by Colm Toibin
‘If you do not marry her, if you fail –’
‘My name is nothing then. My life is nothing. All weakness, a name used to trap a girl.’
‘I can bring my daughter here. Let us both stand in front of you.’
‘Let her remain apart. I will speak to your husband.’
‘My husband . . .’ I began and then stopped.
Achilles looked around at the group of men who were closest to us.
‘He is our leader,’ he said.
‘You will be rewarded if you can prevail,’ I said.
He looked at me evenly, holding my gaze until I turned and walked back through the camp alone. Men moved out of my way, out of my sight, as though I, in my efforts to prevent the sacrifice, were some vast pestilence that had been sent to their camp, worse than the wind that had smashed their boats against the rocks and then rose up again in further fury.
When I arrived at our tent, I could hear the sound of Iphigenia crying. The tent was full of women, a few women who had travelled with us, the women who had come the day before, and now some stragglers who added their presence to create an air of mayhem around my daughter. When I shouted at them to get out and they did not attend to me, I pulled one of them by the ear to the opening of the tent and, having ejected her, I moved towards another until all of them, except the women who had travelled with us, began to scatter.
Iphigenia had her hands over her face.
‘What has happened?’ I asked.
One of the women told us then that three rough-looking men in full armour had come to the tent looking for me. When they were told that I was not there, they believed that I was hiding and ransacked the living quarters, the sleeping quarters and the kitchens. And then they left, taking Orestes with them. Iphigenia began to cry now as the women told me that her brother had been taken. He was kicking and struggling, they said, as they carried him away.
‘Who sent these men?’ I asked.
There was silence for a moment. No one wished to answer until one of the women eventually spoke.
‘Agamemnon,’ she said.
I asked two of the women to come with me to the sleeping quarters to prepare my body and my attire. They washed me, adding sweet spices and perfume, and then they helped me to choose my clothes and arrange my hair. They asked me if they should accompany me now, but I thought that I would walk alone through the camp in search of my husband, that I would call out his name, that I would threaten and terrorize anyone I saw who did not help me to find him.
When finally I found his tent, my way was blocked by one of his men, who asked me what business I had with him.
I was in the act of pushing him out of my way when Agamemnon appeared.
‘Where is Orestes?’ I asked.
‘Learning how to use a sword properly,’ he replied. ‘He will be well looked after. There are other boys his age.’
‘Why did you send men looking for me?’
‘To tell you that it will happen soon. The heifers will be slain first. They are now on their way to the appointed place.’
‘And then?’
‘And then our daughter.’
‘Say her name!’
I did not know that Iphigenia had followed me, and I do not know still how she changed from the sobbing, frightened and inconsolable girl to the poised young woman, her presence solitary and stern, that now came towards us.
‘You do not need to say my name,’ she interrupted. ‘I know my name.’
‘Look at her. Do you intend to kill her?’ I asked Agamemnon.
He did not reply.
‘Answer the question,’ I said.
‘There are many things I must explain,’ he said.
‘Answer the question first,’ I said. ‘Answer it. And then you can explain.’
‘I have learned from your emissary what you intend to do to me,’ Iphigenia said. ‘You do not need to answer anything.’
‘Why will you kill her?’ I asked. ‘What prayers will you utter as she dies? What blessings will you ask for yourself when you cut your child’s throat?’
‘The gods . . .’ he began and stopped.
‘Do the gods smile on men who have their daughters killed?’ I asked. ‘And if the wind does not change, will you kill Orestes too? Is that why he is here?’
‘Orestes? No!’
‘Do you want me to send for Electra?’ I asked. ‘Do you want to find a husband’s name for her and fool her too?’
‘Stop!’ he said.
As Iphigenia moved towards him, he seemed almost afraid of her.
‘I am not eloquent, father,’ she said. ‘All the power I have is in my tears, but I have no tears now either. I have my voice and I have my body and I can kneel and ask that I not be killed before my time. Like you, I think the light of day is sweet. I was the first to call you father, and I was the first you called your daughter. You must remember how you told me that I would in time be happy in my husband’s house, and I asked: happier than with you, father? And you smiled and shook your head and I curled my head into your chest and held you with my arms. I dreamed that I would receive you into my house when you were old and we would be happy then. I told you that. Do you remember? If you kill me, then that will be a sour dream I had, and surely for you it will bring infinite regret. I have come alone to you, tearless, unready. I have no eloquence. I can only ask you with the simple voice I have to send us home. I ask you to spare me. I ask my father what no daughter should ever have to ask. Father, do not kill me!’
Agamemnon lowered his head as if he were the one who had been condemned. When some of his men approached, he looked at them nervously before he spoke.
‘I understand that it calls for pity,’ he said. ‘I love my children. I love my daughter even more now that I see her so composed and in the fullest bloom. But see how large this seagoing army is! It is ready and restive, but the wind will not change for us to attack. Think of the men. Their wives are being abducted by barbarians while they linger here, their land is being laid waste. Each one knows that the gods have been consulted, and each one knows what the gods have ordered me to do. It does not depend on me. I have no choice in this. And if we are defeated, no one will survive. We will all be destroyed, every one of us. If the wind does not change, we will all face death.’
