The Last of the Wine

by Mary Renault

  He said, Before you came of age, your uncle Strymon offered your stepmother the protection of his house. Why did you oppose it? He had never called her my stepmother before. I felt a chill at it, beyond all reason, so that I must have grown pale; I saw his eyes fixed on my face. Then, remembering what a homecoming I had saved him from, I grew angry, and answered, Because I thought it too soon to presume your death. I was about to go on; but before I could open my mouth again, he thrust forth his head at me like a madman, and spat out, Too soon! You had done that, both of you, soon enough!

  I stared at him, his meaning knocking at the doors of my mind, while my soul tried to close them. In the pause, there was a sound under the table. My father turned quickly and stooped down. There was a loud scream, as he dragged out little Charis. She must have been playing on the floor when he came in, and crept there out of the way. He shook her, and asked her what she meant by eavesdropping, as if she could have understood a word of what had passed. Terrified out of her senses, she struggled in his hands, and seeing me shrieked, Lala! Lala! straining towards me. Don't, Father, I said. You frighten her, let her go.

  Of a sudden he thrust her away, so that she fell at my feet. I picked her up, trying to quiet her while she sobbed and wailed. Take her then, he said, since you claim her. The child was crying in my ear; I could not believe I had heard him rightly. He strode forward, and seized each of us by the hair, holding our faces side by side; his lips showed his closed teeth as a dog's do. She is small, he said, for a child of three.

  I have seen evil in the world, and known horror, as any man must who has lived in times like these. But none of it has been to me what that moment was. Since then, the Gorgon's head has never been a children's tale to me. I felt the blood sink back upon my heart, and my limbs grow cold. It seemed that a voice of madness spoke in me, saying, Destroy him, and this will cease to be. I cannot tell what wickedness I might have done, but for the child. Prompted by a god, she did not let me forget her, but thrust her hot wet face into my neck, and clutched my hair. I moved my hand over her body to calm her, and came partly to myself. Sir, I said, you have suffered much hardship; I think you are sick. You ought to rest, so I will leave you.

  I walked out into the courtyard with my sister in my arms. There I stood still, looking before me. It seemed that if I did not move, I could remain as stone, and know nothing. But this sleep was not permitted to me. The child broke it, speaking in my ear. She was saying that she wanted her mother.

  I bent and set her on her feet. Calling the maid Kydilla, who was passing through, I told her to take the child in, and find her mother for her. For she had a right to what was hers. Then I walked out into the street.

  At first, if I had any clear thought, it was only to find a place to be quiet in. But as I moved on through the City, seeking it in vain, the movement itself became needful to me; I walked faster and faster; I was like a man trying to leave his shadow behind. Presently passing through the Acharnian Gate I was out of the City. Then, the need pressing me more strongly, I girded my mantle up, and began to run.

  I ran through the level plain between the City and Parnes. I did not go very fast; for I knew in myself I must run far, and my training worked in me though I did not regard it. The high wall of Parnes rose before me, pale with the summer drought; bleached grass and dark scrub and grey rock, standing against a hard dark sapphire sky. I reached the footslopes and ran between the olive fields, where poppies splashed the barley-stubble with blood. At last hearing a stream below me in a gulley, I felt thirst, and climbed down the rocks to drink. It was shady after the heat of the road, the water cool and fresh; I lingered there, when I should have hastened on. By this I learned that what I had been flying from was madness; for there it overtook me.

  The form of my madness was this: that the sin I had been charged with, I was guilty of, at least in my soul. As in the terror of this thought I climbed up from the stream and began to run over the mountains, all sense fled from me, and it seemed I had committed it in my body also. Sometimes my mind would partly right itself, and I would throw off this last frenzy; yet I never really came into my wit. Who can doubt it was the judgment on my impiety, in destroying my father's letter, and disobeying his command? For I could not see, what any man in his senses must have seen, that being beside himself he had been carried to an absurdity which he must perceive already; that a dozen of our acquaintance could bear witness to the time of Charis's birth; that Strymon himself, who though mischievous was not a villain, would have testified for me in this at least. I only felt myself accursed by heaven and among men. So I hastened on, deeper into the hills and higher, into the wild country above the farms; climbing, and running where there was any place to run. My legs were torn by the heath and scrub, my feet bruised upon the stones. Once a troop of Spartans sighted me; but they took me for a runaway slave making for Megara, and rode past.

