The Last of the Wine (30 page)

I thought, “He’s not so big after all.” He stood with the hounds in cry about him, his head low, his tusks yellow against his hairy black snout. His little eyes looked round, and I saw at once he was not going to rush blindly into the net. He was an old cunning one. Lysis and I stood in our places, our spears pointed forward and downward, gripped in the right hand, guided with the left. Then Phlegon, Lysis’ biggest dog, ran in. The boar’s head jerked once; Phlegon flew kicking in the air, fell and lay still. When I saw him die, and Lysis standing there, I came to myself at last. His dogs were better than mine; they would work the game his way, and he had known it. So I shouted at the boar to make it look, and stepped towards it. At once Lysis shouted too, louder than I. But the boar had seen me first. Before I could think, “Here he comes,” he was on my spear.

I never knew before what strength meant. With his red eyes flaming he thrust towards me, squealing and trampling, trying to run himself up the spear to reach me. His weight felt more than my own. I set my teeth and leaned on the shaft; for moments that seemed hours I looked along it at his tusks and his wrinkled snout. Then quick as lightning he gave, and twisted aside. The spear turned like a live thing, and left my hands.

I felt a great astonishment, in which all was still and it seemed I could easily take back my spear again. Just in time Lysis’ voice reached me shouting, “Down! Lie down!” Used to obeying him in battle I flung myself down quite blindly; then I remembered why, and clutched the roots and small growth below me, to anchor me fast. A boar’s tusks curve upward; he must get them under before he can gore.

My fingers dug into the ground, my teeth met on bitter stalks and leaves. I felt the snout of the boar thrust at my side, and smelt his hot stink. Close by me Lysis shouted; the boar was gone. I lay with my wits scattered, then looked round. Lysis with the boar on his spearhead was fighting for his life. It was thrashing about like a demon, bearing him here and there in the tangled ground, full of hazards for the foot. My mind seemed at leisure and very clear. I thought, “If he falls, I have killed him. But I will not live to carry it in my heart.”

My spear still trailed from the boar’s shoulder. I leaped to my feet and dragged it out and, as he turned towards me, thrust it in lower, at the base of the neck. There was a great surge against my arms; I could hear Lysis pant as we thrust together. Then the boar settled, like a boulder after hurtling down a hill. His mouth opened; he grunted and was dead.

Lysis set his foot on him, drew out his spear, and drove it upright into the earth. I did the same. We stood and looked at each other across the boar. In a while he came round and took me by the shoulders. What we first said is nothing to set down. Presently we went to look at the killed dog; he lay bravely, his teeth still bared for battle, the slash of the boar on his broken neck. “Poor Phlegon,” said Lysis, “he is the sacrifice of our pride. May the gods accept him and be appeased.” Then we called the slave down from his refuge. He was in great agitation, having thought, I believe, that when we were both dead the boar would sit down to besiege him. Being now rather light-headed, we laughed at his fears; then we broke the boar, and cut off the gods’ portion, and sacrificed to Artemis and Apollo. Afterwards we sent home our spoils, with the mule and the slave.

All afternoon we sat on the hill-side, on a slope beside a spring. Below us the blue bay of Marathon washed its sea-wrack shore, with the ridges of Euboea wine-dark and clear beyond. When we had exchanged forgiveness and could scarcely believe in our former discord, I told him in part why I had gone to the mountains, saying my father had charged me with an impiety too shameful to name. He stared for a moment; then caught his breath quickly, and took my hand, and said no more. After that he was so good to me, you might have supposed I had done something wonderful, instead of hazarding his life.

The blue of the sea grew dark, the light deep and golden; shadows leaned down the eastward slopes. I said to Lysis, “Today has not run away from us, like days that are filled with nothing. They are wrong who say that only misery lengthens time.”—“Yes,” he said. “Yet the day is ending, and still too soon.”—“At the end of life do you think it is the same?”—“I suppose the man does not live who has not said in his heart, ‘Give me this, or that, and I can go content.’”—“What would you ask for, Lysis?”—“Some days one thing, and some another. When Sophokles grew old, he said the escape from love was like a slave’s from a tyrannous master.”—“How old is he?”—“Eighty years or so. We ought to be calling the dogs in; they’re all over the hill.”—“Lysis, must we go back to the City? We’ve enough meat left here; let’s cook it, and stay in the hills. Then the day will last as long as we choose.”—“See,” he said, “how near Euboea looks. It will rain tonight.” Then, as I had hoped he would, he asked me to have supper with him at home.

