Presently I asked Hagnon what the Pythia had been like. He answered, “Like weathered rocks. She had lost her teeth, and under the drug she dribbled. But the fact is, I didn’t look at her long. In the back of the cave, behind the tripod, is a crack running into the darkness; and in its mouth is a seven-foot Apollo cast in gold, with eyes of lapis and agate. It must go back beyond the Persian Wars; it has that secret smile. I couldn’t take my eyes from it. But I heard what she said.”
I sent out for some wine, and tried to make him take the price of his time; but he said it would be bad luck. Before we drank, we both tipped our cups before the mask.
I asked him why, if these old forms moved him so, he still worked in the current style. “Just put me back,” he said, “in the glorious age of Perikles, and dose me with Lethe water, to unknow what I know. Once men deserved such gods. And where are they now? They bled to death on battlefields, black with flies; or starved in the siege, being too good to rob their neighbors. Or they sailed off to Sicily singing paeans, and left their bones there in sunken ships, or in the fever swamps or the slave-quarries. If they got home alive, the Thirty Tyrants murdered them. Or if they survived all that, they grew old in dusty corners, mocked by their grandsons, when to speak of greatness was to be a voice from the dead. They’re all gone now; and here are you and I, who know just what became of them. What will you do with that mask, Niko, when you have it on?”
“Well may you ask. At least I’ll play in Aischylos, which is what it was made for. Perhaps it will teach me something.”
The lamp smoked, and Hagnon trimmed it. As he pricked up the wick, there was a flicker on the face of Loxias, and it seemed that the dark side smiled.
At dress rehearsal, just as I had foreseen, the sponsors asked Hagnon why he had fobbed them off with old stuff repainted. When he showed that he had not charged for it, they said, amazed, that they had ordered everything of the best. This mask lacked grace and charm; it was too severe. Sponsors are sponsors, so I did not ask them what Apollo needs charm for, coming to tell of doom in words like beaten bronze. Instead we said the god had chosen this mask expressly, through the oracle, for his Pythan likeness. That kept them quiet.
When these fools had gone, Gyllis the Theban courtesan—getting on now, but still famous for her verse-readings—came round to kiss us all. She had been in front, and vowed we should make a hit. Mikon the mechanic, who loved his work, asked if I found the crane run smoothly. “I like an artist to feel secure, or he can’t do himself justice. Here in Delphi, we never make an old rope do. Twice for a man, once for a chariot, that’s my rule. The last play was Medea, so you get a new one.” I assured him I had not felt safer in my mother’s arms; and he scrambled back into his wooden turret with his oil flask and his crock of grease.
That evening it rained, which damped our spirits; but day broke cool and blue, with barely a breeze. When we got to the theater, the upper tiers were full, and the sponsors’ servants were fussing about the seats of honor with rugs and cushions. Through the cracks in the skene, it looked like a real occasion. I stripped for my flying-harness, and belted over it Apollo’s white, gold-bordered tunic, while my dresser worked the harness ring through the slit.
On my table stood the mask in its open box. From the mask-maker I had bought it a new, fair wig. It was young, strong hair, such as the peasant girls sell when they have to cut it for mourning. The life of the face flowed into it; I pictured it streaming from the head of the furious god, while his arrows clattered at his back with his angry strides, as he came down the crags like nightfall to the plain of Troy. That is the Apollo of The Myrmidons—straight from Homer.
I lifted my hands palm upward, asking his favor, and then put on the mask. As the dresser arranged the hair, the flutes and kithara began, and Mikon from his turret signaled “Ready.”
I ran out, waving on my way to Anaxis, who was kissing Anthemion for luck, and to Krantor strapping on the corselet of Odysseus. Behind the back of the skeneroom was the hidden platform, with Mikon’s boy waiting there to hitch me on the crane-hook. The music rose, to cover the creak of the machine; the rope at my back went taut. I grasped my silver bow, and leaned on the harness in the arc of flight.
Up I soared, out above the skene; the crane-jib, with its traveling screen of painted clouds, lifted and turned upon its pivot. The sea-sound of voices hushed; the play had started. Above the Phaidriades an eagle wheeled and cried, balanced like me upon the air. The jib slewed up and outward, and the music stopped for my speech. It was then I felt, quite close above me, a twang in the rope, and a slight sag down. A strand had parted.
At first I thought it must be just a jolt of the pulley. Mikon was trustworthy and the rope brand-new. I resolved to think no more of it. I was about one-third through, when I felt something go again. No doubt this time. I felt it strain and part; I sagged down a good inch.
… Zeus’ battle-shattering aegis …
I could hear myself going on; while quick as a heartbeat the thought ran through me, “A notched rope—Meidias. Thirty feet down, on stone.”
When the tawny eagle with his stallion crest
Swoops down, safety is hard to find …
Wise words. It was still coming out of the mask, one line prompting the next. Two strands gone, how many left? The last taking all my weight could not last long. If I called out now, they might just get me back in time.
For I am Phoibos, zenith-cleaving, sun-shafted archer,
Unforsworn tongue of truth …
Brave words. I could hear myself as I spoke them, breaking off to yell, “Help! Help! Let me down!” and the theater echoing with a belly-laugh that would sound in my ears if I lived to threescore and ten. And it might be still too late. What a way to end, bawling like a scared child on a swing; what a line to be remembered by. The eagle circling the crags gave a long shrill “Yah!”
I thought of the mask I wore. I had sat so long before it, I knew its face like my own. I thought of that human bleat coming out of it. And I thought, “My father would have gone on.”
This had passed in moments. My voice still spoke the lines; now I put my will to them. The words, the light, the rock-peaks seen through the mask-holes; the smell of the mask, old and woody, mixed with new paint; the scoop of the hillside filled with eyes, struck on my senses clear and brilliant, as each moment passed which might be the last of my life. A kind of ecstasy, such as I have heard men can feel in battle, flowed all through me.
Suddenly the audience had grown restless. There was a buzz; then someone shouted aloud, “Watch out! The rope!”
It had started in the side seats where they could see behind the screen. I wished they would keep quiet. I might be dead before the end of this speech; they could at least attend, not interrupt with stale news. I lifted my hand palm out, Apollo commanding stillness, and threw in the first tag I thought of: “Lord of all gods is Fate!” Then I picked up the speech again.
Dead silence now. Each word dropped into a breathing stillness. In the harness straps I felt a tremor and strain from the rope above. The third strand was parting.
It went. The fourth must be the last, I thought; it was giving already; I was sinking down. Then as the audience groaned with relief (or else with disappointment) it came to me what was happening. Mikon had been warned; he was paying out softly, letting me down on stage.
One moment, it seemed, I was dangling from death’s forefinger; the next my feet touched ground. It was over. The silence broke then. Here I was right downstage, with nobody to unhitch me, and they expected me to stand there taking bows. I got my hand back and slipped the ring, and made some kind of exit. My last line was about flying back to high Olympos. I had just enough sense left to cut it. With a keyed-up audience, it would have been the very thing for a laugh.