  At last I came into the high places, where nothing is to be seen but dry stony tops and deep gorges, and far-off rock-shapes shuddering in the heat. I felt no hunger. Sometimes I felt thirst, but I was loth to stay and quench it, for I knew myself pursued; so that I began to look round for what hunted me, seeking to surprise it. The sunburnt mountain was the colour of a wolf's pelt, and once I thought I saw one move. But it was the wind playing with a bush; it was not wolves that trailed me.

  The sun shone brightly; but after the noontide, the wind blew small dark clouds across the sky, whose shadows hovered, and swooped like ravens down the slopes of the mountains. At first when I saw what followed me, I seemed to see only such a cloud as this, coming up behind. I had now run far in the summer heat, and climbed high; my breath came loudly, my legs began to fail, and my tongue was as dry as a dusty shoe. I saw water before me flowing down from a spring, and flinging myself on the earth drank as a beast does. As I lay there, I felt the cold that ran before the cloud; and looking up I saw them.

  They were not in the cloud, but in the shadow of the cloud, running over the brush and the little stones towards me. Their faces and their feet were blue like the night; their garments were without substance, sometimes showing their dark limbs, sometimes the ground behind them. With a shout of horror I leaped to my feet, and fled; and now I knew that what I had taken only for the noise of my labouring breath, had been the hiss of the snakes that twined and darted in their hair. As I ran I prayed; but my prayer fell back like a spent arrow; I knew I was given to them for my sin, as Orestes was given, and no god would save me. Yet I ran, like the hunted wolf, who runs not in hope nor thought but because he is made so.

  I do not know how long I ran. As they gained on me I began to hear their voices, like the cry of a mixed pack, some deep, some high; and the snakes hissing, back and forth. Then as I was running downhill, I heard one shout, Now! and reach out towards me. I leaped forward, and missing my footing rolled down the mountain-side. I think my senses left me. But in time level ground checked my falling. I got up, wondering that I could stand, for I had thought that all my bones were broken. I stood swaying on my feet; the hillside was dark behind me, and before me was something pale, on which the late sun was shining. Those, whom it is better always to call the Honoured Ones, I could not see any more. But I felt that I was dying; so perceiving that what stood before me was the shrine of a god, I went forward till I reached the steps before the precinct. Then my eyes blackened, and I fell.

  I awoke to feel water on my face, and found an old man beside me. He wore on his white hair a garland of laurel; and, my senses coming back to me, I saw he was the priest of the shrine. At first I could not speak to him; but he gave me water to drink with wine in it; in a little I could sit up, and return his greeting. I looked over my shoulder the way I had come; but the Honoured Ones had withdrawn from me.

  He saw me looking, and said, You have run far; your clothes are torn, you are bruised and bleeding and dabbled with mire. Have you shed blood, and do you come for sanctuary? If so, come into the holy place; for Apollo cannot protect you outside. And
he bent to raise me. His hands were old, but dry and warm, and there was healing in them. I said, I have shed no blood. Better I had shed my own; for my eyes have seen my heart, and its light is turned to darkness for ever. — There is a labyrinth, said he, in the heart of every man; and to each comes the day when he must reach the centre, and meet the Minotaur. But you have not profaned anything sacred to a god, or killed under a pledge of safety, or committed incest? I shuddered, and said, No. — Come, then, poor boy, he said, and set me on my feet.

