The Praise Singer

by Mary Renault

  I was stunned; most of all by finding I had power to wound him. I was fourteen, and had lived as best I knew how. At last I said, “I thought, sir, that you wouldn’t like it.”

  “Is this not Keos? Have you not been to the festivals like any other boy of decent birth? Have the Keans not their own lodge on Delos, for the singers and musicians we send to honor the god? Do you not suppose that if you had shown ability for anything at all, I would not have furthered it? Yet you have chosen to live like a sullen farm-hand, rather than my son; hiding from me all that would have encouraged my hopes of you, till you could send me news by a passing guest.”

  I heard in horror. My former lot now seemed Elysium, compared with my promised future. I was to be trained under his eye for poetry, as I’d been trained for farming, works and days; I would have as much song left in me as a bird in the fowler’s net; and my muteness would be taken for defiance. I thought with longing of the lonely hills and the sheep.

  “However,” my father said, “since this man is ready to undertake your schooling, and is of good repute, so be it. I hope you will do more credit to his teaching than you have done to mine.”

  I had had a long full day, and a beating; my working chiton, which I’d put on to go shepherding, was stuck somewhere to my broken skin. While he was beating me I had hugged my secret and never cried. Now I’d had thrown at me, like a curse, the crown of my desires, it was too much. I cried out, “Oh, thank you, sir!” then clapped my hands to my face and wept.

  I only did as I must; I had no thought to punish him. Now that I’m old, I see it would have been kinder to rail or curse him. He would have known how to deal with that. When he saw me greet with tears of joy the news of my escape from him, some truth pierced his heart. He lived long enough to see me held in honor; he accepted our friends’ felicitations when I won a prize. But I always knew that in the cup of his pride those tears still lingered, like drops of wormwood. To the day of his death, he never really forgave me.

  3

  NEXT DAY I WENT to my master.

  My mother had brought out cloth from her chest, dipped in the famous red Kean dye, and had one of the women slaves make me a cloak. She even gave me a good copper brooch to fasten it, and two new tunics. Though she could not believe that any talent Theas lacked could be worth having, she had the family credit to think of. As I stood at the door with my bundle on my shoulder, she urged me to behave myself and obey my teacher; my father told me to work hard, and not try to do anything the easy way. To his mind, there was something wrong with any instruction a boy found pleasing. Theas ran after me, out of sight of home, and gave me a heavy silver double drachma.

  “Don’t let this man knock you about,” he said. “If he ill-treats you, come home. It will be one bad day with the father, and after that I’ll take care of you.” He was always a peacemaker, and not only when it saved him trouble. Even war, which he excelled at later, he never went into lightly. There are men whom Ares would have reaped on a bloody field, if my brother had not been.

  At Hagias’ farm, my coming was hardly noticed, the doctor being there to physic the sick boy. When he had gone, Kleobis, who was in need of sleep, left me to tend the sickroom. Endios had been bled, and was looking white; I had heard him cry as the knife went in. When I gave him milk, he gazed for a moment at this new ill-favored face, but was too weak to be curious. He lay with closed eyes; I sat wondering how we would get on when he was better. Soon he began to vomit and purge; he said, as I sponged him, that it was from the physic. I told him, to cheer him up, that it would drive out the evil humors; I had heard the physician say so. But I could not see, myself, that he had got much good from it.

  After supper, Kleobis sent me to my bed on the far side of the room, while he kept watch. At first the boy’s moaning disturbed me, but it quietened, and I slept with the soundness of my youth, till I felt myself shaken. I thought I was at home, with my father rousing me. But no one rebuked my laziness. Kleobis said, “Go out for a while, Sim. You can come back later.” There was a blanket drawn right over the other bed, and no movement in it.

  I had never been near a corpse except at funerals. It seemed only a moment since he’d talked to me. Two slave-women came in to wash and anoint his body, since he had no kin there. I went out over the dry summer grass, tasting its freshness after the close air inside. Light slanted over the hill, touching the topmost olive-sprays. I said to his shade—it could not have gone far yet—“I did wish it; but only for a while, and I never prayed for it. Do not be angry.”

