The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [56]
“I’ve been working on a little treatise on literature, the literary arts. Tragedy, comedy, epic. Because I’ve been wondering, what’s the point? What is the point of it all? Why not simply relate such history as has come down to us in a sober manner, not pretending to fill in the gaps?”
He hikes his leg down from the bar and massages the muscle for a moment. “I’ve been reading something. I brought it from the palace library. Wait.”
He limps off, to his room I guess. Except he doesn’t limp, though he must want to. He takes care to disguise the injury and walk evenly. A leader must never reveal weakness in battle, in case he demoralize his troops and encourage the enemy. Something he figured out for himself, or had to be taught? Something a king would teach a king; I hope it comes from Philip.
He’s back, breathless. He ran on it once he was out of the room. The book he wants to show me is one I know well, one of my old master’s, where he rails against the depraved influence of the arts on decent society.
“Only, you know, he can’t mean what he says.” Alexander sits again. “Because he uses theatre to convey his arguments, doesn’t he? A pretend dialogue between pretend people, with a setting and so on. He needs the artifice for something, doesn’t he?”
“Exactly. That’s exactly right.”
“To get the reader’s attention. It’s more fun to read than a dry treatise.”
“It is that.” I think of my own early attempts at the dialogue form. I had no gift for it, and gave it up. “Then, too, I think, you feel more when it’s set up that way. You care more about the characters, about the outcomes of things. That’s the point of the literary arts, surely. You can convey ideas in an accessible way, and in a way that makes the reader or the viewer feel what is being told rather than just hear it.”
“Agreed.” He’s mocking me, but nicely.
“I too have been reading a book, wondering if it might interest you.”
“It interests me.”
I hand it to him.
“Small,” he says.
“An afternoon’s read at most. I hope it will amuse you. It’s by the same author. The setting is a dinner party.”
“Majesty, Master.” An attendant in the doorway looks stricken. “A visitor.”
“Go away,” Alexander says.
“Don’t tell me to go away, you miserable little brat.” Olympias brushes past the attendant, who jumps away from her as though scalded. “Kiss your mother.” Olympias herself, all in white furs, silver stars in her hair, bringing in a fragrant cold breath of the outside.
Alexander looks at her but doesn’t get up. She bends to him and presses her cheek to his.
“Lovely warm boy. I wrote you I was coming. Don’t you read my letters? Don’t lie to me. I know perfectly well no one was expecting me. That attendant looked like he’d seen a ghost. Hello, sir,” she adds, to me. “What’s the lesson?”
“Majesty, Homer. What an unexpected—”
“Not to me,” Alexander says. “I’ve been waiting and waiting.”
“Sweet.” She helps herself to a chair and pulls it up to the hearth to make a threesome. “Well, sit down,” she says to me. “Go on. I won’t interrupt.”
“Yes, you will,” Alexander says.
“May I ask to what we owe this—”
“You owe it to her majesty being bored out of her mind in Pella and missing her baby boy. I see little enough of him, and then that animal of a husband of mine sends him out here. Dionysus himself blew on my little pony’s heels to speed my way. No, actually I left all the servants outside. There’s rather a lot of us, and then quite a bit of luggage.” Her eyes drift up to the ceiling, perhaps the original of her son’s mannerism. “I brought food,” she murmurs.
“I love you,” Alexander says.
“You had better. No one else does. Do you hear from your father?”
“You’re not allowed to ask me that, remember?”
She rolls her eyes. He rolls his, mocking her. The whole performance is shocking: the anger, the meanness, the grotesque intimacy, their willingness to do it for an audience, me.