Glorious Exploits

by Ferdia Lennon

Paches and I sit and listen to this starved bastard, half his body covered by rocks, and as we listen, something happens. The words and voice blend so that what he is blends, and he becomes two things at once, a starving Athenian, yes, but something else, hidden, then rising. He’s Medea, poor princess Medea from Colchis, and she lists her grievances against Jason: how she’d cast spells so he could get the golden fleece, murdered her brother, and betrayed her father so he could regain his kingdom. How he’d sworn eternal love under starry skies, told her he’d never leave and then did as soon as the opportunity arose, fucked off with a girl half his age, made a show of her, and now she’s abandoned, now she has nothing to do but wander Greece a lonesome, wretched thing. When I hear all this, I ache at the injustice and turn to Paches and curse him. Tell him he’s a fucker. That he hadn’t a hope of getting the fleece without Medea. My voice is shaking.

The city wind gets nastier as Syracuse grows. It’s filled with broken pottery, crumbled walls and roofs. The wind often has a red aspect, especially in the evening. Hermocrates says we should be thankful for our red wind. That it shows Syracuse’s prosperity, its growth, but Hermocrates is a cunt, and I remain sceptical.

Gelon smiles. The first in a long while, and though I’ve had a scare, it lifts my spirits. Such conviction in it, like there’s knowledge at the root of its feeling, and he grips my hand and squeezes. Strong bastard that he is, it hurts, but I won’t say a thing. The pain is welcome; friendship’s what I feel.

A drizzle that thickens and quickens till it becomes the mood of the city, and the sky takes on that mourning quality you get from weeping black clouds and shrieking winds that make the old buildings whistle and chatter like drunks in a tavern.

“You don’t rob a man of his suffering,” says Gelon quietly. “That’s his.”

That night Gelon and I paced the city, round and round we went, ten or eleven years old, and I asked him what we were going to do. And he smiled; his eyes were violet with bruises, his lip busted, and then he started into the first book of The Odyssey, and for a while, I didn’t care that I was poor or that Ma and I were alone ’cause my da did a runner, and now I’d betrayed her. I didn’t care about anything but the words he was saying. After that, we were inseparable. Even when he got married and had a son, he always had me around, made me part of his family. Yet here I am drunk, crowing about what I did to some aristo pissant when my best mate could be bleeding to death. I get up and mutter some excuse. The fisherman looks confused, offended even. But fuck it. ’Cause right now Gelon is on that ship, and he’s alone.

Music: Doesn’t need to be a dithyramb or anything, but still. A tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat: dead, and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sail for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm, and the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.

“Do you know what you are, Skiron?” No answer. “A fucking moron.” He smiles and licks his lips. “Is that what I am?” He looks around at his stall packed with customers, its pots brimming with grain, as if to say, Is this stupidity? “Aye, but it’s worse than that. You’re one of those rare idiots who’s convinced he’s a genius ’cause he got a little ahead, and for that, there’s no cure. You’re doomed, Skiron. King of the fucking cereal. You dumb cunt.”

Hunger, what an odd thing it is. Is the source of all love a lacking? Is that what creates emotion? Not a presence but an absence. Do you need to be emptied to be filled?

We’re coming up to Gelon’s cove now. There are caves in the cliffs that you can see when the tide is a little lower. Some people say this is where Odysseus was imprisoned by the Cyclops. I reckon that’s why Gelon first brought Desma here. It’s beautiful, certainly, but Gelon always needed something else. Most people believe in the myths ’cause we attach them to real places, and it adds to what’s already there, but with Gelon, it’s the contrary. He believes in what’s right in front of him through the stories we tell.

“We haven’t. I understand you perfectly.” “But you don’t. You really don’t. See, the thing is, I like listening to you. All the things you’ve been saying about eclipses and the harmony of numbers, I like listening to all of it, but there’s another part of me, and it’s fucking poisonous, and it whispers in my ear as you’re talking. She thinks she’s better than you, Lampo. She thinks you’re a jobless cunt with a clubfoot, and she’ll walk with you on this beach. A snail-paced walk on account of your limping. She’ll mooch along ’cause you’ve paid her master, but really she knows that she’s quality and you’re dirt, slave or not, and I hear all this in my skull, and I want to scream, but I don’t. I say words that I hope will give you some of the pain I feel. I’m fucking scum.”

Lampo, tamer of beasts. I’m fucking Heracles. I walk over to it, not even bothering to slow down, ’cause I got this, and I pat its head. “Ah, the boy,” says I. “How are things?” It bites me. Like really sinks its teeth in, and I let out a muffled cry of pain and shock. “For fuck sake!”

Gelon says nothing. This is a blow. Gelon has never shown hesitation before. I’ve always had my doubts, but it was his certainty that kept me going; something has shifted in him. There’s less melancholy and more fear, and he orders another jug, and we sit there and drink in silence. Each of us is afraid. It’s there in the way we hold our cups. It’s in the way we look about us, squinting into the misty nooks of the bar to see what’s hidden. This skittishness gives an altogether different quality to our boozing. Tonight we’re not drinking to forget, but to remember and dream. It’s hope that makes us afraid, and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, ’cause it means he has something to lose and to win.

But I think I’m happy. I know I am. Sometimes I feel like crying, but I reckon that’s ’cause at last things are happening, and I care how they unfold.

Other days I’m last and hear laughter before I see them: the kids chasing about the wheelbarrow, Dares yapping to Gelon as Gelon listens with a contented grin, and I wonder is it Euripides we’re saving at all?

