“Cover your face. Do you want the City to know you? He will find it out later, and what then?”—“If he is here,” she said, “to know of it later, then my life has been long enough.”
“Thalia,” I said. She looked round at me, as a child does when the beating is over. I reached out, and took her hand in mine; it was young and cold, and roughened with work. “Go home to Lysis, and leave all this to me. Remember, he gave you charge of his honour. Do you think he would sell it for bread? Then nor must you. Go home, and give me your word not to think of this again, and I’ll send you something tonight. Tonight or first thing tomorrow. Will you give your word for mine?”—“But how can you, Alexias? You can’t take it from your mother.”—“I shan’t do that. There are a dozen things a man can turn his hand to. For a woman it’s different. But you must promise me.” She swore with her hand in mine, and I saw her back to the end of their street.
I walked on through the City, along the Street of the Armourers, and of the Coppersmiths, and of the Herm-Makers, where each shop had its little crowd of craftsmen lined up for a chance to do the work of slaves. Presently I got to the sculptors’ quarter, and found the workshop of Chremon. The door was ajar, and I went in.
He had just finished a marble; and was watching the painter colour it; an Apollo, with long hair dressed in a knot like a woman’s, playing with a snake made of enamelled bronze. Chremon had made quite a name for himself among the ultra-modern schools. It was the thing to say of him that his marble breathed. I could have sworn that if I pinched Apollo’s backside, it would make him jump.
The shelf round the wall was full of sketches in wax or clay; if Chremon had sold as many statues, he had done pretty well. They were all of young men, or youths near manhood; leaning, lounging, crouching, lying, and doing everything but stand on their heads. Just then he half glanced over his shoulder and said, “Not today.”
“Good,” I said, “that was all I needed to know.” At that he turned round, and I added, “I only called because I promised you first.”—“Wait a moment,” he said. He was a pale squat man, with a bald head, a reddish beard, and great flat ends to his fingers. There was still a good deal of flesh on him. I was glad to see he could afford to eat so well. “I took you for someone else,” he said. “Come in.” Then he said to the painter, “You can finish tomorrow.”
I came in, and he walked round me two or three times. “Take off,” he said, “and let me see.” I stripped, and he walked round again. “H’m, yes. Take a pose for me. Sitting on your heels, and reaching forward, as if you were putting down a cock to fight. No, no, no, my dear. Like this.” He took my waist between his thick hands. I gave him a moment or two, and then said, “I charge two drachmas a day.”
He stood back from me, crying out, “You must be mad. Two drachmas! Come, come. A good supper at my own table; no one pays more.” He added, “I give my models wine.”—“That’s good. But I charge two drachmas.” I looked at him over my shoulder. “No one else has complained.”
He shook his head from side to side, clicking his tongue. “What are young men coming to nowadays? No feeling, no sense of the grace of life … Ankles of wing-footed Hermes, face of Hyakinthos, a body for Hylas at the pool; and ‘I charge two drachmas,’ like the rap of a mallet. It’s a terrible thing, this war; nothing will ever be the same. Well, well, yes. But you must work for that. Here, hold this pot; that’s your fighting-cock. The left knee down, touching the floor, and out a little. No, no, like this.”
After a time he got a lump of beeswax off the shelf, and began working it up with his flat fingers. Beside me pink-cheeked Apollo, the Double Talker, smiled down sidelong at his thick green snake.
25
THE SECOND MONTH DREW into the third, and Theramenes did not come.
Chremon made six studies of me, in wax or clay: holding a fighting-cock; tying my sandal; binding my hair with a ribbon; as Hylas, kneeling at the pool; as Hyakinthos slain by the disk; and as Dionysos sleeping. The Dionysos was a quick one, done without my knowledge. He kept his word about the wine; we had it every evening, half-and-half or stronger. They say any human state has some good in it if you look; and in those days one could be drunk on very little.
I believe he kept me longer than anyone; for I could not count on the shelf more than four sketches from any one model. He fed me better than Polykleitos had, and he paid me my two drachmas every day. I used to meet Thalia at the ruins of the traitor’s house, and give her anything I could get for the money, telling her not always to say it came from me, lest Lysis should wonder how I got it. When I came to see him he looked a little better, but strange, with deep eyes and a very clear skin like a boy’s. This, I think, came from his drinking much water to kill his hunger; a physician once told me this is good for an unhealed wound, washing the morbid humours from the body; I daresay it was what kept him alive.
It was hard to account to my family for my staying out so late, when, if any man had been seen using oil to burn, his house would have been stoned. If I was gone all night, I said I was on guard duty. Sometimes I saw my father look at me. But there was not much left in the cupboard, and my mother was getting near her time; if he thought it better not to ask questions, I do not blame him.
When she was far gone with child she never looked very well; and she moved slowly now about the house for one whose habit was as brisk as a bird’s. Little Charis helped her, and once, getting home at dawn, I found my father sweeping the courtyard, as smartly as if he had done it for years. Then I remembered. I took the broom from him; but we said nothing.
When I had time I used to look about in the open places, getting grass and green stuff to put in the soup. There was a kind of pine that had a kernel good for eating. The Pythagoreans, from their never eating flesh, were very knowing in such matters; anything you saw them pick up you could be sure was safe.
Sometimes Chremon did not feel like work, and had no use for me till evening, and I could not show myself at home. Such days I spent with Phaedo as a rule. I used to he on the pallet in his room, reading while he wrote, or hearing him teach. He was a good teacher; crisp, sometimes even severe, but always even-tempered. The light from a little window over his shoulder touched his fair hair and fine cheekbone; thinness brought out the breeding in him, but the intellect more. He looked already a philosopher, and as pure as a temple-priest of Apollo. I never told him everything; but once he said, “It is easier these days to be a man alone.”
Sokrates went about all this while just as usual, barefoot in the cold, in his old mantle, talking and asking questions. Once I found him visiting Lysis. They were discussing Homer. It has always seemed to me that this was when Lysis took a turn for the better; though I daresay the wine and dried figs helped, which Plato sent him next day. Sokrates always knew who could spare a little and who was in most need, and how to bring them together.
But I did not often follow him into the colonnades. Plato would be there with him, and seldom alone. If it is Aphrodite of the Agora who has possessed one, winter and want will cool one soon enough, and the beauty that kept one sleepless is only a little warmth to crowd up to when the wind is blowing. But with this love it was otherwise. He had the innocent eye that looks straight at the soul; and mine seemed written all over with the lessons of Chremon’s workshop. So I kept away, and thanked the god who had bestowed him where he could be taken care of. His eyes looked bigger, but bright and clear; his cheek, though it curved in a little, had a touch of fresh colour, from happiness, as I supposed, such as time and change have no power upon; and in his face one could still see music.
Chremon chose the slain Hyakinthos, in the end, to make his statue on. I was glad of this; Hyakinthos lay prone, with an arm flung before the face. At one time Chremon had been very much taken with the Dionysos, who was lying face up.