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It was a damnably bright and pretty day that day in Athens. The July sun was beating down, relentless and white and bleaching everything, marble and stone and leaf, so that a haze clung to the air. It hadn’t been quite as hot as the other days either, as it had rained two days ago, and the breeze still held. It was of course, no weather for one to train during the day under the sun without sweating his very soul out, or getting a headache, or blisters.
But Socrates, being the impossible man that he was, was at the gymnasium, or so had various folk told Alcibiades. He found him there, in the shadow of a colonnaded awning, on that favorite little bench of his that was near the washing fountains but out of sight of them and almost right under a thick spread of ivy overhead that kept the heat away even in the worst of summer days. He had his broad back turned and he was sitting hunched, very unlike his habit, looking out and far towards the city and the plains that run down to Piraeus.
Alcibiades slowed his step and made it deliberately ring loudly as he came up near the old teacher. He knew Socrates had heard him, for his sight was still strong despite the forty years he carried, and he saw the tendon in his neck jump, just once.
“Joy to you, Socrates” He called out in greeting and was left marveling at how his own voice, though he had meant for it to be airy and pleasant, broke with emotion he hadn’t a name for. “Ten years”, he thought “I guess that’s emotion enough.”
Socrates did not answer or stir or make any indication that he’d heard him. A part of his mind cried that he shouldn’t embarrass himself, not at his age, not anymore, that he should leave at once. Socrates had grown, as he had, his hair a bright grey with none of the dark curls Alcibiades remembered from when he had left. But the small part of him, that which was in his heart or his mind or that place in his gut that never quite felt full even after a good meal, screamed over every thought and pulsed with need. Need for that which he dares not name, lest he broke down like a girl and tore at his own hair.
So, he walked forward, steeling himself as if going into battle, but with none of the smell of blood and the cheering of troops and the Paean echoing around his skull, which made braveness quite a challenge. Each step was a stab between his ribs, but he’d been on ship and town-siege long enough by now, and at some point, one becomes master of such weaknesses of the mind, weaknesses such as feeling raw and scared and wounded when approaching an old friend.
He reached him then and stood on the other side of the stone bench, and still Socrates did not move. The general leaned down and took out of his robe, the small gift he had picked up on his way over in a fit of early morning hysteria. A small clay Silenus, with a line down his middle and jiggling with the small golden figurines inside. It had been more expensive than he remembered from when he had last been in Athens, and one could no longer find such things at every stall at the market like before, and that was so for most things like this in the city, since the war started. Few could afford luxuries such as a Silenus that was only meant to be broken in half to reveal the little statues inside, for but a moment’s wonder and entertainment and for saying “This one had two Dionysuses inside, I guess I must get drunk tonight, lest I offend the lord.”
At any rate, he set it down on the bench next to Socrates with a soft click and then he turned his back to him and instead of leaving like one should if their company is unwanted, he dropped himself down on his backside, on the ground behind the bench, and waited.
After a while, as had started occupying himself with removing the dirt from his sandals and feeling the slow drip of sweat from his hairline down his temples, there was a soft stirring and he heard the Silenus getting picked up, twirled about and then broken softly, carefully.
“Which gods bless us today?” He asked without turning, and then, one after the other, the tiny figurines came flying over his head and landing neatly into his lap.
Aphrodite, Aphrodite again, Hermes, Poseidon, Ares, Dionysus. He picked the Dionysus up and observed him. He had no detail on his tiny face, but one could make out the leopard skin for it was painted with dots, and the Thyrsus had a shape hard to misunderstand. He took them one by one and set them on the floor and then he heard Socrates stir again and this time, Alcibiades turned around to look. The old teacher had a hand around the top of a walking stick and seemed more hunched over than before, even though it was clear he was making to stand. Alcibiades shot up, even though his own back and knees had lately started complaining when he abused them, especially so early in the morning.
“Will you not say a word to me then?” He asked, because as Socrates stood up, in the silence, he could hear his knees creak and he wanted that sound erased from his consciousness. It had hurt more than his own kneed did to hear that, as if the sound of old age was more real and vicious than the image of it. Socrates took a visible breath then, and Alcibiades noticed how he struggled. Against what, the gods only knew, and maybe not even them. Socrates took a step and Alcibiades felt desperation choke him, so he said “Since when does Socrates use a cane?”
And Socrates, damn him to hell, thought Alcibiades, turned just enough so his face could be seen over his shoulder, and the bend of his nose and his brow caught the light like a marble statue, so skillfully crafted that even if it was of the most vulgar satyr, it looked wonderful and beautiful, like the sea-eaten sides of cliffs plunging into the sea, when they are alight with the sunset’s fires.
