The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [47]
Private sessions are impossible here, would be impossible to keep secret, so from the start I decide to slow down and address the boys in terms they’ll all easily understand. There follows, accordingly, a kind of pastoral interlude, during which I lead the boys high and low, trailed less and less often by the grimly observant Leonidas, to look at plants and animals, formations of rock, to observe the wind and the sun and the coloration of clouds. I explain the phenomenon of rainbows, a complicated process of reflection that morphs into a geometry lesson as I explain why only half a rainbow is ever visible at one time. I explain the phenomenon of earthquakes as a great wind trapped underground, and when I draw the appropriate analogy to the human bowels am rewarded with an afternoon of farting boys crying, “Earthquake!” I speak of the saltiness of the sea, and this too I relate to the body; for even as food goes into the body sweet and leaves a residue in the chamber-pot that is salty and bitter, so do sweet rain and rivers run into the ocean and disperse, leaving a similarly salty residue. I don’t tell them I struck on this analogy after tasting my own warm piss. We spend a happy morning observing the flow of a river, while I tell them of the great underground reservoirs that some believe are the source of all the water in the world. Always Alexander, when I speak of geography, asks about the East, and I oblige with accounts I’ve read of Egypt and Persia. His eyes go shocked when I speak of the river that flows from the mountains of Parnassus, across which the outer ocean that rings the entire world can be seen.
“I’ll go there,” he says.
I speak of the Nile, and Alexander says he’ll go there too. Once, when I’m speaking of salt and silt and the filtering of sea water, I explain that if you took an empty clay jar, sealed its mouth to prevent water getting in, and left it in the sea overnight, the water that leached into it would be sweet because the clay would have filtered the salt.
“You’ve tried this?” Alexander asks.
“I’ve read of it.”
This exchange stays in my mind, though. Every time Alexander swears to visit some distant place, and Hephaestion swears he’ll go there too, and the others dutifully swear that they, too, will join the company, I think of that jar bobbing in the ocean, the one I’ve only read of.
One hot afternoon I take the boys into the woods behind the temple and set them hunting for insects, particularly bees. I’ve brought along a dissecting board and knives, small clay jars for the specimens, and a book to occupy myself while I wait for them to return.
Within half an hour I realize I’ve made a basic mistake. The shouts and laughter of the boys have long since faded and I know I’ve lost them to the sweet drugged heat of the afternoon. They’re laughing at me, no doubt, wherever they are. Climbing trees, swimming in the river. No matter.
I walk on a little into the woods, calling them without conviction, and am surprised when I come upon Hephaestion and Alexander in a sun-shot grove. Alexander stands still while Hephaestion swats at him.
“They won’t leave him alone,” Hephaestion says, when I come close. Half a dozen bees have locked onto the smaller boy and are whizzing and darting at him, while Hephaestion tries simultaneously to knock them away and catch one in a wooden cup.
“I attract them,” Alexander says. “I have been known for it since childhood. My father’s astrologers tell me it is an auspicious sign.”
“It’s probably your smell,” I say.
I spot the nest up in a tree not far from where we’re standing, and point.
“I’ve had enough,” Alexander says. I realize he’s frightened and afraid to show it.
“Come.” I lead him slowly away. “If you don’t rush, they won’t get agitated.”
I take the boys back to the spot where I left my gear and tell them to wait. I go back to the nest tree and look on the ground beneath it until I find a dead bee. I scoop it up with a leaf and take it back to them.
“You should be flattered,” I tell Alexander. “Bees have a powerful sense of smell,