The Mask of Apollo Read Free Page A

showed up, with a tale of some scrape my father had got him out of when he was young and wild. When it was over we went home and lit the lamps, straightened the room, and looked about as people do, not wanting to think what next.
    I would be leaving within the month. I went out and walked about; everything looked strange. On my way I passed the door of an old hetaira I had had a night with when I was seventeen, because I was ashamed never to have tried a woman. I could hear her now inside, humming to her lyre. She was always kind to boys. But I owed my father more respect; and all I had really wanted was a little mothering. My first real love affair was still fresh in my heart, though it was three years since. An actor visiting from Syracuse had come for a month, and stayed another for love of me. We had had a beautiful parting, quoting from The Myrmidons ; a whole year after, he had written to me from Rhodes.
    Before we started rehearsals, I was asked to sup at Lamprias’ house and meet the company. We lived at Piraeus near the theater; he had lodgings on the waterfront. I walked there anxiously, picking my way over fishy nets and around kegs and bales.
    “The scourge of a third-rate tour,” my father used to say, “is the second actor. He’s the failed one. As a rule he makes everyone pay.”
    This time he was wrong. Old Demochares had had his taste of honey, and it had kept him sweet. More than once he had worn the victor’s ivy crown; he had come down through serving Dionysos all too well in a crown of vine. When I got there he was pretty drunk already; and in the end, to keep him from falling in the harbor, I helped carry him home. He was as jolly in his cups as Pappasilenos, except when we were putting him to bed; then he clasped my hand and cried a little, and quoted O fair young face, sorrow and death pass by you , in a voice that still showed some beauty through the fog. As we walked back after, Lamprias coughed, referred to his past triumphs, and gave me to know I would be expected, along with my other duties, to share the common task of getting him on stage sober.
    The third actor, Meidias, had gone home already in a pet, if you will believe it, because I, rather than he, had had compliments from an old drunk who could not see straight to walk. My father had been half right; here was the failed man; not six and twenty, yet he had outlived his hopes. Some mocking god had given him a handsome face, the one beauty an actor can do without; it had brought him some success offstage, to which he owed his start, and made him think the world was at his feet. Now he was learning that feet are to stand upon, but did not want to know it. We had barely filled the first cups when he began telling me what splendid roles had been offered him if he had cared to sell his honor. He was as free with great names as some old madam showing the girls her jewels. Though young-looking for my age, I knew enough to guess he had gone through whatever his honor would fetch before he signed on with Lamprias. I fear he saw this in my eye.
    Next day we started rehearsals. We had a repertory of two or three modern plays, without chorus, and a couple of classics in case some sponsor hired us for a festival.
    Of course we were bypassing Corinth. Corinthians know what is due to them, and throw things if they don’t get it. We were opening at Eleusis, then on through Megara and south around the Argolid. When Lamprias went on, as he did every day for both our good, about the fine experience I would be getting, what he meant was that we would hardly see a bit of modern equipment from first to last, or, probably, a sponsor; we would cart along our own costumes, masks and props (stuff bought secondhand after the Dionysia, when richer companies had had their pick), fix up the skene with whatever we found when we got there, and practice making do. Though I never thought I would five to say so, one can make worse beginnings.
    It seemed a pity that in