Dancing With The Answer [FICTOID]

He needed to keep his passion secret.  Sparta would show no mercy if they found out.

After a long, hot, tiring day of brutal suppression, the Spartan dictator Testekles would retire to his chambers.  He slept in a small windowless stone cell with a heavy steel door he could bolt shut at night.  During the day a massive combination lock kept anyone from entering.

A single naked lightbulb illuminated the cell.  A hard stone slab served as his bed.  The walls stood bare.

But under the stone slab there lay his secret desire, his secret shame.

He got the painting supplies and canvas from secret police raids looking for artists and poets, weaklings too soft to be true Spartans.

“I need to see what we are fighting against,” he told his chief of the secret police.  “I’ll destroy the evidence after I examine it.”

But he didn’t destroy it, he never destroyed it.

Instead, late at night, when all his guards and minions felt too tired to carry on, he took out the paints and brushes to paint…

…a book.

Not just any book, a literature textbook.  Bad enough he indulged in the forbidden art of painting, far worse his only choice of subject matter was this book.

But is it a choice? he wondered.  Try as he might, he couldn’t paint anything else except variations on this theme.  He’d set out to paint a landscape or a still life but in just a few brushstrokes the image of the textbook would emerge.

It’s as if I’m possessed, he thought.  haunted by a textbook I’ve never seen, never read.

He wondered why this was so.  He told the general of his army to attack a neighboring city-state and bring his their leading philosopher “for questioning.”

They dragged the frail old man to the dictator’s headquarters.  He took charge of the prisoner, bading him to enter his private cell where he bolted the door then lifted the stone slab to show the painting he’d done.

“What do you think?” he asked the ancient philosopher.

“Your brushwork needs improvement,” said the philosopher.  “You also need to study color theory more, many of those offer too  jarring a color scheme.  Your perspective is off, too.  I presume you had no training as a painter; if so, I compliment you on a modestly proficient amateur effort.”

“I can kill you in the blink of an eye!” Testekles thundered.

“Indeed you can and indeed you will,” said the philosopher.  “I knew I was dead the moment you brought me here.  My body can’t withstand torture, I’ll die of shock the moment you lay hands on me, so do your damnedest.  I’m immune to your threats.”

Fuming, Testekles gestured to his paintings.  “Explain that!” he snapped.

“You painted them, you explain them,” said the philosopher.

“I can’t!  Every time I put brush to canvas, I paint that damned textbook.”

“Clearly the paintings are symbolic.”

“What do they symbolize?”

“Ahh, that would be telling.”

“Tell me!”

“Or what?” the philosopher countered.  “I’m dead anyway, why give you the benefit of my wisdom if the end result is death?”

“You must tell me what they mean!  My whole rule depends on it.”

“That it does, and that is why I won’t.  After all, what good would it do you?”

“You talk in riddles, old man.”

“Indeed I do.  Consider:  If I tell you the meaning of the paintings, you will kill me, but then you’ll wonder if I told you the truth before dying.  You’ll never know, will you, until it’s too late.

“Or I could not tell you, and you will spend the rest of your life trying to solve this puzzle, always fearful your quest will eventually betray you.

“But perhaps…perhaps there is no hidden meaning at all.  Now that would be the greatest torture of all.  The uncertainty will gnaw away at you from now until the day you die, never offering your surcease.

“So take your pick, oh Testekles, the wise and benevolent.  The answer means nothing at all to me.”

The dictator killed him with a single backhanded blow, snapping the ancient philosopher’s fragile neck.

Yet as the corpse laid stretched out on the cold stone floor, Testekles saw a slight ironic smile on the philosopher’s face.

He knew, Testekles thought.  He knew…

…or did he?

© Buzz Dixon