Orestes- Blood and Light

by Helen Edmundson

  Orestes, my Orestes, He said you would suffer. He told you that. Do you remember?

  ORESTES. Yes. It is all as he said it would be. All of it. Forgive me. Please forgive me.

  ELECTRA. Hush now. Quiet now. Quiet now. Tomorrow it will all be over. Tomorrow we will be released and it will all be over. Look at me. Tomorrow we will go to Apollo. We will be rocked in Apollo’s arms in a place where there is only gentleness and kindness, where we will have no troubles, no worries, no weight, where our desires will be fulfilled before they are conceived, where we will be all satisfaction.

  The SLAVE has begun to sing to the baby, a haunting lullaby in her own language.

  Orestes, my brother, my only brother. You were gone from me for so long, taken away from me. Your skin smells of islands where I have never been, your hands are larger than mine, your muscles are harder, stronger than mine and yet we are the same. You are me. You are my insides. And I am yours. We are bound together in this and all things. Orestes, my brother, sleep now. Lie down. Sleep. Sleep beside me, your sister. Feel my fingers in amongst your hair. Sleep now. Hearts together. My own heart. Sleep.

  The SLAVE stops singing and asks suddenly –

  SLAVE. Is this a good country they have brought me to? Is this a good country they have brought me to?

  ELECTRA closes her eyes and she and ORESTES sleep.

  The SLAVE leaves. Darkness descends. After a few moments, a man enters, almost silently. It is MENELAOS. He waits for his eyes to adjust to the light. He sees the sleeping pair. He sits down, close by and watches them. Dawn breaks.

  ORESTES awakens. He sees MENELAOS, but does not know who he is.

  ORESTES. Is that the sun?

  Is it time?

  We have slept too long.

  We were tired.

  He struggles to sit up.

  MENELAOS. Let me help you.

  ORESTES. No. I don’t need help. I feel better today.

  Have you come for us?

  Is it only you? One man to take us to our death. They send one man for the children of a king. Is that arrogance, or respect?

  He coughs. MENELAOS hands him a bottle of water.

  MENELAOS. Here.

  ORESTES drinks.

  ORESTES. Thank you.

  MENELAOS. Finish it.

  ORESTES. No. No. She needs some too.

  He watches ELECTRA.

  My sister.

  As a child she must have looked like this. I wish I could remember. When my father went to war they sent me away so that I would be safe. Their infant son. Their precious boy. But there is safe and safe. I wish I could have stayed. I wish I could have played with her, fought with her, been bored with her. I wish we could have slept, just once, with our heads on our mother’s lap. Things might have been different then.

  Do you think things would have been different? Is it possible for one small fact to change everything?

  MENELAOS. I don’t know.

  ORESTES. I don’t know.

  If I could die twice today and save her, I would.

  MENELAOS. You have your father’s too-tender heart, Orestes.

  ORESTES. Did you know my father?

  MENELAOS. I knew your father well.

  ORESTES. Then you are luckier than I am.

  Did you fight beside him?

  MENELAOS. Many times. A General of generals. A King of kings.

  ORESTES. You loved him.

  MENELAOS. Yes.

  ORESTES. Then you must grieve for him as I do.

  MENELAOS. More, perhaps, than anyone, I grieve for him. Orestes, I am not who you think I am. I have not come to take you to your death. I am your uncle – Menelaos. I am Agamemnon’s brother. Menelaos.

  Forgive me. Please. I needed to see you, to watch you. I know so little of you. The only thing I do know, I wish with all my heart I didn’t.

  ORESTES. Menelaos?

  MENELAOS. Yes. It is the truth.

  ORESTES. Menelaos. Uncle. My father’s brother. My blood.

  ORESTES rushes towards him but almost collapses.

  MENELAOS (helping him). You are ill. Here. Here.

  ORESTES. No. I am better. I am better today.

  MENELAOS. Helen told me you were ranting, feverish.

  ORESTES. Helen?

  MENELAOS. Helen is with me. And our baby daughter too. Hermione. Our hope. I have brought them home.

  ORESTES. Apollo has brought you back to me.

