I never saw any of my comrades again. A few days later they were trapped in a valley and slaughtered. The Arcadians didn’t sell me. Instead, they built a litter for me, let the blood run, then sewed up my thigh with tent stitchings. They cleaned the wound with powdered linseed and boiled leaves of fig, also olive, horehound, epipetrum. Wrapped my leg in a cloth soaked with boiled lentil and wine and trefoil. They carried me from camp to camp, slowly making their way across the Sicilian plain to Gela, where they hoped to find a friendly ship back to the Peloponnese.
I remember his smell, the man who fed me figs from his hands.
Anytus had stopped talking and stared at the dirt floor. Pyrrhias stood up and slowly moved around the cabin, naked and white. More wood for the fire. Outside, the rain was letting up. The low drum roll on the roof had diminished.
They carried me across the plains to Gela. We ate dried figs and what we could find in the plains, small animals and plants, lizards, birds. It took us five days. They intended to sell me back to my family when we reached the Peloponnese. One morning, at dawn, I heard chimes. We went through a valley shaped like an eagle. In Gela, the Arcadians boarded the first ship traveling east and, in their haste and exhaustion, left me lying on the floor of a lampmaker’s shop. I promised the owner a half-talent of silver, and he fed me for a week. An Eretrian vessel took me to Sunium.
When I got back to Athens, dragging my bad leg, the city greeted me as a hero. They believed nothing I said about Sicily. They did not believe that Nicias and Demosthenes had been killed. They did not believe that fifty thousand men had been slaughtered or captured. A hundred Athenian ships lost. They believed nothing except that I was a hero. After a while, I wanted to be what they wanted. Prodicus, a small boy then, marched around the house with my shield and begged to sail with me against the Chians.
Anytus spit out a thin hollow laugh. He removed a burning stick from the fire and held its glowing sharp point just above the scar tissue on his thigh. Pyrrhias quickly snatched away the stick. He could not look the other man in the eyes.
“Can you believe that Prodicus once thought I was a hero?” said Anytus. “Now he despises me. I hardly know him. He’s a grown man now. I hardly know my own son, Pyrrhias. He is my flesh and blood.”
“Master.” Pyrrhias paused. “I wish I had been with you in Sicily.”
Anytus smiled sadly. He listened and heard silence. “The rain has stopped. What do you suppose is the hour?”
THE EXECUTION
It was early that evening as Anytus reclined on one of the couches in the men’s dining room of his house, drinking from a painted earthenware cup. He was alone. Next to his elbow sat a table of inlaid wood and pink ivory, bearing a large bronze vessel of undiluted wine. He had finished his dinner, without company, and the fish bones and fruit peelings still littered the marble floor. Slowly, his chin sank to his chest, his grip on the cup began to go slack. A trickle of wine spilled on his chest.
He was gazing up at the painted designs on the ceiling, bright from the light of a dozen oil lamps, when Pyrrhias returned from the prison. The slave entered the dining room and stood anxiously in front of Anytus. “He is dead.”
“Were you seen?” asked the tanner.
“No, Master, I was not. I hid in the cell next to the sophist’s. I could see through cracks in the walls.” “Tell me everything.”
Pyrrhias bit off a piece of bread that was his supper and began talking rapidly. To begin with, there was no trace of the Twine. No body, no blood on the floor of the prison. Possibly, some of the sophist’s followers had secretly taken care of everything. Attendants discovered the night jailor lying on the stone floor and carelessly attributed his death to a drunken fall.
The executions took place just before sunset. There were two. The Eleven sent a message that the Megarian should drink the poison first. He refused. When an attendant entered his cell with the cup, the prisoner burst out of the room into the corridor, pleading his innocence all over again. He was a handsome, fierce man with the build of an athlete and a trimmed beard. He demanded to see his wife and young son, who had been standing outside the prison all day in the rain calling his name, and the prison attendants let them in, and they also pleaded his innocence. The wife had cut off her hair, as if her husband were already dead. Seeing his family, the prisoner became distraught and shouted, tried to rip off his clothes, struggled with his chains. The child, a little boy, began wailing and rushed toward his father. At this point, the Megarian tried to escape. He was stopped by an attendant and subdued with a great blow to the back. When he fell to the floor, his wife and son began wailing even louder, promising anything, promising to sell themselves if he could go free. The prisoner struggled to his feet and cursed everyone, he swung his chains at the air, he shouted profanities. No longer did he recognize his family, who stood back from him, crying. Finally, the prisoner drank the poison. Then the jailors chained him to a ring in the middle of the corridor and escorted his sobbing family out of the prison.
