Graccus rose to his feet. ‘Now, friends,’ he said, and he mixed a fresh wine bowl – one to one, wine to water. Exciting. ‘Some of my friends have decried the absence of women at my parties.’
Much laughter. Some finger-pointing, some rude gestures.
‘And I thought perhaps to remedy this shortcoming’ – he made the words short and come sound obscene – ‘by inviting the most celebrated young woman in Athens to share our evening. Instead of a host of flute girls, I thought to bring one courtesan.’
‘Does that mean we take turns?’ Demetrios called out.
‘Shush – one does not hire a hetaera for such rude stuff.’ Graccus smiled.
‘How would you know?’ called Diodorus. ‘You’d hire her as a cleaning lady. You don’t even know what a porne is for!’
They were best friends, I gathered, because in Macedon, blood would have been shed.
Graccus made a face. ‘I’ve heard – from friends.’
Everyone laughed.
‘I think you are all too drunk to enjoy her wit,’ he said. ‘I promised her we weren’t a bunch of drunken barbarians.’ He looked around. ‘I am serious, gentlemen. She’s here as a guest, and not for wages. Treat her as such, or I send her home.’
Kineas glanced around the room. He was their leader – I don’t think I really needed to say that, but in that moment I saw how powerfully he was their leader. He caught almost every eye – looking around. His message was as obvious as if he’d spoken aloud. ‘Do not be bad guests, you louts!’ he shouted with those eyes.
Kineas had a measure of what Alexander had in bushels. In fact, they had a great deal in common, I think. Kineas was Alexander muted; he was not as brilliant, but I think more to the point, he had a loving mother and father, sisters, a home. He had never been betrayed, never brutalised, never taught that such things were normal. I saw it all in that glance of his eyes – when he commanded his friends to behave themselves, where Alexander would have enjoyed watching his friends make arses of themselves.
On the other hand – Kineas drew lines, and he never crossed them. Alexander never knew what a line was. I don’t think Kineas would have conquered the world. Or wanted to.
As an Indian philosopher once told me, there is not just one truth.
As usual, I digress. Graccus brought a woman in, modestly dressed and heavily veiled – wool veils that showed us nothing. She sat, picked up the kithara that one of the players had put by – the players were all guests now – and began to play.
She didn’t play the fast, harsh style of the men. Nor was her style particularly feminine. In fact, it had many of the same precise displays of notes – but it was slower, and she had phrases of music that seemed to have a rhythm of their own, like lines of song repeated.
But men are men, and most of the guests, fascinated at first to hear a woman play so well, drifted back to their conversations. I did. I wondered idly what kind of childhood a woman had to be so good at playing. I was thinking about Kineas and Alexander – at another level, I was thinking that in Athens, Nike and I might have married.
Demetrios was back, hectoring me to talk about oligarchy.
‘Let him be,’ Kineas said. ‘He is a guest, not a performer.’
I had to smile at the notion of me, the Macedonian monster, as a performer.
We were swiftly drunk again. Graccus and Niceas kissed – something that would never, ever happen in Macedon. Men may move each other, but never in public! And Demetrios picked a fight with Diodorus, and they rolled on the floor – and they were fighting – fighting hard, grappling with intent to do real injury. Diodorus had the better of it, and they rose, embraced, and Diodorus rubbed the back of his head where, apparently, he’d struck it against the base of a kline early in the struggle. Demetrios fell backwards theatrically on to my couch. ‘He’s just better than I am,’ he said, and giggled.
I had to laugh.
‘We’re going to go and get laid,’ Demetrios said. ‘Me and Diodorus. When he’s done chatting up the hetaera. He loves them all – swears that if he’s ever rich, he’s going to buy one.’
Diodorus came and sat with us. ‘Why not? Why have a twelve-year-old virgin just starting her courses when I could have a woman who can discuss Socrates and suck my dick with skill?’ He shook his head. ‘I’ll buy her contract for life and have sex whenever I want!’
We were all eighteen, remember.
Diodorus leaned over. ‘That’s Thaïs. She’s new – but a free woman, not a slave. People say she has a scar – never seems to take the veil off.’ He shook his shoulders. ‘Ooh, I want her.’
