I like music best at night, under the stars; I like it when I lie down in the afternoon, aware, yet not truly aware; I like it when I am up the mountain, the wind harsh; I like it when I am on the shore, the beach fire low, sparks rising, the sea almost at rest.

I like music when I eat, when I am at the theatre, or alone. Lonely music is marrow-wise, aware of secrets, revelatory in surprising ways, prying, blurring-altogether deceitful. I like the harp better than the horns. Drums frighten. The voice is best: its story is man's, the sea's, the mountain's, and the sky's.

How I used to laugh at rimes Alcaeus wrote against Pittakos:

Old Pitt, we found your cloak

Among the fish and fisherfolk;

We saw your mouth gape and perk

Whenever a blouse made something jerk.

I suppose Pittakos paid many a visit to the fisherfolk-he was young enough then. And Alcaeus was clever enough to wring every drop of satire out of P's doings. His foolery endangered many of us. What a disgrace Pittakos remains in office. How fine it would be if Libus were empowered.

Libus says:

"There aren't enough of us to overthrow this man...he's entrenched till he dies. It's better to wait. Look at Alcaeus, what has his fight gotten him? Part of his tragedy comes from his inability to overthrow this man."

Yesterday, when I visited Alcaeus, I shivered and pulled back.

Alcaeus stepped forward and grabbed my hand.

"Come, darling, we're having a drink. Join us."

Libus signaled me to sit down: their dining room was full of phantoms; shields glared; pennons dragged at me. With an apish grin, Alcaeus reeled across the room to bump against a table and chirp a drunken song.

It was rainy and dark and the melancholy afternoon and room closed in. You must pretend, I said to myself. Pretend he can see. Pretend there's nothing wrong...imagine...

As the three of us drank together, a scrawny, red-fleshed boy served us, downcast, looking as if recently beaten.

As we drank, the melancholy of Alcaeus' soul spread, seeping through taut throat muscles: intelligent things said with difficulty, good things said badly, reminiscences slightly distorted. What is more dismal than a damaged life, damaged beyond alteration, no matter how much we care? What more futile than communication at such a time?

I could not look at him but looked at Libus instead, his ephemeral face growing more ephemeral as he continued drinking, wrestling with his dogged silence.

Drink could not help... I fled home.

Mytilene

641

Three soldiers have been washed up on a raft, scarcely alive: all of them were taken to Alcaeus' house to recover, if that is possible.

Libus wanted them there, to care for them. They are islanders and had been imprisoned over a year. For days they had been adrift, paddling, foodless except for fish and birds. I hear from Thasos that one of them, not much older than Phaon, throws himself against walls and stalks about babbling to himself, begging for water.

Alcaeus is in his element, determined to help these derelicts: he's captain again, in command: he's kinder and more resolute with this trio, which he believes he understands: oh, I sympathize with these sun-blackened wanderers, these lovers of freedom who defied jailers. I, too, know what it is to defy, and what it costs.

I sent them food but I could not go to them.

Later, I changed my mind; I wanted to see them, to see what their failure had done to them, what their fight had cost. I decided I might be able to encourage them, so I brought Atthis and we asked Libus to let us in and we talked to two of them, giving them food and helping them eat and drink, and everything went well till the mad fellow heard us and hurled himself against the bedroom door and burst in, to collapse in a heap, jabbering, writhing, eyes rolled back.

Atthis jumped from her chair and cried:

"Uh...how terrible...like a worm!"

Libus knelt by the young man and his hands quieted him. Not a word was said: then he turned to Atthis:

"He's been through a lot. Exposure...heat...no food... We can help him. He'll be all right, in time."

With a few reassuring words, he got the fellow up and led him away.

Later, I learned that one of the older men is a cousin of Phaon's.

Phaon has heard the details of their days on the raft, and I am pleased by his kindness, the hours he gives to stay with the pair.

He and Libus are restoring them: food and encouragement are cancelling horror. Even the mad fellow is mending, eating and drinking normally, talking rationally much of the time. Phaon's cousin claims he fought with Alcaeus, but Alcaeus can't identify his bearded soldier: is it lapse of memory?

Or was it, as the cousin says, the period when Alcaeus lay injured, the spear wound in his skull healing, those weeks of pain that brought about his blindness?

Sappho and Phaon, in a small boat,