Penelope's Secret

by Nicolas Ségur

  The legends of gods and heroes who, pierced by the mysterious spur, desired to the point of death, revived in the young man’s thoughts.

  Even the seven unparalleled men who are celebrated under the name of the seven sages could not escape the implacable law, he said to himself. Did not the grave Periander forget the harmonies of the celestial spheres and the meditation of eternity, one day in Epidaurus when he saw the beautiful Melissa, more troubling in her light diaphanous tunic than if she were naked, distributing wine and smiles to her father’s workmen?

  Desire now took on a symbolic force in the eyes of the adolescent. He saw it leading the universe, moving the stars, agitating the gods themselves and bringing together on a bed the hostile flesh of humans. And when he raised his eyes to the wall of the Poecile that sheltered him, the sight of the immense painting of the capture of Troy, which Polygnotus had traced there, gave a new force to his ideas; for in that grandiose and grave composition, in which one saw the final woes that the infidelity of the Tyndaride had provoked, it was once again desire that triumphed, ravaging equally the victors and the vanquished, uniting lust and death.

  Near the cadavers of the Trojans, which Medusa, the daughter of Priam, was washing with lustral water, under the ruins of the devastated city, the most beautiful and the most exquisite figure was that of Cassandra, whom Ajax had just violated in the temple of Minerva. The prophetess had in her visage the illumination of pleasure, mingled with a grim and shameful irritation. Polygnotus, who excelled at magnifying and symbolizing the movements of passion, had imprinted such a great shiver into that indignant body, and such an intense and ardent vibration to that altered physiognomy, that one believed that one could see, beneath the young woman’s garments, the lacerating wound that the passion of Ajax had made, and also the victorious frisson that had buckled her beneath the empire of the powerful embrace.

  Why, then, would the amour of humans differ from universal amour, and why would it draw its source elsewhere than from carnal and imperious appetite? Would the ancestors have made amour into a frightful malady, a devastating force, if that passion resided anywhere other than in the senses and the appetites? It is the fury to embrace and possess that drives Phaedra to seize the body of Hippolytus between her arms and satisfy her ardor thereupon, and it is the impatient flame of the blood again that enfevers and burns Byblis for her brother, and which leads the incestuous Myrrha, fainting, to the paternal couch.

  The sky was now covered by a tender weave of crimson clouds, and the silver of the sea was deadening in a great frisson of vesperal wind. And Plato saw in his mind’s eye the mysterious powers of the world and mortal beings confounded under the same necessities. Believing that he had found what he sought, he was rising to his feet in order to go when, nearby, in the nascent shadow, a voice called him by his name.

  He turned round and saw an old man of noble physiognomy who was buckling meekly under the weight of the years. Plato went toward him swiftly, for he had recognized Philotas, the husband of his cousin Nicareta.

  “Be welcome, Philotas,” he said to him. “I know that thanks to the immortal Pericles, who once attracted into our harbor the wealth and products of all our allies, your commerce in Piraeus is flourishing. Is Nicareta well?”

  “Your cousin’s health is excellent, Plato,” Philotas replied, mildly. “But accompany me on the road to the Pnyx. The evening is fine and, glad to see you, I also have something to tell you.”

  “Willingly, Philotas.”

  “Listen, young man,” the old man went on, after having taken a few steps in silence. “Via your mother Perictione you are my wife’s closest relative. And you are also one of our friends. I know your valor and our prudence and, although you have abandoned your father’s métier, preferring to follow the sophists, I honor you and hold you in esteem. Nor am I scornful of your resolution to remain poor. Your words, when they are not too ironic or bizarre, respire a precision that satisfies me.”

  Plato made no reply, but gazed benevolently at his companion He was afflicted by the multiple wrinkles that insulted the face of that honest man, and the impression of a slightly limited rectitude that seemed to shrink him.