The Megarian did not let the poison work gently. He banged on his chains, shouted continually for his family. He twisted and turned and jumped up and down in anger and madness. He began foaming at the mouth and started to shake in convulsions. One of the younger jailors vomited himself. The prisoner continued to shake and to twitch and to drool at the mouth. Finally, he went limp.
After that, one of the attendants prepared the drink for Sokrates and took it into his cell. The old sophist had just returned from a bath and reclined on his bed in a clean tunic and mantle. His friends and supporters stood and knelt around him and wept. Sokrates greeted the cup as easily as if it had been filled with red wine but did not quaff it immediately. Instead, he held it in his lap, carefully, so as not to spill any drop of the liquid, and sat talking a few moments longer. He was taking pleasure in describing part of his system of the world: “The earth, when looked at from above, appears streaked like one of those balls that have leather coverings in twelve pieces, decked with various colors.” He chastised his friends for crying like women and urged them to take courage.
Then he smiled at his weeping friends and drank from the cup, swallowing four times. Rising from his couch, he began walking around the room, round and round, walked for some time until he claimed that his legs had grown heavy and dull. At that point, he lay down quietly and covered his face with a cloth. However, he continued talking, occasionally asking questions. One of his friends touched his feet and ankles, as he had been instructed, and the sophist reported that he had no sensation there. A few moments later, the same for his groin. The poison was slowly moving up. He made some kind of a joke about his head being in his feet. Then, with the most gentle sentiments, he thanked his friends for their friendship. They asked him what should be done with his ashes, and he said to scatter them wherever they liked.
Anytus stood up from the couch, his lips curled in mockery. “What kind of fool is that, unconcerned about his final resting place. What else did he say just before the end, Pyrrhias?”
“That’s all I remember, Master.”
Anytus began pacing the room, holding his half-full cup of wine. “Did he curse anyone? Did he curse me?”
“No, Master. He did not seem angry.”
Anytus filled his shallow cup with wine, drank, and continued pacing. “He must have been frightened. Did you see his eyes?”
“He looked calm, Master.”
“How could you see? You were looking through a crack.”
Pyrrhias didn’t reply. He swallowed uncomfortably.
“Did you see his hands? Were his hands gripping the edge of his bed?”
“I didn’t see his hands, Master. He said that death is only the separation of the soul from the body. After that the soul is pure and free. He said that men who fear death love the body, and probably power and money as well.”
Anytus threw his cup to the marble floor, where it shattered into a thousand pieces. He sat down on the couch, staring at the curtains on the o
ther side of the room. He placed his sandaled foot down on a shard of his cup and slowly pressed until it crunched. Finally, he said in a low voice, “I want you to take twenty minas to the dead sophist’s house and leave it at his doorstep. Pronapes will show you the way.”
“Master?”
“Are you hard of hearing?” shouted the tanner.
“No, Master,” said Pyrrhias. “I will take twenty minas to Sokrates’ house.”
“I am going out for the rest of the night. Have Penelope tell my wife that I will not be home until tomorrow. Better yet, have Penelope tell her that I will be with Calonice tonight.” Anytus abruptly rose from the couch and moved toward the doorway.
“Master,” Pyrrhias called anxiously. “Please. Do not do this thing to your wife. Master.” But Anytus was gone, and the curtains rippled and swayed like the ocean.
THE JOB OFFER
When he finished the reading, Alex remained sitting near his father, staring at the last page.
Bill peered toward the foot of the bed. He had never seen his son so exhausted, so serious, bearing weight. His illness was taking an awful toll on the boy, and the Anytus story was tragic, too tragic to be read at this time. Why had he allowed Alex to continue reading to him so late at night, when the boy should be in bed? And he was still losing weight.
“You look worn out,” Bill said.
Alex turned away from the lamp on the vanity, placing his face in half-light. His hair was auburn and fine, like his mother’s. “I’m okay,” he said after a pause.
“Are you getting enough sleep?”
Alex nodded. “What happened to the Megarian’s child?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
Alex seemed to be trembling, almost in tears. Bill should never have let him read the story.
“I wish Anytus sent money to the Megarian’s family, like he did for Socrates.”
“Why would he do that?” asked Bill. Now, he could hear Alex’s sniffling, tiny rivulets of sound that merged with the trickles of Melissa’s shower in the bathroom. How he wished that he could comfort his son, his dear son. But who was he, to comfort anyone?
