Madman

by Tracy Groot

  His eyes widened as an unholy scream cut the air, and he gripped his cup reflexively. He hated this part of it. It couldn’t be civilized. It was always . . . untidy.

  He liked the festival atmosphere prevailing at the inn, but he didn’t like the mess that sometimes went with it. Once, when Kardus got to the part about the boat coming, a woman near the door threw herself on the floor and began to writhe like a snake. Kardus calmly went to the woman and uttered a terse command—Tallis couldn’t hear what he said, something like “Go” or “Begone”—and the woman shook like someone had taken her feet and was rattling her violently on the ground. Then she lay as if dead. If the others gaped at her in consternation, Kardus merely went back to his stool. After a few moments, the woman sat up, looked around, and slid back into her seat.

  If something happened, it was always at the part where Kardus talked about the boat coming. And Kardus could tell it as dramatically as if he were on Antenor’s stage, in a hushed tone and with rhythmic timing: The storm was hellspawn, a malevolent masterpiece . . . still the boat came. They blocked him from view, all hope had fled . . . still the boat came.

  Tallis got uneasy around that part. He’d scan the crowd for possible interruptions. Why at that time did disturbances occur?

  “Still the boat came,” he murmured beneath his breath, rubbing his brow. A soft knock came. He went and lifted the bar and let Kardus in.

  “Will the man need accommodations?” Tallis said in a low tone.

  “No. He wants to get home as soon as possible to bring the boy to his mother.”

  “He is . . . well, then?”

  “He is well.” Kardus flashed him a smile. He noticed the cup and amphora on the table, and said, “Do you mind if I join you?”

  “Not at all.” Tallis took his seat and watched Kardus fetch a cup from behind the corner counter.

  His face was beginning to heal. Kes put ointment on it every day, to soften years of exposure. The sores were going away, cuts were healing. Kes sometimes wept when she applied the ointment.

  Her tears would annoy Arinna, and Arinna would snatch the jar from her and take over. Tallis couldn’t help but smile—that girl had a pragmatic way about her. He wondered why she cared that Kardus sat on a hard stool.

  “We haven’t had a chance to converse, Tallis, it’s been so busy.” Kardus took his seat across from Tallis.

  Tallis noted the apology in his tone. Perhaps the lad had the blood of the innkeeper, after all, and felt the need to see to all who stayed beneath his roof.

  “You have an important undertaking, with your talks,” Tallis said, with a nod toward the corner stool. “I see how it affects the people. It’s a grand thing. Perhaps a little more gratifying than teaching of Alexander.”

  Kardus rested his head on his hand as he looked at the stool. The pose made Tallis think of Zagreus—Baraan. The child insisted on being called Baraan.

  Kes fretted to Tallis that Kardus was not paying enough attention to Zagreus, his own son. Tallis told her to give him time. It seemed Kardus had enough to take in, learning of the death of his father and the dissolution of the academy. Now he had a son, a son madness made him forget. Likely the last time he saw the child, knowing it was his own, was just after he was born, before Portia took him to the temple.

  Tallis wondered briefly if Kardus had been at the temple too, and had absorbed whatever was there. The memory of the column of evil was no different from what he had felt from Kardus, whenever he used to be near.

  It was still very hard to believe that this man at the table was the foaming-mouthed freak, the man around whom Tallis could not even stand upright, who once had a presence to crush everything about him. Now, it felt no different being around Kardus than being around his cheerful little son.

  “Tavi and I have grand plans,” Kardus said softly as he gazed at the stool. “We’re going to start a different sort of academy, right here. We’re at the beginning stages of drawing up a charter for it.”

  He glanced at Tallis, and Tallis averted his gaze.

  “Do you wonder if any are still in here?”

  Tallis looked back, and the lad had a grin. “Other people do. I’ve seen their amulets. Sometimes I want to roll my eyes at them, just once. I’m not sure they’d think it funny.”

  The cuts on his face were nearly healed. Most of the scars would fade, but many would remain. Were there any scars on his soul? What had the experience done to him?

