School of Athens

by Archer McCormick

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  ATHENS

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  Socrates senses slowly fail him. His left eye socket is already so bruised that he’s rendered half-blind from the swelling. He wraps his forearms around his face in a vain effort to protect his skull, but his opponent finds more than enough exposed territory to bludgeon Socrates freely. For a brief moment the crowd’s cheers evaporate into the night’s slight chill, replaced by the searing pain of the boxer’s fist repeatedly pounding Socrates’ ear drum like a hammer onto an anvil. Even though the referee is standing right next to Socrates, it is only when the beating finally stops that the old mason discerns the faint sound of a ringing cowbell signaling the end of the round.

  “Back to your corners!” the referee instructs both fighters.

  Socrates opponent struts back to his trainer, his arms raised victoriously over his head and takes a seat on a short milking stool. There his attendants dab balms and oils on the few cuts and bruises Socrates has managed to inflict during earlier rounds. He listens patiently as his coaches advised him, nodding his head obediently between the shallow breathes of his panting.

  Among the crowd there is little question that the fight would last any longer than the next round. As his opponent calmly takes his seat in the corner, Socrates still wobbles around the periphery of the ring, his arms extended into the adjoining audience in hopes that his trainers would pull him to safety and mend his wounds. An onlooker reaches out and grabs Socrates linen-wrapped hand and shakes it in a sarcastic display of support, a gesture Socrates initially believes his coaches pulling him into his corner. The audience erupts with laughter when the old mason tries to take a seat and falls over onto the ground when his ass falls through a phantom milk stool. Gamblers concede bets and pay off debts.

  “Over here, you fucking idiot!” Euripides yells after shaking his head at the sight of Socrates rolling around in the dust. The playwright takes a large pull from his skin of wine as Socrates gets back on his feet. “Follow the sound of my voice!”

  Socrates staggers over to Euripides. A young man, no older than eighteen, scurries into the ring from behind Euripides to help guide Socrates back to his stool. Once Socrates is finally seated in his corner, the boy wipes away the sweat and lightly chops at the fighter’s shoulders to prevent the muscles from stiffening in the damp night air. The boy tears pieces of linen from an old cloth, dips them into a bucket filled with putrid water nearby and cleans the wounds as quickly as he can.

  “Listen to me!” the boy says to Socrates as he tends to the mason’s wounds. “Every time he leads with his left hand he lifts his elbow slightly and starts to exhale. Hit him in the abdomen and you’ll knock the wind out of him long enough to finish him off, got it?”

  “More wine!” Socrates managed to say, his lips painfully lumbering through the words.

  The boy shakes his head as he continues to wipe away dirt from the open cuts littering Socrates’ face. “There’ll be plenty of wine after the fight,” he said.

  But Euripides will have none of it. He pulls a second skin of wine from his belt and uncorks the top. “Oh, give the son of a bitch some more wine!” he says, pouring the flagon directly into Socrates’ mouth. “He’s the one doing the fighting!”

  By this point in the evening Euripides is quite drunk and his aim proves to be grossly inaccurate. More wine spills onto Socrates face and body, mingling with the streaks of blood running from his cuts, than arrives into his mouth. At first the young boy does what he can to mop up the wine with the linens, but the mess proves to be too much for him. He throws his dirty cloths into the bucket in frustration, but just as the boy is about to slip back into the crowd he notices the wine coursing through Socrates’ wounds like melted snow cutting a path down a mountain in spring, washing away the filth and pustules that have accumulated in the open tissue. “The gods be damned,” he says to himself, grabbing a candle from a nearby drunk and holding it close to Socrates’ cut. “The wine is cleaning the wound.”

  Before the boy can inspect the phenomenon any further, the cowbell rings again. The boy blows out the flame, returns the candle to its puzzled owner and ducks back behind Euripides, who hands him the unfinished portion of Socrates’ wine. The boy grabs the skin, nods with thanks and takes a long pull.

  “I hear he’s a better mason than a fighter,” the boy says to Euripides.

  “Wait,” the playwright begins, revealing an expression of confusion to the boy. “How long have you known Socrates?”

  “We met just the other week,” the boy replies.

  Euripides snatches the skin from the young man’s hands and immediately guzzles what wine remains, throwing the empty flagon over his shoulder.