On reaching the City, I went in to shed my hunting leathers, and get clean. I dressed my hair, and put on my best mantle, with my worked sandals; coming to his house I found he had done the same. Soon after we had begun supper, the summer rain came down upon the City. It pattered on the terrace vine, and drummed the roof. The air grew soft, with scents of slaked dust and freshened leaves, and of drenched flowers from the market-fields beyond. We said we could hear the scorched hills we had come from, drinking their fill, and raised our cups in company. When the slave who waited had gone, we set the bronze bowl for kottabos, and threw for each other, calling toasts as we threw. Lysis made a better score and laughed at me; so I declared I would not accept the omen, and re-filled my cup to challenge him. This time I won; but he would not yield the victory; and so on, till the more my effort the worse my aim, and Lysis reaching to take my cup away, said, “My dear, you have had enough.”

“What?” I said, laughing and taking it back again. “Is my speech thick, or have you heard me talking nonsense? Or am I one of those who lose their looks at the third cup?”—“You deserve yes to that.”—“Drink up yourself, you are taller and need more to fill you. All the earth is drinking and growing beautiful, so why not we? It is to feel as I do now, that men plant the vine and press the vintage. Not only you, Lysis, look beautiful to me as always, but the whole world is beautiful. For what else was wine given us by the god?”

“Leave it so, then,” he said, “and don’t spoil it with more.”

“One more, for us to pledge each other. Have you thought, Lysis, that now my life is yours? But for you, tonight I should be who knows where? A shadow, shivering out there in the rain, or flitting about on the shores of Styx, squeaking ‘Lysis! Lysis’ in a little bat-voice too high to hear.”

“Stop,” he said. “No more, Alexias. Death comes soon enough to divide friends.”

“Here’s to life, then. You gave it me. This lamplight; the scent of flowers and rain; the wine, the garlands; your company best of all. Don’t you want me to praise your gift? I only need one thing to make me the happiest of all mankind; something to give you in return. But what would be enough?”

“I told you,” he said, “that one more would be too many.”

“I was only fooling. See, I’m as sober as you are; soberer I daresay. Tell me this, Lysis; where do you think the soul goes, when we die?”

“Who has come back to tell us? Perhaps, as Pythagoras taught, into the womb again. Into a philosopher if we have deserved it, or a woman if we were weak; or a beast or bird if we failed altogether to be men. It would be pleasant to think so, because it would be just. But I think we sleep, and never awaken.”

His sadness reached me through the wine-fumes, and I reproached myself. “Sokrates says not. He has always held the soul is immortal.”—“His may be. One can’t doubt it is made of harder and clearer stuff than other men’s, less easy to disperse.” He roused himself and smiled. “Or perhaps the gods mean to deify him, and set him in the heavens as a constellation.”—“He’d laugh at that. And draw you in the dust the Constellation of Sokrates, with two little stars for the eyes, and five or six big ones for the mouth.”—“Or reprove me for being disrespectful to the gods … One can’t tell him everything; he doesn’t understand the weakness of ordinary men.”—“No,” I said. “He has the heart of a lion; nothing frightens him, nothing tempts him aside. Seeing the good and doing it is all one to him.” And I was going on to add, “But he says it comes by daily practice, like victory at the Games.” Then I remembered, and instead of speaking lifted my cup to drink.

Presently I said, “I daresay he knows he is one to himself, and doesn’t look to others to be what he is.”—“He isn’t a man for compromise.”—“Not with himself. But he is kindly. He has learned not to expect too much.” Lysis said, “I should think Alkibiades taught him that.” He got up from his couch, and walking away stood out at the terrace.

I followed and stood beside him. “Don’t be angry with me tonight, Lysis. What is it?”—“Nothing. I have been angry with you too often without a cause. Look, the rain is over.”

A white new moon had come out of the clouds, and there were one or two stars. The garden air was fresh in our faces; behind us the supper-room smelled of bruised flowers, lamp-smoke and spilled wine. “I provoked you without cause too,” I said, “or with the same cause. There is more rain to fall; don’t you feel it, Lysis?”—“It has been a long drought,” he said.—“Too long. If the earth doesn’t drink deep, we shall have great storms, and fires upon the mountains.”—

“Well, if you had had your way, we should have been out on Pentelikon tonight.”—“I suppose,” I said, “we should have found some cave to creep into, wide enough for two.”

