Master Pilo

The sky was yellow, the air was yellow. The sun beat down on the dusty road and made the whole of Philetas’ immediate world of fields and olive trees yellow. He heavingly mopped his brow for the several-hundredth time. It was already two in the afternoon, the sun had not lessened since noon, and he estimated his journey would last for another hour or more yet.

“I honestly cannot contemplate why it was that I chose Sicily for a holiday when I hail myself from Greece,” he muttered to his donkey.

“Surely I have said I hate the heat a hundred times a day at home and at work to anyone who will listen, and so I choose akin a clime in which to contemplate my navel at rest. More fool me.”

He sighed, then smiled at the sound his own voice made in the still, clammy air.

The donkey, who had not been listening, spat foam to the side of the road. He wished his fool rider would stop for them to take a drink, and maybe even be good enough to splash some water over the donkey’s parched hide. The intense sun was making his hairy back sweat and itch underneath the blanket supporting Philetas’ bony maximus, and, having no arms, he could not scratch.

Philetas, who did have arms, scratched his chin, much to the chagrin of the donkey, who raised his luscious eyelashes to his driver and grunted irritably at what he saw was a misdirected effort.

Philetas too was suffering the sweating and itching of his hairy skin, though of his face, and he desired a drink. Under the still, dusty yellow air another smile lifted his cheeks and his mind wandered ahead to the delight awaiting him at his destination. Aside from the fine wine produced in the region, served in the most delightfully clean houses (in which he had heard one could also engage the most delightfully clean wenches for the same price as a couple of amphorae), he also intended to engage the services of what one of the handsome travellers to Cos had told him in the local inn was The Best Barber In Sicily. Scratching his hairy, sweaty chin with its week’s growth, Philetas imagined it smooth and clean, scented with clove oil, and himself unimaginably more attractive to the girls of the house. He imagined so hard that he only noticed he had reached the village of his aim when the donkey came to an abrupt halt, and he found himself outside a surprisingly yellow taverna on the edges of the town.

His donkey gratefully tied by a water-trough, Philetas shouldered his belongings and made enquiries at the inn. Successfully lodged, he decided to take his seat outside, where the heat had finally begun to lessen, and partake in a light wine-and-water as his rest.

There seemed to be a lack of other customers, and so Philetas was soon joined at his table by the large owner of the taverna, who brought with him a jug of a stronger vintage and curious questions about his new lodger’s travels. Philetas was only too pleased to regale such a willing listener about his work in Cos, where he was presently apprenticing himself to a philosopher.

“My most clever master has a great grasp of the philosophical mysteries,” he rambled.
“Indeed,” grimaced the inkeep.
“Why yes,” Philetas continued, “he spends his most treasured time in deep deliberation, pondering paradox.”
“Paradox?” This was new to the innkeeper.
“Paradox,” repeated Philetas, and smiled deploringly. He also realised this was new to the innkeeper. He readied himself for launching into a speech, almost perceptibly rising a little from his seat.
“Such a thing as thought not perceivably possible, and yet so. Such a thing as…” He searched for something basic the innkeep would understand.
“When Achilles chases a tortoise, he cannot reach it, as when he arrives at where the tortoise was when he began, the tortoise has moved, no matter how slowly, from that particular place, has created another distance, and Achilles must continue to chase.”

Philetas looked questioningly at the innkeeper, who grinned fixedly back, and asked “Isn’t Achilles faster than a tortoise?”

Philetas smiled his condescending smile.
“I see you fail to comprehend.” He looked at the sky. “No matter. One day I shall master more than my master, have all the solutions in my scope. For there must be solutions!” He looked suddenly fierce. The innkeeper hurriedly poured him another drink and changed the subject.

As the afternoon wore out, the two moved into the taverna under the veranda, and the innkeep was suitably interested, rather than in his telescopic philosophical tall-tales, by Philetas’ increasingly bold descriptions of the fine artefacts and jewellery collected on his holiday so far, intended for sale to his jeweller uncle upon return to Cos, and their current repose in his inn room.

“But before I advance I intend to imbibe your optimum vintages,” he grandly declared, his head lolling as he eyeballed the innkeeper’s young serving-wench placing another jug on the table, “…and of course have my chin sheared by the master barber you have here…one Pilo?”

“Aha! Master Pilo!” cried the innkeeper, swinging his cup back to the table and spilling overmuch wine from it in a show of drunken gregariousness, and slapping the floundering Philetas on the back with overzealous friendship, “Master Pilo is a riddle of a man!”

He lowered his head to Philetas’ and grinned, the failing light shadowing it into a grimace. “You know, Master Pilo shaves all those in this village.” His smile froze in thought. “Well, all those who do not shave themselves.” He waved his hands in dismissal. “He says he has no time for people who have no respect for such skilled work that they ruin their chins themselves.”