  “Hey! Won’t Socrates need that next round?” the boy asks.

  “There’s not going to be a next round,” Euripides grumbles.

  The referee silences his cowbell and Socrates immediately sets to work throwing quick, surgical punches to his opponent’s abdomen, most of which land to the surprise of the crowd. The momentum of the fight quickly shifts. Slowly, Socrates begins to push the fighter away from the center of the ring out into the periphery, where the jeering mob taunts and goads Socrates’ opponent until he pushes the scrappy mason away from him with a jerk of his elbow, then jabbing at Socrates with his blindingly swings with his right hand.

  Suddenly Socrates’ opponent start to raise his left arm to unleash a flurry of jabs, but the old mason sees an opening and land a vicious hook to the man’s abdomen. The punch stuns the boxer. He grabs his gut with both hands and keels over ever so slightly. The crowd gasps and pushes closer in anticipation of the last flurry of punches that will end the bout.

  Socrates cocks a fist back behind his back and unloads a brutal hook into the fighter’s face, connecting perfectly just below the man’s cheek with such force that his opponent’s head spins around his neck beyond his shoulder.

  For the briefest of moments, Socrates stands in the ring admiring his work, waiting patiently for the boxer to fall to the ground as the rest of the audience leans in closer. At first the boxer wobbles, his equilibrium teetering precariously, but slowly he recovers his balance and turns his head back to Socrates. The boxer stands upright, grins and winks at Socrates before releasing a single, tremendous punch directly between the mason’s eyes. For a moment, Socrates’ body is parallel to the ground before he falls on his back, mercifully knocked out cold and unable to hear the cheers of the surrounding crowd celebrating his opponent.

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  An hour later, Socrates sits on the top of a table inside a tavern called the Argonaut, the fight’s principle sponsor and second home to many of those in attendance. He pressed a raw cut of meat to the bruises circling his eye while the young trainer in his corner during the match meticulously stitches his cuts with a needle and thread. Euripides, now so drunk he has difficulty standing without the support of a nearby lode-bearing beam, leans in closer to his companions and scrutinizes the boy’s handiwork.

  “Do you mind?” the boy asks Euripides. “I need the light to see what I’m doing.”

  The playwright looks offended. He turns an aggrieved scowl to Socrates and arches a single eyebrow, but the defeated fighter waves him off. “Leave him be, Euripides.”

  “You should have done as much during the fight,” Euripides says, shaking a bony finger at his friend. “That boy nearly got you killed.”

  Socrates takes a deep breath and appears ready to argue the contrary when he suddenly pauses. “Do you two even know each other?”

  The boy sets down his needle and thread and turns to Euripides. Both men glance at each other and shrug their shoulders, as if the very question itself means nothing to either of them, before returning to their prior business.

  Before the boy can resume stitching Socrates’ face, the old mason pulls away and points to his friend the poet. “That dour old man is my friend Euripides, the fifth most decorated playwright in all of Athens,” he informs the bo
y.

  Again, the young man peers over his shoulder at Euripides, who bows gracelessly as a drunken actor would during a curtain call. The boy shakes his head. “Never heard of him,” he confesses tactlessly.

  Euripides rises from his bow and almost chokes on his own breath. “You must have seen Telephus?” he asks, but the boy shakes his head and continues to concentrate further on his stitching. “What about The Cretans?” Again, nothing. “My Alcestis won second prize at the Dionysian!” Euripides throws his hands up in despair. “It’s that bloody Sophocles!” he continues. “As long as he’s alive no one will ever know I exist!”

  “Sophocles?” the boy echoes. “I like him! I must have seen Ajax a dozen times and it doesn’t get much better than Antigone. Do you know him? Can you introduce me to him?”

  Euripides stares at the boy for a moment before silently taking a seat, his back turned to the young man, and burying his face in his hands.

  The boy shrugs and returns his attention to Socrates’ face. He pulls a small knife from his belt and uses it to shorten a line of thread dangling from Socrates’ chin. “There!” he says, pulling the string from the stubble of Socrates’ nascent beard. “All done.”

  The boy rises from his seat and walks backwards several steps, examining his work from various angles, searching for the best light. Euripides rises from his own seat and examines the stitching. The playwright is impressed: the large gashes that dug deep into Socrates’ face just an hour earlier are now barely noticeable at a distance of a five paces.