  Later on, when I came back to Keos, I bought a carved stone for his stranger’s grave, knowing I owed it him.

  Kleobis came out to me, by the flat rock where he had stood to sing. His face was yellow and drawn with watching; the boy had not died till almost dawn. He said, “I ought to have let him go.”

  I remembered his good clothes, better than my brother’s. “But, sir, he wanted to learn from you, he wasn’t poor?”

  “Only in talent. He should have gone home, to strum a lyre at the drinking, and give his mother grandsons. But he was strong, and useful, and willing. And his father ransomed me once from pirates. I could not turn him off too soon.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Fifteen, I think. He had a beautiful treble, before it broke. When the choir went to Delos, I heard him sing the solo. Everyone said he looked like the young Apollo. His parents had always heard him praised; I could not refuse to take him.”

  In the house, one of the slave-women was wailing over the body, from kindness, or remembering grief of her own. Kleobis said, “When I saw in the brush your ugly face, my son, touched by the god, and beautiful, I thought, ‘Ah, now’s the time. I will buy Endios his passage home, in a good ship, and send word to his father that he has learned all I can teach him.’ But too late. The god did not require this sacrifice.”

  I listened gravely, and ventured no reply. Later, I’ve asked myself if Apollo’s arrow was not shot by his son Asklepios. The doctor had been the best in Iulis; but it did seem to me that the evil humors in the boy had been expelled too forcibly, when they might have left of their own accord. Truly I owed poor Endios a tomb; he has saved my life many a time. Some of my best friends have been doctors, and excellent people they were, most knowledgeable about the minds of men, whom they see when poets do not. But doctors are taught their laws, and they keep those laws if it kills you. Some of them here in Sicily come asking how a wanderer like me has kept such good health to past fourscore. I tell them this or that. It would be uncivil to say that whenever in my travels I get a touch of fever, I go quietly to bed and send for the local wise-woman.

  4

  AMONG THE TROUBLES ALL men are heir to, I have had good things from the gods. I have been honored by kings and princes and cities, and by men of my own craft, and have been pleased with it, more I daresay than men with less need of esteem. I have rejoiced in what I made: in making it, in singing it, in getting paid for it, all delightful things. But brightest of all, after nearly seventy years, shines in my memory the day I sailed from Keos.

  It was a clear morning, just wind enough to fill the sail and spare the rowers. The ship was new, the eyes on the prow fresh-painted; the cargo was clean, mostly pots and figs, and smelled as delicious to me as spices. I shouldered my master’s baggage with as much pride as a knight takes in his horse. It was the first mark of my new calling.

  When the sailors had told me where to put it, and shoved me out of their way, I stood at the rail and looked back at the harbor. It seemed like a foreign port already. I was amazed to see Theas appear and wave. He jumped aboard, paid his respects to my master, and looked about him with wistful eyes. I saw, hardly believing it, that he envied me.

  Getting me in a corner where they had finished lading, he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve never talked, not as men. I’m telling you now, never think you can’t come back here, and be somebody at home. When you’ve seen other cities, and how men live there, you’ll think we must
be poor folk. Well, we’re not poor, Sim, and we never have been. Sometime I mean to see the world myself, and I’ll not need to work my passage. Nor you. You’ve chosen a calling with plenty of ups and downs, not that I blame you. But one day there’ll be enough for both of us, I promise you that.”

  He had had thoughts like mine. Like me, he would not own to them.

  “I must go,” he said. “I’ve the thralls to mind in the tenacre. If the father sees them idling, he’ll be asking them where I am. Here.” He undid a buckle at his belt. “This is for you. You’ll likely need it sooner than I would. Don’t you be the one to start, that’s all.”

  He held out his dearest treasure, a good knife with silver studs on its horn handle. It had been a prize at the games, for throwing the disk and javelin; I had never seen him without it, except when without his clothes. He strapped it on my belt, and embraced me. Next moment we were both in tears. We had not much thought till now that we would miss each other: I a protector, a hero in whom to trust, and he a worshipper—what man is displeased with that? But we were young, we would not die of it. We wiped our eyes and parted; and Kleobis gave us the long look of a poet getting a phrase for a song.

