Voices from the Past Part 34

"What's to become of you?"

"Let me go," he said.

"I'll see you home. Here, Thasos, take his arm. Thasos, were you mad?"

"We should have stoned him."

"Why?"

"He quarreled with Alcaeus-spat on him."

Alcaeus leaned on me and I sensed his weariness as if it were mine: he was breathing hard and had to rest, stopping again and again. Behind us, his madman wandered, his Pamphilus.

"I'm too old for this kind of horseplay, it seems."

Thasos and I were saddened by his tragic features; we frowned; minute wrin- kles had enlarged and deepened; his hands trembled; his mouth was open. He seemed in the past, with his men, galled, waiting: What is memory for, I asked myself, to crucify? Shut off from the day, is this the best memory can do?

When I sat with him at home, I said:

"What was the quarrel about?"

"First, some water."

Thasos brought us water. The cool of his gourd helped.

"Pittakos has stolen from the city...again...I came at him with the facts...I know the truth...many of us know."

We remained silent a while, my hand in his.

"It's an old truth-for us," I said.

"Very old," he said.

Presently, the madman entered, carrying himself stiffly, chalk faced, chastised.

Oblivious of us, appearing more normal than any time I had seen him, he talked with Thasos, regretting the incident.

Soft-talking men, inside an inner room, brought home to me the. innocence of our own lives, how based on impulse, how like kelp, twisting, sinking, headed for sh.o.r.e, dragged to sea: we are mad, we are sane, or between: we exert our- selves and the world seeks revenge; we accept and earn ridicule and belittlement: we affirm ourselves and alter our lives and the lives of others: war is such an affirmation.

Innocence? Why not call all life innocent because dependability can not be a.s.sured. And, if life is innocent, then what is there but compa.s.sion and patience and kindness and beauty and love?

"It would have been better if they had killed him," Alcaeus said, rubbing his hands over his face.

I said nothing.

"I could have him murdered," he said.

"Alcaeus...wait..."

"WAIT? HOW MUCH LONGER MUST WE WAIT?"

"He's old."

"Are we children?"

"He knows what's happening."

"No-not even yet."

"That couldn't be."

I saw Pittakos by the sea, spray dampening his clothes, his mouth to the gulls: I saw him, hand over eyes, legs spread; I heard stones. .h.i.tting him... I could take no more and saying good-bye to Alcaeus, I walked home, eager to be alone, for now the town seemed withdrawn, callous, incomplete, a failure. I touched a hollow in a wall and picked a leaf and, where a street opened on the bay, looked and looked: the sea's salty taste acted as a philter and years of contentment and ease surged about me, trying to reinstate themselves: my girls met me and we went home together, sharing our innocence.

Just the other day, I dreamed of Serfo's place, his fabrics around me, things from a.s.syria, Egypt and Persia.

Some of the cloth blew against me, light as a Sudanese veil. Atthis had a length of it in her hands, a twisted flowered piece yards long.

"I'll make ribbons for your hair," she said.

Alone, I sank into patterns, colors and textures.

Something brushed my cheek, a winged bull in gold on blue cotton... I saw an imperial snake in green on white silk, a mighty roc in black on grey wool... I heard friends asking prices, Anaktoria, Libus.

I heard mother say:

"This is the best, this one, darling, with temples and s.h.i.+elds on it, this blue, soft blue! Don't you love it?

Here, take it in your hands, press it to your face."

I saw s.h.i.+ps and listened to their keels...sailors unloading bales...wasn't that a remnant on the water?