  Socrates hops off the table and slaps the boy on the shoulders. “And this is Hippocrates,” he says to Euripides.

  The playwright and the boy shake hands. “At your service,” Hippocrates says with a reverent bow.

  “His parents want him to peruse a career in government,” Socrates continues.

  “A noble profession! May the gods be with you on your journey,” Euripides tells the boy before taking a sip of wine.

  “But he’s more interested in medicine,” Socrates adds.

  Euripides chortles, nearly chocking on his drink. “Good luck earning a drachma in that scoundrel’s trade!”

  Socrates scowls at Euripides’s rudeness before digging into his coin bag and flipping the young doctor a drachma. “Why don’t you get us another round of wine, Hippocrates?” The young man catches the coin with both hands and walks off across the crowded tavern on his way to the bar.

  “Where did you find him?” Euripides asks, once Hippocrates is out of earshot.

  “He actually found me unconscious in the necropolis in middle of the night,” Socrates replies.

  “What was he doing in the graveyard in the middle of the night?”

  “He dissects human corpses to teach himself anatomy. At first he thought I was a fresh corpse, but—”

  “Just as long as dissecting is the only thing he’s doing to them,” the playwright interrupts. He pauses for a moment and watches Hippocrates pay for next round of wine at the far end of the tavern. “What were you doing in the graveyard?” Euripides asks his friend.

  “I was passed out drunk,” Socrates replies nonchalantly.

  “Yes, of course you were,” Euripides nods. “How silly of me to ask.”

  Across the pub Hippocrates carefully tries to juggle three cups of wine in both hands and navigate his way back to Euripides and Socrates with a minimal degree of spillage. He carefully avoids ruckus pockets of revelers and shimmies by drunken Athenians of all shapes and sizes. The young doctor almost makes it back without incident when a chair shoots out from under a table, bumping Hippocrates and causing him to spill all three cups of wine on the occupant’s head.

  The man sitting in the chair slowly rises from his seat, his shoulders growing larger even as they start to tower over Hippocrates’ head. The wine seeps into the patron’s tunic and clings to his skin. The young doctor sees his muscles clench in anger. Hippocrates hears a huff flare from the man’s nostrils that reminds him of the sound a recalcitrant oxen makes when being fitted with a yoke.

  The patron slowly turns to Hippocrates, grabs him by the throat and pushes him against a nearby wall. “You stupid fuck!” the patron screams, immediately bringing all other business in the tavern to a halt. “I’m going rip off your limbs and beat you senseless with your arms!” Hippocrates cringes and recoils at the wine-soaked vapors spilling from the drunken patron’s mouth.

  “Leave the boy alone!” Socrates yells back, calmly cleaning his fingernails with his teeth.

  “Stay out of this, old man!” the drunken patron responds.

  “He meant no harm,” Socrates continues.

  “I don’t care what he meant to do!” the drunken patron declares. “I prefer to drink my wine, not wear it!”

  “I’m surprised a Theban bastard like you is smart enough to know the difference,” Socrates snaps back.

  The drunken patron drops Hippocrates and slowly walks toward Socrates. The entire tavern collectively braces itself like an impish child awaiting lashes from his father’s switch. Seconds later, Socrates’ body sails through the Argonaut’s front doors and tumbles out into the empty street until it comes to a sudden stop in the middle of the intersection.

  The tavern’s clientele streams out into the streets. Gamblers take bets as curious on-lookers jockey for positions close to the action. One of the last men to leave the bar is the drunken patron himself, grinding the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other, his shoulders stretching from one vertical beam of the doorframe to the other. Euripides and Hippocrates follow immediately behind him only to scratch and slither through the crowd.

  “I thought you might have had enough abuse earlier in the evening, old man,” the drunken patron taunts, “but I’d be happy to give you some more!”

  The crowd cheers and coaxes the fighters on as Socrates slowly rises to his feet and dusts off his robes.

  Hippocrates turns to Euripides, his face on the verge of complete panic. “I don’t know how much more of a beating those wounds can take!”

  But Euripides merely sighs. “You’ve really never seen any of my plays?” he asks.

  “How can you ask me about your fucking plays at a time like this?” the young doctor snaps back. “Your friend is about to have his skull crushed like a, uh, like a gadfly!”

