Business once took me to Thessaly, where my mother's family originated; I have, by the way, the distinction of being descended through her from the famous Plutarch. One morning after I had ridden over a high range of hills, down a slippery track into the valley beyond, across dewy pastures and soggy ploughland, my horse, a white Thessalian thoroughbred, began to puff and slacken his pace. Feeling tired myself from sitting so long cramped in the saddle, I jumped off, carefully wiped his sweating forehead with a handful of leaves, stroked his ears, threw the reins over his neck, and walked slowly beside him, letting him relax and recover his wind at leisure. While he breakfasted, snatching a mouthful of grass from this side or that of the track which wound through the meadows, I saw two men trudging along together a short distance ahead of me, deep in conversation. I walked a little faster, curious to know what they were talking about, and just as I drew abreast one of them burst into a loud laugh and said to the other: 'Stop, stop! Not another word! I can't bear to hear any more of your absurd and monstrous lies.'
This was promising. I said to the story-teller: 'Please don't think me impertinent or inquisitive, sir, but I'm always anxious to improve my education, and few subjects fail to interest me. If you would kindly go back to the beginning of your story and tell me the whole of it I should be most grateful. It sounds as if it would help me pleasantly up this next steep hill.'
The man who had laughed went on: 'I want no more of that nonsense, do you hear? You might as well say that magic can make rivers run backwards, freeze the ocean, and paralyze the winds. Or that the sun can be stopped by magic in mid-course, the moon made to drop a poisonous dew, and the stars charmed from their proper spheres. Why, you might as well say that day can be magically annihilated and replaced by perpetual night.'
But I persisted: 'No, sir, don't be put off. Finish your story, please finish it; unless this is asking too much of you.' Then, turning to the other, I said: 'As for you, sir, are you sure that it isn't either natural dullness or cultivated obstinacy that prevents you from recognizing the truth of what your friend has been trying to tell you? Stupid people always dismiss as untrue anything that happens only very seldom, or anything that their minds cannot readily grasp; yet when these things are carefully inquired into they are often found not only possible but probable. Tell me, for instance, what you make of this. Last night at supper I was challenged to an eating race by some people at my table and tried to swallow too large a mouthful of polenta cheese. It was so doughy and soft that it stuck half-way down my throat, blocking my windpipe, and I nearly choked to death. Yet only a few days before, at the Painted Porch in Athens, I had watched a juggler actually swallow a sharp cavalry sabre, point downwards too; after which, he collected a few coins from us bystanders and swallowed a hunting spear in the same astonishing way. We watched him tilt his head backwards with the handle sticking out from his throat into the air; and presently, believe it or not, a beautiful boy began to wriggle up that handle with such slippery movements that you might have mistaken him for the royal serpent coiled on the roughly-trimmed olive club carried by the God of Medicine; he seemed to have neither bone nor sinew in his whole body.' Then I turned once more to the other man: 'Come, sir, out with your story! I undertake not only to believe it, even though your friend will not, but to show my gratitude for your kindness by standing you a meal at the next inn.'
'Many thanks for a most generous offer,' he said, 'but I need no reward for telling you my experiences, every word of which-I swear to you by the Sun who sees everything-is absolutely true. And this afternoon when we reach Hypata, the most important town in Thessaly, you will no longer need to make the least mental reservation about its truth, because everyone there knows the story of what happened to me. It was by no means a private affair, you see. I must begin with some particulars about myself-my name, business and so on. I am an Aeginetan, in the wholesale provision trade, and I travel regularly through Thessaly, Aetolia and Boeotia buying honey, cheese and goods of that sort-the name is Aristomenes, at your service! Well, news reached me one day from Hypata that a large stock of prime cheeses was being offered there at a very tempting price. I hurried off at once but, as happens only too often in the trade, my trip was an unlucky one. I found as soon as I arrived that a fellow named Lupus, a merchant in a big way, had cornered the market only the day before. Depressed by having travelled so fast and to so little purpose, I went along early that evening to the public baths; and there, to my astonishment, whom should I meet but my old friend Socrates. I hardly recognized him, he looked so miserably pale and thin, sitting on the ground half-covered with a filthy, tattered old cloak, just like a street beggar. Though we had once been on the most intimate terms I hesitated a little before greeting him.
