The Golden Mean Read Online Free PDF Page B

for me, though I refuse to sit down. They’re still in their costumes and are enjoying themselves voraciously.
    “Better every time,” I say.
    I’ve taken to haunting rehearsals ever since I stumbled on them the day we arrived. When I returned later that day to apologize to Carolus for the interruption, he too was apologetic. He suffered headaches and insomnia and his cast was made up of locals, mostly clowns and jugglers, acrobats, and one or two musicians. “I think of Euripides seeing this and I die,” he told me. “I die and die again.” When he discovered I knew the play, had seen it in Athens in my student days, we compared notes and realized it was his own Dionysus I had seen. He had been young enough then, still, to get away with it: dark-haired instead of white, thrilling-voiced, intense. The boy he’s got for the role now is pretty enough, but dense and oddly prim. He has to be taught to walk like a cock and not a hen. Aging Kadmos, trained as a clown, fancies himself a professional, though he’s never done tragedy, and considers himself the actors’ spokesman. He takes their complaints to Carolus and delivers them long-windedly, pleased with his own diction. Agave looks nice in a wig but simpers and minces and forgets his lines. Pentheus often misses rehearsals, with no explanation. He’s away today.
    The actors are playing a drinking game, tossing the ball of rags they’ve been using for Pentheus’s head amongst themselves; whoever drops it has to stand and drain his cup while the others hoot and jeer. I rejoin Carolus. I like him. I like having a friend near enough my own age. Older, actually, but not old enough to be my father, and I like that, too. And still the embers of a sexuality not quite spent; you can see it when he gets angry. He likes men, told me so early on, and didn’t mind when I told him I didn’t. We talk about plays and theatre generally, tell each other about productions we’ve seen. I don’t have much to offer that he’s unfamiliar with.
    I ask him what makes a good tragedy. He thinks about this for a while. A companionable silence between us while the actors slowly drift away, bidding each other stagy goodbyes, and the rain increases, drumming at the roof like fingers. He’s got good wine from somewhere, not the local.
    “Funny question,” he says. “A good death, a good pain, a good tragedy. ‘Good’ is a funny word.”
    “I’m writing a book.” The response I default to when my subject starts to look at me strangely. And maybe I am, suddenly, maybe I am. A little work to bring me back here when I reread it years from now, to this rain and this cup of wine and this man I’m prepared to like so much. The comfort here, this little sanctuary.
    “Gods, man,” he says. “Are you crying?”
    I tell him I’m unwell.
    “What kind of book?” he says.
    “An analysis.” I’m thinking through my mouth. “In two parts, tragedy and comedy. The constituent elements of each, with examples.”
    “Tragedy for beginners.”
    “Sure,” I say. “A gentle introduction.”
    “How are you unwell?”
    I tell him I cry easily, laugh easily, get angry easily. I get overwhelmed.
    “That’s a sickness?”
    I ask him what he would call it.
    “Histrionics,” he says. “What do you do for it?”
    I tell him I write books.
    He nods, then shakes his head. “My father had the same. I wish he’d written books. He was a drunk.”
    I wait for more, but there isn’t any.
    “A good tragedy,” he says. “I think you’re a dabbler.”
    I lean forward. I tell him that’s exactly what I am. I suggest the stilts.
    He laughs, then falls silent again, long enough for me to wonder if our conversation is over and he’s waiting for me to leave. I clear my throat.
    “It’s the whole course of a character’s life,” he says. “The actions he takes, decisions, the choices that bring him right up to the present moment. Having to choose.” He points at me. “That’s what I want to