  MENELAOS. Back from sixteen years of war and wandering. The last six years our ship was lost upon the seas, driven from one strange coast to another. I knew my brother would reach home before me. It was what sustained me – the thought of his welcome here in the city, his sweet reunion with his wife, with Klytemnestra, in this room, in that very bed, I pictured it. I pictured his children gathered around him as he stood on the balcony and addressed the people, his figurehead chest swelling with pride as he described to them our victories.

  Then, one day, we came to a country, a thriving place, where they told me stories of my brother’s death, stories so particular in detail that they could not be dismissed, of how he died in his bath, killed by his own wife’s hand.

  ORESTES. True. All true.

  MENELAOS. I wept then. I wept and raved against the Gods. I raised a mound for him, a cenotaph. With my own hands I struck his name into the stone.

  ORESTES. Thank you. Thank you.

  MENELAOS. Then yesterday, when we, at last, had reached the coast, before I had set foot on land they called across to me from the quay, Klytemnestra is dead, killed by her children, the matricides.

  ORESTES. And now we in turn will die. Today the assembly meet to decide our death.

  MENELAOS. Orestes. Why did you stay? You should have crossed the border. Sought sanctuary.

  ORESTES. I was too weak to run. This grief. This guilt. If it were not for Electra I would be dead already.

  I see her, Menelaos. When my eyes are open, when my eyes are closed. When the sun is up. When the moon is out. I see her. Last night . . . last night she was as real to me as you are now.

  This is not something to be run from.

  MENELAOS. I understand.

  ORESTES. It is a part of me now. (Indicating ELECTRA.) A part of us.

  MENELAOS. Yes.

  ORESTES. I, like you, have just returned from years away, to be where I should be, ruling in this palace as my father ruled. It is the only fate I want. The fate I have cherished, prepared for since I first become aware of who I am.

  MENELAOS. Yes.

  ORESTES. And now it can happen. Because you are here. You have come and everything has changed. You will help us, Uncle?

  MENELAOS. Yes. Of course I will help you.

  ORESTES. My father was your true brother. He went to war for you, protected you and now you protect me. You save me. And Electra too.

  MENELAOS. Yes.

  ORESTES. How right this is. How good and right this is. Electra. Electra. Wake up. Look, and try to believe what you see.

  She opens her eyes and sits up.

  It is Menelaos. It is our uncle.

  ELECTRA. Uncle? Uncle.

  She falls at MENELAOS’ feet and begins to weep.

  MENELAOS. Don’t. Don’t cry, Electra.

  ELECTRA. How can I not cry? You are so like my father. They hurt him, Uncle.

  MENELAOS. I know.

  ELECTRA. They trapped him. He didn’t stand a chance.

  MENELAOS. If only I had been here. They would not have touched him then.

  ELECTRA. They buried him with nothing. No offerings, no sacrifice.

  MENELAOS. It is cruel beyond belief.

  ELECTRA. They tipped his blood away like dirty water. I saw them carry out the bath. They tipped away his blood into a rancid stream.

  MENELAOS. Hush now. There is no need to speak of this.

  He raises her to her feet.

  I am back. No more weeping.

  ORESTES. I had no hope before you came, but now I know we will not die today. />
  Footsteps are heard outside the doors. TYNDAREOS’ voice rings out.

  TYNDAREOS (off). Where is he? Search.

  ORESTES. They’re coming.

  MENELAOS. I know that voice. My father-in-law – Tyndareos.

  ELECTRA. Grandfather.

  ORESTES. Our grandfather?

  ELECTRA. Why does he come now?

  MENELAOS. Because I am here. He must have heard I have returned. And Helen too.

  ELECTRA (to ORESTES). Move back into the shadows. He doesn’t need to see you.

  ORESTES. No. I will face him. I must face him. I am strong enough for anything today.

  The doors are thrust open and TYNDAREOS enters with ATTENDANTS. He stares at MENELAOS.

  TYNDAREOS. So it’s true then.

  MENELAOS. I am glad to see you again, Tyndareos, after all these years.

  TYNDAREOS. I would be glad to see you anywhere, Menelaos, but not here.

  MENELAOS. Where else would I go? Agamemnon’s Palace. The seat of my Fathers.

  TYNDAREOS. This place is contaminated now, and will be so until those two are dead. Then it can be cleansed and prayers can be said. Then and only then will it be fit to rule from.