  SAMOS

  1

  YES, I OWED ENDIOS a tomb. In death he was my benefactor.

  By Keos reckoning, Kleobis must always have been an easy master. But no one can travel without some hardship; being used to it himself, he had naturally supposed that what he could bear at sixty could not hurt a strong lad of fifteen. He took the death hard, the son of a friend and benefactor. On our voyage out, he kept going over the boy’s last days; his getting wet on the ship coming from Ephesos; his climbing up from Koressia in maybe too hot a sun, carrying a bag which was maybe too heavy; his sitting outdoors at the wedding when the fever must have been on him. The upshot of all this was that now when he had got a Kean shepherd lad, tough as a goat, he took all the care he wished he had taken before. I never once slept in an outhouse, unless by mishap he had to shake down there himself; when offered hospitality, he had me received as a guest as well. His own son could have lived no better; and my father’s son had never lived half so well.

  People think the bond between poet and pupil is forged by the holy Muse. Quite true; but nothing forges it tighter than traveling among strangers. Friends met by the way will soon pass on; on the whole, there are just the two of you. If you are out of tune, it can’t last long. But if it wears well, it will be like father and son. Closer, for me. My bloodfather saw that at the start. Well, I could not help it.

  My tasks were a game to me, compared with what I had done at home. Kleobis, sensible man, always traveled as light as his purse, only gathering stuff when he could afford to hire a donkey. We never went without clothing for heat or cold, and best clothes for a performance; but it did not weigh so heavy as a three-month lamb on the mountain.

  Had I been serving only a craftsman or a merchant, I would have found things to enjoy: steep islands, still and dark in a laughing sea; white harbors full of strange ships; a road creeping small into dark blue mountains; a pleasant inn in a poplar grove by a river; the terrible filthy inn where they tried to rob us, and I pulled out Theas’ knife. After that, Kleobis treated me like a man.

  I only missed one thing from my former life: for a long time I hated to sleep alone. My mother took against me from the moment the midwife held me up to her; once I was weaned, if I cried in the night her remedy was a slap. But Theas, who was no more than six or seven, would creep up softly and take me into bed, as he might have done a squeaking pup. Soon I would climb in of my own accord, and like a soft-hearted child with a growing pup, he let me be. So there I stayed, feeling safe with him like a dog. For months I felt restless and strange without him, and would wake in the darkness wondering where he was.

  All this was the daily bread of my life. The meat and wine were the songs.

  Excellent men, concerned with the training of youth to virtue, have begged me to declare that art is the child of labor. Well, labor must bring it forth, like everything else that lives. As I tell these people, there are women one can’t get without taking pains, or boys if you prefer them; but first you must fall in love. After that, the pains take care of themselves. So don’t bring me, I say to these worthy men, some youth who wants to know what kind of song is likely to win the crown this year; or what everyone else is singing, lest he should feel lonely. If that is all he wants, I’ve no time left to waste on him. Take him away, and apprentice him to a lyre-maker, where he may even be of use. But if you come upon someone who grabs at song like a child at a bright stone on the shore, who shapes and reshapes like a child building a sand-castle, deep in his act and lost to all around—then, never mind if his sand-castle leans sideways, just give him time. Don’t tell him that this year people are doing, or not doing, or no longer doing, this or that. Send him to me, who will protect him from fools like you, will show him the great shell-beaches and watch him at his play.

  Oh yes, I worked. Yes indeed. Looking back on my father’s last instruction, not to do things the easy way, I used to laugh aloud. In our calling, once you know where you’re going, there is no easy way; you get there, or not. Even if you aim to go no further than four lines on a dog’s tomb. Well, for that matter, I have gone a good way in four lines, and further still in two.

