House of Names

by Colm Toibin

  ‘I don’t want you to go,’ Orestes said.

  ‘You won’t want me when there is a child.’

  ‘Did you see the man who caused this?’ he asked as he touched her stomach. ‘Did you see his face? Do you know his name?’

  ‘There were five of them,’ Ianthe said. ‘I was attacked by all of them. There was not just one.’

  ‘But the child is in you, not in them,’ Orestes said. ‘They are all dead. They were all killed.’

  ‘Yes, the child is in me.’

  ‘And the child grew here in our house and will be born in our house.’

  ‘No, it won’t be born here. I’ll go.’

  ‘Does my sister want you to go?’

  ‘I haven’t told her that I’ll go.’

  ‘But I am your husband. I don’t want you to go.’

  ‘You won’t want the baby.’

  ‘It is the baby that grew in you. It’s your baby.’

  ‘But it’s not yours.’

  ‘It grew in you as I held you. It grew in the night when you were here with me.’

  ‘I can’t tell my brother,’ Ianthe said. ‘I can’t tell him anything of this. There has been too much.’

  ‘You must tell Electra that you said nothing to me either.’

  ‘When the baby is born,’ she said, ‘you will think of the men. That is what you will think of.’

  ‘Does my sister want you to have the baby and stay?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘Yes, but she also wanted me not to tell you what happened.’

  ‘But she wants you to stay?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then that’s what you will do. There cannot be anyone else . . .’

  He felt that he was choking as he tried to stop himself from crying.

  ‘Orestes, what? I can’t hear you.’

  ‘We cannot lose anyone else. I lost my sister, I lost my father and . . .’

  He hesitated and then held her nearer to him.

  ‘My mother moves in the corridor at night.’

  Ianthe sat up and looked around her.

  ‘Have you seen your mother?’ she asked. ‘You have seen her?’

  ‘No, but she is there. Not every night and not for long, but some nights some part of her is here and then moves away. Sometimes she is close. She is close now.’

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘I do not know. But I cannot lose, we cannot lose, anyone else. There has been enough death.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘there has been enough death.’

  *

  In the weeks that followed, as he moved between his own room and the room where the others gathered, where Ianthe also spent her days and which was filled with visitors and messengers and the voice of Leander shouting out orders, the scar on his face often growing red, Orestes began to feel the hostility from the elders. He was not wanted here, he saw, the same as he had not been needed anywhere, except when Electra needed him to do something that she would not do herself or when Leander needed him to escape with him so they could protect Mitros.

  When he came into a room, he saw that no one looked up or people brushed by him. He could stay here if he wanted or go back to his own room and listen to the sounds of the day outside in the corridor in the full realization that they had nothing to do with him. He could imagine that, compared to what had happened, these sounds did not matter, or perhaps he was the one who did not matter. Like the messengers who came and went with urgent missives, he himself, he saw, had his uses. He had proved to them that he was someone who would do anything.

  But now he was living in the shadows, spending each day in a pale aftermath.

  When he lay with Ianthe at night he felt that she too was distant from him, as the child in her was distant, the child that he had believed was his, the child to whom he would be the ghostly father, since the real father, whoever he was, had been consigned to dust.

  Ianthe noticed his listlessness and encouraged him to stay longer when he came to the meeting room for the discussions among Electra, Leander, Aegisthus and the elders. A few times as he made to stand up and leave, she signalled to him to stay with her and listen.

  They were discussing what to do with the slaves whom his father had captured all those years before. The slaves had been made to work clearing rocks from fields and building irrigation canals, but now, since Leander’s victory, they were roaming the countryside in groups, marauding settlements and attacking houses.

  As Orestes listened, he was surprised that no one suggested sending troops to round the slaves up, kill their leaders and put them back to work. Not long before, he was sure, this would have been Aegisthus’ view and his mother’s, and perhaps it was even what his father would have done and with the agreement of the elders. But now, Aegisthus spoke of a territory where there was spring water in abundance but no irrigation and where the land was in much need of work.

  When Aegisthus described it, Leander suggested that this land be given not only to the slaves but to the men who had been sent away with them and who had no families. It should be divided into small parcels so that each one would own something. Electra spoke then about the seeds and the implements that could be distributed and what crops might grow. One of the elders reminded them that some of the slaves were actually in captivity close by and perhaps could be released, before Aegisthus interjected to say that some of these slaves were dangerous and they should be released only in twos and threes, after having been carefully vetted. He believed also, he said, that the slaves who were roaming would have to be forcibly removed to this new territory as they would not go willingly.

  Some of them, he said, even had hopes that they would be sent back to their country of origin, which could not happen, since their land had been resettled by soldiers who had fought in the wars against them.

  At the end, when Leander asked Orestes in a desultory tone if he had anything to contribute, he shook his head. But before he did so, he saw the elders looking away and Electra and Aegisthus becoming involved in something else. He wondered if Leander had drawn attention to him just to mock him.