  “No, but I do wonder many things. If you’re up for talking about it someday—”

  Kardus spread his hands. “Why not right now?” He leaned forward. “You don’t have to treat me like Kes does.”

  “How does she treat you?” Tallis already had an idea but wanted to see what Kardus thought of it.

  Kardus didn’t answer. His mind already leaping to something else, he said, “What do you think of Arinna?”

  “Well, there’s a subject for you. She reminds me a little of your sister—she likes to rub the nose of nonsense in its own rot. Just like Aristarchus.”

  Kardus shrugged. “Aristarchus? Oh, you mean from . . .”

  “Cal’s place, back in Athens. I think Arinna is remarkable. She hadn’t struck me so, a few months back.”

  “I used to come and visit from Hippos, but I hardly noticed her. She wasn’t interesting then.”

  “What changed?” Tallis mused.

  Something had happened to her in the temple in Scythopolis. He thought of her holding Zagreus. He had never seen that tenderness before. Never suspected it. Leave him! Tallis remembered. She’d leapt in like a lion.

  “She came into her face,” he murmured in surprise. He glanced at Kardus. “Like you did.”

  Kardus returned the look with deepening eagerness. “What do you want to know? I’ll tell you anything. I’ll bet you’ll ask more interesting questions than the others. I wish Polonus—” He broke off. He worked his thumbnail into the table grain. “He doesn’t talk to me much.”

  “You don’t talk to him either.”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “He was your teacher. . . .”

  “I know.” Kardus sat back, restless. He leaned forward again, chin on fist. “You have to understand . . . I woke up from a nightmare that lasted years. My father’s gone. I have a five-year-old son. Things are so different.” His gaze strayed. “Portia’s gone. I’m glad about that—I think I am. The academy is gone. Bion killed himself. Theseus was murdered—”

  He shot an incredulous look at Tallis. “Did you hear about that? Hector told me. I didn’t like him, and he didn’t like me, but . . .” He shook his head grimly. “It’s all so hard to believe. So much is lost, and changed. And some things haven’t changed at all.”

  “What hasn’t changed?” Tallis asked.

  “Kes. The way she treats me. And Polonus. Things are different with him . . . but I don’t know, he may still think of me as Kes does, and that—” Kardus clenched his fists. “It’s my own fault. I let them treat me that way.”

  “What way?”

  Kardus picked up the terra-cotta amphora, looked over the stamp from the vintner in the Gaulanitis, and set it down. He found a piece of twig, broken from the broom, and poked it at the flame in the lamp. His actions were no different than any other restless young man having to face something unpleasant—perfectly sane little actions—and Tallis couldn’t help a small smile. No wonder they came to sit and stare at him.

  His face was shaved clean, Roman style, and Arinna had cut his hair because Kes cried when she tried. It was so matted and filthy and crawling with vermin Arinna had to cut nearly all of it (this, the girl who couldn’t clean up vomit), leaving only a few inches. She did a pretty good job, giving it what style she could, and after a profound scrubbing, what Tallis had thought was bracken gray was actually a soft light brown, touched in copper.

  The color of his eyes was no longer indeterminate, superseded by what had indwelled him. Tallis saw now they were light brown, and t
heir shape was a little like Jarek’s. He was a handsome lad, and the few scars would not detract from it. If anything, the scars gave his face a certain appeal for his utter unconsciousness of them. Tallis had watched as Kardus and Tavi spoke together, huddling over parchments at a table. The eagerness he saw in Kardus, the passion, were indeed elements to attract attention.

  The end of the twig caught fire. Kardus watched it burn, then pressed out the tiny flame on the edge of the lamp.

  “Kes stood between me and my mother, and I never thanked her. Polonus opened up the world to me, and I never thanked him. I came to expect what they did for me—Polonus, Kes, and Father. I took it as a right, not as a gift. I was so arrogant. So ungrateful. And it’s too late to tell my father how sorry I am. And the last time I spoke with him . . . I can’t even remember what I said, but I’m sure it was awful.” Kardus did not speak for a time.