“For the child,” said Alex. “What will happen to the child?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think Anytus really cared about any of the children. He sent the money to Socrates’ family out of guilt. Anytus wouldn’t do anything from the goodness of his heart.”
Alex stood up from the bed and began walking toward the bedroom door.
“I don’t want to hear any more of the Anytus story,” said Bill. He found himself suddenly angry. “Is it finished?” “There’s one section left.”
What was that look on the boy’s face? Bill squinted to see, tried in vain to move his head higher against the headboard. “Go to bed now, you need to get to sleep.” Bill moved his head into the pillow; he wished he could fall asleep himself, deep in some dreamless sleep.
“Wait,” said Alex. The boy turned and hurried from the room in a determined manner, as if he were going to bring something of importance to his father. In a few moments he returned and placed a piece of paper on the bed. Then he stepped back. What was this piece of paper that Alex seemed to regard with such significance? Bill squinted at his son and thought he could make out a pleading look on the boy’s face, a look of pleading combined with childish pride.
“What is this?”
“An e-mail I got from Dr. Soames. I printed it out.”
“Addressed to you?”
“Yes.”
“An e-mail to you from Dr. Soames? Read it to me.”
It was a job offer, to do transferrals of medical information on the Internet, part-time. Dr. Soames had been very much impressed with Alex’s “facility on the Internet, and your promptness at replies to messages, your conciseness, and your Web site www.paralysis.aol.com/achalm, which has come to my attention.” Alex’s face lit up as he read the letter. When he finished, he placed it carefully in his pocket and gazed expectantly at his father. He had received the message several days ago, he explained, and had not known what to do with it, how to respond, and had hid the printed copy in his room. Now, he looked again at his father with pleading eyes, almost embarrassed.
“Maybe I could help out,” Alex stammered, “make some money. While you’re …” He didn’t finish the sentence and stared painfully at the floor.
Poor boy, Bill thought and felt his son’s distress. Alex must be so conflicted, to receive such an endorsement of his abilities at the same time that his father lay useless and paralyzed. Bill could see the hesitation in his son’s body, the embarrassment at displacing his father. For even though the job could not be a great deal of money, Alex would consider the offer as usurping his father. What a triumph this letter might have been. The boy had hidden his treasure for a week, probably first elated and then embarrassed, but now he had come out with it, possibly to prove his worth to his father, to show his father that despite his small physical size and fleeting hobbies he had achieved something of meaning in his father’s world. Asking Bill’s permission to take the job and at the same time apologizing for it. All of these things Bill could sense in Alex’s tender face, the slump of his shoulders. How grown up the boy had become.
“You should take the job if you want it,” Bill said. “Take it.” He wanted to praise and congratulate his son, he should have congratulated his son, but Alex’s embarrassment and confusion had spread to himself, and he could say nothing more.
Alex nodded. But Bill could tell that his son would not accept the offer, would tuck his treasure away in his room, never to mention again but to look at privately from time to time. Alex gazed once more at his father.
“Good night, Dad.”
“Good night.”
THE MALL
The next morning, Saturday morning, Melissa took Bill and Alex to the Burlington Mall. They both should get out of the house, she said, some air, a change of scenery, and the mall contained miles of walkways for the wheelchair. And she needed them out of the house, she needed the house to herself. They were all drowning in the muddle of visitors, Dorothy’s shifts, Virginia coming and going with her children, and Petrov’s constant updates on the results of the PET.
What an absurd excursion, Bill thought, to go to the mall in a state of paralysis. He would be on parade. As Dorothy carried him down to the waiting automobile below, he let his head flop back on her shoulder and stared at the ceiling. It bobbed up and down with each step, just as he remembered when his father carried him to bed as a child. A wave of nostalgia passed through him. His father would have been a young man then, considerably younger than Bill was now, his future lying in front of him as he crossed the narrow hall of the rented house. Bill strained to remember the sound of his father’s steps as Dorothy thudded heavily down the stairs. In a mental diversion, he imagined that each of her steps was five years. Five years, ten years, fifteen years. So quickly his life had gone by, from infancy to marriage to this acutely aware forty-year-old brain stem being carried down the stairs. One step for every five years, until this. His pants bulged with the double diaper beneath.
Outside, Bob and Silvia Tournaby stood in their driveway and called hello while he was being loaded into the car. Not too close, as if they might catch whatever mysterious disease he had, but a sympathetic wave of the rake. Silvia had brought chicken pot pie once a week. A wave of the rake. Across the street, a dim form that looked like Olivia Cotter slid out of her house and also waved. Bill could see her from the corner of his eye. “Olivia,” he suddenly shouted, wanting to hear a definite loudness in his ear, something definite in the midst of this cowardice.