  But once he stayed in the room with them, he found that since he listened intensely and was never preoccupied by what he himself should say next, he could remember with accuracy a previous argument or a solution of which they had lost sight. When there had been a complex discussion, or detailed evidence that contradicted other evidence, Orestes could remember what the others had forgotten or remembered hazily. On a few occasions, he was ready to correct them, tell them precisely what had been said or agreed. But since he saw that they had no interest in what he might say, he did not intervene.

  He did not merely notice them and the words they used, but as he looked from one to the other, he felt other presences in the room, people who had dealt in a different way with these same matters in the past. He felt his father’s spirit hovering and the spirits of Theodotus and Mitros and other spirits whose names he did not know.

  But more than anything, he saw his mother in the room and saw her in Electra. He saw his mother’s face and heard her voice when he looked at his sister or listened to her speak. And then he would notice a faint presence or a change in the light and he would realize that it was his mother. He would hold Ianthe’s hand and keep her close so that the disturbance would fade and the atmosphere become calm again.

  *

  Orestes was not surprised when Leander came alone to his room one evening, while Ianthe was still with Electra. He had almost been waiting for this. In the half-light, he observed that Leander’s scar was white at the edges and seemed almost open like a lip.

  ‘The guards have heard a voice in the corridor at night,’ Leander said. ‘At first, they say, it was only a disturbance in the air. Last night, however, they ran to my room because a woman’s voice spoke.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said your name. The guard heard her say your name and then he ran in fright to my room. When I came out, I noticed a coldness in the corridor. No
thing else.’

  ‘And so there was nothing?’

  ‘Orestes, the guard saw your mother. It was your mother. He knew her and recognized her fully. He heard her voice and he asked her if she meant you harm.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She said that she does not mean you harm, but that you must come into the corridor alone. I have arranged for the guards not to be at their stations tonight. For some hours in the fastness of the night there will be no one in the corridor.’

  ‘Does my sister know?’

  ‘Only the guards who heard her voice know, and I know.’

  ‘Will you be close by?’

  ‘I will be in my room.’

  ‘What will I tell Ianthe?’

  ‘Ask her to stay with your sister. It is near her time so perhaps she needs to be with your sister. I will tell Electra that the midwife has sent a message that it is best for Ianthe to stay in Electra’s room. You will be alone.’

  ‘Are you sure I should do this?’ Orestes asked. ‘Are you sure this is not a trap that has been set by Aegisthus or by one of our enemies?’

  ‘I swear to you, by the memory of my grandfather whom I loved, that I believe that your mother has walked in the corridor.’

  *

  They ate together with Electra and Ianthe as though there were nothing strange. Once supper was finished, Orestes and Leander withdrew. As he passed the guards in the corridor, Orestes saw how nervous they seemed. At the door of his room, Leander held him in a warm, familiar, comforting embrace and then released him and walked down the corridor to his own room. Orestes waited alone, checking at intervals if the guards were still at their stations.

  When he saw that they were gone, he waited in the corridor, unsure whether he should stand still and wait or walk up and down to see if she would appear.

  As he returned and lingered at the doorway to his room, there was nothing. No sound, no change in the air. He shifted his position a few steps and then back. What came to him now, as it sometimes did when he was alone at night, was the distant sound of animals bellowing in fright, and then the more piercing cries of agony from the heifers, and then the smell of blood and fear and raw animal intestines that rose from the place of sacrifice. And then his sister dressed in white and cries from her and from his mother.

  As these sounds came to him now, he looked around him. He had moved into the middle of the corridor, and she was there, his mother. She was saying words that he could not make out. He whispered to her that he was Orestes and he was waiting for her. Suddenly, two hands gripped him firmly by the waist and he was swung around. Then the hands released him. He knew that he must only whisper, he could not call out in case he alerted Electra or Ianthe.

  ‘I am here,’ he whispered.

  When his mother appeared again, she was wearing white as though dressed for a wedding or a feast. She was younger than he remembered her. As she moved away from him, he followed her, then stopped as she stopped.

  ‘I am Orestes,’ he whispered.

  ‘Orestes,’ she whispered.

  He could see her clearly now. Her face was even younger.

  ‘There is no one,’ she whispered.

  ‘There is,’ he said. ‘I am here. It is me.’

  ‘No one,’ she repeated.

  She said the words ‘no one’ twice more, and then, as her image began to fade, as the shadows grew around her, it seemed to him that she had some fierce and sudden intimation of what had happened, how she had died. She gazed at him in surprise and then in pain, and then she gasped in anguish before she disappeared.

  When he felt a cold wind in the corridor, he knew that she would not come back.

