If Georgios lifted a hoof and caught a whiff of that smell,
it meant a good beating for someone
and I can’t say I blame him.
You don’t get that smell from a day’s neglect,
but from filth underfoot all the time.
A horse is only as good as his hooves.
Even a donkey is worth something.
I plucked her grass from the courtyard
and she nuzzled my hands.
I plaited clean straw and rubbed her down,
loosening those mats.
She was smart. Right away,
she knew I wasn’t going to hurt her.
I told her I was in charge of her now,
and I was going to keep her clean
and get a good hard floor under her feet at night.
Her clownish ears
flicked back and forth
catching every word I spoke.
There was a shovel leaning against the shed,
so I got started on her stall.
I was at work
when my master came out in the courtyard.
He stopped in mid-stride
and turned to look at me. It was light by then
and he’s an ugly man.
I heard the words come out of my mouth
before I could stop them.
“Her stall’s too wet. A donkey’s feet are like sponges.
She’s got to have better footing.
A donkey is only as good as its hooves.”
He frowned. “Pyrrhos — ”
he was silent for a moment, thinking —
“You sound like you’re accusing me.
You’re quick to speak up for yourself. I don’t like that.
You have something to say, you watch me;
wait till I’m ready to listen.
You don’t speak up any time it suits you.
You wait until I speak to you. Do you understand?”
I stared at the ground.
When he said Pyrrhos
I forgot that was me.
“Go on, then.”
He walked away from me
and started talking to Kranaos
about the kiln.
Which is something that you can talk about for hours,
but I didn’t know that, the first day.
I didn’t know how pots were made.
I couldn’t imagine all the things I was going to learn,
or the backbreaking work ahead. That first morning,
when we were about to sit down to eat,
I heard Zosima whisper, “Don’t be too hard on him, Phaistus!
And don’t try to teach him everything at once.
He’s only a child.”
“He’s got to learn.”
He was right about that. I had a lot to learn.
That first day, he taught me
how to wedge clay,
which is folding it
and thumping it
and rolling it
till you can cut it with a wire
and not see any air pockets inside.
I wedged clay until my wrists hurt
and my hands
and my back
and then he showed me
I could do it with my feet.
So I wedged clay with my feet
until my toes were frozen —
clay’s cold —
and my legs ached
and even my bottom.
I was almost at the point of crying,
when he said I’d done enough, and done it well.
He told me I could take Grau for water,
and where the troughs were in the Agora.
I led her there and let her graze
while I stole glances at the city.
I was glad to be away from my master,
alone with the donkey. I stroked her —
she liked my fingers
scratching up and down her spine.
She rocked back and forth on her heels,
saying in donkey-talk,
I like that. Right there. More, more, more!
Animals know when things get better.
People might not know, but animals do.
That very first day, Grau knew
I was going to be good to her
and I swear to you, she was glad.
I whispered: “I’m not calling you Grau.”
And I named her: Phoibe.
I never named anything before,
and I didn’t know how naming something
makes you feel
as if it belongs to you. Phoibe means shining
— which didn’t suit her then,
because her coat had been neglected —
but it gave us something to hope for.
2. KRANAOS
I didn’t like Kranaos.
He was a slave himself; he was no better than I was;
but Phaistus called him kiln-master,
he was someone else
I had to respect.
“That man knows about the kiln.
There’s no man in Athens who knows more.”
That’s what Phaistus said. The solemn way he said it —
you’d have thought Kranaos was a god.
The room where Kranaos slept
was on the other side of the shed wall,
so every morning, I could hear him
coughing and wheezing
and hawking and spitting.
It made me taste the phlegm in my throat.
Kranaos used to say
he’d breathed in too many kiln-fires
and the smoke had darkened him
gullet to belly.
He was as black inside as an old bottle.
He was the oldest man I ever met. He was a slave,
but half the time he sat idle,
huddled in his cloak,
like a tortoise in its shell.
He was always cold,
looking for patches of sunlight
or hogging the space near the hearth.
Zosima let him. She treated him like a father,
mashed up his food in little pieces
and coaxed him to eat.
I didn’t like him. He watched me,
spying out every fault
so he could tattle to the master.
“The boy knows nothing.”
That was his favorite thing to say. Sometimes, for a change,
he said it to me. “There’s a world of things you don’t know, boy.”