He bowed to some invisible presence in front of him and then he signalled to the two men closest to him to follow him into his tent; two others went to guard the entrance.
It struck me then that if the gods really cared, if they had been watching over us as they were meant to be, they would take pity and quickly change the wind over the sea. I imagined voices coming from the water, from the harbour, then cheering among the men, the flags blowing with this new wind that would allow their ships to move speedily and stealthily so that they would know victory and see that the gods had merely been testing their resolve.
The noises I imagined soon began to give way to shouting as Achilles ran towards us, followed by men roaring abuse at him.
‘Agamemnon told me to talk to the soldiers directly myself, to tell them that it was out of his hands,’ he said. ‘I have now spoken to them and they say that she must be killed. They shouted threats at me too.’
‘At you?’
‘To say that I should be stoned to death.’
‘For trying to save my daughter?’
‘I begged them. I told them that victory in battle made possible by the murder of a girl was a coward’s victory. My voice was drowned out by their shouting. They will not give in to argument.’
I turned towards the crowd of men that had followed Achilles. I thought that if I could find one face and gaze at it, the face of the weakest among them or the strongest, I could shift my gaze to each of them and make them ashamed. But they would not look up. No matter what I did, not one of them would look up.
‘I will do what I can to save her,’ Achilles said, but there was in his tone a sound of defeat. He did not name what he could do, or what he might do. I n
oticed that he too had his eyes cast down. But as Iphigenia began to speak, he looked at her, as did the men around him, who took her in now as though she had already become an icon whose last words would have to be remembered, a figure whose death was going to change the very way the wind blew, whose blood would send an urgent message to the heavens above us.
‘My death,’ she said, ‘will rescue all those who are in danger. I will die. It cannot be otherwise. It is not right for me to be in love with life. It is not right for any of us to be in love with life. What is a single life? There are always others. Others like us come and live. Each breath we breathe is followed by another breath, each step by another step, each word by the next one, each presence in the world by another presence. It hardly matters who must die. We will be replaced. I will give myself for the army’s sake, for my father’s sake, for my country’s sake. I will meet my own sacrifice with a smile. Victory in battle will be my victory then. The memory of my name will last longer than the lives of many men.’
As she spoke, her father and his men slowly emerged from his tent, and others gathered who had been nearby. I watched her, unsure all the time if this were a ploy, if her soft tone and her voice low with humility and resignation, but loud enough that it could be heard, was something she had planned so that she could somehow save herself.
No one moved. There was no sound from the camp. Her words lay on the stillness of air like a further stillness. I noticed Achilles about to speak and then deciding to remain silent. Agamemnon in those moments attempted to assume the pose of a commander, as he ran his eyes over the far horizon, suggesting that large questions were on his mind. No matter what he did, however, he appeared to me like a diminished, ageing man. He would, in the future, I thought, be viewed with contempt for luring his daughter to the camp and having her murdered to appease the gods. He was still feared, I saw, but I could see too that this would not last.
Thus he was at his most dangerous, like a bull with a sword stuck into its side.
With dignity and proud scorn, I walked away from them, with Iphigenia gently following. I was sure then that the weak leader and the angry, uneasy mob would hold sway. I knew that we had been defeated. Iphigenia continued speaking, asking me not to mourn her death, and not to pity her, asking me to tell Electra how she died and to implore Electra not to wear mourning clothes for her, and to use my energy now to save Orestes from the poison that was all around us.
*
In the distance, we could hear the howls of the animals that had been brought to the place of sacrifice. I demanded that all the women who once more had arrived get out of our sight, except the few we trusted who had accompanied us to the camp. I ordered Iphigenia’s wedding clothes to be prepared and the clothes that I had planned to wear at the wedding ceremony to be laid out for me. I asked for water so we both could bathe and then special white ointment for our faces and black lines for around our eyes so that we would seem pale and unearthly as we made our way to that place of death.
At first no one spoke. Then the silence was broken at intervals by men shouting, by the sound of prayers rising, by animals bellowing and letting out fierce shrieks.
When word came that there were men outside and they were preparing to enter, I went towards the opening of the tent. The men seemed frightened when they saw me.
‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.
They would not look at me or reply.
‘Are you too cowardly to speak?’ I asked.
‘We are not,’ one of them said.
‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked this man.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘From my mother I received a set of words that she, in turn, had received from hers,’ I said. ‘These words have been sparingly used. They cause the insides of all men within earshot to shrivel, and then the insides of all their children. Only their wives are spared, and they are destined then to search the dust for food to peck.’
They were so filled with superstition, I saw, that any set of words that invoked the gods or an ancient curse would instil instant fear in them. Not one of them questioned me even with a glance, not one shadow passed over what I had said, not one hint that there was no such curse, and never had been.
