Gryllus' colleagues heard the commotion first, and peering through the crowd one of them asked dryly, "Gryllus, isn't that your boy riding that ape's shoulders?" Gryllus looked up in dismay at his son's noisy arrival, accompanied by the tittering of the surrounding onlookers. The tear tracks still shone on Aedon's dusty cheeks as he smiled down at us in relief, his eyes glistening. Gryllus' expression, however, remained as stony as I had ever seen it. He gingerly reclaimed his offspring from Otus and tossed a piece of silver to the hirsute, malodorous giant, who ostentatiously waved it in the air like a victor's spear, bellowing out his thanks. Gryllus graciously took his leave from his peers and walked us straight home, nodding and smiling at passersby, but keeping a death grip on the backs of our necks. "Aedon!" I hissed. "Your father told me to watch out for you. Now look what you've done!"-but neither of us was able to pursue the argument further because Gryllus tightened his grasp on our necks. I received a sound thrashing from him that night, though the punishment was mild compared to Aedon's. To him, Gryllus offered not a word. Not a touch, not a gesture. Only a brief glance of disdain and disappointment, and in the morning he was gone, back to the war. Though it was my buttocks that burned, it was Aedon who cried himself to sleep for many nights afterward, despite my many attempts to convince him of his father's true concern for him.
But to return to the alley where I had tripped: My later questioning of Aedon told me precisely what happened after he had sped on ahead of me. When rounding a corner, he was suddenly brought up short by a cane held horizontally across his path. He tried merrily to dive under it, but the cane's owner deftly parried his move, and gave him a swat across the chest for good measure. Aedon tried to squirm around the tip of the cane, but the owner merely projected it further, impaling its tip in a crack in the crumbling mortar of the narrow alley's opposite wall. Having trapped the boy's forward progress, the cane was then used like a shepherd's rod to nudge him from side to side until his back was against the wall with the cane pressing him from the side against his belly. At his size and age Aedon could have easily pushed the tip away from his body and broken free, but suddenly, with a deft movement, the canes-man slipped the rod behind his knees in such a way-I still wonder at the speed-that with a slight upward jerk of his wrist both the boy's legs slipped out from under him and he landed with a grunt, flat on his buttocks. Aedon looked with astonishment at the cane as it disentangled itself from his legs, and slowly followed its length up to the junction with its owner, who possessed a knotted, gnarled old hand like that of an ancient soothsayer. This in turn was attached to a burly wrist and a hairy, scarred arm-an arm that, in its day, must have seen a good deal of fighting, though with a sword rather than a thin wooden stick, and against Spartans and Thebans rather than cocksure young boys.
Aedon's eyes continued to travel up the cane-wielder's arm until he came to a most remarkable visage, that of a man he had often seen in the agora, talking to groups of young men. The face was the exact image of Marsyas the satyr, whose bronze image on the Acropolis I had often laughed at and pointed out to Aedon. The man's eyes were bulbous and protruding, his nose broken like that of a boxer, and his thick lips split his deeply creased face across the middle like one of those overripe Ephesian plums you sometimes find in the marketplace on festival days. His cranium was completely smooth and bald on top, with greasy wisps of white hair hanging down the sides and back in long strings. His tattered, ill-fitting tunic, the stains of which clearly showed the contents of his breakfast that morning and for the past several days, did little to hide the enormous belly that protruded over two spindly legs which were completely hairless, like those of some enormous, ungainly bird.
Like the old soldier that he was, the man paused to critically survey his catch, and his eyes, for all the homely aspect of the rest of him, twinkled merrily as he spoke. "Begging your pardon, lad," he chuckled, as if apologizing for having accidentally trapped Aedon in a narrow alley and tripped him flat onto his back with a wooden rod. "But I was wondering if you could tell me where I might purchase some turnips?"
The boy stared, astonished at this odd question. He considered the man's query carefully, looked around to see if there was any immediate escape, and resigning himself to the fact that there was none, he piped up in his sing-song voice, "Yes, sir. The first stalls as you enter the market from the south end sell all manner of fruits and vegetables. Surely you will find turnips there."
