Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (easy books to read TXT) 📗

proud.

He was the son of a sea-nymph,

almost a god,

but there was a doom on him.

If he fought, he would win

undying fame —

but he would die young.

The way I saw it, he couldn’t win.

Patroklos was his friend. And here’s the thing:

Patroklos was shorter — at least, his statue was —

so I thought of him as a boy.

In my mind, there was Akhilleus, who was like Menon,

and Patroklos, who was like me.

They went off to battle together.

For a long time, Akhilleus didn’t fight.

Not because he was a coward,

but because one of the other men had shamed him.

Everyone wanted him to fight,

because then the Greeks would win,

and these other people, called the Trojans,

would lose.

But lion-heart Akhilleus was too angry to fight.

He stood on the sidelines

while the Greeks were butchered.

Patroklos couldn’t stand it.

He wasn’t a great warrior himself,

but he cried like a girl

when his friends were slain.

So then Patroklos fought.

And he was killed.

And his death broke the heart of swift-fated Akhilleus.

Then Akhilleus fought, and Akhilleus was killed,

but the Greeks won the war.

I felt bad for Akhilleus, because:

First, he was shamed in front of everyone;

so his pride was broken.

Then he lost his friend.

Then he died. And the story was true.

They used to live just down the road.

When Menon told me that story,

I was so caught up, I said,

“I know how he felt.”

I saw the mocking light in Menon’s eyes. “You?

You crumb, you mouse,

you compare yourself

to godlike Akhilleus?”

“I didn’t say I was like him.

I said I know how he felt.”

And I did. And I do. Because Akhilleus — he couldn’t win.

He couldn’t have both life and glory,

and he had to lose his friend.

That’s what I understood,

and Menon didn’t,

because he always won everything. In the gymnasion

or when we play-wrestled,

he had to win. Every single time.

If he couldn’t win,

he was like a drunkard without drink.

I didn’t think about that, after he went to war.

I didn’t think how he mocked me,

or called me andrapodon,

which is a word for slave

that means thing with human feet.

I missed him. I remembered how he made me laugh.

I thought about how proud I was

when he won a race or a wrestling match. And after a while,

I made up a new Menon. I was Patroklos,

and I made him like Akhilleus. I remembered him different from the way he was. It was stupid,

but after Menon left

I had nothing to do inside my mind

but make up crazy stories.

Sometimes you have to lie to other people.

But you don’t have to lie to yourself.

It’s like what Sokrates said:

When I lied to Georgios —

about whether or not

I’d picked up turds in the far field —

I knew I was lying. I lied on purpose.

When I made up stories about Menon,

it was worse, because after a while

I didn’t know I was lying.

Then Menon came back from the war.

2. WARFARE

The minute I laid eyes on him, I knew he wasn’t Akhilleus.

And I wasn’t Patroklos.

If I died, his heart wouldn’t break.

He was changed.

He’d always been lean, but now his bones were sharp.

He put me in mind of a bow strung tight

just at the point of breaking.

No less beautiful, but —

Three days Menon was home

before he came to the barn to find me.

He snorted like a horse with his nose full of dust.

He said I needed licking into shape.

He said he could tell

I’d gone back to my own ways,

my old stink.

I’d like to see him pick up turds all day and not stink.

I went back to serving him;

he went back to teaching me things.

He taught me about war:

the blows he’d dealt, the deaths he dodged.

He showed me dents and scrapes in his shield.

He had a new sword, the blade inlaid with iron;

he taught me how to oil it.

He was wolf-hungry, those first days back.

He drank too much. He took me to drinking parties

so I could lead him home. I carried the torch

and steadied his footsteps when he stumbled.

I helped him into bed. I filled a water jug,

emptied the piss-pot,

placed them on the floor where he could reach.

Then I crawled under his bed. He wanted me nearby

and it was safe under there. When he slept,

he was prey to the winged god, the frightful one,

Ikelos,

bringer of black dreams:

I’d hear the bed frame creak,

the bed ropes straining. He’d twitch in his sleep

and mutter. Then there came a night —

he wasn’t yelling —

he was whimpering

high and thin,

and I pitied him. I crawled out

from under the bed

knelt beside him                               snatched his arm

tried to shake him awake —

I hit the ground.

I saw stars.

my eye and my nose

blood gushing

warm

blinding me

slicking my chin

my blood on his hands

he shrieked like an owl

inhuman

There were footsteps,

his mother,

a slave with a light.

They managed to wake him and calm him.

That was the first time he broke my nose.

3. MYCALESSUS

When dawn came

I went to Georgios. My eye was swollen shut.

I was afraid I’d go blind.

Georgios said it was nothing: my eye would mend,

but my nose might be crooked.

“ — Which wouldn’t be the worst that could happen.

Good looks are bad luck for a slave.

You’d never have caught the master’s eye

if you hadn’t been so good-looking.

And what’s it got you?”

I thought of saying,

A black eye

and a crooked nose,

but it hurt to talk.

When Menon saw me next, he looked away.

He said it was a pity about my nose,

but I’d already been disfigured

— that was his word —

because of the scars on my arms.

They were barbaric.

I remember learning those words that morning:

Disfigured: made ugly.

Barbaric: not Greek.

Thracians, Menon said later,

were barbarians. Brutes, not men. He said they were brave

but hotheaded,

stupid like me, with my thick Thracian skull.

I remembered my mother’s stories.

I said to Menon,

“My grandfather was a Thracian soldier. He feasted with kings

and drank from a golden cup.”

And Menon laughed. When he laughed —

his eyebrows lifting

and his head thrown back —

my heart took wing like a gull,

because I’d made that joy in him —

but then his eyes narrowed

and I braced myself.

He asked me if I knew what the Thracians were,

what they’d done

at Mycalessus.

I didn’t. He told me.

Mycalessus is small. Just a village,

so out of the way

that the wall had tumbled down

and nobody bothered to fix it. The Thracians came.

They were