'"Why, dear Socrates," I said at last, "what in the world is the meaning of this? Why are you sitting here in such a frightful state? Have you committed some crime? Don't you know that you have been officially listed as dead, and that your family have gone into mourning and paid you their last devotions? Your children are now wards of the provincial court, and your poor wife, who has ruined her looks by crying herself nearly blind for you, is being worried by her parents to re-marry and put the family on its feet again. And here you turn up like a ghost! Really, it is most upsetting."
'"Oh, but Aristomenes," he replied, "if only you knew what extraordinarily unkind tricks Fortune can play on a man, you would never speak to me like that." He blushed and pulled his rags over his face, which had the unfortunate effect of uncovering the lower part of his body from the naval downwards.
'I could bear it no longer. Catching hold of him, I tried to pull him up from the ground, but he resisted me and groaned: "Leave me alone, leave me alone! Let Fortune have her way and enjoy her triumph over me for as long as she pleases." However, in the end he promised to come along, so I pulled off one of the two garments I was wearing and put it on him. Then I hurried him into a private bath, where I gave him a good scrubbing and took off several layers of filth. Finally, though exhausted myself, I managed to drag him along to my inn, where I made him lie down on a mattress and gave him plenty of food, plenty of wine and all the latest news from home. After a time he brightened up and we began to laugh and joke together and got very noisy-until all of a sudden he heaved a passionate sigh, beat his forehead with his fists and cried: "Oh, how miserable I am! It all started with my wanting to watch that much advertised gladiatorial display near Larissa. I had gone to Macedonia on business, as you probably know, and I was coming home after ten months with a tidy sum of money when, just before reaching Larissa, I was waylaid by bandits in a wild valley and robbed of practically everything but my life. Well, I managed to get away from them in the end and, almost at my last gasp, reached this town. Here I went to an inn run by a woman named Mero?. She was no longer young but extraordinarily attractive, and when I told her my sad story and explained how anxious I was to return home after my long absence, she pretended to be deeply sympathetic, cooked me a grand supper for which she charged me nothing, and afterwards pressed me to sleep with her. But from the moment that I first climbed into her bed my mind began to sicken and my will-power to fail. While I was still well enough to work for a living I gave her what little money I picked up by carrying bags, and then, as I grew weaker, I even presented her with the clothes that the kind robbers had left me to cover my nakedness. And now you see the condition into which bad luck and a charming woman have brought me."
'"Good God," I said, "you deserve all this and more, if possible, for having deserted your home and children and made yourself a slave to an old bitch like that!"
'"Hush, hush," he cried, a forefinger to his lips, looking wildly round in case we were overheard. "Say nothing against that marvellous woman, or your tongue may be your ruin."
'"Really!" I said. "Then what sort of inn-keeper can she be? From the way you talk, anyone would think that she was an absolute empress possessed of supernatural powers."
'"I tell you, Aristomenes," he answered in lugubrious tones, "my Mero? is able, if she pleases, to pull down the heavens or uplift the earth; to petrify the running stream or dissolve the rocky mountain; to raise the spectral dead or hurl the gods from their thrones; to quench the bright stars or illuminate the dark Land of Shadows."
'"Come, come, Socrates, this is the language of melodrama! Ring down the curtain for pity's sake and let me have the story in plain words."
'He answered: "Will a single instance of her powers convince you? Or must you have two, or more? Her ability to make men fall passionately in love with her-not only Greeks, but Indians, and eastern and western Egyptians and even, if she pleases, the mythical inhabitants of the Antipodes-this is only a slight sample of her powers. If you want to hear of the greater feats that she has performed in the presence of reliable witnesses, I will mention a few. Well, first of all, one of her lovers dared have an affair with another woman; she only needed to pronounce a single word and he was transformed into a beaver."
'"Why a beaver?"
'"Because the beaver, when alarmed by the hunt, bites off its own testicles and leaves them lying by the river bank to put the hounds off the scent; and Mero? hoped that this would happen to him. Then there was the old inn-keeper, her neighbour and rival, whom she transformed into a frog; and now the poor fellow swims around in one of his own wine casks, or buries himself in the lees, croaking hoarsely to his old customers: 'Walk up! Walk up!' And the barrister who had once been briefed to prosecute her: his punishment was ram's horns, and now you can see him any day in court bleating his case and making learned rebuttals, with the horrible things curling from his forehead. Finally, when the wife of another of her lovers spoke nastily about her, Mero? condemned her to perpetual pregnancy by putting a charm on her womb that prevented the child from being born. This was about eight years ago; and now the poor woman swells bigger and bigger every month until you would believe her to be on the point of bearing a young elephant."