He smiles then, a lovely smile. “Why do you act the fool? You’re not a fool.” “I am. I just know it. I reckon that makes me cleverer than most.” “Someone said that. Who said that?” His eyes are furrowed as if trying to remember. “The great Lampo uttered those words to a gobshite in the Syracusan market, if the tales are true.”

“The luckiest man who ever lived died in his mother’s womb.” “What’s that?” “An Athenian proverb,” says the old man, fingers still dancing. “A melancholy people, the Athenians. Fierce melancholy.” “We’re not, though.” It’s Paches, and he takes a long pull from the wineskin. “No need to defend them, Paches. I know you’re different.” Paches doesn’t seem to be satisfied with the compliment, for he frowns and drinks some more. “Slow down now. Don’t want you pissed. A drop to ease the nerves but not so much as to slur the speech.” “You’ve never seen a people laugh as much as us Athenians,” says Paches. “I had a friend who’d make you laugh so hard you felt your ribs would crack.” He grins as if ribs cracking were a wondrous thing. “The funniest man you could ever meet and a fine musician too.” “What was his instrument?” asks Alcar, interested. “Lyre. He and I would play together.” He must see the surprise on my face, as he adds quickly, “I was awful, but he liked me to play with him. He said I made him calm.” Again that smile. “There’s more to Athens than tragedy,” says Paches with feeling. “We laugh till we cry, and we drink.” Another swig. “We drink till we fall down, but we’re up first thing in the morning to scheme and love and build and do it all again. It’s a city of belief, not despair. That proverb has nothing to do with the Athens I knew.” The old man looks at him, the twinkle gone from his eyes, replaced by something graver, respect even, and he reaches over and pats P...

The audience for this play has more than doubled, though not with Syracusans. There’s still the same number of them. It’s the Athenians, those prisoners who were never part of our production; they’re huddling forward, careful to keep a safe distance from the Syracusans while getting as close to the stage as they can. I thought that these fellas didn’t give a shit about anything. That they’d reached a point beyond desire, but the withered faces that stare at the stage are rapt.

What people expect rarely happens. Things that seem impossible come to pass. It’s always been the way. The gods have the best seats in town, and we’re their favourite show.

Common sense is common, has no imagination, and only works by precedent. It leaves the man who follows it poorer, if not in pocket, then in his heart. Fuck common sense.

I play, though of course you couldn’t really call what I’m doing playing, but it clashes with the scurrying of rats, their awful screeching, and in my mind, those rats aren’t just rats, they’re everything in the world that’s broken. They’re things falling apart, and the part of you that wants them to. They’re the Athenians burning Hyccara and the Syracusans chucking those Athenians into the quarry. They’re the invisible disease that ate away at the insides of little Helios till he couldn’t walk or, in the end, even speak, just cry with the pain. Those rats are the worst of everything under an indifferent sky, but the sound coming from the aulos, frail as it might be in comparison, well, that’s us, I say to myself, that’s us giving it a go, it’s us building shit, and singing songs, and cooking food, it’s kisses, and stories told over a winter fire, it’s decency, and all we’ll ever have to give, I say to myself, as my lungs burn and my eyes water, ’cause I don’t have much left, but I keep blowing away at the aulos, playing my song, but the rats are as loud as ever, and this is madness, I’m pouring water in the desert, hoping flowers grow, what does it even matter if a few do, we’re fucked, and the music stops.

I’ll set it down so that I always remember what we did, and yet I might as well say it now that I’ve reached the end. All this happened years and years ago, and I’m an old bastard. I never learnt to read or write. I certainly tried, but I couldn’t seem to make it stick, and so I have to trust that clever Strabo has set it down, for he’s a man grown now and often stops in to see me. I’ve told it to him a piece at a time, and he says he’s writing it on great big rolls of papyrus. Really, I’ve no clue, ’cause my eyesight’s gone, and Strabo jokes that I’m like the blind bard, a second Homer.

Not to end on a downer, but the word is that Syracuse is doomed. We’re under siege, and the Carthaginians are meant to sack the city any day now. Make us slaves. People are getting out, and Strabo wants me to go too, but I won’t. It’s mad; I’ve always wanted to leave Syracuse, ditch this house, but now that I have a perfect excuse, I don’t know, I can’t seem to do it. Stubborn, I guess. There’s Gelon’s grave, too, and that needs tending. It’s up past Epipole, and I make my way there most weeks and tell him what I’ve been up to, which usually isn’t much. Sometimes I’ll play a tune on the aulos, and though I won’t win any prizes, I’ve been practising for a while now and reckon I’m decent. The odd time, I’ll see old students paying their respects. Gelon set up a little school, teaching kids The Iliad and whatnot. The plan was I’d join him and be a teacher too, but sure the kids knew more than me.

It was a curious tale. Too improbable to be believed. All about a theatre in a quarry, run by potters and children, and how he and many other prisoners were given food in exchange for the master’s words. These lines were life to them, and that was why he’d come here,

For the remainder of the night, he ignored the other guests and spoke only to this man. Amphitryon wondered how it had come to this. How on their final night he should choose to spend it listening to the imaginings of this broken fellow. Yet, he reasoned, perhaps in the end it was fitting, for his master was ever in love with misfortune and believed the world a wounded thing that can only be healed by story.

Firstly, thank you to my family, my brothers Anthony and David, for their constant support, encouragement, and laughs. Thank you to my mother, Anne. It’s a rare parent who phones up their unpublished son to tell him that he must, on no account, let his job distract him from his writing. Growing up, our house was always full of books, and you taught me there were things more important than making money and that they often came bound.