A laden leaf spilled its water, pattering in the vine. “It is late,” he said. “I will call a torch for you.”—“Late? It must be an hour short of midnight still. Are you treating me like a child now, because I lost my spear?”—He cried out, “Don’t you understand?” and then after a moment, below his breath, “I saw death reach out for you; and I had no philosophy.”

“You did well enough with a boar-spear,” I said, trying to make him smile. “At war we have each seen the other brushed by death, and at night have joined in the singing.”—“Shall I sing now? Singing is easy. I saw you dead, and beyond it nothing. Only toil for a burned harvest, with spring and summer lost. And now I have told you, though I never let wine loosen my tongue before. Have you heard enough? You had better be going.”

He turned from me, and walked towards the doorway, to call the slave. But running I overtook him, and caught him back by the arm.

My garland had slipped back on my hair as I ran; he put up his hand to it, and it fell behind me. I could hear the vine shedding its last heavy drops upon the terrace; the croak of a frog at the cistern beyond; and my own heart beating.

I said, “I am here.”

I
T WAS THE WINTER
after this that Lysis and I took to the sea, and sailed to the island of Samos.

Each had his reasons to leave the City. Lysis’ father died, carried off by a winter chill; and Lysis, who had sheltered him for years from the cares of a sinking estate, now could not bear to stint his tomb. He was laid among the trophies of his chariot-races; and when it was over, Lysis could afford to keep a horse no longer, unless he applied to the cavalry levy fund, which he was too proud to do.

My father grew stronger; he might yet want Phoenix back, and I did not care to wait for his asking. These days he and I walked softly, as men do in a house cracked by an earthquake.

He was now very thick with a set of oligarchs, who had the name of being rather more than homesick for the past. They came together without gaiety, like men with a common purpose; often I found the supper-room closed on them, and the slaves shut out; there was a feel in it all I did not like, over and above the presence of Kritias. If, as some said, there were men in the City who would let in the Spartans if they might hold office under them, it seemed to me they might be such as these. At my age, I might well have felt it within my rights to take it up with him; but we did not speak of serious matters any more. If he rebuked me, it was in passing for trivial things: for not growing my beard, or for sitting in the scent-shop, which indeed I only used if I found friends there already, and why does one walk in the City except to meet and talk? It was true, however, that when Lysis was not free, sometimes I would spend my time with unprofitable people, rather than go home.

Lysis was uneasy at it, yet had no Heart to blame me. We had our own life to live, which was no one else’s concern. But where both are restless, it will appear in this also; there was a certain wildness in us at this time, which broke out sometimes in violent joy, and sometimes in recklessness; in extravagant pranks at drinking-parties, or over-boldness in the field.

Sokrates never spoke of it. Indeed, I don’t think the cause was a secret from him long. Love is a boaster at heart, who cannot hide the stolen horse without giving a glimpse of the bridle. No one could have been kinder in those days than he. Without a word spoken, simply from being with him, I understood this: that while we had supposed we were doing something for him, it was he who, out of affection for us, had thought to give us some of his riches; and now he was gentle to us, as to friends who have suffered a loss.

This we knew, but did not feel it, then, within ourselves. What had defeated us was something beyond; and this, which had come after, seemed to us now a consolation and a joy. We did our duties to the gods, and were faithful together, and held each other’s honour dear. Only from this time on I found the visions of my youth grew fewer, and faded, and turned to memory. But I have been told that this is the necessary effect of years.

So things were drifting, when on a certain day I visited Asklepios, son of Apollo.

One could not go to Epidauros, because of the war; and indeed that would have been making too much of it. So I went to the little shrine in the cave, in the rocks of the High City, just below the walls. I went at evening. A fading sunlight fell on the pillars of the porch, but it was dark inside; the dripping of the holy spring sounded solemn and loud. The priest took the honey-cake I had brought, and gave it to the sacred snake in his little pit. He uncoiled himself, and accepted it; and the priest asked me why I had come. He was a dark man, thin, with long fingers; while I talked he felt my skin, and pulled my eyelids back from my eyes. I said, “It is my desire, at the next Olympic Games, to enter for the men’s long-race.”—“Thank the god, then, for good health,” he said, “and if you want a dietary, consult your trainer. This place is for the sick.” I was going away when he stopped me and said, “Wait. What is it?”