'"But when all these things came to be generally known?"
'"Why, then there was a public indignation meeting, at which it was decided to stone her to death the next day. This single day's grace was enough for Mero?, just as it was for Medea when King Creon ordered her to quit Corinth. Medea, you remember, set fire to her supplanter's bridal head-dress; soon the whole palace was alight, and the new bride and Creon himself were both burned to death. But Mero?, as she confided to me the next morning when drunk, dug a trench and performed certain rites over it, and by the dark power of the spirits that she invoked, she laid a spell on the gates and doors of every house in Hypata, so that for forty-eight hours nobody could come out into the streets, not even by tunnelling through a house wall. In the end the whole town had to appeal to her from their windows, promising if she freed them never to molest her again but, on the contrary, always to defend her against harm; then she relented and removed the spell. But she took her revenge on the chairman of the meeting by spiriting away his house at midnight-walls, floors, foundations and all, with himself inside-to a town a hundred miles off. This place stood on the top of a waterless hill-the townspeople had to rely on rain-water for all purposes-and the buildings were so closely crowded together that there was no space to fit the house in; so she ordered it to be flung down outside the town gates."
'"My dear Socrates," I said, "these are certainly very wonderful and terrible stories and I am beginning to feel a little scared myself; in fact, really frightened. Suppose that your old woman were informed by her familiar spirits of all that we have been saying? But what do you say to going to sleep at once? The night is still young and we could make an early start tomorrow morning, getting as far away from this damned hole as our legs will take us."
'While I was speaking, poor Socrates suddenly fell asleep, and began snoring loudly: the natural effect of a good meal and plenty of wine on a man in his exhausted condition. I locked and barred the bedroom door, pushed the head of my bed against the hinge, shook up the mattress and lay down. For a time I could not sleep, because of Socrates's uncanny stories, but about midnight when I had comfortably dozed off, I was awakened by a sudden crash and the door burst open with greater force than if a pack of bandits had run at it with their shoulders. Lock, bar and hinges all gave way together and my bed, which was a worm-eaten old camp-bed, a bit short for me and with one damaged leg, was tossed into the air and fell upside down, pinning me underneath it.
'Emotions are contradictory things. You know how sometimes one weeps for joy: well now, after this terrible awakening, I found myself grinning and joking to myself: "Why, Aristomenes, you have been transformed into a tortoise!" Though knocked flat, I felt fairly safe under the bed and poked my head out sideways, like a tortoise peeping from under his shell, to watch what would happen next. Presently in came two terrible old women, one of them carried a lighted torch in her hand, the other a sponge and a drawn sword. They stood over Socrates, who was still asleep, and the one with the sword said to the other: "Look, sister Panthia, here is the man whom I chose to be my sweetheart-as condescendingly as the Goddess Diana chose the shepherd Endymion, or Olympian Jove chose that pretty little Ganymede. And a wonderfully hot time I gave him, too. But he never really returned my girlish passion and fooled me day and night. Now I have caught him not only spreading scandal about me but actually planning to run off! He fancies himself an Odysseus, does he, and expects me to howl and sob like Calypso when she awoke and found herself alone on her island?" Then she pointed at me and said: "And this creature peeping at us from under the bed is Aristomenes, who put him up to his mischief; but if he hopes to get safely away from me he is making the mistake of his life. I'll see that he repents too late of all the nasty insulting things he said about me earlier tonight, and of this new impertinent prying."
'I broke into a cold sweat and began to tremble so violently that my spasms made the bed rattle and dance over me. But Panthia said to Mero?-she could only have been Mero?: "Sister, shall we tear him to pieces at once, or shall we first tie strong twine around his privates and haul him up to a rafter and watch them being slowly cut through?"
'"No, no, dear, nothing of that sort! Let him be for awhile. My darling Socrates will be needing a sexton tomorrow to dig a little hole for him somewhere or other." Still speaking, she turned Socrates's head on the pillow and I watched her drive the sword up to the hilt through the left side of his neck. Blood spurted out, but she had a small bladder ready and caught every drop as it fell. Socrates's windpipe had been sliced through, but he uttered a sort of cry, or indistinct gurgle, and then was silent. To complete the sacrificial rite in what, I suppose, was her usual manner, this charming woman thrust her hand through the wound, deep into my poor friend's body, groped about inside and at length pulled out the heart. But Panthia took the sponge from her and stopped the gaping wound with it, muttering as she did so:
Sponge, sponge, from salt sea took,
Pass not over the running brook!
