snarls, ungodly, echoed down the vacant lanes. I ran this gauntlet for what seemed hours, at last drawing up before Alcibiades' gate.
Lanterns blazed; no watchman attended. Gay music sounded from within. Crossing the courtyard, I saw a man of my age, unknown to me, cavorting in a dry fountain, cupping from behind the ungirdled breasts of a prostitute. Another sprawled in the shadows with a porne on her knees before him.
I advanced into the interior. The place was torchlit and pullulating with revelers. Drums beat. A procession, chanting, jigged about the court. Upon a dais stood a congress of men and women clad as acolytes and bearing wands of willow. They enacted a burlesque of the rites of Thracian Kotyttos, the orgy goddess.
Here arose Alcibiades, at the fore, performing in mockery the office of priest, or should I say priestess. He was dressed in women's robes, lips painted, his curls bound in lampoonish caricature of the sacred style. He was barefoot, dead drunk. I advanced before him, demanding the whereabouts of my cousin.
Alcibiades stared. He had no idea who I was. The dancers capered wantonly about him. “Who is this intruder who dares trespass, uninitiated, within the hallowed precinct? Kneel, supplicant, and show reverence of the goddess!”
I demanded again my cousin.
Alcibiades recognized me now. He elevated his staff, which I saw was a cook's stirring paddle, for soup.
“Bow, interloper. Display deference to heaven or, by my vested powers, I'll have you blown senseless.”
Two whores twined about his knees. He directed one forward; she lurched upon all fours, clutching at my cloak, beneath which from its baldric hung a xiphos sword.
“And comes this stranger armed as well? Impiety! What punishment for this?” Alcibiades flung his wine bowl in sham outrage. “Attend, postulants, to this party-pooping heretic! He has observed, as Menoetius says, that which no mortal, unpunished, may look upon and depart.”
Now I saw my cousin. “Get out of here, Pommo,” he commanded me, emerging from the daisy chain of prancers.
“Not without you,” I replied.
“Pommo, you swine!”
This from Alcibiades, descending from his perch and draping a merry arm about my shoulders. “Once upon a siege, my friend, you played the spoilsport and I commended you. But see, the tables have turned. It is our country now which stands embattled and immured.”
He tugged the whore before me to her feet. “What do you think of this?” he pronounced, and tore her garment to the waist. “Not impressed? How about this?” He stripped her naked. The girl made no effort to cover herself but faced me in the eye, prideful in her beauty.
“Let him alone, Alcibiades,” my cousin put it.
I noted Euryptolemus advancing to intercede.
“You're not queer, are you, Pommo?” Alcibiades declaimed. “We can address those needs as well!” He motioned to the shadows, summoning boys.
“What of your famous mythos, Alcibiades? What will Athens think of these proceedings?”
“Who will inform her, Pommo? Not you, I know. Nor these others, for if Euphorion speaks true, Which dare call him thief, whose fist resides within thief's purse?”
Euro moved beside me, sheepish and ashamed. “Pommo has lost wife and child,” he informed his cousin.
“And I mother and sons, daughter, and uncles and cousins. To say it with stone, as our friends the Spartans phrase it: 'Who hasn't?'
“ Fury seized me. “You claimed once to be two-Alcibiades and
'Alcibiades.' Which are you now?”
“I am a third Alcibiades. He who cannot stand to be the other two.”
“That Alcibiades,” I declared, “can go fuck himself.”
Anger flared within his eyes, quelled at once and mutated into an aspect of irony and despair.
“And can you call yourself friend to one Alcibiades and spurn the others?”
“I was never your friend.”
I turned upon my heel.
“Come back, Pommo! Take your vows. Be one with us!”
Striding out, I could hear him call after me, laughing. “The good alone die young. Haven't the Spartans taught you that? Take care, old friend. Don't tempt the gods with virtue!”
In the courtyard I seized my cousin and pleaded with him for his children's sake to come home. He would not, but clasped me hard, brow glistening with that sheen of fever one knew only too well, and exhorted me to stay-here, where laughter and music yet obtained.
“Go home, then!” my cousin called as I stalked clear. “Go home to death. I will stay here with life, for as long as I have to live it.”
Here, Jason, this entry in my father's log: Male, 54. Plague. Death.
This was his own warrant of doom, self-diagnosed.
Within days he began to fail. My sister labored, using all her skills. Then she, too, showed the signs. She would not drug the pain with those few pharmaka we yet possessed, preserving them for others.
My father grew desperate to release her. Twice I prevented him.
How much longer could she last? Ten days, he said, in this hell of pain.
I sat all night with my sister while she writhed.
“Do you love me, Pommo?”
I knew what she wanted.
“You must not let Father do it.”
Again I stalked the streets. Let her go, I prayed. But always, returning, she lingered. Her agonies redoubled.
“You are a soldier, Pommo. Be strong like one.”
We bore her, my father and I, to the tub. Her frame was light as a child's. “May the gods bless you,” she said. I instructed my father to seize her, hard, when I gave the nod. At this instant my edge sliced the artery.
“May the gods bless you,” my sister repeated.
She clutched my hand and my father's, his own as weak as hers.