  “I hardly know how to start a conversation with Polonus. And it hurts to see Kes treat me the way she used to, with a veneration I don’t deserve. I don’t want her to wait on me, I don’t want her to fuss over me—and I don’t know how to tell her. Sometimes I can’t be near her, for the guilt. You have to understand—for years she put herself between me and my mother, and I let her do it. I knew what hell she was getting, and I didn’t care. Then I went off to Athens that summer with Polonus, and when I came back I lived in Hippos. I hated coming here, even after Mother’s death. I hated how much Kes and Father still loved me—I didn’t deserve it.”

  He rubbed the ash off his charred twig. “Felt like chains on me. I hated that their love required something of me, and because of that, I began to hate them. Samir, most of all. He loved me exactly as he did when I was a child, without expectation, and that infuriated me. Worse than Father and Kes. Love without expectation has the greatest expectation of all. And by this time . . . I’d met Portia.”

  He frowned. “She opened new thinking for me, but . . . strange . . . I can’t remember why she was so insightful. That’s all gone. I have only memories I’d rather forget. She was . . . bringing me to a place I thought I wanted to go, so very badly. An empty place. My life depended on going there. There, I could forget everything. Forget Mother and the things she did, forget the way she was. Forget what I owed everybody.”

  Kardus noticed his wine and took a slow sip. What he had to say next seemed difficult.

  “I get . . . panicked sometimes. I see expectations again. Sometimes I fear I’ll try to find the empty place again.” He glanced at Tallis then, as if he had just divulged the dirtiest secret of all.

  “It’s terribly interesting . . . ,” Tallis mused aloud.

  Kardus waited expectantly, and Tallis grimaced. He’d been forming an observation and didn’t like to speak without thinking it through.

  “What?” Kardus finally demanded. “Do you know how much I’m enjoying this? Real talk! Not my own speeches.” He took the amphora and refilled their cups. He pushed Tallis’s cup toward him. “Come on, talk.”

  Tallis grimaced. “I’m thinking as I speak, for which Callimachus would have fits, but what strikes me is this: The man in the boat brought you back to pain. Good, honest life pain.”

  Kardus got an uncertain but hopeful glint in his eye.

  “The demons took away life, with its dilemmas and uncertainties. The man brought it back. He didn’t fix everything—he just gave you a chance to have it square in your lap again.”

  Kardus sat back. When his eyes filmed with tears, Tallis busied himself with inspecting the vintner on the amphora.

  “Good, honest life pain,” Kardus murmured. “Yes, he gave it back. He gave me back what was mine, and mine alone. He gave me back responsibility.” Then he said clearly, “But they never took anything I didn’t surrender first.”

  This time Tallis sat back, bottle still in hand, remembering a certain Two Truths. “Why, of course. You can choose, and I suppose you can choose to give that right away.”

  “That’s what I keep talking about, night after night. But they don’t get it. Not this. Not what you and I are talking about. They see I have my old voice back, and that I don’t break shackles anymore. I don’t do bad things anymore; I don’t frighten them now. I’m a curiosity. But it’s hard to tell them he did much more than chase the demons away—it’s what is in their place. It’s what he gave me back. That’s hard to put into my story.”

  “It’s all they see, Kardus. It’s okay for now.”

  “I suppose.” Kardus placed his hands on his belly. “We all have a place we’re not meant to give away. But they came, and I gave, and I was wrong. I got to that place of silence I wanted to go so badly, but soon it wasn’t silent at all. She lied, they lied . . . it was the opposite of everything they promised, this . . . deafening prison, with no rest at all. I couldn’t even kill myself, you know that? I can’t tell you how many times I tried. And then, like this . . . miracle . . . he came. And the sense of gratefulness I have . . .”

  He shook his head. Then he looked at Tallis, and Tallis felt a thrill at the intensity in his strong remarkable gaze.

  “He gave me back people. Life. Everything I tried to run away from. When he tells me to speak of God’s mercy, that’s what I’m talking about.” Then his shoulders sagged. He found the charred twig and idled with it. “I’ll need help, maybe, this time around. I don’t want to ever return there. I don’t want to ever go back.”