Then they came across the room to me, lifted away the bed, squatted over me and stared long and vigorously in my face.
'After this they left me; and no sooner had they crossed the threshold than the door rose up by itself and bar, lock and hinges miraculously refixed themselves in their original positions. I lay prostrate on the floor, naked, cold, and clammy with loathsome urine. "A new-born child must feel like this," I said to myself. "Yet how different his prospects are! I have my whole life behind me, not in front of me. Yes, I'm as good as dead, like a criminal on his way to the cross. For what will become of me tomorrow morning when they find Socrates's corpse with his throat cut? Nobody will believe my story. 'You ought at least to have cried out for help if you were no match for the women,' they will tell me. 'A big, strong man like you, allowing a friend's throat to be cut before your eyes and not uttering a word!' And: 'How do you explain being left alive yourself? Why didn't they kill you, as a witness to the crime, to destroy all evidence against them? Your punishment for being alive to tell the tale must be death.'" My mind circled around what seemed to me at the time an almost posthumous chain of reasoning. But the night was now nearly over and at last I made up my mind to steal out of the inn before daylight and run off. I took up my bundle of belongings, drew the bolts of the door and put the key in its lock, but the honest old door which during the night had opened of its own accord to let my enemies in, now refused to let me out until I had turned the key this way and that a score of times and rattled hard at the handle. Once outside in the courtyard I called out: "Hey, porter, where are you? Open the gate, I want to be off before daybreak."
'He was lying naked on the bare ground beside the gate and answered, still half-asleep: "Who's that? Who's asking to get off at this time of night? Don't you know, whoever you are, that the roads are swarming with bandits? You may be tired of life, or you may have some crime on your conscience, but don't think that I'm such a pumpkin-headed idiot as to risk my life for yours by opening the gate and letting them in."
'I protested: "But it's almost morning. And anyhow, what harm could bandits do you? Certainly I think you are an idiot to be afraid of them. A team of ten professional wrestlers couldn't take anything worth having from a man as naked as you are."
'He grunted, turned over on his other side and asked drowsily: "How do I know that you haven't murdered the man you brought in yesterday afternoon-running off at this unearthly hour?"
'I shall never forget how I felt when he said this. I had a vision of Hell gaping for me and the old three-headed Dog snarling hungrily. I was convinced that Mero? had refrained from cutting my throat only because of her vicious intention to get me crucified. I went back to my room, determined to kill myself in my own way. But how was I to set about it? I should have to call on my bed to help me. So I began talking to it. I said coaxingly: "Listen, bed, dear little bed, the only true friend that I have left in this cruel world, my fellow-sufferer and the sole witness of my innocence-please bed, lend me some clean, wholesome instrument to put me out of my misery. For I long to die, dear bed!" Anticipating the bed's reply, I began to tug out a length of the rope with which its frame was corded, made one end fast to a rafter which stuck out above the window, and knotted the other into a running noose. I climbed on the bed, put my neck into the noose, and then kicked the bed away.
'My attempt at suicide was a failure. The rope was old and rotten and broke under my weight. Down I tumbled. I rolled gasping and choking against the body of Socrates which was lying on its mattress not far off. And at that instant in came the porter and shouted: "Hey you, you who a moment ago were rearing to get off in such frantic haste, what are you doing here, wallowing on that mattress and grunting like a pig?"
'Before I could answer, Socrates sprang up, as if suddenly awakened-whether by my fall or the porter's hoarse voice was not clear-and said sternly: "I have often heard travellers cursing at porters and their surly ways, and upon my word, they have every right to do so. I was tired out, and now this damned fellow bursts into the room and shouts at us-I am sure with the notion of stealing something while our attention is distracted-and spoils the deepest sleep that I have had for months."