‘Excellent figure,’ I admitted. It is hard to hide a woman’s figure under a chiton. This one had strong shoulders, a long back and long legs. And beautiful feet, the only part of her that showed, but a most excellent part.
Diodorus laughed. ‘A man of taste, hidden under the barbarian! Come, let’ s get our spears wet.’
I must have looked at Kineas. He shrugged. ‘I’m a prig. I’m for home. Some people need to remember that tomorrow is a feast day – the cavalry must be on parade. Yes?’
So they left – Diodorus and Demetrios together, later inveterate enemies. Lykeles, who had not been there for dinner, came in, played a song, embraced me and left. People were coming and going now, and I was pretty drunk. I remember having a pleasant conversation with a very aristocratic man with beautiful manners who proved to be a former slave and professional musician. Athens.
There were other women circulating, now – four dancers who were, somehow, obviously not available (at a Macedonian dinner, any woman you could catch was available) and a trio of flute girls who played very well indeed. They were comediennes, and very funny – they’d play a song, and then play a sort of slur on the same song – the largest girl would start to run her flute in and out of her mouth in a lewd way, and another would . . . well, you are too young. Let’s just say they were available after the eleventh or twelfth bowl.
I went out to piss, came back and found the veiled woman on my couch.
Before I could flinch, she laughed. ‘I had nowhere else,’ she said with a chuckle.
I liked the chuckle. She was referring to the fact that the larger of the flute girls was entertaining two guests at the same time, and she, the hetaera, was as far across the room as she could manage. But the chuckle let me know that while she was no prude, she was neither afraid nor really interested. Quite a lot to convey in a chuckle.
‘Are you from Macedon?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ I said. I suddenly felt drunk. ‘Are you really a hetaera?’
It is hard speaking to the blankness of a wool veil. I noticed that it was very fine, and moved slightly with her breath.
She nodded. ‘I am.’
I lay back – a sign of intimacy, Aristotle told us. ‘How do you choose such a road?’ I asked.
‘Women can have ambitions, just as men do,’ she said.
‘To open your legs for strangers? That’s an ambition?’ I said. Nasty words – I remember thinking as soon as they left the fence of my teeth that I should be ashamed.
She turned her head – a hand’s breath away, just as Demetrios had been. But covered by a veil. ‘Any way a woman turns, man, she is forced to open her legs for a stranger.’ She said it without the least heat. But with the utmost conviction. ‘I choose who they are, and see that they reward me.’
‘A husband—’
‘Is a tyrant chosen by others; an owner who pays no price, a client without a fee.’ She turned her head.
‘But marriage?’ I asked. I’d never heard marriage indicted before.
‘Sex from duty is like killing from duty, don’t you think?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I wouldn’t know myself, but I assume that when your prince orders you to kill, you kill, whatever you may feel about it. And when a girl’s husband says “lie down”, why then, she puts on perfume and lies down, or he beats her and does her anyway. Yes? So you would understand better than most.’
‘When I want a man, I can have him, or not. And when I don’t like him, I never have to have him.’ She also sat up.
‘I’m not sure the two are the same,’ I said.
She let down a corner of her veil so that I could see one side of her face. She smiled. ‘You are not the barbarian they made you out to be. I’m not sure the two are the same, either. But philosophy is the land of assertion, is it not? And I will insist that while most men proclaim that killing is bad, few seem to think that sex is bad. A man should be more careful who he kills, and for whom, than a girl who she beds, and for what.’
I had to think that through – her Greek was so pure, so Attic, and she’d just said . . .
I got it, and I rocked the couch laughing. ‘You are a philosopher,’ I said.
‘I like a good time, too. Red wine. A fart joke.’ She laughed. ‘But a girl who can’t talk to philosophers won’t get far in this town.’
People were looking at us. Graccus raised his wine cup in my direction.
‘You are with Prince Alexander?’ she asked.
‘Do you always ask things to which you already know the answer?’ I asked.
‘It’s a good idea for a woman,’ she said. ‘Since men seldom listen to us, and often lie.’
