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The Flute Player's Deposition ...suddenly a marvelous
sound of music was heard...
A flute player, that's what I was. Gigs
at them banquets with Cleo and Tony. But I'd started young, twelve or so.
Father a bellows mender, mother'd been an acrobat. She mended clothes.
All Greeks. Street life, not so bad, sometimes a bit rough; but then along
comes this old dancer, teaches me the flute, and I was off. Bought a double
flute of me own the very next year, talent, they said, and our group, one
night, some drunks dragged us into a palace. Where we could see, far off,
on couches, in the torchlight, the general and his lady.
as if a troop of revellers were leaving the city, shouting and singing as they went. --Plutarch Well now, yes, we certainly knew his goose was cooked, the general's. We'd heard about him, stuck on Pharos, the Parthia flop still shamin him, and the ship thing soon after. He'd take a walk every noon, people said, round the lighthouse. Watched, frownin, seaward, wretched. Knew Octavius was comin after him. Wasn't sure about the queen anymore. She was all for show, so was he, but he was changin, she was still pretendin, only performin. Then came this gent who was bald, one of those, called philosophers. He said things had gone too far. The party was over. But it wasn't. Not by any stretch. There were more and more parties. Bit by bit we got rolled into their act. Hired, night after night. And I'll tell you, Tony once, he come up so close you could touch him. Fifty or so, beamin, we was havin a breather in an alcove, up he comes to say thanks for the song, flesh hangin off his cheekbones, eyes sort of filmy, big smile, but you know he had a mouth no bigger than an owl's asshole, for all the fine speeches. Sat beside me, put his huge hand on my knee, he did. But that was all right. This knee, look at it. Anyway, to resume, like they say? After one big night in one of the palaces, up comes baldy again. Lads, he says, the whole parade hangs by a thread, you're the group to snip it. There's a myth about Antony, myth, that's what he said, and it's our ruin. They can't dish that much buffoonery forever, or that many nightingale tongues. What's to be done? Those were his words. So here's what he told us to do. There's that long street in Alexandria from the palace quarter to the outskirts and a big sewer runs under the street. You go in through the manhole with your flutes, lutes, tambourines and stuff, don't forget the hand harp, and you walk all the way along the sewer, makin music, till you reach the last manhole. There'll be a dab of green paint to mark it. Then you come out. That's near where Octavius has pitched his camp, but the camp's on the far side of the eff- eff- eff-luent plain, so you'll not bump into any sentries. Make all the noise you can while you're movin along down there. Don't slip. Don't slosh about. Make merry music, and loud. People outside have got to hear it, see? Then they'll say: The god is leavin Antony, leaving Alexandria. By mornin the story will have got to him. The last thing he said, that philosopher, was Make your music merry and when you're comin up through that last manhole, take care nobody sees you. Snip the myth, that's your slogan. So that's what we did. Paid in gold, baldy did. As for what happened next, I don't remember much. Our bit didn't figure in Cleo's dispatches?her scribbles on the tablets she sent to Octavius, still tellin herself the show must go on, then haulin her Tony up, him with his self-inflicted, so they did say, upper body wound, into her monument. Vague then, and what did we care. Even vaguer now. Figs and asps. Masks, masks. Difficult now to...what a long time ago. And seventy years don't go by for nothin. If someone could only explain to me what this inner whatsit is that certain folks nowadays is goin on about, then I might remember more, just might. Might not, too; in those days we was seaweed, grass, goin any which way the sea told us, or the wind. We was smoke. Tony and Cleo, they was big smoke, fortunate, just so long as they could outfool whiffs like us. Baldy tried fillin us in. Revenge for Manissa, some story like that. Us Greeks, puttin the measure back into things. I knew a bit about measure, from the music. But for the likes of me it didn't seem quite the same. Baldy talked about two hundred thousand scrolls they looted out of Ephesus?anything in those scrolls about the likes of us, I wonder? Of course not. Whiffs is what we was, and we still is. Want to hear my flute? |