  The playwright shakes his head. “I suppose you haven’t,” he surmises, “otherwise you would have come up with a better simile.”

  Once on his feet, Socrates plays to the crowd, pumping his arms triumphantly in between displays of shadow boxing, before placing an open hand to his ear hoping to incite the crowd to louder cheers. The drunken patron folds his arms across his chest and snorts at the sight and waits patiently for the mason to finish his exhausting antics. When Socrates is satisfied that the audience is worked up into a sufficient lather he stretches his arms behind his neck and jogs in place to limber up for the imminent fight.

  Then, once the crowd can no longer wait a moment longer to sate its bloodlust, Socrates removes his tunic, tosses it contemptibly on the ground and stands completely naked before the assembly, his fists raised in the defensive fighting stance he had learned as a youth.

  The crowd’s noise ceases instantaneously. Some men wipe their eyes hoping to massage sobriety into their pupils. Others glance away, unsure if view such a spectacle is appropriate in such a setting. Most men simply continue to drink their wine and wait for the actions of their neighbors to guide their own responses.

  Alone among the men in the street, the drunk patron laughs loudly and from a deep place within his belly. “My quarrel’s with you, not your cock, old man!” he taunts. The crowd joins him in his mirth.

  Socrates looks confused. He lowers his guard and waits for the laughing to subside then looks directly at the drunk patron. “We’re not fighting naked?” he asks.

  “Why would we fight naked?” the patron asks back.

  “Two reasons,” Socrates begins, grabbing one hand by the wrist of the ot
her behind his back as he walks contemplatively back and forth in the ring. “Since this misunderstanding is over soiled linens, I just assumed you wouldn’t want to sully your clothes any further with either your blood or, more likely, mine.”

  Hippocrates looks to Euripides. “What’s he doing?” he asks anxiously.

  Euripides quietly calls for silence from the young doctor by placing a finger to his lips. “You’ll see,” he whispers.

  The drunken patron now appears thoroughly confused, but Socrates pushes forward. “See, if this fight ends with the very same result that caused it, namely, me bleeding all over your clothes just as my friend spilled wine all over them, then there really isn’t much reason to start the fight in the first place, is there?”

  “I suppose not,” the patron agrees pensively.

  “Of course not!” Socrates erupts. “And you’re a smart man, so why, by the gods, would you go through so much effort to mangle my face only to arrive an end no different from the point whence you began? That wouldn’t make any sense at all!”

  The crowd murmurs in ascent to Socrates reasoning. Even the furrows on the brow of the drunken patron himself shift in a manner that suggests agreement. “What’s the second reason?” the man asked.

  “Simple,” Socrates says, ceasing his pacing and pointing a finger to the sky. “You’re just worried that I have the bigger cock!”

  The crowd explodes in howls. Men grab themselves and spit on the ground before taking long swigs of wine. The drunken patron’s cheeks flush red with the shame of being baited by someone he now realized he should have dispatched before ever allowing to speak. Impatience and anger further turned his complexion a sinister shade of crimson.

  Socrates grins. “But have no fear,” he advises the drunken patron, “I’m sure everyone here will understand if you want to back out now rather than let your tiny prick wave in the midnight breeze.”

  The patron takes a deep breath and smirks at Socrates’ jest. Slowly, he reaches down to the bottom of his tunic and pulls the it up first over his chest, but at the split second the cloth covers his face, Socrates pounced from across the ring, leaping into the air and landing a savage punch squarely onto the patron’s nose. The man falls to the ground, flopping spastically like a fish on the floor of a boat. A scarlet stain growing larger and larger on the tunic still wrapped around the man’s head as he screams for someone to heal his broken nose.

  The crowd stands frozen in stunned silence, still unsure of what it had just witnessed. Socrates gazes around the audience with a wry smile, the spectators parting as he passes through them to leave. “Good evening, gentlemen!” he says with a nod.

  The men watch Socrates walk down the street with nothing but the moonlight covering him in the glory of a conquering hero. Hippocrates and Euripides pushed their way through the crowd just in time to see him disappear into the shadows of an alley off the main road, just a few blocks from the Argonaut. The young doctor stammers for a moment, struggling to collect his thoughts, until Euripides gently places his had on the boy’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen Socrates win a fair fight,” the playwright explains, “but he does awfully well in dirty ones.”

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