The Golden Mean Part 26

"As I can. I sweep it out most days. I'm trying to bring back the garden, too. Can't manage the orchard, though, except for the windfall."

"You're alone?"

"I'm too old to leave. My boys aren't far. I lived with them for a while after the war, after the exile order, but I belong here. I came back last month when I saw the big house was finished. Army knows I'm here; army don't care. n.o.body cares. My boys check on me every few days, bring me what I need."

I'm scouring my brain, trying to place her. "Sons. No daughter?"

"You should know my little girl."

"Should I?"

"My baby, Herpyllis. She serves your lady." She sees my face. "No. Not my baby before me."

"No, no. It was my wife who died."

"Ah." She relaxes, shakes her head, pats my arm. "I'm sorry. How long?"

"A year and a half ago. Herpyllis-" I look at and then away from Callisthenes, who's considering the ceiling. "Herpyllis was a great comfort to her lady through her sickness. To me, too."

"You didn't get rid of her, then, after."

"Ah."

Callisthenes is humming faintly, eyes closed now.

"No. As a matter of fact-" I've never had a mother-in-law. "Shut up," I tell Callisthenes.

"Sorry."

The old woman laughs. "That kind of comfort, is it?"

"A son is a great comfort."

"A son!" She claps her hands; pulls her dress wide with her fingertips and describes a slow circle in the middle of the room: dancing. "A grandson!"

"Herpyllis is very happy," Callisthenes says.

The old woman has gone pink in the cheeks. "Will I show you the big house? It's ready for you. You'll bring them here, bring them back. Won't you? Get the lantern for me, love. Up on that shelf."

"Tomorrow."

Callisthenes begins to talk about my household, Herpyllis and the baby, the good food they eat, the nice clothes they wear, all easy and expansive, distracting her from the answer he knows I haven't given. She asks us to stay, but the officer expects us back for a tour of the reconstruction first thing in the morning.

"In the afternoon, then."

"The afternoon."

Callisthenes and I walk back to the soldiers' camp.

"You'll break her old heart," he says eventually.

"I can't help that."

"I know." It's late; cold. Our breath smokes. "This is why we came. For you to decide."

I can't speak.

"You've seemed better, lately." Callisthenes doesn't look at me. "Your illness. It was so bad for a while, but just lately-"

"Illness?"

We're on a small rise overlooking the soldiers' encampment. I raise my hand to acknowledge the sentry, who's spotted us. He sits back down at his fire.

"Please," Callisthenes says. "Won't you talk about it, even to me? Haven't I known you long enough?"

I shake my head.

"You're better when you have someone new to love. Alexander, at first. Herpyllis, now. Me, once. You pull out of yourself. It helps you. I remember when I first came to you, in Atarneus. Everyone warned me what a miserable man you were, but I was never happier in my life. You always had time for me, always wanted to talk to me. You gave me gifts, encouraged me, made me welcome, made me feel brilliant. I wondered for a while if it was s.e.x you wanted. But it wasn't; you just loved me. Then you got married and it was Pythias. Then we came to Pella and it was Alexander."

"You're jealous?"

"No. Yes, of course. But that's not-I'm trying to say I've been watching you for a long, long time. You have a sickness. Everyone who loves you sees it in you. When you were in Mieza, Pythias and I used to talk about how to help you. She said you needed Alexander. She said if ever they took him away, you'd die."

"Black bile," I say.

"She wasn't resentful. She was more astute than I think you ever-"

"Not in her, in me. My father taught me long ago that black bile can be hot or cold. Cold: it makes you sluggish and stupid. Hot: it makes you brilliant, insatiable, frenzied. Like the different stages of drunkenness, you see? Only my father didn't realize that none of this had to be bad. The people who find the balance between the extremes-"

Callisthenes puts his hand on my arm.

"-the very best teachers, artists, warriors-"

"Plato, Carolus, Alexander-"

"I swung back and forth for a long time. I'd find a girl and f.u.c.k myself empty, and then afterwards I wanted to die. Lately, though, as you say, it's better. Not so high, not so low. Maybe it's Herpyllis; maybe. Does it matter, if it holds?"

"You think it won't hold here?"

"You saw the orchard by the big house?"

"Plums."

"Plums. One of my oldest memories, the taste of those plums. I looked at them as we walked by just now and thought, too small, after all these years. Those d.a.m.n trees are still too small to hold a noose. That's the furniture in my mind, here, still."

"Athens, then."

"For me. For you?"

He looks shy, surprised.

I nod. "Your work is solid. You don't need me any more. I'll give you this place, if you want it."

We start the walk down to the camp. "Remember how I hated Macedon when we first got here?" my nephew says.

"I do."

"Stageira," he says. "Comfort and leisure and time to write. I could do worse."

"Or you could come with me, stay with me. Colleague, rather than apprentice."

"Or I could do something else altogether. Fall in love, maybe. Travel."

"Both."

He laughs. "Both, then."

