He went on smiling, but not with his little eyes. “Have you some reason?” he said, and watched me.
“Yes, I have. I was not satisfied with my performance.”
“Everyone agrees you performed outstandingly.” He did not say it as a compliment, but with hard suspicion. Having pretended he had seen me, he could hardly now go back on it.
“I think not. Conditions were against me. You have a very well-equipped theater here; but I prefer to play where poet and artist are taken seriously.”
“What do you mean?” he said, in a voice which did not ask, but threatened.
“Portrait masks are for comedy. In tragedy they distract the audience. To spring such tricks on actors in performance is to treat us like clowns at a fair. What is this money for—my reputation? Thank you, but I’m afraid it is not enough.”
He spluttered, then forced a laugh and held forth about the vanity of artists, quite believing, now, that this was all, and, of course, that I would take it in the end. With some trouble I undeceived him, and left him admiring my self-importance. It had never struck me this might impress him, but of course he was just the man. I could see, when I left, that my consequence had been raised with him.
I would have liked to leave at once. Just as when the old Archon died, the streets were full of muttering groups, the citizens in their factions, foreigners with their kind. Now and then soldiers would go past: a great Gaul staring haughtily over people’s heads, a swaggering Nubian shouting to another across the street in their unknown tongue; or a group of Romans swinging along in step together, taking everyone’s size in the self-sufficient way these people have, as if wondering when they would get orders to clear the street. The mercenaries were making their good spirits known. What the citizens thought, they were not telling.
No man has less taste than I for getting caught in foreign civil wars; yet I had thought that out of all those people I had heard praising Dion’s justice, someone would strike a blow for him. But no. I was in Syracuse. They waited to see what would happen to them next; they had forgotten they could themselves make happenings.
Eager as I was to be gone, I lingered, to learn if Plato was leaving. Surely he would go; but if he were delayed, he would need Speusippos with him; and, parted from Dion without a moment’s warning, he must have things to write, unfit for the Archon’s courier. I knew where he was lodging, at the house of a Pythagorean up on Achradina. But it seemed unwise to be seen there; I was now a caller who would be noticed. So I hung about the wineshops for Speusippos, thinking that if he wanted a word with me he would seek me there.
On the third day of this, I met by chance a most charming person, who came up to commend my performance in the theater. Our talk lasted till bedtime, and one thing led to another; so it was morning when I got back to the house of Menekrates. He greeted me with the news that Plato had been murdered.
“The soldiers did it,” he said quite cheerfully. “Everyone knows they’ve been spoiling for a chance. They said Dion was their best general, before this windbag turned his head. Why, Niko, what’s the matter? I thought you couldn’t bear the man.”
I said, “This news will kill Dion. And I shall have to bring it.” This made enough sense for Menekrates. To tell the truth, I was surprised myself at what I felt. I had not understood a word of his lecture on the One; where I did know what he was saying, about the theater, I had thought him dangerous, as men with half a truth can be. Yet, little by little, he had stamped his mark upon my mind, like some great actor beside whom one has played extra. I recalled how his eyes had said to me, What are you? and had seemed to know the answer. He was gone now, and the answer with him.
I was overcome with the guilt men feel, with reason or without, at such a time, because I had spent the night in pleasure. Presently I began to ask Menekrates who had told him, and where the body was; the bones ought to be sent to Athens, and Speusippos might be alive or dead. From the replies I got, I soon realized it was all street talk, nothing first-hand. This gave me some hope, knowing what Syracuse is for rumors. So I went up to the house to see.
There was no sound of mourning. I knocked and asked for Plato, making up some errand. Without going inside, the slave answered at once that I should find him in Ortygia. He was now the Archon’s guest.
He must have read my face (this was no doubt a house where people talked freely) for he added that the gentleman had come to no harm so far; I could count on that, for his nephew was here upstairs, packing up his books.
Before I had time to ask for him, Speusippos came running out. If he had looked strained before, he now looked ill. “Niko! I knew that was your voice. Don’t stand in the street, come in.”
He hurried me through the inner court, and upstairs to Plato’s room, now in confusion and full of smoke. The floor was Uttered with open book-boxes and scrolls. In the middle was a charcoal brazier, where Speusippos had been burning papers. I coughed, and went over to the window. An actor has to be careful of his throat.
“A god sent you,” he said. “Are you going back to Athens?”
“Yes or no, according to what help you need.”
He clasped my hands, then turned away, wiping his eyes and cursing the smoke. Any small kindness will move a man who is overwrought, but philosophers are not supposed to weep.
“What happened? Where’s Plato? In the quarries?”
“God forfend! No, what you heard at the door is true, he’s an honored guest—while it lasts, for he’s a prisoner too, of course. Dionysios has given him a house in the palace park. No one leaves the inner citadel, by land or sea, without a pass. We were half-packed to go home, when a squad of Gauls brought the invitation. I’ve just come from there. You should see the place. Bronzes, books, lyre-players, boy-slaves—as full of toys as a jackdaw’s cage. It’s as if some bandit had captured a chaste lady and were ashamed to rape her, so kept laying his loot at her feet and begging for a word of love. One could laugh. But how will it end?”
“In the end,” I said, “he must let him go. Where Plato is, the world is watching—the learned world, at least. Think of the scandal. The second Dionysios is not the first.”
“But you know what he wants. He wants Plato to side with him against Dion. Before he will do that, Plato will sit in Ortygia till he dies. And it might come to that. He’s past sixty, Niko; this climate doesn’t suit him; he’s not been well. Besides, Dionysios is as fitful as a woman. It needs only some open quarrel, or public slight; then the soldiers, or Philistos’ faction, will take their chance.”
“I doubt it. It’s not a chance I’d care to take, after seeing them together even once. I told you before, the poor antic is in love. And so vain—he wants to be in the histories as Plato’s favorite pupil, not his murderer. Tell me, when did you last eat, or sleep?”
Luckily, soon after, his host sent a tray up with wine and cakes. We got rid of the stinking brazier, and cleared two chairs. Books were piled on everything; Plato must have brought a small library along. Even then, as I remembered, he had written to Archytas asking for more.
Speusippos looked better for the food, and started scrambling about among the litter for things he wanted sent home. The books, to my relief, were going along to Plato; but, muttering to himself or me, Speusippos picked out some notes for a lecture on the nature of the universe which Plato wanted Xenokrates to give for him; a scheme for a future book, which he was afraid of losing in Syracuse; and a rare work of Pythagoras for the Academy library. After looking under everything in sight, he found a pack of paper with dead flowers pressed in it. I supposed it must be some old love-token, till he reminded me he was a botanist. “If you can get them to the Academy uncrushed, I shall be much beholden to you. There is a lad who came to us this year from Stagyra, a promising boy, who helps me with my collection; he will look after them … By the dog, I’ve been so harassed, it’s put his name from my mind.” He clutched his brow, then remembered and wrote it down, Aristoteles. I promised to see to it.