“Since when is Alcibiades’s hair so dull and his cheeks so hollow” Socrates grumbled, and it took everything -everything- in Alcibiades not to break into tears at the sound of his voice. Soft and full and kind and infinitely mocking as it was. Alcibiades was always jealous of the consonants rolling off of Socrates’s tongue like music. He thought in that moment, as he had thought before, that he would have preferred to have been a word, a simple one, rolling off his tongue for just a moment, and if that was all his existence was to be, he would have been content. But he was born a miserable, wretched man.
Alcibiades laughed a small laugh and Socrates then turned towards him fully and before Alcibiades could utter another word, the old teacher reached out and with just two fingers, pushed a lock at the side of his face back, as if to fix it, as if to put it back into place. Alcibiades knew his hair was perfectly in place already. The girls in Athens had lost many things in the time of war, but not their skill in matters of beauty nor their willingness to spoil him rotten. Three of them that very morning had been braiding and oiling his hair, while a fourth sat in his lap, listening to some idle story he half made-up about the gardens of the Persians, and the peacocks they kept there and “oh, darlings, I wish I could have carried some of them back, for they would suit your beauty better that they suit the almond trees and willows”
He promised then that if he ever came in possession of a peacock, he would bring it to them. And then he left, not before diligently handing out their gifts and kisses and not without a little tug on the belt and a whisper at the ear of the black-haired girl who had been weaving the beads in his hair while, accidentally of course, brushing up against his neck or shoulder with every movement.
But Socrates pushed his hair in place even though it didn’t need fixing and Alcibiades would have undone it himself at that instant and forgotten all about the girls and all about later arrangements of the day, if only Socrates could touch his hair again, or stroke his face or hold him by the wrist.
And then Socrates drew back again and Alcibiades blurted out “I missed you” and then cursed himself and felt his blood turn to ice and fire. Had he lost his mind? Had the sea salt done more damage, like the lieutenant always claimed salt could do, to his mind than to his hair?
Socrates did look taken aback, which made a sick satisfaction bloom shyly in Alcibiades’s heart, though it was short-lived.
“I did not” said Socrates, very bluntly, very roughly. “I was blissfully free of trouble while you were away, as none of my other students have been as unruly and unreasonable and horrible as you”
Alcibiades raised his arms then, understanding this for what it was, and Socrates moved forward as if he had no cane and no sixty years of life, and he embraced him about the shoulders, all but crushing him, for he was still impossibly wide and strong. Alcibiades could do nothing but hold on like the wailing women hold onto the statue of Athena when their men are dying in battle, and dig his fingers into the threadbare cloth and bend his head down so his nose was in Socrates’s shoulder and he could smell that he had, just a short while ago, washed the grime of the gymnasium off with olive soap.
And if Alcibiades cried then, if tears ran from his eyes silently and if his whole body was wrecked with sorrow and joy and if he was a grown man clinging to another when he should by rights have his own youth clinging to him, nobody but him and Socrates would know. And he had already embarrassed himself to his teacher every day of his life, so the sting of it wasn’t new and it wasn’t unpleasant. It felt like forgiveness and punishment, that Socrates simply held onto him, and gave him time and silence.
-
After they had embraced for some time, Socrates drew back and whacked him across the head with his cane, which he had raised with inhuman speed and dexterity. Typical, Alcibiades thought as he rubbed the spot on his head and thought that, well, now a lock must've truly gone out of place and need fixing.
"You whelp" said Socrates, a true frown across his face, made all the more severe by how aged it was, as if anger was proportional to one's years. "You're gone for ten years, and you bring back a cheap little Silenus as a gift to the teacher that's taken such great pains for you?" But the mirth was there, as always, and Alcibiades thought Socrates must be particularly happy to see him, for he had called him a whelp and not stupid or a moron, or a "bitch lost in a dark cave who, even though she's starving, is still whimpering for a mate, or a hand behind her ears". Alcibiades vividly remembered that one, for he had been comfortably drunk that night and he had replied, "even if I were lost and starving, your hand behind my ears would be sweeter than a feast at my own table" and Socrates had made a whole show, a tragic play fit to make poets weep, of how burdened he was by Alcibiades's affections, but they still slept curled against each other on a couch when the hour grew late.
At any rate, presently, he took out of the folds at his breast a small sphere, fitting just perfectly at the palm of his hand. It was dark and glistening as if it held flecks of magic, or a god's blood in it. He looked at it fondly, for he had taken extreme pains to hold onto this one thing he had found at a Persian market. The merchant had mentioned the name of the stone it had been carved out of, then, but it was a complicated name and Alcibiades hadn't been entirely sober, and he had forgotten. But it didn't matter. He turned to Socrates.
