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

gold-turbaned Persians into the sea. Eleusis was just ahead; we would be playing there tomorrow, setting
the skene today. I rode my donkey, getting the cart when I could between me and Meidias. Lamprias led
on his riding mule; Demochares liked to start the day on the cart, where he could have out his sleep on
the bundles and favor his morning head. I looked at him hopefully, planning to ask him if he had ever met
Euripides. He looked old enough.

There is nothing really worth telling about the first part of the tour. A hundred artists could tell it for me: I
had the hardest bed at the inn with the oldest straw, ran everyone's errands, mended the costumes, put
laces in the boots, combed the masks' hair and beards, and daubed on paint when some old skene
needed freshening. I did not mind, except when Meidias told people it was what I had been hired for.

He was the gall under my harness-not the fleas in the straw, nor the hard work, nor looking after
Demochares. I loved the old soak, even when he drove me mad, and soon learned to manage him. In his
heyday, as he let me know, he had been a great amorist; it was some while, I think, since he had taken to
a youth whom he trusted not to mock him. Being the ruins of a gentleman, he was never disgusting, even
in his drink; more like some old dancer who, hearing the flute, steps through his paces where the
neighbors will not see. Self-respect kept him in bounds when sober; after the play, when he started
drinking, he had no time for lesser interests. All it came to was that he taught me a great deal, which has
been of use to me ever since, and recited me some beautiful epigrams composed by Agathon and
Sophokles. for youths they courted, with the name changed to mine wherever it would scan.

It was only in the morning, before the play, that he gave me any real trouble. Then he would slip off for a
cup to warm him up, and, if I did not watch out, go on and finish the jar. I would run to the wineshop for
him, mix in the water on the way, and keep him talking to spin it out. With luck I would have him dressed
in time to get my own work done.

"The theater is in your bones," he used to say to me. "You have the open face. Not like that oaf Meidias,
who is in love with the mask he happened to be born with, and soon won't have even that, since his
fatuous conceit is already marking it. The artist flows into the mask the poet offers him; only so will the
god possess him. I have seen you, my dear, when you have not seen yourself. I know."

He spoke to comfort me. No one was kinder, when he could be kind sitting down. I never hoped of him
that he would stay sober to fight my battles. He was near sixty, which seemed very old to me; but he still
moved like a man who knows he looks distinguished, and behind a mask it was surprising how young he
could sound, on a good day. I bore him no grudge for Meidias, who would snigger to strangers in taverns
about the old man's darling.

So things were jogging on, till the day we put on Philokles' Hector. It calls for Homeric battle dress,
showing one's legs to the thigh. Meidias was thin-shanked, had to wear padded tights, and still had
knock-knees. He was cast as Paris.

We were playing at a little market town between Corinth and Mykenai. Such places always have the
local wit who gives his own performance. Paris exits saying, "What do I care, while Helen shares my
bed?" This man yelled out, "She must have got thin, to fit between those knees." It stopped the play for
some time, and worse was to come. Meidias was playing the Greek herald too, and Paris, who must be
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