  MENELAOS. I wanted to see my brother’s children. To listen to them. You have always defended a man’s right to have his say.

  TYNDAREOS. They have no rights. Murderers have no rights.

  MENELAOS. Surely every man has rights.

  ORESTES. Grandfather?

  TYNDAREOS. Is it true that she is here? My so-called daughter, Helen?

  MENELAOS. Yes. I have brought her home. And our child too.

  TYNDAREOS. Your child, you say?

  MENELAOS. A baby daughter, born at sea.

  TYNDAREOS. You think that will keep her with you? Even a branded beast will stray, Menelaos.

  MENELAOS. We are a family now. Let me call them to you.

  TYNDAREOS. No. I have not come here for reconciliations. I have come for one reason alone, to warn you not to try to stand between these two and their certain fate.

  MENELAOS. To ‘warn me’?

  ORESTES. Grandfather?

  TYNDAREOS. Do not call me so. I am no kin of yours. Look at you – a shambling criminal, more dead than alive, dried blood under your fingernails, you have no claim on me. I thank the Gods I never grew to love you. So much the easier now for me to turn my back on you.

  MENELAOS. Don’t speak so harshly, Tyndareos. He is your kin. He is your kin and mine too. We help him and we honour him.

  TYNDAREOS. Not when he has broken the law.

  MENELAOS. I hold to a greater law.

  TYNDAREOS. Your wandering has left you soft, Menelaos.

  MENELAOS. And your age has left you hard.

  TYNDAREOS. Things have changed here since you left. We have sharpened the edges of our democracy.

  MENELAOS. And put an end to mercy, it would seem.

  TYNDAREOS. Mercy? There is no place for mercy here. What mercy did he show his mother?

  MENELAOS. As much, perhaps, as I would have shown, had I arrived here first.

  TYNDAREOS. You would not have been so rash, Menelaos, and you know it.

  I don’t excuse my daughter, Klytemnestra, for what she did, but she was, after all, a woman, and fractured with passion like all her kind. But when he heard of Agamemnon’s death he should have stuck to the law, our law, hard-won, ordained by the Gods. Our laws are there to stop the chain of death on death. Any man with blood on his hands should be banished, outcast, not seen or spoken to. That is what he should have called for. That would have been fit punishment for her, clean punishment for her. Then he would have won respect, admiration for his wisdom, his his circumspection. But no. He judged her beyond the law, he sank beneath her level and so he threatens the whole of civilisation.

  We are not animals. Do you understand me? We are not animals. You make me sick to look at you. I heard she bared her breast, begged you for mercy and yet still you struck her – the body which gave you life. I have wept to think of it. I am not ashamed to say that. I try to sleep at night and my mind flinches, my body fits at the image of her face, her fear, the whites of her eyes, her hand raised against the blade.

  The Gods hate you, Orestes. Your blasted wits are proof of that. If you help him, Menelaos, you defy the Gods and you defy the law. Leave him. Let the people stone him to death and then it will be done with.

  ORESTES. Grandfather – for you are still my grandfather, the father of my mother and the man I must respect, my father gone, above all others. I have long pictured the moment of our meeting; the chance to be able to touch you, talk with you, learn from you. I had hoped to undo, with one embrace, all the years of separation and unknowingness. I had hoped that the cord, from your centre to mine, would pull us tight together.

  TYNDAREOS. You severed that cord.

  ORESTES. The thought that I have caused you pain is almost impossible for me to bear, and yet I must risk hurting you further now for I cannot let you go without begging you to listen to what I have to say and asking that you try to understand me.

