Amber and Clay by Laura Schlitz (phonics books txt) 📕

status will be low,

but he’ll be free: a manumitted slave,

not to be insulted,

not to be seized and beaten.

That’s why Rhaskos is praying in the Temple of Hephaistos.

While we were talking, Melisto followed him in:

there are torches burning in the temple

and shadows moving. She’s one more shadow,

one more flame.

She stands at his elbow, listening to his prayers.

She wishes he would turn his head to see her —

but he won’t. His mind is caught up

with the thing he desires,

the thing she is bound to help him find.

There they are:

the girl as electric as amber,

and the boy, indestructible as clay.

1. SCORPION

Six days after I learned about Phaistus,

I was sweeping up.

I found the scorpion behind a stack of pots.

I poked it with the broom —

it didn’t stir. The tail was stretched out straight.

I picked it up. Cautiously —

I don’t know why,

but I wanted to draw it.

Later I scratched it on a broken pot. It was complicated,

unexpected. The legs were thin near the body;

then they flared out, elbow-like and muscular:

easy to draw

and impossible. So many segments —

but I liked how the pincers hugged the curves of the pot;

I curled the tail like a crescent moon;

I pressed the dead scorpion into wet clay

and examined the imprint.

I wanted to show my work to Phaistus,

but I didn’t want to remind him.

2. SILENCE

I kept thinking about Phaistus.

He’d been a slave, like me,

but now he was free.

I wanted to ask a hundred questions

but my tongue was as still

as the dead scorpion. I thought of him saying

Kindness is wasted on you.

He’d stopped teaching me to draw.

When he first bought me, he tried to shut me up.

After a while, I shut myself up.

Something about the way I did it

drove him crazy,

so I shut up even more.

Now I wanted to talk, and I couldn’t.

I was like a boy trying to play catch

with his hands tied behind his back.

Then Sokrates came and my mouth was opened.

3. SOKRATES

I saw him often,

but mostly from a distance. Even at a distance:

that same hairy cloak,

the goose-like strut,

and always, he was talking.

He’d talk to anyone. Women, even slaves.

He was friends with Simon,

the cobbler who fixed Zosima’s sandal.

He loved the Agora. He’d ask the potters how trade was

and stoop to read the pictures on the jars.

Mostly he was surrounded by young men —

aristocrats, and some of them were beautiful.

Fresh from the gymnasion, their skins gleamed with oil;

graceful, taut-muscled,

they strolled and lingered,

showing off how they were free to waste time.

I tried to eavesdrop. I’d find some excuse

to cross the market square and listen.

Once I heard him talking about a group of men

who were chained up, prisoners in a dark cave —

I wondered if they were slaves at Lavrion.

I wanted to hear if they got free.

Before I could find out

Phaistus called me back to spin the wheel.

There came a day — I was gathering brushwood;

it was scorching, the dog days of summer.

I felt like a pot in the kiln,

my skin blazing red, darkening —

I was close to the river —

I heard someone humming. A glimpse through the trees:

an old man wading.

My heart leapt. “Sokrates?”

He tented his eyes with his hand,

squinting against the sun.

“Rhaskos! Is that you?

Come join me in the water! I want someone to talk to!

I’ve been remembering a wise man named Herakleitos —

He said that that no man ever wades twice in the same river.

What do you think of that?”

That was Sokrates. That was the kind of thing he thought about.

I loved how he asked me what I thought.

I’d never heard of Herakleitos,

and what he said didn’t make sense.

You can wade in the same river any time you want.

I’d dipped into the Kefissos all summer.

I tethered Phoibe so she could graze

and waded into the river by Sokrates. It was so cold

it made me grit my teeth and grin.

Water brown and yellow with silt,

foaming white around my knees;

it came to me what Herakleitos meant:

water changes.

The river keeps moving. You can step in the same river,

but the water swooshes past you

and runs into the sea.

“I think maybe he’s right, Sokrates.

Not about the river,

but about the water.”

“Do you think all things are like that, Rhaskos?

Are all things moving and changing, all the time?

Is there anything everlasting, unchangeable,

any absolute beauty or goodness?

I wonder about this. I even dream about it.”

The water stung my legs with cold.

I squatted down to let it soak my tunic.

“I don’t know, Sokrates.

I went to a drinking party once,

and they asked that same question:

does everything change?

Or does everything stay the same?

I have to tell you, I thought it was a stupid question.

I thought: some things change, like eggs,

and others don’t, like rocks.

But maybe that was a stupid answer.”

Sokrates smiled. He bent over and scooped up a rock

from the riverbed.

He handed it to me. It glistened.

It was a yellow rock,

bigger than a drachma, but smaller than an egg.

I have it still.

“Is this rock unchangeable, Rhaskos?”

I turned the rock over in my hand.

One side was smooth, stroked by the water;

the other side was rough.

“No. The water’s changed it.

Though it can’t change by itself. I could pound it with another rock,

chip it, maybe break it. So rocks can change . . .

The stars don’t change, but they move in circles . . .

I don’t know if moving is the same thing as changing . . .

Even the gods change. I mean, Zeus changed himself into a bull,

and a swan. They can change into anything they like!

Maybe your man was right. Everything changes.

The river and the gods and even rocks.”

I looked to see if that was the right answer.

Sokrates didn’t say anything. He was watching me,

watching me think.

I had the idea he was waiting for something.

He waded to a shady spot on the riverbank

and sat down, soaking his feet.

I could see his feet through the water.

They were wide and bony,

brown-spotted,

yellow as the rock in my hand,

horny and warped.

I splashed over and sat beside him.

I tried to find my soul

so I could remember the truth.

“I can think of one thing that can’t be changed, Sokrates,

but it doesn’t have to do with absolute goodness,

the past can’t be changed.

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