'At the sound of Socrates's voice I jumped up in an ecstasy of relief and cried: "No, no, you are the best porter in the whole wide world, and honest as the day! But look, look, here's the man whom in your drunken daze just now you accused me of murdering-my friend, whom I love as dearly as a father or brother." I hugged and kissed Socrates, but he pushed me away crossly, saying: "Ugh, you stink like the bottom of a sewer!" and began offering unkind suggestions as to how I came to be in such a mess. In my confusion I made him some sort of lame excuse-I forget what-and turned the conversation as soon as possible. Catching hold of his hand, I cried: "What are we waiting for? Why not start at once and enjoy the freshness of the early morning air?"
'"Why not?" he sniffed. So I shouldered my bundle once more, settled my bill with the porter, and soon Socrates and I were out on the road.
'When we had gone some little distance from the town and the whole countryside stood out clear in the rising sun, I took a long careful look at Socrates's throat to see where, if at all, the sword had gone in. But nothing showed and I thought: "Here's Socrates as well as he ever was and without a scratch on him. No wound, no sponge, not even a scar to show where the sword went burrowing in, only a couple of hours ago. What a vivid and fantastic dream! I was mad to drink so much." And I said aloud: "The doctors are right. If you stuff your stomach the last thing at night and then flood it with drink you are bound to have nightmares. That was why I slept so poorly last night after our celebration; I had such a frightful dream that I still feel as though I were spattered with human blood."
'Socrates laughed. "Blood indeed! The plain truth is that you soaked your bed and still stink of it. But I agree with you about the cause of nightmares. Last night I had a terrible one myself, now I come to remember it: I dreamed that my throat was cut and I had all the sensations of agony from the wound, and then someone pulled my heart out, which was such an unspeakable experience that it makes me feel ill even to think of it. My knees are trembling so violently now that I must sit down. Have you anything for me to eat?"
'I opened my haversack and took out some bread and cheese. "What about breakfast under that big plane-tree over there?" I asked.
'As we sat down together I noticed that his healthy looks had faded and that, though he ate ravenously, his face was turning the colour of boxwood. I must have looked almost as pale myself because the vision of that terrible pair of furies had repossessed my mind, and all the terrors of the night returned with a sudden rush. I took a small bite of bread, but it stuck in my gullet and I could neither swallow it nor cough it up. I grew more and more anxious. Would Socrates survive? By this time a number of people were about, and when two men are travelling together and one dies mysteriously by the roadside suspicion naturally falls upon the other. He ate a huge meal, a great deal of bread and nearly a whole cheese, and then complained of thirst. A few yards off, out of sight of the road, a brook ran gently past the roots of the tree. It was bright as silver, clear as crystal, placid as a pond. "Come here, Socrates," I said. "This looks better than milk. Have a good drink of it." He got up, walked along the shelving bank until he found a place that suited him, knelt down, bent his head forward, and begin to drink greedily. But hardly had his lips touched the water when the wound in his throat opened wide and the sponge dropped out into the water, followed by a small trickle of blood. He would have fallen in after it, if I had not caught at one leg and lugged him up to the top of the bank. He was stone dead when I got him there.
'After a hurried funeral-service I scraped away the sandy soil and laid him in his eternal resting place, there by the brookside. Then, trembling and sweating with fear, I ran across the fields, continually changing my direction, stumbling on and on, always making for the wildest and most desolate country…
'I never returned to Aegina. With a conscience as bad as any murderer's, I abandoned my business, my home, my wife, my children, and exiled myself to Aetolia. There I married again.'
***
That was the end of Aristomenes's story. His friend, who from the first had obstinately refused to believe a word of it, said to me at once: 'Well now, honestly, I have never in all my life heard so many nonsensical falsehoods told at one time. This is worse even than the stories the priests tell. You are an educated man, to judge by your dress and general appearance; surely you didn't believe a word?'
I answered: 'I refuse to admit, in theory, that anything in this world is impossible; to do so would be to set myself above the Power that pre-destines all human experience. And, in practice, things do occasionally happen to you and me, as to everybody else, which are so outrageous that we can hardly believe in them ourselves, and which any ordinary person would certainly reject as mere fiction. As a matter of fact, I do believe Aristomenes's story and I'm most grateful to him for having entertained me so well; I hardly noticed the roughness and steepness of the hill. And look over there: those must be the town gates! It seems almost impossible that I have got here so easily, not on horseback but towed along by my ears. My horse, I am sure, will gratefully second my hearty vote of thanks; Aristomenes has saved him a long, tiresome trot.'
Here our ways parted. They turned off towards a group of houses to the left of the road; I went straight on.