The man grunted in assent, but remained standing where he was, the cane hovering menacingly over the boy's head as he assimilated this response, slowly and somewhat densely. It was at this point that I came running up, panting and sweating, and stopped in astonishment at the sight of this fat, odd-looking gentleman standing over my ward. He looked deeply into my face, and I averted his gaze with a scowl, but then saw the man's eyes again turn to Aedon, who held his stare unblinkingly. A trace of a smile was beginning to form on the boy's lips.
"And where," the man continued, "might I find some of that good Attic peasant bread, the flat round kind, still warm from the hearth?"
This response was easy, for Aedon had just swiped some of the very same bread that morning, a crust of which, I saw, was still tucked into his belt for an afternoon snack. It was no doubt the view of this crust that had prompted the old man's query.
"Why, on the street of the bakers, of course," he replied. "Not all the shops sell the Attic flat bread you want, but the third shop on the left most certainly does, and you can be sure of its quality." He grinned, and this time the man openly returned it, ignoring me completely, and gazing in frank, almost fatherly admiration at Aedon for his quick and articulate reply. I saw passersby out of the corner of my eye, squeezing between the wall and the old man, glancing at us briefly and then smiling as they continued on their way, shaking their heads, in what? Exasperation? Pity? For the old satyr or for us? The man lowered his cane to its normal position, standing it upright next to him, and Aedon scrambled to his feet, though not without some degree of caution lest he again end up flat in the dust. I seized his forearm and spoke to him harshly.
"Aedon, let's go! Your father expects us to be at our lessons now…" and I began tugging him back out of the alley in the direction whence we had come. He started to turn, but at the mention of his father he impatiently shook off my hand and stood looking at the old man, his face open and full of expectation.
"One more question for you, youngster, if you have the time to spare," said the strange man. Aedon was already planning his response, prepared to show off his gift of speech as he so often did for his father's friends when they tossed him easy questions that he knew he could answer. "Where might men go to become good and honorable?"
Aedon's face clouded in confusion and then in disappointment, as he found himself at a complete loss for words.
"You don't know?" said the man. "Pity, a smart lad like you. Come with me, and I will show you."
That afternoon, the old tutor sat fuming in Gryllus' house, waiting in the gathering darkness for a student who did not arrive. Aedon and I had trudged to the agora with the strange old man, and spent the rest of the day there with him and his followers. The boy's education as a disciple of Socrates had begun.
CHAPTER THREE
ANTINOUS WAS A hulking youth, shoulders as broad as a temple column and as solid. Legs like tree trunks supported a thick torso quite unlike the artistic ideal, but the effect was not uncomely: His abdomen was the same circumference as his chest, lending him a stolid, almost sinister aspect considerably more unnerving than that of the sculptor's favored triangle-shaped taper. Though he was by no means tall, his girth seemed to lend him height beyond his actual endowment. This was complemented by a head and face in keeping and proportion with the rest of his build: a heavily ridged brow and jutting jaw, though not to exaggerated effect; and a nose of a surprising length and evenness, surprising, I say, because of his profession, which more often yielded a proboscis laying crazily to the bias, or one with odd bumps of cartilage sk
ewing its balance.
The twenty-two-year-old athlete's expertise was pancration, the all-in, no-holds-barred wrestling that combined kicking, boxing, and strangling. The sport was fanatically popular in Athens, though of an incredible brutality-favorite maneuvers included breaking the fingers, kneeing the groin, or twisting a knee out of its socket. There was a whole series of moves devoted to strategic thumb insertions. Biting and eye-gouging were forbidden, but this rule was only sporadically enforced. Antinous' skill at the sport was such as to have once earned him a temporary exemption from military training, during which he had worked with the city's most renowned athletic trainers in a bid to win the laurel crown in this event at the Olympic games. Unfortunately, he had been disabled only days before the event when a clumsy servant girl spilled a pan of sizzling oil on the back of his right shoulder, disabling him for months and leaving a profoundly ugly, puckered pink scar, as broad as a man's hand. Despite a daily application of salves and poultices, the skin had never healed properly; the scar tissue had thickened and periodically cracked, like a horny callus on a foot, seemingly stretched too tight for the area it covered. Its extreme sensitivity precluded him from ever again becoming a champion wrestler, and this blow to his aspirations hastened his return to common barracks life-but not before catching the expert eye of Gryllus.
