"In jail?" Bulnes jumped up. "In the name of Zeus, why?"
"I do not know. He made some disturbance at the play, and the Scythians carried him off."
Chapter Eleven
The "House" stood at the north end of the Agora — a small, nondescript brick building whose rooms opened outward. In one of these stinking cells sat Wiyem Flin, shackled to a ring in the wall by a fetter on one ankle.
"So there you are!" he cried. "Where the devil have you been? I've sat here for hours and I'm jolly well starved."
"I'm sorry," said Bulnes. "I came as soon as I heard." His jaw muscles tightened.
"Well, why didn't you start hunting when I didn't come back from the play on time? And why haven't you brought some lunch?"
"Don't they feed you here?"
"Of course not. Any ass knows that. Why didn't you ..."
"My dear sir," said Bulnes, eyeing the little man coldly. "I've done the best I could, and if you're going to be a farstard, I'll simply go away until you stop."
Flin mumbled something apologetic. Bulnes asked the prisoner, "What happened this time?"
"It wasn't really my fault. You'd have done the same if you weren't such a cold-blooded ..."
"Get to the point, please."
"Blast it, I'm trying to tell you! I went to the performance of Aias with Podokles and saw Thalia in the women's section, as I thought I might."
"You did!"
"Yes, I did. There was no mistake."
"Are you sure it was the right woman?"
"I ought to know my own wife after being married for eleven years! When the play was over, I hurried to the exit and stopped Thalia on her way out. 'Thalia!' I said. 'I'm here!' She looked at me blankly and replied, in Greek, that she didn't understand — 'Ouk' oida.' So I repeated what I'd said in that language.
"She said, 'You've made a mistake. My name isn't Thalia.' 'Oh, yes it is,' I said. 'I'm Melite, the wife of Euripides Mnesarchou,' she said. 'Go away and stop bothering me.' And she started to brush past me.
"I lost my head a bit, I suppose, and caught her wrist, saying, 'Thalia, don't you know your own husband?' Then she screamed for help, and the next thing I knew a couple of the Scythians had grasped my arms and hauled me out under the direction of a tall chap with a tremendous long beard. This, it turned out, was Euripides himself, the great playwright.
"One thing about a small town like this, it doesn't take you long to get from place to place. It can't have been ten minutes before those coppers had marched me all the way from the theater around the Akropolis to the Agora, where the Polemarchos holds forth. We had to wait at the Epiloukeion for the Polemarchos to show up, because he'd been at the play like the other citizens. When he did come, Euripides laid a complaint before him of second-degree assault or something of the sort. The Polemarchos asked me if I had anything to say, and I was so rattled by that time I could only babble about Thalia's being my wife and not that of Euripides. Which made no impression. So the Polemarchos ordered me confined under a bail of five mnai pending my trial. What are you going to do about it?"
A tart sentence formed in Bulnes's mind, asking Flin why he should do anything for a damned fool, but with his usual self-control the Spaniard thought better of saying it aloud.
"Five mnai, eh? That's five hundred drachmai, which would be about — ah — seventy-five to a hundred krauns in modern money. Not unreasonable, I suppose, but much more than I have."
"Why not ask one of your pupils? Demokritos seems pretty well upholstered, and Kritias is simply rolling in the stuff."
"An idea, comrade. Definitely an idea."
"How'd you find out about me?" asked Flin.
"Sokrates sent his slave to tell me."
"He did? Dashed decent, considering how vexed he was with us. That's the real Sokrates for you."
"Yes?" said Bulnes, cocking a skeptical eyebrow. "We shall see about that. Meanwhile, I'll get you some lunch and then go see about raising bail."
"Hurry up about it," said Flin. "If I'm knocked on the head and thrown into the Barathron, it'll be all your fault. And none of that beastly barley porridge, mind you!"
Bulnes, wondering what he had done to deserve so unreasonable a companion, departed rather than argue the point. In the Agora he bought a loaf of bread, a bunch of mixed vegetables, and a cheap cup and plate to hold the victuals. He filled the cup at a public fountain and carried the meal back to Flin, who sneered at it but fell ravenously to eating.
Bulnes then hiked to the house of Kallaischros and asked for Demokritos. As neither Kallaischros nor Kritias nor Demokritos was in, the porter told Bulnes, "The young men have gone to the Kynosarges. Kritias usually attends the Akademeia, but they have gone to the other gymnasium because Demokritos is not a citizen."
Bulnes set out again. He found the street that ran over the low saddle between the Areopagos and the Akropolis and toiled over it into the south part of town, which he had not previously visited. He would have gotten hopelessly lost in the tangle of narrow streets except that he kept looking back at the Akropolis to orient himself. Outside the Diomean Gate, near the great unfinished Olympieion, lay the Kynosarges, a small park.
The Scythian at the entrance looked Bulnes over to see that he bore no slave brands and waved him on in. Bulnes passed a couple of altars and came to a large quadrangle comprising a gym building and a series of porticoes.
In and around the quadrangle naked men were running, jumping, wrestling, and otherwise exerting themselves. Bulnes (who took a dim view of calisthenics) passed them by, for they reminded him that he possessed the beginnings of a middle-aged paunch, which he somehow never found time, energy, or will power to train back. At length he located Demokritos in a huddle under one of the porticoes. The young man was engaged in a game of Greek checkers, with several kibitzers standing around.
Demokritos looked up and said, "Rejoice, my dear Bouleus! I shall be through here directly, as soon as I have forced this man's stones off the sacred line."
He made a move, and his opponent said, "That does it. Away with you, man of Abdera! Tyche is too good to you."
As the group broke up a voice said, "The Tartessian professor! What can we do for you here?" It was Kritias, with dirt on his face and his skin glistening with oil. "How would three falls out of five suit you? Come now ..."
"If you please, gentlemen," said Bulnes, "I am here on more serious business. My colleague are in prison."
Kritias laughed loudly. "That is good! What has he done, broken into the treasure of Athene Parthenos? Tried to pass himself off as a citizen in hope of snaring a juror's pay?"
"Not so serious as that, but vexatious, nevertheless."
He thereupon began the story he had been rehearsing.
"When we dwelt in Tartessos, my colleague Philon had a wife on whom he doted. But on an evil day a Carthaginian galley raided the coast near our city for slaves and caught my poor friend's wife. Ever since then he has been a little mad on this one subject. When he sees a woman he think looks like his wife, he will have it that it is indeed she and tries to claim her."
"And he has been claiming the wife of one of our people?" said Kritias.
"Exactly so. It was at the play this morning, and the victim was the wife of Euripides the playwright, who had my friend thrown in jail for making a disturbance."
"That will teach him," said Kritias.
Demokritos said, "On the contrary, it proves my point, my dear Kritias. You will remember my saying that in an ideal commonwealth, slavery would not be allowed."
"Nonsense!" said Kritias. "Without slaves, who would do the work? We, of course, and we should therefore have no time for sports, art, science, and literature. In other words, no slaves, no civilization."