She didn’t sound like a whore. At all. Or a stuck-up Athenian philosopher. Her eyes were beautiful – blue, deep as the sea.
‘I listened to you. And I assert that I kill for my prince of my own will.’ I lay back.
‘Well – I was married at twelve, and it wasn’t bad at all.’ She rolled on an elbow. ‘In fact, my husband and I had a physical attraction I’ve never felt for anyone else.’ She got a tiny furrow between her eyebrows. ‘Why am I telling you this?’
‘How on earth did you go from wife to . . . hetaera?’ I asked.
She shrugged. ‘Things happen,’ she said. ‘Not things I wish to discuss,’ she added, closing the subject. ‘You are easy to talk to – like a farm boy, not an aristocrat.’
‘Perhaps being a foreign barbarian has its advantages,’ I said. I saw a little under half of her face, and if she had a scar, I was the King of Aegypt. She had sharp cheekbones, a lush mouth and a nose – well, smaller and prettier than mine. But not by much.
‘You’re staring at my nose,’ she said.
‘I love your nose,’ I said.
‘It’s huge,’ she said.
‘Superb,’ I said.
‘Large,’ she said, but without coquettishness.
‘You wear the veil to hide it?’ I asked.
‘You are suggesting that I need to wear a veil to hide it?’ she said, and I couldn’t guess whether she was really being sharp with me, or whether I was being mocked.
‘Tell me about Prince Alexander,’ she said, after a pause.
‘He’s better-looking than me, and not very interested in girls.’ I was drunk.
‘I hear he’s not very interested in anyone.’ She had a wicked twinkle in her eye. ‘The party girls and boys say . . . that he doesn’t.’
I shrugged. Even drunk, there are things you don’t say about your prince. ‘Not something I will discuss,’ I said, since she’d been free enough in shutting me down.
She nodded. ‘Fair enough. You are married?’
I shook my head, and there it was – without pause, I burst into tears. Drink, and Nike.
She didn’t throw her arms around me, but she didn’t flinch, either. ‘Bad question. I’m sorry.’
It passed like a sudden rain shower. And drunkenness passed into sobriety. I wiped my face. ‘Thanks,’ I said, or something equally deep and moving.
She shrugged. ‘You love your wife. I’m not surprised. You seem . . . complete. More complete than most men your age.’
I shook my head. ‘I had a mistress. She died – a month ago.’ I sat on the edge of the kline. Wondering why I was babbling to this woman. ‘I should have married her, and I didn’t.’
The hetaera sat up with me. She was quite tall. ‘I don’t really know what to say. Men usually confide in me about their wife’s failings. Not . . . not real things.’
That made me smile. Somehow. ‘Well,’ I said. ‘You have a way with you.’
‘I’m a happy person,’ she said. ‘I try to spread it around. Not all the ground is receptive, but some is.’
A slave brought me my chlamys, and I pinned it. Graccus came up, kissed the hetaera on the cheek (she unveiled for him) and put an arm around me.
‘You have been a charming guest. I had you for Diodorus’s sake, but I’d have you again for your own. Diodorus or Kineas can tell you when I have another evening. I hope that you enjoyed yourself.’
The woman bowed slightly to me while she pinned her veil, so that I had a flash of her face, and then she went to the next kline, and sat with one of the kithara-playing men, who put his arm around her. They laughed together, and though I looked at her I couldn’t make her turn her head.
‘I had a wonderful time,’ I admitted.
‘I think she likes you,’ Graccus said, following my eyes. ‘But I admit, with Thaïs, it’s often hard to tell. She’s not like any other hetaera I’ve ever known.’
‘No,’ I said. I’d only known one, and she’d been . . . complicated. I looked at Thaïs again, and she had her head back, veiled, laughing.
I embraced my host, gathered Myndas from the kitchen, drunker than me, and started the long walk home.
That was the first of a long series of symposia, and while I don’t recall every one of them, I loved them as a whole. I found that I loved to talk – I loved to mix the wine, when invited. I went to the agora and purchased spices, and carried them in a small box of tortoiseshell. I still have it. I sent wine to friends – I was a rich man, even by Athenian standards.
