Free The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault Page A

went in to eat. The food was excellent, but simply cooked, and two courses only, not at all the Sicilian banquet of the proverbs. The flowers came in, small yellow roses, and the wine, the same he had sent me at the theater. He had given his best. He was always all or nothing.
    A splendid lamp-cluster hung from the ceiling, Etruscan work, a sunburst with outward-soaring nymphs whose arms held up the lampbowls. You don’t get such things in a hired house unless you bring them with you. There was nothing in the room which did not serve some use, but what there was, was royal. I found it hard to take my eyes off him long enough for manners. Reclining wreathed on the supper couch, cup in hand, he could have modeled for a vase-painter drawing a feast of gods. His bare arm and shoulder were like fine bronze; he could not make an awkward gesture; the dignity actors train for was bred into his bones. And his face passed the test of motion. Often beauty grows dull or common when speech breaks the mask; but here each change, like a change of light, brought out new quality.
    Presently he sent out the slave, saying we would serve ourselves; the krater was set in the middle, the dipper laid on a clean cloth, our couches pulled up nearer. “Now tell us, Nikeratos,” he said, “about your escape this morning; and if I am intruding on your mystery, forgive me; for I am a soldier among other things, and I never saw such coolness in the face of death. Were you inspired? Or do you prepare for such things in training?”
    He spoke as if to a guest of honor. I paused to think. “Well, no,” I said. “After all, a theater is a sacred precinct. It’s a crime to strike a man there, let alone shed blood. We don’t train for such things, though we do reckon not to be put out easily; I’ve known a man who fell off the god-walk to change masks and play on with a broken arm. But today, I think … You saw the mask of Apollo. It’s not a face one would care to make a fool of.”
    He threw a quick look at his friend, as if to say, “I was right,” then turned with his grave eager smile. “Not without cause, then, these words were in my mind: Do you think I have less divination than the swans? For they, when they know that they must die, having sung all their lives sing louder then than ever, for joy at going home to the god they serve. Men, who themselves fear death, have taken it for lamentation, forgetting no bird sings in hunger, or cold, or pain. But being Apollo’s they share his gift of prophecy, and foresee the joys of another world … ” He broke off, and said to his friend, “I speak without the book.”
    “Near enough,” he answered, smiling.
    “No. I forgot the hoopoe.”
    I had been listening with all my ears, and could hardly wait to exclaim, “What marvelous lines! Who wrote them? What is the play?”
    They looked at each other. I seemed to have made them happy. Dion said, “There is the poet. They are from Plato’s dialogue Phaedo .”
    The name amazed me. These were the people whose story I myself had told Anaxis! All those years ago—near twenty it must be—and here they were still meeting. But I had thought this Plato was some kind of sophist.
    “The words are mine,” he was saying. “The thought was a better man’s.”
    “But the words!” They were still sounding in my head. “Sir, have you more like that? Haven’t you ever thought of writing for the theater?”
    He raised his brows, as if my little compliment had startled him. At last, however, he said half-smiling, “Not lately.”
    “Plato!” said Dion. “What is this?”
    “Strange to say, in my youth it was my first ambition. I was full of images and fantasies; they had only to knock and I would open; only to ask, and I would feed and clothe them … oh, yes, Dion, surely I told you that?” I noticed again his expressive voice, like a low-pitched aulos played by a master. But no volume with it. With that chest of his, he could have overcome it