The parking lot of the Burlington Mall was a hundred acres of gray asphalt and cars, thousands of cars, half of them speeding in every direction, plowing through intersections and traffic lanes without slowing, honking impatiently, a constant danger to other cars and to pedestrians. Two-hundred-odd stores stacked together like toy blocks. The Election Day Sale. Everyone was rushing to get to
the double glass doors of an entrance before everyone else, to buy quality merchandise cheap while it lasted, Ralph Lauren shirts and slacks, Ann Taylor blouses, sweaters at Banana Republic, Liz Claiborne separates, suits at Jones of New York, shoes by Enzo Angiolini, exercise machines and cameras, microwaves, blenders, computers and calculators, digital alarm clocks, bedsheets and towels, CD players, robot swimming-pool cleaners, humidifiers, rugs and carpets, virtual-reality helmets, skis and ice skates, televisions and stereos, cosmetics, jogger clips measuring speed and calories burned, correct-posture dog feeders, lamps and pens and end tables, spray paint, automobile accessories. It was all here. Bill could sense the frantic urge to stay current, the eagerness to buy and consume, the sobs of desire caught by the churning bodies and the spastic blasts of automobiles moving through the gray, teeming swamp. He hated the mall the same way he hated himself, except that he hated himself more because he was a part of the mall and he knew it. With a struggle against his dead weight, 175 pounds and climbing, even though his legs had dwindled to nothing, he was hauled into his wheelchair by Alex and Melissa. “Alex, you take care of him.” She would return in two hours. Watches were synchronized.
Inside, the air exploded. Colors from sale signs and banners. Shouts and grinds of machines being tested, smells of perfume and pizza and chocolate chip cookies. It was a city, an indoor metropolis, older people, young people, children with mothers, teenagers in love. Escalators jagging and glass elevators with their umbilical cords dangling. Fountains spewing from sunken pools. Bill felt sick to his stomach. Why was he here? His insides were sending tumultuous signals to his brain. Why was he here? “I want to see the new pet store first,” Alex said and he pushed the wheelchair as fast as it would go, Bill’s arms and legs shaken loose with the speed and splayed over the wheels. “Brad said they’ve got some good stuff.” Wheels squished as they rolled over an Egg McMuffin lying on the pink tiled floor. “Hey,” a man said as he walked past with a package in his arm. “They’ve got motorized wheelchairs you can operate with one finger. Or with eyeblinks if you can’t move a finger.” The man hurried on. “I want to see the new pet store,” said Alex. “After that, Radio Shack. I saw their new stuff advertised on the Net.” Stores pounded the corridors, one after another. People laughing and eating, hoarding their purchases, visiting on benches, kids flying past on rollerblades. New cars for sale sprawled in the middle of the floor. “Made in America.” Bill could hear dissatisfied customers arguing with store managers. “The automatic shutter delay was advertised as fifteen seconds.” “You can have a store credit.” “I don’t want a store credit.” A great wall of merchandise vibrated and pulsed. Clothes, shiny surfaces of metals, small unidentified objects. One store after another, kaboom, kaboom. A giant plaza with intersecting corridors, enameled benches and white columns. “That way,” Alex shouted, caught up in it, and flew around a corner, jerking the chair. To Bill, Alex seemed suddenly a wild dog unleashed, all of his quiet and hesitancy gone as he ran from one store to the next, wanting to buy everything, already looking at his watch to see how much time they had left. “I want to go home,” said Bill. He tried to close his eyes, to escape into his brain stem, but the motion disturbed him, the air rushing by, the legs and arms bumping into the chair. Shouts and radios blared from hand-held CDs. “Can you call Mom? I want to go home.” “Oh, Dad. We just got here.” Alex looked at his watch, a Casio with alarm that he’d bought at this same mall six months ago. “We’ve been here only ten minutes.” Ten minutes, Bill wondered, coughing on the scent of somebody’s perfumed soap. Living trees sprouted suddenly from the middle of the floor, their trunks descending through holes cut out of the pink tiles. Could there be real earth here? Bill stared down and then up and saw the dim forms of second-floor shoppers scurrying along glass walkways with mirrored sides. Now the glitter was multiplied into doubles and quadruples. Maybe he would spend the rest of his life in this mall, maybe he would die here. “Excuse me.” Someone had bumped him, a woman with shopping bags.