Then, to the master:
“The boy daydreams. Stops his work and stares into space.”
I wasn’t staring into space.
I was looking at a jar.
There was a wine jar with horses on it . . .
See, when I went to live with Phaistus,
there were jars and pots and plates
everywhere. I didn’t want to knock one over
and risk a beating. There were so many,
rust red and bright black
people in helmets
spears sticking out in all directions
all those patterns: crosshatches and leaves
and meandering keys —
they were crowded, those jars:
pictures running in circles
like a dog chasing its tail —
I never looked at them.
It was too much work to look at them.
But my eye caught this jar with horses on it,
and the horses weren’t drawn from the side.
They were facing me. You could see the muscles
of their noble chests
and their back hooves lined up
behind the front ones.
You could see their wide foreheads
and the life in both eyes.
I could never figure out how to draw a horse like that.
I’d tried. But I couldn’t figure out where the lines should go.
Phaistus had figured it out.
That’s why I was staring. It wasn’t daydreaming.
Anyway, Kranaos thumped me between the shoulder blades
and dragged me off to show me the kilns.
Phaistus had two: a round one and a rectangle.
Kranaos could talk about those kilns
all day and all night.
His breath was like a rat that had been dead a while,
and he leaned close to me
so he could mumble
all on one note. An ever-flowing stream
of knowledge and foul breath:
He told me how you have to load the pots
so that none of them touch.
He said that some places inside the kiln
were hotter than others, and you had to place each pot
just where it wanted to be.
He showed me the air vents
and said that at first, you needed a hot fire, with plenty of air,
and then a hotter fire, with no air,
and moisture — wet sawdust or green wood.
The whole time the pots cooked
you had to give them the fuel they wanted:
charcoal
brushwood
olive prunings
nutshells.
What I foresaw was,
whatever kind of fuel that was handy,
that would be the kind Kranaos wouldn’t want.
This turned out to be true.
I didn’t foresee
how smoky it would be
or how we’d all be coughing,
Phaistus, Kranaos, and I.
The first time we fired the kiln,
Kranaos clawed a lump
from the jars where the clay was set to age.
He rounded the lump and told me
that clay was for the Kiln God,
and I should always put some in for him.
I didn’t believe in any Kiln God.
It makes sense that we should we pray to Athena,
the goddess of the city,
the goddess of craft.
I didn’t know about Hephaistos —
we didn’t worship him in Thessaly —
but once I found out about him, I believed in him.
It stands to reason you’d worship a god of fire
— but a Kiln God?
Why would a god want to live in a kiln?
I didn’t believe in the Kiln God
yet.
What I did grasp
was that if Kranaos could sacrifice
lumps of good clay
to the Kiln God,
it would be just as easy for me to reach into those jars
when no one was looking
and dig out a ball for me.
You can draw on clay
smooth it flat
and cut in with a bone tool. You can make a horse
and shape it
draw it from the side
or from the front. You can keep drawing
and rub out your mistakes with water
and roll up the clay
to hide what you did.
If you keep that clay moist and supple
and hidden,
a single lump
will hold all the horses you want to draw.
3. PHAISTUS
He could have been worse.
Weeks passed. The swollen moon shrank
and fattened. In all those days,
he never beat me. He threatened to beat me.
He cuffed me:
smacked my arm
or swatted my shoulder, barking, “Wake up!”
“I’m talking to you!”
“Look sharp, Pyrrhos!”
but he never struck hard enough
to leave a mark. He never picked up a stick or a strap,
never aimed at my head
or kicked my feet out from under me.
I kept waiting to find out
what his beatings were like
so I’d know how my life was going to be.
He worked me, dawn to dark.
He kept me sweaty and aching. To make pots is to work hard.
I hauled water. Broke up the dry clay
pounded it
submerged it in water
sieved out pebbles and roots and dead bugs. I wedged clay
until the skin around my fingernails
was cracked and bleeding.
He didn’t starve me, though. When we ate —
Phaistus and Kranaos and Zosima and me —
Phaistus sat on the couch, because he was the master,
but we all ate the same.
Phaistus explained, “We all work. We all get a square meal.”
If it was all right with him,
it was all right with me.
I didn’t say so.
Phaistus didn’t like my mouth.