With the permission of Eumenes, I used his andron and gave my own symposium. I invited Aristotle – he was far away, in Mytilene, and didn’t come, but it amused me to invite him. I invited Alexander and Hephaestion, Cleitus and Nearchus, Kineas and Diodorus, Graccus and Niceas, Demetrios and Lykeles and half a dozen other young men I’d come to know.
I agonised over the arrangements – no help from Eumenes or Kineas, who, for aristocrats, were surprisingly uninterested. Eumenes decried the expense, and Kineas just laughed.
‘A flash of good wine, a bowl to mix it, some bread and some friends,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing to it.’
I glowered at him. ‘I want it to go as well as Graccus’s parties,’ I said.
Kineas shrugged. ‘That’s all Graccus has – wine, bread. A good sunset and the right men.’
‘Flute girls, actors, music, a hetaera, perfect fish . . .’ I said.
Kineas laughed. ‘Frippery,’ he said. ‘The guests make the evening.’
‘Thanks, Socrates,’ I said. ‘Go away and leave me to my barbarian worries.’
Diodorus was more help. ‘Get that girl,’ he said. ‘The hetaera. Everyone says she gives the best symposia in Athens. I’ve never been invited. Offer her money.’
‘She went to Graccus’s house for nothing,’ I said primly.
‘Are you Graccus?’ Diodorus said. ‘She’s a hetaera. Offer her money.’
In fact, I had no need to approach her, because a week later, after a state dinner where we discussed – in surprising detail – the logistics of the crusade against Persia with Phokion and a dozen of the leading men of Athens, Alexander took me to her house. Alexander took me to her house. He walked through the front door as if he owned the place.
‘Never known a woman like her,’ he said. ‘Brilliant. Earthy.’ He shrugged. He was lightly drunk.
Hephaestion wasn’t jealous, so it wasn’t sex. Or wasn’t just sex.
At any rate, I don’t know what I expected – a brothel? An andron writ large? But Thaïs’s house was a house – the house of a prosperous woman – and she sat at a large loom, weaving. She rose and bowed to Alexander, and he took her hands, kissed them and went straight to a kline with Hepha
estion.
There were other men there – and other women.
She had no veil on, and she was beautiful. All eyes and cheekbones. And breasts. And legs.
‘The Macedonian,’ she said to me, quietly. ‘I wondered if I had offended you.’
I must have looked surprised. ‘How so?’
‘I invited you to come,’ she said. ‘You didn’t.’
I shook my head. ‘I never received any such invitation,’ I said. ‘I would most certainly have come.’
She nodded. ‘Eumenes probably destroyed it.’ She bit her lip. ‘He’s very . . . old-fashioned.’
I found myself smiling. ‘I’m giving a symposium,’ I said without preamble.
She looked up at me – she was back at her loom. ‘Splendid!’ she said, with a little too much emphasis.
‘I want your advice. Your help.’ I blurted this. She smiled and looked elsewhere.
‘Advice?’ she said.
‘I want it to be perfect,’ I said.
She smiled. ‘It’s all in the guest list,’ she said.
‘That’s what Eumenes says,’ I shot back.
‘He’s right,’ she said. She was looking around the room. There were eight couches, all full. ‘I am working right now,’ she said. ‘If you were to come back tomorrow afternoon, we might actually talk.’
Alexander raised a wine cup. ‘You are not your sparkling self tonight, Thaïs. Too busy weaving?’
She rose to her feet. ‘I was thinking about Persia,’ she said.
Alexander looked puzzled – as if a pig had just said a line of Homer. Women did not, as a rule, think about Persia. It was odd—he could see her as a woman—even as an intelligent woman. But as someone who could understand politics? Never! Which, of course, makes her later role all the more delicious.
‘What about Persia?’ he asked.
‘I was wondering how old I will be before you destroy it utterly,’ she said.
All talk in the room ceased.
Alexander looked at her with wonder. ‘Are you a sibyl? An oracle?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I am a woman who wants revenge. I cannot get that revenge myself. But I long to see it.’
‘Revenge?’ he asked. Odd – he was so good at leading men. His questions showed how little he saw in her.
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