Philetas, admiring his reflection in his companion’s broad chin, was delighted. “You say he shaves everyone in the village whom does not shave himself, and because he is so attached to his art? Tell me, how many of these vain villagers shave themselves?”

The innkeeper looked blankly at Philetas, and then grinned again and raised his hands. “None!”

Intrigued, Philetas laughed, hiccupped, and clapped his hands. “He shaves everyone then! He is highly recommended indeed!” he cried, looking around him eagerly at the empty tables. “I am surprised there are not more customers at your inn with such a promise awaiting them.”

The innkeeper coughed and poured Philetas more wine. After a minute of watching him drink, the innkeeper spoke again.

“Yes, but the barber so highly recommended that he is very busy, and shaves only every member of the village that does not shave himself. It is hard to get to see him.”
He stroked his own baby-smooth chin. Philetas scratched his hairy one. He carefully set down his cup and smiled suavely, a thought on his lips.

“If the barber only shaves those who do not shave themselves,” he spoke carefully, “then who shaves the barber?”

The innkeeper coughed again. His wide, blank smile returned.
“What?” he asked flatly.
Philetas began again. “If the barber shaves only those in the village who do not shave themselves, then he cannot shave himself.”
The innkeeper lost his smile. “Eh?”
“If the barber shaves himself, then he cannot shave himself because he shaves himself.”
The innkeeper shrugged and threw back more wine. Philetas continued, slightly slurred.
“It is a paradox. Like Achilles attempting to run at the Great Panathenæa, only he can’t possibly finish it because before he can finish he must run half way, and before he gets that far he must run half that distance, and before he gets that far he must run half that distance, which is all mildly impossible.”

The innkeeper looked as though he thought all this was also impenetrable. Philetas scowled, grinning inwardly at his superiority of thought.

“My dear…sir, and a state that cannot possibly exist. You mean to have the better of me!” and tapping his cup to his head, said, insistently songlike, “but it is not a very good paradox, and I know the reason!”

Philetas, now, was drunk. He became insistent, but also with it increasingly leery at the serving-wench who came to wipe the sodden table. He watched her scamper away, then suddenly became alert. Pointing at the innkeeper he declared “You, sir, you must be hiding something from me. I insist you must be, I have worked you out…”
He paused for effect, and just as the barber opened his mind to reply he barked “There must be another barber, a better barber, to whom Master Pilo, the passionate artis…artis-ss…artisan, must entrust his own chin!”

He slammed his cup onto the table, cocked an eye into the inn just to check when the wench would come to clear up the spills again, and then made his demand.

“I intend to see that barber right now, sir, right now under this very roof.”
He folded his arms resolutely. “There must be another barber who only shaves the chin of the barber whom shaves only all those in the town that do not shave themselves, and I want to see him.”

The innkeeper felt himself being glared at. Then the recurrent, wicked thought that was the cause of the profundity of the innkeeper’s moneybags, and of the rumour that effected the emptiness of his inn of the local clientele, rose again in his mind. He smiled his most grotesque smile yet. Rising with a dramatic flourish to his feet, he indicated, with a most regal hand, in the direction of the wench.

Philetas allowed himself a gratified half-smile at his triumph, and turned to look at the girl, who covered her initial look of surprise with one of haughty amusement and, picking up a blade from the counter, walked forward to the staring men. To Philetas’ delight she ran a brown, long-fingernailed hand under his chin and stroked his stubble, then tickled the blade along his face in teasing strokes. In the manner of what she thought to be a ‘pro’ she discussed the ‘fine’ texture of his skin and the ‘manly’ hair upon it. Then at a look from her father, who was scanning the empty street for witnesses, she suddenly spun Philetas round in his chair and slit his throat.

The following morning, as the innkeeper was cutting slices of eating-apple with a blade under the veranda, and his feet up in the already intense morning heat, a familiar face greeted him as it passed by.

“Ah, Master Pilo,” he called in return, his hideous trademark grin already in place, “you look well today.”

“More than can be said for the state of your floor,” said Master Pilo, glancing at the innkeeper’s daughter who was furiously scrubbing at a lessening but wide red stain on the tiles with a bundle of soaking straw. “What happened?”

“Oh,” said the innkeeper, keeping his feet firmly on the table, “just a bunch of rowdy travellers, spilt some undiluted wine, strong stuff.” He waved it away with a grimace, then stopped to admire the sparkling new ring on his finger.
“But it’s fine,” he said quietly, “They paid their way.”

Master Pilo frowned, then scratched his immense beard and walked on.