‘If one of you lays a finger on my daughter or on me,’ I continued, ‘if one of you walks ahead of us, or speaks, I will invoke that curse. Unless you come behind us like a pack of dogs, I will speak the words of the curse.’
Each one of them looked chastened. Arguments would not work for them, not even pity, but the slightest invocation of a power beyond their power had them spellbound. Had they looked up again, they would have seen a smile of pure contempt pass across my face.
Inside, Iphigenia was ready, like some deeply moulded version of herself, stately, placid, not responding to the sound of an animal howling in pain that rose at the very place where she soon would see light for the last time.
I whispered to her: ‘They are frightened of our curses. Wait until there is silence and raise your voice. Explain how ancient the curse is, passed from mother to daughter over time, and how seldom it has been used because of its power. Threaten to invoke it unless they relent, threaten it first against your father and then against each one of them, beginning with those closest to you. Warn them that there will be no army left at all, just dogs growling in the deathly stillness that your curse will leave behind.’
I told her then what the words of the curse should say. We walked in ceremony from our tent to the killing place, Iphigenia first, with me some distance behind her, and then the women who had come with us, and then the soldiers. The day was hot; the smell of the blood and the innards of animals and the aftermath of fear and butchering came towards us until it took all our will not to cover our noses from the stench. Instead of a place of dignity, they had made the place where the killing was to happen into a ramshackle site, with soldiers wandering around aimlessly, and the leftover parts of dead animals strewn about.
Perhaps it was this scene, coupled with how easy it had been to invoke the gods in the curse that I had invented, that sharpened something already in me. As we walked towards the place of slaughter, I realized for the first time that I was sure, fully sure, that I did not believe at all in the power of the gods. I wondered if I were alone in this. I wondered if Agamemnon and the men around him really cared about the gods, if they really believed that a hidden power beyond their power was holding the troops in a spell that no mortal power could manage to cast.
But of course they did. Of course they were sure of what they believed, enough for them to want to go through with this plan.
As we approached Agamemnon, he whispered to his daughter: ‘Your name will be remembered for ever.’
He turned to me and in a voice of gravity and self-importance he whispered: ‘Her name will be remembered for ever.’
I saw now that one of the soldiers who had accompanied us went to Agamemnon and whispered something to him. Agamemnon listened closely and then spoke quietly, firmly, to the five or six men around him.
Then the chanting began, the calling out to the gods in phrases filled with repetitions and strange inversions. I closed my eyes and listened. I could smell the blood of the animals as it began to sour and there were vultures in the sky, so it was all death, and then the single sound of the chant followed by the rippling, rising sound of the chant being repeated by those who followed the gods most closely and then a sudden mass sound directed towards the sky as thousands of men responded with one voice.
I looked at Iphigenia as she stood alone. She exuded an unearthly power, with the beauty of her robes, the whiteness of her face, the blackness of her hair, the black lines around her eyes, her stillness and silence.
At that moment, the knife was produced. Two women walked towards Iphigenia and loosened her hair from its pins, then pushed down her head and hurriedly, roughly cut her hair. When one of them cut into her skin and Iphigenia cried out, however, the cry was that of a girl, not a sacrificial victim,
but a young, fearful, vulnerable girl. And the sacred spell was broken for a moment. I knew how fragile this crowd was. Men began to shout. Agamemnon looked around him in dismay. I knew as I watched him how thin his control was.
As Iphigenia pulled herself loose and began to speak, no one could hear her at first and she had to scream to get silence. When it was clear that she was ready to invoke a curse against her father, a man came from behind her with an old white cloth and bound it around her mouth and dragged her, as she kicked and used her elbows, to the place of sacrifice, where he tied her hands and her feet.
I did not hesitate then. I stretched out my arms and raised my voice and I began the curse of which I had warned them. I directed it against all of them. Some of those in front of me started to run in fright, but from behind another man came with a ragged cloth that, despite my efforts, he pulled tight around my mouth too. I was dragged away as well, but in the opposite direction, away from the place of sacrifice.
When I was out of sight, out of earshot, I was kicked and beaten. And then at the edge of the camp, I saw them lifting a stone. It took three or four men to lift it. The men who had dragged me pushed me into a space dug into the earth below the stone.
The space was large enough to sit in but not to stand up or lie down in. Once they had me there, they quickly put the stone back over the opening. My hands were not bound so I could move them enough to take the cloth from my mouth, but the stone was too heavy for me to push so I could not release myself. I was trapped; even the urgent sounds I made seemed trapped.
I was half buried underground as my daughter died alone. I never saw her body and I did not hear her cries or call out to her. But others told me of her cry. And those last high sounds she made, I now believe, in all their helplessness and fear, as they became shrieks, as they pierced the ears of the crowd assembled, will be remembered for ever. Nothing else.
*
Soon, for me, the pain began, the pain in my back that came from being cramped under the ground. The numbness in my arms and legs soon became painful too. The base of my spine began to be irritated and then felt as if it were on fire. I would have given anything to stretch my body, let my arms and legs loose, stand up straight and move. That was all I thought about for the first while.