you?’
‘I was thinking—’ I began.
‘Don’t. Graccus gets away with it because of the view and the very intimate company he invites. You have to get these philosopher boys to settle down with your Macedonians – just because you like them all doesn’t mean they’ll like each other. Keep it shorter. After dinner. Less smelly, less to clean up. They’ll arrive sober, because it is Eumenes’ house. I think you’ll be golden. But serve Lesbian rolls – barley rolls, I’ll send you the recipe – and have almonds in honey. Again, I’ll – oh, Aphrodite, I’ll just have cook send you some.’ She smiled. ‘When people taste them, they’ll know they’re mine. And that will please some and raise other eyebrows.’ She got the little furrow between her own eyebrows. ‘Really, I’m taking over. Don’t let me. It’s your party, not one of mine.’
‘I’m delighted,’ I said. ‘You know, my lady, sometimes there are advantages to being a foreign barbarian.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Really?’
‘Well, I don’t know whether I’m supposed to offer you money for your advice,’ I said. ‘But since I’m a foreigner, I doubt you’ll be insulted.’
She chewed a finger for a moment. ‘No – I’ll make money from your wine and your almonds. And everything in life is not a moneymaking proposition.’
‘Perhaps you might view me, as a rich foreigner, as a long-term investment?’ I asked.
She looked up, and I realised that I hadn’t really looked into her eyes until that moment.
‘When the day comes, kill a Persian for me,’ she said. ‘That’s all you owe me.’
Well, well. I was too well bred to ask, so I found myself out on the street with Myndas, wondering why she hated Persia.
My symposium was splendid. The food was excellent, the wine was divine and widely commented on, and Eumenes not only allowed the two female kithara players but paid us all the compliment of attending during their performance and mixing us a very mild bowl. He was courtly to them, treating them like visiting matrons, friends of his wife, perhaps, or sisters of his friends, and they, despite being radicals of the most democratic stripe, responded in kind with the sort of well-bred courtesy he must never have expected from them. It was a war of sorts, conducted with manners, and both parties left with increased respect for the other.
And they were the finest kithara players I’ve ever heard. I remember their Sappho lyrics, a hymn to Aphrodite, and my favourite, which begins:
That Sappho. She’d grown up with soldiers.
The elder of the sisters gave me a clam shell as she left – a folded note on parchment that said only ‘good luck’, and a laughing face. I grinned for the rest of the evening.
Alexander was at his best. He lay on his couch with Hephaestion, or with other guests, sang songs, danced, once. He was brilliant – capping every quote, but mocking himself for it. The best I remember was the moment when he pretended to be both himself as a twelve-year-old and Aristotle, mocking the pretensions of both.
With Alexander, when he was dark or moody or absorbed in war or politics or any other passion, it was possible to forget this man – the lightning flash, we used to call it among the pages. Funny, witty, self-mocking, aware of what we thought of his flaws – wicked, too, with a turn of phrase that would have made a whore blush. It didn’t happen often – and I suspected it was as much a performance as any of the other Alexanders I knew. But when we lay on our couches roaring with laughter, unable to speak at the spectacle of Alexander/Aristotle attempting to seduce Alexander/Alexander with philosophy, with Lykeles actually rolling off the couch he was on to crash to the floor – with Kineas, always so controlled, spitting barley roll, with tears coming from his eyes, and Hephaestion pounding Antipater’s back because he’d swallowed wine the wrong way laughing too hard . . .
I was sober – I was too nervous to be drunk. And as he wound to the climax of his amazing, lewd, witty impersonation of a besotted Aristotle with an erection based entirely on his love of Philosophy, I caught his eye.
His face was wild with the exertion of the drama, and yet, as if it were a mask, I caught a glimpse of the actor within, coolly assessing his audience. The strength of his own performance.
I was standing at the wine bowl when he came to the end – clutching the serving table to keep from pitching to the floor.
Hephaestion embraced him. ‘Oh, my brother, why can’t you always be like this?’ he asked.
Alexander’s face of command slipped effortlessly back into place. ‘Like what?’ he asked. ‘I’ve heard of actors crowned, but never a comic.’ Aside, to me, at the wine bowl, he said, ‘Whenever I do that, I feel less a man afterwards. As with bedding a woman. Or too much sleep.’
He was drunk. Make what you will of his words.
At some point, Diodorus proposed that we run a race to the top of the Acropolis and back. I must have started drinking by then, because I thought it was an excellent idea. So did everyone else, so I suppose Antipater and Eumenes, the oldest men, were gone.
We stripped naked, of course.
Kineas, Diodorus, Graccus, Niceas, Nearchus, Cleitus the Black, Alexander, Hephaestion and me. Polystratus started us from Eumenes’ front gate. Every man had a torch – I forget whose idea that was.
I didn’t even know where the Acropolis was, when we started, so I followed Kineas. Kineas had a badly formed right leg – he didn’t trouble to hide it – and he wasn’t very tall. But he knew Athens, and he was probably soberer than the rest of us. Alexander was quite probably the drunkest of the lot of us, but he was a wonderful runner, and it was all I could do to keep the two of them in sight. I ran as hard as I could, and they vanished; corner after corner, I saw the tails of flame as I arrived. They’d always just turned the
Up and up through the town, which washes like waves of houses right to the base of the fortifications. Up and up, into a strengthening wind that blew our torches into blazing fires.
Out on to the broad stones of the Panathenaeum. Up and up and up. Now I could see them, neck and neck at the gates of the fortifications. I got a second wind, or perhaps I was not as drunk as I thought, but I caught them up on the steps below the temple to Nike.
Maybe she came to my aid, for the good of Greece. Who knows?
They touched the columns of the Parthenon together. I couldn’t tell you which had won.
When I came up, they were agreeing to settle it with a race back down.
They were greater than human. It’s in the eyes. It is a certain glow in the skin. I have seen it a few times, when a man rises above himself, usually in athletics or war. And they both had it, just then.
But they were courteous enough to wait for me.
And Niceas was right on my heels.
‘Don’t do it,’ Niceas panted. ‘Down is dangerous.’
Alexander’s eyes gleamed. ‘Dangerous is just fine.’
‘You could fall,’ Niceas said.
‘I’ll fly, then,’ Alexander said. ‘Kineas?’
Kineas took his hand. ‘You could run in the Olympics,’ he said.
Alexander laughed. ‘Only if they had a competition for demigods, heroes and kings,’ he said. ‘Come, before they dissuade us.’
Niceas grabbed my shoulder. ‘You stay with yours and I with mine,’ he said.
And we were off.
Alexander meant to go down the way he’d come, but as soon as we were clear of the steps by the temple to Nike – I touched the wall and said a prayer – Kineas turned on a side path down the hill.
Alexander knew tactics when he saw them. So he turned and followed.
Niceas and I were hard on them – a man can only run so fast down a cliff, even a demigod. And when the goat trail ended on a hard-packed street below a row of tiled roofs, Kineas shocked me by leaping from the hillside on to the roofs and running along the tiles as if they were a road – which they were if you don’t mind a slope to your road.
With torches. Leaping from roof to roof. Downhill, never touching the streets – down past the lower temples, past the watering fountains. Somewhere – I don’t know where, and I’d never be able to retrace the path except in a