"f.u.c.king cold one tonight," the sentry says. "Extra blankets in the storage tent. Help yourself to what you need."

"MAJESTY."

"Master," Alexander says.

We embrace, briefly. I feel the dry, slightly feverish heat in his skin that corresponds precisely to the ruddiness of his complexion, feel the strength of him, and smell the faint, pleasant spiciness that so endeared him as a boy to my dead wife. We're in the palace library, back in Pella, for the last time. He's been king for eight months.

"I can't believe you're going," he says.

I give my student two gifts: a volume of Homer, and one of Euripides.

"But these are your own." He looks through them. "Your notes are here."

I nod.

"I will always sleep with them beneath my pillow," he says gravely, and I bite back a smile. I rise. "No, no. For all I'm giving you, I want one more gift."

"Anything." What else can I say?

Alexander laughs and says, to an invisible audience, "Look at him. You'd think I was asking for his first-born."

I feel a last pang of jealousy. Here is a mannerism I've not seen before; already Alexander has fallen under new influences. That I'll no longer be close enough to watch him adopt and adapt, to watch his mind fill in as his body has-this is love, then, finally, I think, what I feel as I watch him. Maybe Callisthenes was right. As good as love.

"A lesson. I want a last lesson."

We take our seats.

"I suppose it would be a waste of time to speak to you of moderation." I hook a smile. "Therefore I will speak to you of excellence. What is human excellence? When is a man a good man? What does it mean to live a good life?"

"To triumph. To act to the furthest extent of one's capacities. To flourish."

"To flourish." I nod. I talk about the exercise of a man's faculties, and all the ways in which he might excel: in character, in friends.h.i.+p, in intellect. I linger over the intellect, explain that it is the divine seed in man that no other animal shares. In the hierarchy of excellences, intellect is at the top; therefore the best human life is that spent in pursuit of intellectual excellence.

"In philosophy," Alexander says.

I turn away from the glibness in my student's voice, the smooth amus.e.m.e.nt. I want at this moment to bury my face in my books the way Little Pythias once buried her face in her mother's breast, obliterating the world thereby.

"Lysimachus used to say the same thing," Alexander says. "That it was in my nature to excel in all things, and anyone who stood in my way was thwarting the will of the G.o.ds."

"I don't think that's quite what I'm saying, is it?"

"Not quite." Alexander smiles. "Lysimachus flourishes, these days."

"Does he?"

"I've promoted him to my personal bodyguard. Oh, the face! You don't approve?"

"Not for me to approve or disapprove. Only-"

"Only?" He leans forward.

"Only I would have thought he had all the preconditions to pursue the kind of excellence I'm describing to you. A well-rounded man, an athlete, an artist, a lively mind, just the mind to appreciate the innate superiority of the contemplative life. Not to mention the means, the leisure. I'm pragmatic enough to know that's a necessary part of the equation."

"I have the same qualities, don't I?"

"If your father left you an impression of a Macedonian king having time for leisure, you weren't paying very close attention."

"Don't avoid the question."

"You have the same qualities. No. You have these qualities superlatively. You know it. You know I don't flatter you. Have I ever?"

"Wouldn't love you if you did." Before an awkwardness can grow up he says, "I should retire to one of my father's estates and spend my time in a comfortable chair, drinking water and considering the wonder of creation?"

"Not too comfortable a chair. My father's estate is in Stageira, by the way." I make sure he looks at me. "I never lived there as an adult."

"A self-made man."

"That can be hard to pull off. Harder than you know."

He laughs. "You think your life is perfect. You think everyone should want to be you. All our years together, you've made your theories out of the accidents of your own life. You've built a whole philosophy around the virtue of being you. Seash.e.l.ls are worthy of study because you love to swim. Violence should be offstage because you never got to leave the tent at Chaeronea. The best government is rule by the middle cla.s.s because you come from the middle cla.s.s. Life should be spent in quiet contemplation because life never offered you more."

"Tell me what more is."

"There's a whole world more." His eyes go big. "You could travel with me, you know. I'm not staying here. I'm going east, and east, and east again. I'm going as far as anyone's ever gone and then farther. Animals no one's ever seen. Oceans no one's ever swum in. New plants, new people, new stars. Mine for the taking. Yours, too. I'll make sure you're comfortable. We'll carry you in a palanquin, cus.h.i.+ons, scribes, wagons groaning with all the specimens you'll collect. You'll never even notice the army. We'll just be clearing the way forward for you. To make the unknown known, isn't that the greatest virtue, the greatest happiness? Isn't that exactly what we're talking about?"

"You conflate pleasure and happiness, real enduring happiness. A few thrills, a few sensations. Your first woman, your first elephant, your first spicy meal, your first hangover, your first ascent of a mountain no man's ever climbed, and your first view from the top to the other side. You want to string together a life of thrills."

"Teach me better, then. Come with my army. Come with me. You've been a father to me. Don't orphan me twice."

"You worked on that line."