If Aedon was the son that Gryllus was surprised to have begotten, Antinous was the one he felt he deserved, and shortly after the wrestler's return, Gryllus, a former pancration athlete himself, hired him at a stupendous fee to visit the house thrice weekly to supplement Aedon's regular gymnasium training. A makeshift sandpit was constructed in a little-used back courtyard separated from the rear alley by a crumbling stone wall, and this became Aedon's small circle of torture whenever Antinous visited. Stark naked, they practiced, wearing only stout leather thongs wrapped around their fists to protect the thin skin of the knuckles, the boy's pale, hairless body contrasting harshly with Antinous' scarred, heavily muscled torso.
At first the athlete's training methods stunned Aedon-the conditioning exercises alone were enough to crush any mortal. Antinous stretched the boy's tendons and muscles to a point that left him gasping in pain, to just short of actually tearing the tissue, his vision blurring as he struggled to keep from fainting; Aedon felt as if his skin were being ripped like poorly woven cloth. Weight training left his triceps and pectorals quivering spasmodically, as Antinous taunted and cursed him.
"One more, you sniveling ass-wipe! My nine-year-old sister could press more than that. Push!"
Aedon would collapse on his belly during push-ups, the dust from the pit mixing with his spittle to form a dirty ring around his anguished mouth. Antinous would stand straddling him, lifting him from above by the chest, forcing him to do yet more push-ups with only three-quarters of his body weight, then with one-half as Aedon's arms weakened further until finally, at the point of complete muscular failure, the boy dropped flat again. Three minutes' rest, then another set of the same, and another, until he was unable even to rise, but lay panting and drenched with sweat, glaring at his trainer with hate-filled eyes while Antinous leaned against the wall, absent-mindedly scratching his bearish chest.
I performed the exercises with him, both in a show of solidarity and to strengthen my own limbs, but Antinous ignored me, a mere slave, and Aedon did too-this was a battle he preferred to endure alone. At night, after Antinous had left and Aedon had recovered somewhat through my careful massage of his tortured muscles, he would rail at his father's cruelty, to my calm protests as to Gryllus' genuinely good intentions. Aedon swore he would stay in the house not a day longer, that he would run away as soon as he was able to stand again-but the next day, as his burning muscles began to heal, he relaxed his determination to defy his father and simply set his face grimly to survive the next session.
Several months of such efforts left little visible effect on his body-he was still the slight, somewhat pretty youth he always had been-but considerably improved his tolerance for pain. When Antinous was convinced that the conditioning was beginning to have the desired effect, he advanced to the next stage: actual training in pancration.
For this he brought a helper, his younger brother, two years older than Aedon. This boy was much thinner than Antinous, and though strong and rangy, he lacked his sibling's rugged handsomeness. More simian in appearance, already showing a coating of dark body hair and a coarseness about the jaw line, he had long, swinging arms that draped almost to his knees when relaxed. The boy's brain was addled-his eyes stared dully, he spoke only with great effort, and he was forever sporting a foolish grin, despite the quantities of loathsome epithets his brother would rain down on him for his slowness and stupidity. Antinous refused even to call the lad by name, as if he considered him too stupid and animal-like to deserve one-he referred to him simply as Boy, seemingly unwilling even to acknowledge the blood relationship. At heart, Boy was a peaceful enough sort, believing his sole mission in life was to please Antinous, whom he followed like a puppy. He had little talent in the more refined techniques of the martial art; still, he was fast and strong and had assimilated enough to be dangerous, and he was useful for humbling beginners. As Boy pummeled Aedon unmercifully, Antinous watched with a critical eye, flogging them indiscriminately with his "donkey-beater," the stout rod used by referees to separate clinching opponents. On one of Gryllus' short leaves from his duties, he asked to view a session to gauge his son's progress. He instructed Antinous to do nothing special, but to conduct the training in the usual fashion, while Gryllus sat quietly on a stool in the corner of the courtyard. Aedon glanced once at his father, then glowered and pawed the sand, bracing himself for the signal to begin sparring.