  If he had not been strong for his years, he could not have brought me the little way to his house; for my knees failed under me as we went, and but for his arms I should have fallen. His wife being an old woman appeared before me, and helped him to lay me on a bed. She gave me soup to drink, and took away my garment; they washed me, and cleaned my wounds with wine and oil, and covered me with a mantle. It was like being a child again in my grandmother's house. Last he gave me a hot spiced posset, with poppy in it; as soon as my wounds ceased smarting from the wine, I fell asleep.

  I slept through the evening and the night, and on till almost noonday. Then I put on the mantle they had laid over me, and went out. I felt tired and sore; my limbs moved heavily, but they were sound. The sanctuary stood beside a cleft in the mountains, with a steep hill above it on which pine-trees grew. One could see a great way down the gorge, to the plain and the sea. It was the kind of place Apollo loves. But the beauty of the morning was strange to me, and I saw that it was good only for other men.

  The priest, seeing me up, came down from the shrine, which was a small one, made of a silver-coloured stone. He brought me back to the house, and put food before me, not questioning me at all, but telling me how the shrine had been founded, by one to whom the god had appeared in that spot. When I had eaten, he asked if I would like to see the sanctuary; for, he said, the image of the god is very beautiful; though this place is hard to come at, people journey a long way to see it, having been told of it by others. It is not as old as the shrine; indeed, I was here myself at its dedication. Pheidias made it, the statuary of Athens.

  Out of civility I went with him, with my commendations ready made, because of his kindness; for I could not care for anything. But when I saw the statue, I found he had been too cold in its praise. The god was represented as in early manhood, a glorious youth, of nineteen or twenty years, his face most noble, mingled of grace and power. A blue chlamys hung on his shoulder, and his left hand held the lyre. As I looked, for a while I forgot even what brought me there.

  The priest said to me, You are admiring the image as if astonished; and indeed, it is not as well known as it ought to be. But the same thing happens to those who come full of expectation. You have been told, I daresay, that after Pheidias had brought his art to full perfection, he worked no more from the living model. He waited on the inspiration of the gods. But while he was carving this, there was a certain young knight, of a beauty, he said, almost divine, whom he would ask sometimes to come as a service to the god, and strike the pose for him. Then letting the young man go, he would meditate, and pray to Apollo, and afterwards begin to work.

  I looked again, and thought both Pheidias and the youth must have been visited by some vision; for it seemed that this and no other was the very form and face of the god. I asked if he knew who had posed for the work. Certainly, he said; it is common knowledge, and though you are young you will surely have heard of the man, for it is only a few years since his name was in everyone's mouth: Myron son of Philokles, whom they call The Beautiful.

  My mind was silent, like fallen snows in a still air. I stood, and gazed. Then, as winter's white comes crashing down the mountainside and runs away in water, grief fell upon me for all mortal men, so great that my body would scarcely hold it. I had no care that the priest stood there beside me; but, remembering presently that I was in the presence also of the god, I lifted my arm, and covered my face with my mantle as I wept.

  After a while, the priest touched my shoulder, and asked me why I was weeping. But I could find nothing to say to him. You wept, he said, when I told you the name of the youth. Perhaps he has died, or fallen in battle? I shook my head, but could not speak. He paused, and said, My child, I am old, and time stands still for me; nor do I fear death as an evil, more than one fears sleep after a full day. Pray rightly, that at each time of your life your desires may be comfortable, and do not fear; old age will come not to you, but to another whom the gods will make ready. And as for the youth you grieve over, he is fortunate, since his beauty having become the dwelling of a god lives on in this temple, as well as in his sons.

  I bowed my head, honouring his wisdom. Yet he had not reached my grief; and to this day, though I have read many books, I have found no words for it.

  All that day I rested there, and the next, and the night following; for my strength was slow in returning. On the last evening, when the lamp was lit and the old woman was cooking supper, I told him what I had been accused of, and that I did not know where to go. He told me I must go home, and the god would protect my innocence. Then, seeing my eyes fall, he said, A certain man went a long journey, leaving his money in the charge of a friend. On returning, he got back all he had left in trust, and was satisfied. If it were found that the friend, while the money was in his house, had been in want, would he be honoured less among men, or more? — It is not the same, I said.— It is the same to the gods. Believe in your own honour, and men will do so too.

