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

was always something one could say, and something true. But the great things every artist hopes for, the
harsh god closed my mouth upon, and pushed them back down my throat. He missed them; I know he
missed them; I saw it sometimes in his eyes. Why not have said them, and left the god to make the best
of it? The gods have so much, and men have so little. Gods live forever, too.

I could not lie there like a child. I got up and wiped my face, greeted Phantias, finished cutting my hair for
the grave-wreath, and stood at the door to receive people. I was there when Lamprias called.

When he made his offer, my mother, without asking me what I thought, thanked him with tears. Lamprias
coughed, and looked at me with apology, knowing what I knew. His great black eyebrows worked up
and down, and he glanced away at my father. I too, as I accepted, half looked to see him sit up on his
bier and say, "Are you mad, boy?" But he said nothing; what indeed could he have said? I knew I should
have to take it. I would do no better, now.

At nineteen, one is good for nothing in the theater but extra work. To get into a company, even as third
actor, one must have the range that will let one play not only youths and women but warriors, tyrants and
old men. No lad of that age can do it; whereas a good man, who has kept his voice in training and his
body supple, can wear juvenile masks till he is fifty, and do everything else as well.

So long as my father lived, I always got work, singing in choruses, carrying a spear, or doing silent
stand-ins, when two roles played by one actor overlap, needing an extra to wear the mask and robe for
one of them. Lately I had even gotten odd lines here and there, in modern plays where the rule of three is
not so strictly kept, and the extra sometimes speaks. Though I knew little else, I knew the theater; and I
was not fool enough to think that any more of this would come my way. Any actor good enough to
appear in Athens has a son, or a nephew, or a boy friend training for the stage. From now on, I would be
like the little orphan in The Iliad, who gets no table scraps. "Outside!" say the other boys. "Your father is
not dining here."
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I reckoned I would need three years to make my way, at the very best, before I got parts in good
productions; and even for three months my mother could not keep me idling. We had been left really
poor; she would have to sell her weaving, my sister would have to earn her own dower or else marry
beneath her. Somehow I must pick up a living at the only trade I knew.

Lamprias was pleased I agreed at once and said nothing to embarrass him. He would be getting
something for money he owed outright, when cash down was what we needed. "Good boy, good boy,"
he said, patting me on the back. "The choice of a real professional, and your father's son. The range will
come, we all know that; meantime, you've a head start over most lads I could get. You've lived
backstage since you could stand, you know something of everything, from lyre-playing to working the
crane. A tour like this will be the making of you. No artist knows himself till he's done a tour."

I did not tell him I had toured only last year, with my father, playing Samos and Miletos as extra in a
first-class company, berthing aft and eating with the captain. I would make what was coming no better by
putting on airs and being resented. It might have been worse. Boys left like me have had to choose
between selling their favors to some actor in return for work, or going right to the bottom; the village
fit-ups where, if they don't like you, you can make your supper off the fruit and greenstuff they throw. At
least LampriasтАЩ company played in theaters, though only in the little ones.