At the clap, Aedon stepped gingerly toward his opponent, and after two swift feints dove quickly in at Boy's knees in a two-legged take-down. The bigger boy sprawled, throwing his feet out behind him to deny Aedon a grip on his thighs, then leaned the weight of his torso on Aedon's shoulders, flattening him on his face into the sand. Antinous flogged Boy on the back to stop the match and disgustedly motioned for them to get up. Gryllus watched impassively.
Antinous again gave the signal to start the match. Aedon circled warily around Boy before again dropping swiftly to one knee and diving beneath his swinging arms for a one-legged take-down, hoping to trip Boy onto his back. Before he had even touched the other's leg, however, Boy brought his knee up sharply into Aedon's face, nailing him squarely on the jaw with a sharp crack and dropping him heavily like a sack of barley thrown by a stevedore. He lay motionless and I glanced over at Gryllus, who did not rise, but whose eyes narrowed as he watched his son closely. Antinous sauntered over and roughly jerked Aedon to his feet.
"You'll live," he said harshly, after briefly examining Aedon's eyes and swelling lip where he had bit himself. It was the most tenderness I had ever seen Antinous express.
Again and again Aedon dove for take-downs, and Gryllus watched as his son's face was driven into the dirt, or he was thrown onto his back, or suffered Boy's knee driven sharply into his kidney. Each time he lay senseless for a moment before again staggering gamely to his feet, his face bloodied and his eyes swollen almost shut. After shaking his head to clear his gaze, he would stare pointedly at his father, as if trying to memorize every detail of his face, before returning to his corner of the ring and glaring fiercely at Boy. Antinous began to worry that this was not the display of skills he had been hoping to show Gryllus, but rather a show of dumb, brute determination more indicative of pure stubbornness and stupidity than of any better quality.
"Lesson's over," Antinous grunted several times, hoping to see Aedon's usual slump of relief. Each time, however, the boy shook his head silently and resolutely returned to his corner for yet another round. Antinous stared at him in exasperation. "Keep your head up then," he would say, or, "You've got to get your hooks in before he throws you. I'll bust your nose myself if you don't start using your fucking brains out there."
Gryllus
shifted restlessly on his seat as his son's face swelled beyond recognition. Boy grinned stupidly after each of Aedon's ill-fated forays against him. Antinous, however, had had enough. It would not do to have a student killed in front of his own father. I saw the trainer catch Boy's eye and nod to him slowly, in a signal with which both were familiar. Aedon wavered unsteadily on his feet, but still moved gamely into the center of the ring and made a fierce lunge. Boy stepped aside deftly and kicked out sideways, and Aedon, his feet tripped out from beneath him and his hands grasping only air, crumpled into the dirt with a grunt and a dazed, confused expression in his eye.
Boy quickly made his move. Pressing his sweaty chest against Aedon's back in the ladder-grip, his legs wrapped around his opponent's stomach and his bicep around his neck, with his free hand he pressed Aedon's head forward, cutting off the air supply. Aedon's eyes bulged even through their swelling, and his tongue emerged from his split lips as his legs twitched helplessly. He flailed his arms wildly above and behind him, seeking to hook anything-hair, nostrils-in a desperate bid to remove Boy's arm from his throat. In his struggle, he somehow managed to seize Boy's ear-lobe with his fingernails, ripping it from its tenuous attachment to the side of his head. Howling in pain, Boy dropped him and backed away, his mouth working soundlessly in bewilderment, then his eyes narrowing in fury.
Aedon scrambled to his feet as well, suddenly energized by this unexpected success, and carefully circled Boy as the other eyed him ruefully and rubbed his bloodied ear. The two opponents locked eyes, Aedon's muscles quivering in fatigue and tension. Gryllus, I saw, had straightened up and was now watching the match intently, as the two boys froze momentarily, testing each other's reflexes, each daring the other to strike.
The Ten Thousand Page 4