  Tallis delicately cleared his throat and pursed his lips. “Kardus—tell me what you did out there, with the man and the boy.”

  “You mean—just now?” He shrugged. “I told the demons to go. I said they had no right, that Jesus of Nazareth wouldn’t put up with it, and neither would I and neither would the boy’s father—not anymore.”

  “And they left.”

  “Of course. I told the father what they were, trespassers. I told him if he put up with it he was a lousy father. I said it was like having an intruder come in at night—I asked him if he would put up with that, having an intruder invade his home and ravage his wife and child and steal his things while he just sits by, and ho, that put some backbone in him. Then he knew what I was talking about.”

  Kardus grinned then, a deep glittering grin Tallis could almost call wicked.

  “Then we made them leave.”

  “And you need help, Kardus?” Tallis spread his hands. “You have all the help you need. Quandocumque impellunt, repelle.”

  Kardus thought it over for a moment. Then he smiled a wry little smile of agreement. He lifted his mug. “Vero, amice. Quandocumque impellunt, repelle—solum Jesu a Nazareth. Solum Jesu.”

  Push back, only with Jesus.

  Tallis snorted and lifted his own mug. “Having been there, I can’t argue with that. He’s the one I’d want for an ally, with these particular foes.”

  How he managed to do it was another discussion entirely. And how he managed to cleanse the air of an entire region . . . why, that was an academy unto itself.

  It seemed Kardus read his mind.

  “Master Tallis, Tavi and I have grand plans, you know that? This area has long belonged to Dionysus, in ways you don’t even know. You have to live here to understand it. He’s done a great deal of damage. But Tavi and I will form our own academy, where people can come and learn of him, how he will wreck their lives if they let him. I want to do for them what Jesus has done for me. I want to tell them about the sacred place. How to protect it, so they won’t ever have to go through what I went through. I want to give hope to people, for everyday living.”

  He pushed up his tunic sleeve to look at the bumpy scars on his arm. He ran his fingertips over them. “These can’t be for nothing. It’s all a waste if they’re for nothing.” He looked up. “Perhaps . . . you can help us form the academy.” He sat up straight. “Think of it! The Academy—the Academy of Socrates, right here! What do you think?”

  Tallis smiled a little. “Perhaps. I know Antenor has spoken of reviving it once more. And perhaps Polonus can help. He has a lit
tle experience running an academy.”

  “Yes . . . he does.” Kardus cast a look about the room. “A school, right here at the inn—think of it: the very place my mother forbade learning. What irony. And this will be a different learning, life learning, like philosophy but so much more. Oh, we can have philosophy and mosaic classes and such things—Julia can come with her hard-luck cases—but I want to help people. Just look at this!”

  His arm swept the room. “Can’t you see it? Our very own school, a school of life? A place of healing? Think of it! The academy will live again!” He looked at Tallis eagerly. “You can take over teaching of Alexander! What do you think, Tallis?”

  Tallis gazed on him. He thought on Callimachus and Aristarchus. Samir and Polonus. Jarek, who shackled his son. They tried the best they could for this boy, and that was something good. Then came someone to do for them what they could not, to take their good where they tried desperately to go, and that was something for which Greek had no word. He whom Kardus called Across the Sea was to Tallis Antenor’s Great Good.

  What did he think about a place of healing?

  What did the father think, who at this very moment guided his son home to his mother in what must be great joy?

  “Kardus . . . I think it’s marvelous.”

  To Aristarchus

  At the estate of Callimachus

  Athens

  From Tallis

  In Palestine

  Greetings.

  Your letter is next to me, on the desk.

  Tallis looked long on the waters of the Galilee. It was hard to write past the ache in his heart. Aristarchus would not welcome any declarations of grief. If Cal hated trivialities, Aristarchus hated declarations.

  I never imagined I’d be far away when he died. I’ll keep my outpour brief, and say only this, that a color has gone from the sunset. It will never be the same to me.