  “I am therefore coming to you without dread,” Philotas went on, “to invite you to fulfill a duty that the laws and the will of the ancestors render sacred and imperious, You know that your uncle, old Charmides, who was my friend and the companion of my first voyages to Egypt, wanted when he was dying to unite me with your cousin. The beauty and the grave modesty of Nicareta did not give me the strength to refuse or to consider my advanced age.

  “You remember how splendid and joyful the wedding was! I have tried to render Nicareta happy and I have succeeded. I have furnished and equipped a sumptuous dwelling for her and when, holding the torch, you escorted us there with the other young relatives on the chariot drawn by mules, your cousin could have believed that she was entering the house of the rich Callias, so much did everything respire wealth.

  “In accordance with the Athenian custom I had set up two beds in the nuptial chamber in order that the young woman would not be frightened and would not despair in only seeing one. But I must confess to you that I could not honor her bed, and that Nicareta still remains in her white virginal robe. My humiliation, however, has become known outside, for Nicareta is innocent and modest. She would never have dreamed of invoking the old law of Solon that obliged a husband to visit the conjugal couch three times a month.

  “Unfortunately, she is an heiress, and ought to have children. That is why the family assembly and the members of the tribe have ordered me either to give my wife, in accordance with the ancient custom, the right to invite her nearest relative into the conjugal bed, or to separate myself from her entirely and to return her dowry. You can imagine my shame and my dolor, Plato! I cannot think for a moment of separating from Nicareta of my own free will. She doesn’t want that either. And since you’re her nearest relative, I’ve come to ask you whether you will come to share her bed and help us to have children.

  “I’m not unaware that another, more self-interested than you, would refuse. For if you refuse and I have no children, Athenian law permits you to take possession by right of Nicareta’s hand and fortune without my really being able to oppose it. But you wouldn’t want, Plato, to give me so much chagrin, knowing that I love my wife tenderly and that she also, in her innocence, honors me like a father.”

  Philotas stopped, anxious, waiting Plato’s reply. But the latter remained silent. However, that proposition, so ordinary, so much in conformity with Athenian custom, had caused him a movement of agreeable, almost joyful surprise, which he tried in vain to suppress, judging it contrary to the habitual gravity of his thought.

  That evening, fully ripe for amour, he had collected the troubling seeds that spring was sowing in the air. His soul was sighing for the mysterious and unknown passion. And he believed now that it was Venus herself who, wanting to initiate him to sensuality, and sparing him a vulgar union, was offering him this young woman, this virgin who was appealing for his caresses. He had asked heaven and earth for a response regarding the nature of amour, and now Destiny was taking charge of introducing him into the sanctuary of sensuality, and presenting him with pleasure as a duty and an obligation.

  Suppressing the tumult of his heart, imposing silence on his excessively keen desire, he said to the old man:

  “You know, Philotas, that my life has thus far been in conformity with the traditions. I believe that the salvation of the city depends on it. As I am not yet married and am thus escaping the obligation to give children to the fatherland, I am accomplishing a double duty in ceding to the will of my cousin, and to yours. We have courtesans for our pleasures and wives for the imperious necessity of producing children. And if it is permissible for us to satisfy our own whims by paying hetaerae, Solon obliges us in his wisdom also to give the tender joy of efficacious cresses to our wives. Banish all anxiety from your thoughts. I would be incapable of nurturing an
y malevolent design upon the hand and fortune of Nicareta. Be sure, on the contrary, that I will strive to establish peace and contentment in your heart.”

  The old man approached and put his arms around the ephebe’s neck as a sign of gratitude.

  They were now headed, through the invading darkness, toward the tomb of the Amazon Antiope, where one emerged in order to go to Piraeus. There they mounted two donkeys and set forth along the Phalerian road, which led to Mounichia. When they arrived at Philotas’ house, after an hour of travel, Nicareta appeared before them, in the soft light of the torch illuminating the threshold. She darted a tender glance at her cousin with blushing.

  She was not beautiful, and Plato knew that she was a little vulgar and limited, but he only saw her youth, her becoming smile and the promises hidden within it.

