The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [12]
The actors are playing a drinking game, tossing the ball of rags they’ve been using for Pentheus’s head amongst themselves; whoever drops it has to stand and drain his cup while the others hoot and jeer. I rejoin Carolus. I like him. I like having a friend near enough my own age. Older, actually, but not old enough to be my father, and I like that, too. And still the embers of a sexuality not quite spent; you can see it when he gets angry. He likes men, told me so early on, and didn’t mind when I told him I didn’t. We talk about plays and theatre generally, tell each other about productions we’ve seen. I don’t have much to offer that he’s unfamiliar with.
I ask him what makes a good tragedy. He thinks about this for a while. A companionable silence between us while the actors slowly drift away, bidding each other stagy goodbyes, and the rain increases, drumming at the roof like fingers. He’s got good wine from somewhere, not the local.
“Funny question,” he says. “A good death, a good pain, a good tragedy. ‘Good’ is a funny word.”
“I’m writing a book.” The response I default to when my subject starts to look at me strangely. And maybe I am, suddenly, maybe I am. A little work to bring me back here when I reread it years from now, to this rain and this cup of wine and this man I’m prepared to like so much. The comfort here, this little sanctuary.
“Gods, man,” he says. “Are you crying?”
I tell him I’m unwell.
“What kind of book?” he says.
“An analysis.” I’m thinking through my mouth. “In two parts, tragedy and comedy. The constituent elements of each, with examples.”
“Tragedy for beginners.”
“Sure,” I say. “A gentle introduction.”
“How are you unwell?”
I tell him I cry easily, laugh easily, get angry easily. I get overwhelmed.
“That’s a sickness?”
I ask him what he would call it.
“Histrionics,” he says. “What do you do for it?”
I tell him I write books.
He nods, then shakes his head. “My father had the same. I wish he’d written books. He was a drunk.”
I wait for more, but there isn’t any.
“A good tragedy,” he says. “I think you’re a dabbler.”
I lean forward. I tell him that’s exactly what I am. I suggest the stilts.
He laughs, then falls silent again, long enough for me to wonder if our conversation is over and he’s waiting for me to leave. I clear my throat.
“It’s the whole course of a character’s life,” he says. “The actions he takes, decisions, the choices that bring him right up to the present moment. Having to choose.” He points at me. “That’s what I want to say. You’re surrounded by evils, a banquet of evils, and you have to choose. You have to fill your plate and eat it.”
“And comedy?”
He looks at me like I’m stupid. “Comedy makes you laugh. A couple of slaves buggering each other, I’ll have that and thank you very much. How would you say that here?”
I think for a minute. “Ass-fucking,” I say in dialect.
He grunts. He likes it.
“That’s it?” I ask.
Carolus shakes a reproving finger at me. “I won’t have you slighting the comedies. They were my living for the first few years. Lysistrata without the props, if you know what I mean. I got a reputation for that one. I was just a teenager then.”
“You started young.”
“I did, man.” He grasps himself between the legs and we laugh. “It was the family trade. My grandfather was Tiresias in the first production of Oedipus the King.”
“No.”
“He was. After him, my father took up the role.” He looks at me and says nothing for a moment. Then: “I kept the mask he wore that night. I’ll show it to you sometime, if you like.”
“They let you?” I mean the company. Good masks are expensive, irreplaceable.
“He stole it.”
I nod.
“No masks for this crew.” Carolus waves a hand at the table the actors have lately abandoned for a dive in town. “I haven’t the time or the money. They’re all so stiff anyway, I doubt anyone will notice the difference.”
“You’re too hard on them. Dionysus is improving, with