Just knowing that
made me think of smart-ass things to say.
I kept them inside. I didn’t want to push my luck.
Then I discovered
if I kept my mouth shut
he didn’t like that, either.
I tried saying as little as possible:
Yes, master. No, master.
His eyes would narrow
and he’d glare, suspicious.
It was perfect. I was safe
and getting on his nerves
at the same time.
Every slave knows his master.
Phaistus was thin-skinned —
that’s why he needed all that respect.
When he waited on customers,
he was slavish,
busy and brisk as a flea.
“You’ve chosen well, sir. You’ve an eye for quality.
I never painted a better cup
than the one you chose.”
Then he’d shout for me to bring burlap and straw
to protect the cup. “Look sharp, Pyrrhos!”
Showing he was master, throwing his weight around.
Against my will, I did respect him. Not all the time;
but when he took a brush
to an unbaked pot
he could draw
anything.
Sometimes he drew the background first: a swarthy sky
that fit around red horses
and red heroes. By painting the sky
he shaped
warriors that really fought,
cranes that really flew,
maenads in a frenzy. And when he threw a pot —
I was supposed to spin the wheel —
the clay changed from rank mud
to something alive. It stretched and spun upward
quivering; he hollowed it with his thumbs
reached inside it
made its belly curve
pinched up the rim
and raised a tower
whirling
swaying
glistening
Then: “Not like that!”
He’d start yelling
because I hadn’t spun the wheel right —
I hadn’t been fast enough
or I’d spun it crooked —
and he called me an idiot
a stupid donkey. He smacked the ruined pot
and thumped his feet against the ground
having a tantrum.
He swore I’d never learn.
“He can’t learn.”
That was Zosima, standing in the doorway.
“He’s never seen anyone throw a pot before,
and he can’t take his eyes off the clay.
That’s what’s the matter with him.”
She came forward
and put her hand on my shoulder —
I’d rather Phaistus cuffed me.
“Get up, Pyrrhos.
I’ll show you how it’s done. First watch Phaistus.
Then watch me spin the wheel.”
I got up, my knees aching;
Phaistus grunted, and she took my place,
kneeling at his feet. He cupped his hand,
scooped up water from a bucket,
wet the clay. “Now!”
She spun the wheel
perfectly. She seemed to know exactly what he wanted,
the speed, the steadiness. His fingers opened up
and the clay became
a breathing
swelling
changeable
animal.
I watched. She was skillful with the wheel,
but I didn’t care about that.
I wanted to do what he did.
I wanted to make magic
and spin the clay to life.
4. ZOSIMA
I didn’t trust her.
Right from the start I knew
there was something she wanted from me.
She watched me too closely. She smiled too much.
She’d named me. Like a dog. Pyrrhos. She fed me
as if I were a dog. Slipped me tidbits:
a handful of sticky figs
a crust dipped in honey.
“A growing boy is always hungry,” she’d say.
What did I know about women? Not much.
Georgios used to say that Woman was an evil thing:
a meal-snatcher, a troublemaker,
changeable as the sea.
I didn’t know what the mistress wanted,
but I made up my mind,
I wasn’t going to give it to her.
I wasn’t going to be anyone’s
dog-slave.
Zosima was the first up, before dawn.
I could hear her sandals — she wore them loose —
smacking the soles of her feet:
slap-flap
slap-flap
slap-flap
Her feet were quick and grubby
and looked too small to carry her.
I’d hear her in the courtyard. She’d go out in the dark
to fetch water. She said it was her chance
to see the other women
and the first streaks of dawn in the sky.
She went out by daylight, too,
to bargain for food in the market. She was sunburned,
the mark of a bad woman
or a poor man’s wife.
She bartered with the neighbors:
a platter for a jug of wine
clay beads for dye
wool for dried apples.
At supper she’d boast to her husband
how much money she saved.
I pitied Phaistus. Here was this woman
who squinted when she smiled
and talked too much
and wouldn’t stay in the house.
At least she was a worker.
Her sandals flap-slapped through the house all day.
She kept the fire on the hearth
and made bread and broth and porridge.
She dug the garden
and tended the chickens
and tamed the raw wool over her thigh
and wove thread into cloth.
One day I came inside the house
and saw her sitting,
with a water jar in her lap. It hadn’t been fired,