"Many a time I’ve told you, all that I have, my very life, is yours if you ask for it" But he held out the sphere and lifted it up, so it caught the sun's light, and then!
It was set alight from the inside, as if the dark stone was suddenly cracked open by light alone, and inside were endless golden and red valleys, deserts and canyons and forests of autumn trees and great rivers that leapt out of their banks into starry skies and back down again, looping through clouds of all sorts of colors. And as he turned it, the landscape changed, and changed again, and sometimes it even was nothing but indescribable shapes, those that heaven must be made out of, too divine for mortals to understand. Socrates was looking at it , Alcibiades noticed, and in the far back depths of his eyes, there was something. And Alcibiades felt his heart soar and sing and bleed all over the ground like a fish gutted before its soul could leave its body. And he lowered his hand and gave the sphere to Socrates, who took it and held it in silence.
"I know it is silly" said Alcibiades "but I bought it one day that I was drunk, and bored and it looked very peculiar, and then I went to my rooms, and I saw it in the firelight, and the next day in the sunlight, and every time I couldn't stop crying because it reminded me of you." He folded his arms across his middle then, and rubbed at his own skin, for he felt very exposed all of a sudden.
"Then you must keep it, perhaps" said Socrates, but Alcibiades shook his head and smiled.
"No, it is for you. It gave me a lot of pain and sorrow and hope these past years. Now it's only right you have it, and maybe remember me when you see it, if I am gone"
Socrates gave a laugh that sounded very choked, but that might've been Alcibiades' eagerness and love muffling his ears. "What makes you think I want to remember you when you are gone?" he asked and looked at him from under his thick brow.
"Maybe you don't" said Alcibiades "but I want you to"
"Ah, dear boy, have your victories gone to your head this much?" Socrates shook his head in disappointment "that you think what you want must be imposed upon another man's thoughts and heart?"
"You alone should know it's not the victories that have gone to my head" Alcibiades felt the old, the very familiar desperation rise in him.
"You don't look drunk" said Socrates thoughtfully.
"Oh, for the love of gods, man!" cried Alcibiades and he was very close now to tearing out his hair.
Socrates shook his head and made to give back the sphere to him. Alcibiades tightened his arms where they were wrapped around himself and took a step back
"Do not offend me, just this once" he pleaded. He truly pleaded, he let his throat open and raw with it.
Socrates then stood there and thought for a very long time. Alcibiades was used to this, and he stood patiently and politely. At length, Socrates had come to the conclusion of his thoughts, and he was ready again to be amongst the pitiful world of men. He tucked the sphere into his own robes and sighed a great sigh.
"You're always causing me trouble boy" he said as he turned to walk away, Alcibiades dutifully at his heel.
"I'm as far from a boy as one gets, Socrates" he said with a smile.
"Indeed, you are!" said Socrates "I saw the grey in your hair, and the lines about your eyes." He laughed as if there was a joke only for him to know and then continued "but it's the gift of old age, now, that men like you seem only boys to me, yet I remember when I was at that age as clear as if it were last week! Time is a strange force"
"It truly is" agreed Alcibiades, as was, as had always been his habit when talking to his teacher. Most of the times, he could only agree, feeling that anything he said would pale and fall like a rotten piece of fruit on the ground after Socrates’s words.
They were walking towards the agora now, and it was early enough that it was just starting to get busy, what with the summer heat making everyone prefer the shade and coolness of their homes or tucked-away stores. Alcibiades felt for a moment, perhaps as the mention of time being strange was fresh and churning around in his mind, that the world melted at the seams like wax, and from the gaps he could glimpse the old Athens, of his youth, bright with fresh color and gold and the promises of greatness. Socrates would be dark-haired then, and taller than he is now, almost as tall as Alcibiades himself, and his back would've been more square and straight , and he would be strutting, much more leisurely than he did now with his cane and his strange stiffness, like a great huge bird, or something between a bird and an ox, like he owned the very ground he walked upon, and like he was free of even the weight of his own body at the same time. Alcibiades wouldn't be much different than he is now, perhaps his step would've been lighter and his cloak a bit longer, but he still let it trail behind him on the ground, and he knew his gait had not yet changed with age. Not even the years aboard ships had managed to take away his cat-like stride, on which Socrates had once commented, in one of his rare good moods where he decided to be kind to Alcibiades, that "it's as if he isn't going anywhere in particular, but he is going there with purpose" and Alcibiades had held that, and every other little comment close to his heart, memorized, emblazoned on his soul, like the Delphic maxims are on stone.