  However, at that age it still took me ten lines at least to say “Good dog.” All I was fit for was to learn, but at least I knew it. I gorged like a calf in a spring meadow; not only Kleobis’ lessons, but anything I could browse on along the way. Like every bard who will not let his repertoire go rusty, he would go over it quietly as we walked; and by the time he was ready to give me line by line, I had much of it in my head. I did not know, till he told me, that I had a better memory than other people; I thought one would naturally remember what one had liked to hear. To this day, there are pieces of Homer, or Sappho, or Stesichoros, which I can’t recall without some bit of road, or courtyard, or stone fountain-rim coming to mind along with them.

  This cornel-wood staff of mine—the old man’s third leg, as the Sphinx said in her riddle—when Kleobis owned it, I felt it many a time. If I spoke to him when he was composing, he didn’t interrupt himself, just gave me a rap. If I was fool enough to start begging his pardon, he hit me again, to teach me the virtue of silence. I would then mind my own business, of which I had quite enough. You don’t master the Iliad in a month, or in a year; but every day I added my few lines, like a bee bringing wax to the hive.

  I soon learned I have a certain gift of nature: that what I have learned by heart, I can call back all at once, just as one does a prospect seen with one’s eyes, not one stone or tree after another. Some philosopher, it must have been Herakleitos, once tried to explain to me the nature of this whole, which my memory hears in a moment though it would take an hour to speak it aloud. But Herakleitos would make a mystery of anything.

  Of course, a man like Kleobis did not live like some wandering minstrel, singing in markets for a supper. We never even slept at inns, unless benighted between towns. In any city, some house was always open to us, often two or three in rivalry; he had guest-friends everywhere. If he sang at a sacred festival, we might be lodged in the temple precinct. Besides all this, Kleobis had a home.

  His patrimony was at Ephesos; a farm let to a tenant, and a city house kept ready for his return by an old Karian slave-woman. She doted on him, but scolded him so freely that it was clear they’d been bedmates once. She was not yet past jealousy, though not of me; me she favored, because I was too ugly to be a rival. Getting me in a corner she would give me a fig or apricot, and try to make me tell tales. I thanked her prettily, and kept my tales to myself.

  Kleobis had a moving little song, about an old man bidding farewell to Aphrodite. I have known it make wrestlers cry. But if they thought he spoke for himself they were much mistaken. From time to time he would tell me that this evening, to reward my progress, I could play upon the kithara instead of my practi
ce lyre; he was going to visit friends and I need not wait up for him. It did not take me long to observe that this happened in cities polite enough to have some clean amusing hetairas. He was a fastidious man. I can’t recall his ever visiting a common stews. Happy to get my hands upon the kithara and sing to its seven-stringed voice, I wished him a pleasant evening, with no thought that such things would ever be my concern.

  In those years, I hardly knew that I was made like other men. I had married my art, and kept all my love for my master. I daresay I had Bouselos’ little daughter to thank, for keeping me out of the street of the women. As I grew from boy to youth, of course I was importuned as all travelers are. But each of them in turn I thought would endure me for the pay, mocking me after with some fellow whore; she must indeed be the lowest of her calling, to seek my custom at all. I had no need to master desire, while I had such thoughts to quench it, and felt only shame at these solicitations. Returning to my lyre, I would sing of royal maidens, chosen by gods to bring forth heroes. One of my lays pleased Kleobis so well that he let me sing it at an Ephesian supper-party. I got a ring of worked bronze from the host. My first fee. I have it still.

  Nowadays, friends and fellow poets will talk of my ugliness as easily as of my clothes. Mostly it is done as a kind of courtesy, meaning that I can afford it; and I take it so. Sometimes malice creeps in, but envy does not hurt a man like scorn.

  When I had been about two years with Kleobis, he urged me to visit Keos, compete at the Apollo festival, and show them what I could do. By this time I had sung several times in public, and even my own songs had been well received. My voice was well over breaking, settled into a middle tone with a good range; I performed with a growing courage. But still, at the very thought of singing before my father, the soul of a ragged shepherd boy possessed me. I said I was sure to lose, and be shamed before my kindred; and besides, if I went back too soon I might find myself betrothed again. He did not press me. The world was wider in those days. We scarcely knew how fast it was closing in.