"Mary Renault - Greece 5 - Mask Of Apollo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Renault Mary)

catch fire before I sobbed aloud.

The hands that had traced my painted wounds lifted me gently. I was gathered into the arms of Hecuba;
the wrinkled mask with its down-turned mouth bent close above. The flute, which had been moaning
softly through the speech, getting a cue, wailed louder. Under its sound, Queen Hecuba whispered in my
ear, "Be quiet, you little bastard. You're dead."

I felt better at once. All I had been taught came back to me. We had work to do. I slid back limp as his
hands released me; neatly, while he washed and shrouded me, he wiped my nose. The scene went
through to the end.

In vain

we sacrificed. And yet had not the very hand of God gripped and crushed this city deep in the ground we
should have disappeared in darkness, and not given a theme for music, and the songs of men to come.

As the extras carried me off in my royal grave-clothes, I thought to myself, surprised, "We are the men to
come." As well as everything else, I had been responsible to Astyanax. His shade had been watching
from the underworld, hoping I would not make him mean. What burdens I had borne! I felt I had aged a
lifetime.

My father, who had been standing behind the prompt-side revolve and seen it all, ran up as they slid me
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off the shield, asking what had come over me. If it had been my mother, I daresay I should have raised a
howl. But I said at once, "Father, I didn't make a noise."

Kroisos came off soon after, pushing up his mask. He was a thin man, all profile, like a god on a coin
except that he was bald. When he turned our way I hid behind my father's skirts; but he came towards
us, and fished me out by the hair. I came squirming, a disgusting sight, as you may suppose, all smeared
with blood-paint and snot. He grinned with big yellow teeth. I saw, amazed, that he was not angry "By
the dog!" he said, "I thought we were finished then." He grimaced like a comedian's slave-mask.
"Artemidoros, this boy has feeling, but he also knows what he's about. And what's your name?"

"Niko," I answered. My father said, "Nikeratos." I had seldom heard this used, and felt somehow
changed by it. "A good omen," said Kroisos. "Well, who knows?"

Now, while the women wailed over the bier, a dozen such scenes from my childhood up came back to
me. My father always got me in as an extra when he could.

Outside came a lull; Phantias the mask-maker had come to condole, bringing a grave-pot painted to
order with two masks and Achilles mourning by a tomb. The women, who were getting tired, broke off
to talk awhile. I was master of the house, I ought to go out and greet him. I could hear his voice, recalling
my father as Polyxena, and turned over again, biting the pillow. I wept because the god we both served
had made me choose, and my heart had forsaken him for the god. Yet I had fought the god for him.
"What a house today," I would say. "They must have heard the applause at the Kerameikos. That
business with the urn would have melted stone. Do you know I saw General Iphikrates crying?" There