  So, early next day, I set off for the City. Though a good way, it was not so far as I had come, for I had wandered to and fro on the mountains. I returned at evening, a little before the lighting of the lamps. The priest's wife had mended the rents in my mantle, and washed it, so that I looked more like myself, though somewhat bruised from the fall. As I came into the courtyard, I saw the lamp begin to shine from indoors. I waited outside for a while; but the dogs knew me, and ran up making a noise; so then I went in.

  My father was seated at the table, reading. As he raised his eyes, my stepmother came in from the kitchen. She looked at him, not at me, and waited. He said, Come in, Alexias; supper is almost ready, but you have time for a bath first, I daresay. Then, turning towards her, Has he time? — Yes, she said, if he is not too long. — Hurry then; but as you go, bid goodnight to your sister. She has been asking for you.

  So we sat down to eat, and talked of matters in the City; and what had passed was never spoken of again. What he had said to my stepmother while I was gone, or she to him, I never knew. But as time went by, I saw there had been a change. Sometimes I would hear her say to him, The evening will be cool; your cloak is not thick enough ; or Don't let them give you the spiced meat that kept you awake last time. He would say, What's that? or Well, well! but he would obey her. I had not perceived that he always treated her as a girl, till now when I saw him treat her as a woman.

  How this had come about, I never knew; nor, I think, did I wish to know. It was enough that nothing would be again as it was before.

  19

  during the time that followed this, I was much in the City, and little at home. There was a great emptiness within me; I was always glad to be in company, and did not always wait to find the best.

  I could not speak of what had happened, even to Lysis. But some hint at least I would have given him, if he had not asked me in anger where I had been, and reproached me with leaving no word for him. Natural as this was, yet being still not myself I felt he had failed me at need, and only said shortly that I had been hunting. Alone? he asked. I told him yes. Seeing I had lied, I need not have been injured by his disbelief; yet I felt it an injury.

  After this, though needing him more now than ever before, from being thoughtless I grew to be unkind. I often tormented him, well knowing what I did; saying to myself that his baseless jealousy deserved to be punished. Then lonely and wretched, and full of shame, I would return to him, as if this were to undo the past, or as if I had treated lightly a man without pride. At his first coldness I would le
t fly, and it would all begin again. Sometimes out of longing for his company I would beg his pardon, or set out to get round him in spite of himself, and we would be reconciled. But it was like the clouded gaiety of fever. At parting he would ask me with forced carelessness what I meant to do next day and whom I was seeing. I would laugh, and give him some slight answer; later, alone at night, I would have given anything to have parted friends, and could not think what had possessed me. For often in company, or with the troop about us, I would look at him knowing the world held nothing so dear; if at that moment we could be alone, it seemed, there would be no cloud between us. And I even thought he felt the same.

  While I was with Sokrates, I could always stand aside and see my folly. Yet I did not come to him for counsel. When one day I could bear myself no longer, it was to Phaedo that I turned.

  By chance I found myself lying next him at the hot-bathhouse. It was Kydon's place, an irreproachable establishment. When the bath-man had done with us, and we were waiting for the masseur, we drew up our couches and talked. It is a place, one finds, for loosening the tongue, and I found my troubles pouring out with my sweat. He listened, lying on his belly, his head on his folded arms, looking round at me through his fair hair. Once he seemed about to interrupt me, but was silent, and heard me out. At the end, he said, You're not serious, are you, Alexias, when you say you can't understand all this? — Why, yes; for I don't think either of us really cares any less for the other. Indeed, I think . . . He pushed the hair out of his eyes to look at me, then let it fall back. Well, he said, if you can't understand it, it must be because you don't wish to; and for all I know you may be right. No, I can't tell you what to take for the pain, Alexias; I am not the doctor you are needing; you know I never pretended to know anything of love. Why don't you ask Sokrates? I said I would think of it. I did not choose to ask him what he meant.