  “Be welcome, Plato,” said Nicareta. “For a long time we have desired to invite you to share Philotas’ dinner, giving me the joy of serving you.”

  “My joy in seeing you is great, Nicareta,” Plato replied. “Since your marriage, when, in accordance with Athenian custom, it was finally permissible for me to know you, my amity for you has remained strong. I always sought opportunities to encounter you.”

  Nicareta lowered her eyes and Plato remembered with tenderness the pleasant Athenian celebration where, alongside his uncle Charmides, he had brandished the hymeneal torch. Having arrived at Philotas’ door, along with the other young people, he had simulated a struggle against the groom’s parry, pretending to resist the forced abduction of the bride, in accordance with Athenian custom. It was at that moment that he had touched his cousin’s body, holding her in his arms while the laughing Philotas attempted to draw her away, and the latter’s elder brother, bearing the urn full of water from the Callirrhoe spring, awaited the new mistress of the house in order to purify her and initiate her into the cult of the tribe that she was entering.

  All those memories flooded his mind and charmed him. It was with some disturbance that he sat down at the table. Breaking the bread and eating distractedly, he sensed a great pleasure in being served by his cousin, who poured wine for him and offered him the dishes.

  She went out momentarily in order to bring the basket of fruits. Then Philotas turned to the young man.

  “You will have to be careful of her modesty and her inexperience, Plato,” he said to him. “Nicareta is ready to welcome you, since you are her relative, but she feels anxious and fearful, as before the unknown.”

  When the young woman returned, Philotas addressed her: “Plato consents to what we desire of him. He will not cross the threshold of our house to leave until morning. Obey him like a servant full of good will, and be grateful for the happiness that he will give you.”

  After the dinner, he conducted them to the obscure couch, and then withdrew into the men’s apartment.

  Plato experienced a moment of embarrassment, as if he were about to penetrate into the adyton where the mysteries are celebrated. The presence of that woman, whose soul and thought were unknown to him and who, after a few moments, would abandon herself to him, threw him into profound meditations. He saw himself on the threshold of the future, ready to make the hereditary gesture, the obscure and redoubtable act that perpetuates life via a frisson.

  Then he took Nicareta by the hand, gently. Kissed her and said to her: “You consent, then friend that I enter the bed with you and that I enclose you in my arms like a husband?”

  She was unable to respond and, agitated by fear, she extracted herself from his grip and took a few awkward steps toward the bed. Plato thought that she was rejecting him, and such was his own disarray that he stopped, fearful that the precipitate palpitations of his heart might make him totter. He recovered his courage quickly, however. Guided by the dim light that filtered through the window, he distinguished Nicareta, who was huddled in the bed, motionless, waiting for him. “You don’t want me, then, Nicareta,” he murmured to her with a mild reproach in his voice. “I have to depart humiliated, in spite of your husband’s plea and in spite of my own desire?”

  But he felt two arms that closed around his neck, and on leaning forward he discovered that the violence with which the female breast was heaving equaled his own. Nicareta seemed like a frightened bird. Enlaced with him, she now seemed avid for that embrace. It was Nature that was guiding her, and later, he recognized that blind instinct was guiding his own body, bringing it closer to the woman, and rendering his hands adroit.

  In spite of the obscurity he distinguished clearly that Nicareta’s first movement, under the caress, was one of recoil, and that the pleasure he sensed and that he gave was violent and tumultuous, participating in struggle, and a little in hatred: a pleasure that was akin to anguish and destruction. Meanwhile, sensuality inundated him, sharply, and he judged that only wine imprinted on men in orgiastic festivals, in the midst of dancing, a fury similar to that of kisses.

  But when he finally detached himself from Nicareta’s body, he found himself so fallen and saw her so bestial under the as-yet-unappeased spur of pleasure, so discordant with him in sensations, that a violent disgust gripped him, a sad disintoxication, a prostration of his entire being.