  Do you think this was easy for me? An easy decision – to kill my mother? You think my wits are shaken now with guilt, but they were shaken first by the long, tortured days which followed when I learnt what she had done. Long days of questioning and turmoil. I was so far away, separate, no family to ask advice of – Menelaos, you. I forced myself to think dispassionately, to see it from every side: who did I owe greatest allegiance to – my father or my mother? My father who sewed the seed, began me, or my mother who sheltered me inside her as I grew? My father then, I thought. Then there was the fact of her adultery: whatever grievance she had against my father, she should not have debased herself and him by taking another man into her bed, opening herself to another man, an impostor, a lesser man, and when my father had gone to war to fight for all our state. That Aigisthos had to die was clear to me. But what of her? What of her? You say my actions have undermined our civilisation, but I thought of civilisation, of what was best for our people. I thought, the only true deterrent is death. Another woman, here in the city, now, who thought of murdering her husband must know that she would pay with her life. Nothing less. Even then I lost my nerve, swayed my own mind. For ten days I was going to spare her, to stay away and not come back, abandon my sister, deny my name. But the thought of my father raked my soul. My father, my father, killed in cold blood, betrayed, disposed of. And his breath was in my mouth and his tears were in my eyes and I knew that he would find no peace until he was avenged. The Gods. Apollo. I ran to Apollo’s temple. The Gods, the Gods, my only hope. I fell on my knees and I begged for his help as though I were begging for my life, because I was. And He came to me, He spoke to me. The release of it. The hot, seeping release of it. The decision was His, the orders were His: kill her and Aigisthos too. Kill them. Avenge your father.

  I came here, and I did it. The right thing. And it was well done. For my God and for us all. It was well done.

  TYNDAREOS. How dare you? How dare you try to soften me, mollify me with your creeping, teary apology for yourself?

  ORESTES. It is not an apology. / I am trying to explain. To justify myself.

  TYNDAREOS. Spewing forth your words, contrived words, sure of their mark, full of contempt for those who hear them. What is it to me that you thought about it long and hard? Worse. Worse, in fact, that you did, that you had the doubts, understood all the ways in which it was wrong, yet still you couldn’t stop your hand. What will be said of you, as word of this atrocity spreads across the land, the world, the whole of time? ‘After much deliberation and thought, and having asked the Gods’ advice, Orestes killed his mother’? No. They will say, ‘Orestes killed his mother in cold blood, destroyed the name of a great house, dragged his sister into it, brought about their deaths and the destruction of a dynasty.’

  ELECTRA. I wanted what he wanted. We did what we were told to do.

  TYNDAREOS. Oh, I know you are not innocent, Electra. I s
aw your face as they closed your father’s body in the tomb, the grey-stone expression in your eyes. I told you then, gently, with a gentle touch, to mourn out your anger in the proper fashion, to make your peace.

  ELECTRA. A coward’s way.

  ORESTES. Don’t Electra.

  TYNDAREOS. You were always a watchful, untrustworthy child. I never liked you near me. But only now do I understand that you are full to your throat with recklessness.

  MENELAOS. Enough now. Enough has been said.

  ELECTRA. Not enough. Not enough. You listen to me now – /

  ORESTES. Electra.

  ELECTRA. We have listened to you, now you listen to me.

  TYNDAREOS. Know your place and be silent.

  ELECTRA. You are afraid to hear me. You are afraid to hear the truth.

  TYNDAREOS. I fear nothing from you.

  ELECTRA. You claim you are the great upholder of the law, you claim you are the champion of due process and restraint – /

  TYNDAREOS. I do not claim so. It is so.

  ELECTRA. And yet you cry for us to be thrown to the mob. You want to see us stoned, battered, torn limb from limb in some stinking alleyway.

  TYNDAREOS. Because you are beyond the law. You put yourselves beyond the law.

  ELECTRA. Then you be the one to bring the law to bear. You with your weight and your wisdom. You are are not a child alone and desperate as he was, as I was – /

  TYNDAREOS. Oh, so you are children now.

  ELECTRA. You be the one to break the chain of death on death. You be the one to stand before the assembly and demand that we be dealt with according to the law.

  TYNDAREOS. Too late for that. The people are frantic for your blood.

  ELECTRA. So your law is not so strong as you claim it is.

  TYNDAREOS. How dare you?

  ELECTRA. It is a light thing. It can be blown and bent by the breath of angry people.

  TYNDAREOS. Your crime provokes beyond all reason.

  ELECTRA. Why didn’t you act against her and Aigisthos? The moment you knew what they had done? Where were you then? When you whispered to me at my father’s funeral, urged me to silence, I thought you planned some retribution of your own. Justice. You, with the whole weight of the world behind you. But no. Weeks and weeks passed and you did nothing. The morning I was sent away to a shameful, degrading marriage, even then I looked for you but still you didn’t come. And then the rumours reached me. I heard you went to dine with them, that you sat down and drank with them, flattered them, took gifts from them.