  *

  He waited alone in the silence for some time, and when he was sure that there was no trace of her he went to Leander’s room. He found it empty. He then ran the length of the corridor to find his sister and Ianthe, but he could not locate them. In the corridor again, he went to Aegisthus’ room, to discover that he was in bed with the guard, the one who had come to Orestes with messages he claimed were from Leander. When Orestes asked where Leander was, Aegisthus said that Leander had been shouting Orestes’ name in the corridor some time earlier, and he should ask the guards in the corridor where Leander had gone.

  ‘There are no guards in the corridor,’ Orestes said.

  Aegisthus appeared ready to spring to the door in alarm, but instead he motioned the guard to go and look.

  ‘They are in their usual places,’ the guard said, having peered into the corridor.

  As Orestes passed the guard, he took him in from head to toe, until he was sure that he had let him understand that he would be dealt with in some way or other in due course.

  When he himself stood in the corridor, he was instantly approached by two of the guards.

  ‘Leander has been looking for you,’ one of them said. ‘He has sent guards out to search for you.’

  ‘He is not in his room,’ Orestes said.

  ‘He is with his sister. She is in labour,’ the guard said.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In the new room.’

  The guards accompanied him to the room that had been decorated for Ianthe and her child. Ianthe was lying on the bed. She was being held and comforted by Electra. Leander was standing close to them.

  ‘We couldn’t find you,’ Leander said.

  ‘I was in the corridor,’ Orestes replied.

  ‘We were all in the corridor,’ Leander said. ‘No one could find you. It was a peaceful night until her pains came. You were not in your room or anywhere else so we sent some guards to search for you and we sent others to get the midwife.’

  Ianthe cried out. She was unable to control her breathing. Electra pulled her hair back from her brow and sponged her face with cold water, soothing her as she spoke.

  ‘It will not be long now,’ Electra said. ‘The midwife will not be long.’

  Leander made a sign to Orestes that they should leave. Orestes thought it was strange that just a few minutes earlier he had been desperate to find Leander to tell him what he had seen, but now, as they moved towards the steps of the palace to wait for the guards and the midwife, and as the light of dawn appeared, making the stone red and golden, what had happened seemed already to have faded as the darkness itself had faded.

  He moved beside Leander, putting his hand on his back and saying nothing. Even as they saw the guards coming, hurrying, the midwife between them, they did not speak. Once she was at the top step, however, Leander told the guards that they could wait at the palace doors while he and Orestes went with the woman to where Ianthe and Electra were waiting.

  ‘She is in time,’ Leander whispered to Orestes. ‘She is here in time.’

  When they led the midwife into the room, they stood in the doorway looking at each other nervously as Ianthe cried out again in pain. The midwife examined her and then sternly told the men to go outside.

  All they could do now was wait as they heard the noise of people getting ready for the day, and then the voices inside of Electra and the midwife calming Ianthe, whose moans they could hear clearly as they walked the corridor together.

  They made their way outside and stood on the steps, taking in the dawn light, fuller now, more complete, as it always would be once the day began, no matter who came and went, or who was born, or what was forgotten or remembered. In time, what had happened would haunt no one and belong to no one, once they themselves had passed on into the darkness and into the abiding shadows.

  Orestes suggested to Leander that they return to wait outside the room. Leander nodded and touched Orestes’ shoulder. Almost afraid to look at each other, the two went back into the corridor and stood together without saying a word, listening to every sound.

  Acknowledgements

  Much of this novel is based on imagination and does not have a source in any text. Indeed, some characters and many events in House of Names do not appear at all in earlier versions of this story. But the main
protagonists – Clytemnestra, Agamemnon, Iphigenia, Electra and Orestes – and the shape of the narrative are taken from Aeschylus’ The Oresteia, Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra, Orestes and Iphigenia at Aulis.

  I am grateful to the many translators of these plays, most notably David Grene, Richmond Lattimore, Robert Fagles, W. B. Stanford, Anne Carson, W. S. Merwin, Janet Lembke, David Kovacs, Philip Vellacott, George Thomson and Robert W. Corrigan.

  I am grateful also to my agent Peter Straus; to Catriona Crowe, Robinson Murphy and Ed Mulhall, who read the book as I worked on it; to Natalie Haynes and Edith Hall; to Mary Mount at Penguin in the UK; to Angela Rohan, as always; and to Nan Graham and Daniel Loedel at Scribner in New York.

  About Colm Tóibín

  Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eight other novels: The South, The Heather Blazing, The Story of the Night, The Blackwater Lightship, The Master, Brooklyn, The Testament of Mary and Nora Webster. His short story collections are Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family. He is a regular contributor to the Dublin Review, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He is currently Mellon Professor in the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.

  By the same author

  FICTION

  The South

  The Heather Blazing

  The Story of the Night

  The Blackwater Lightship

  The Master

  Mothers and Sons

  Brooklyn

  The Empty Family

  The Testament of Mary

  Nora Webster

  NON-FICTION

  Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border