  Animality, repressed for so many years by study and reflection, had triumphed momentarily over his body. The calm that Socrates praised so highly in him, the harmonious order of his being, was broken. Under the degrading empire of pleasure, obscure sentiments had emerged from the depths of his being, of which he had previously been unaware.

  That woman now appeared to him as a stranger, likes a vanquished enemy. Her body no longer awakened any desire in him and he saw nothing but the mediocrity of her features, her nudity weighed down by sleep, which seemed to him to be sad and debasing. Gazing at her with a hostile attention, he noticed that her hips did not taper splendidly, in accordance with the lines of a slender amphora, and that near her navel there were slight creases that spoiled the luminous whiteness of her flesh.

  I have nothing in common with this woman. Why am I in this bed?

  Experiencing repugnance toward himself, ashamed on his previous delirium, Plato recognized that the pleasure was too close to its own disappointment. The fruit of sensuality was that of death. The amour that was praised as the organizer of the world, the supreme music, could only reside the demented movements, full of thirst and violence, of two bodies that seemed prey to the Furies.

  And, unable to sleep or to tolerate Nicareta’s slumber, he remained meditative and revolted until morning. Then he withdrew, almost furtively, at the moment when the Pleiades were disappearing.

  The pure freshness of the dawn was an appeasement, and he returned to Athens at a rapid pace.

  IV. The Secret of Sthenelais

  Sexual intercourse is nothing but the animal gesture of amour, its fashion of depriving it of wings. It belongs to Venus Pandemos, while the veritable amour resides in the gaze of Venus Urania.

  Thus thought Plato when he arrived home, rested and light, after the morning bath.

  He had avoided all company and, alone at his window, he followed during the morning the play of the light on the summit of Hymettus at dawn, black and then gilded, and subsequently brightened by a rosy tint, and clad at midday in sparkling violet. While admiring that, Plato also lent his attention to the thoughts that were born in the depths of his consciousness.

  Having been mingled in a bed with a woman, the scales had fallen from his eyes and the nature of pleasure appeared to him. The awakening of instinct had veiled the truth from him momentarily and had caused him to enter into the common illusion that bears people toward enjoyment as if it were the goal of life. But now, Plato knew that it was nothing but a fit of dementia, an impulsion of sovereign hunger, blinding men and dominating them.

  As for amour, the divine flower of the soul, as the poets had praised it, one ought to place it outside desire, since its end was nothing but disappointment, and its aftertaste nothing but bitterness.

  The proof, Plato said to himself,
that the flesh is foreign to amour is that the possession of Nicareta has increased instead of satisfying my thirst to know that sentiment. After having sampled intercourse, my curiosity, my ignorance of amour, remains the same.

  Shaken by contrary thoughts, Plato went out when the heat eased, wanting to wander and to think again. After having passed through the Agora he stopped outside Simon’s shop and approached the shoemaker.

  “Tell me, Simon,” he said, distracted and smiling, “did Theodota’s spur enter profoundly into your soul?”

  The shoemaker raised his scintillating eyes, which illuminated his dull visage like a conflagration, and he replied: “The savant Meno came here yesterday, having need of a pair of sandals. He talked to me about astronomy and assured me that the sun, as Anaxagoras conjectures, is larger than the Peloponnese. The stars are, it appears, assemblies of molecules in ignition, and rotate in the sky following predictable curves. That revelation is still confounding my mind. While I hammer the leather of Amylceus I cannot deflect my meditations away from it. So, any other subject has become indifferent to me.

  “Even so, I agree that Theodota is beautiful. I think her well-made in her body and possessing harmony. Unfortunately, she was enveloped in a tunic when we went in, so that we know nothing precise about her lines. The mind, creating in its fashion that which we do not know, gratuitously augments a woman’s charms, her beauties and the enjoyments that might flow from her. We attribute imaginary perfections to Theodota, and if she has flaws we will never know them.”

  “You think accurately, Simon. But tell me, can you define the essence of amour for me? The problem has been occupying me in vain since yesterday, and nothing can suggest a satisfactory solution to me.”