Jocasta: Wife and Mother

by Brian Aldiss

  ‘Soon, I foresee, the Sphinx will die. Soon the gods also must die. They cannot live in the dull, materialistic world to come, when magic has died like the light of an oil lamp.

  ‘Do you not recall from your childhood the eight-year solar-lunar calendar, O Oedipus? That calendar which the Sphinx embodies?’

  ‘I lived in Corinth and studied new sciences. I recall nothing of which you speak.’ Yet, pronouncing the words from his confining crouch, he suddenly, in a trick of the mind, did recall the words of Jocasta’s old grandmother Semele. The hag was well familiar with the ancient succession of the seasons.

  In her younger age, Semele had worn a dress with eleven pendants. She explained the pendants as signifying the discrepancy of eleven days between solar and lunar years. She had talked to them over and over of the sacred union of sun and moon. It was necessary to believe in it, she said. All magic sprang from that union, that discrepancy.

  Oedipus and Jocasta had listened, unwilling to believe a word Semele said: yet, in their confusion, partly believing. The wild lady, sitting there in the candlelight, talking, talking, carried undeniable conviction.

  She had talked over and over as they sat at table at night, with the candles guttering and the platters pushed aside; Semele amusing them with tales of her early youth, when she was indoctrinated into magic, the wine liberating her tongue.

  On those occasions, he had seen her beauty, so different from Jocasta’s.

  ‘I do recall,’ he told Thalia, with a sense of misery that those times, for which he had then had no particular affection, were now over and gone for ever.

  ‘You do well to recall …’ said the nymph in her musical voice. ‘The calendar may change. The seasons do not change. Some things are immutable …’ She bestowed on him a sweet smile that yet he found threatening.

  He roused himself, asking why she had said that the Sphinx would die.

  She gave him another smile, rather less friendly than the previous one. ‘She will die through your fault, your carelessness, O Oedipus!’

  Thalia’s luminance seemed to grow more intense. Was he conscious or did he dream? He had quaffed a beaker of the sweet wine they sold at the temple door. What had it contained beside the fruit of the grape?

  ‘Yes, the solar-lunar calendar … The sun and moon begin and end the cycle in step. That’s when new moon and winter solstice coincide.’ He spoke as if to talk at all was to sleepwalk. ‘But the lunar year of twelve moons is shorter than a solar year by eleven days. So the sun takes – as they used to say – three steps and halts at the end of the third and sixth year. Then a thirteenth month brings sun and moon almost in step again.

  ‘So the sun … mmm … oh, yes, so the sun goes sometimes on three feet. Then after two more solar years, a further month of thirty days is needful – that’s to say, at the end of the eighth year, ending the cycle. So it sometimes goes on only two feet.’

  ‘That’s not quite all,’ said Thalia, encouragingly.

  He remembered. The young Semele had drawn a figure on the table with a finger dipped in her wine. ‘You used also to add a single day every four years, or leap years. So that occurred twice in the eight-year cycle. You could say that the sun sometimes went on four feet, but is at its weakest then, in the sense that it is only one day ahead of the moon.

  ‘That was how it was, I believe.’

  A silence prevailed. The flambeau crackled, its light dulled by the radiance of the wood nymph, who seemed to be waiting for Oedipus to speak again. Her skin, of an intense pallor, appeared to be a source of light.

  He did speak again. The words seemed forced from him. ‘Helios is the sun god. He speaks with one voice. His queen is the moon goddess … So that was once the answer to the Sphinx’s riddle. Are you telling me that?’

  ‘You are telling me that.’ He saw that he was adrift with her, passing high over a green mountainside. The moon stood still in the heavens. Her delicate fingertips touched his. It was a moment of extreme unction. The snake was guiding him. He was not afraid. He was free of earthly problems.

  ‘You are telling me that.’ Thalia was looking about her rather anxiously, as if in fear of vultures. ‘You have now answered the riddle a second time, in two voices.’

  They seemed to be encompassed in a glowing cloud, and without weight. Distantly to his ears came his own question.

  ‘But why did the Sphinx accept my first answer?’

  ‘Perhaps she was tired of killing other fools …’ Her voice seemed faint and distant. ‘Or it was a question of time …’

  Fearing she would disappear completely, Oedipus cried, ‘Stay, sweet nymph! Will not Apollo spare me now?’

  She looked at him, full in the face. Her countenance, he now saw, was but a mask; behind it waited a snake, ready to strike.

  He was confused and alarmed, not least because the mask seemed to resemble the face of Jocasta. He floundered, seeking to disregard the illusion.

  ‘Spare me!’

  The response came without comfort for his confusion.

  ‘Life is a labyrinth. You must solve the riddle of your own personality – if you can … if you can …’ Her laughter was faint, was a cackle, was a crackle, was the noise and splutter of the flambeau dying into its socket, the ribs of the sacrificed lamb scorching in its ashes. Oedipus found that he lay sprawled on the cold tiles of the temple. He rose up groaning. The mountainside was gone, the serpent, the nymph. The flame died. He found himself alone in the stifling dark.

  His forehead burned.

  ‘Apollo!’ he cried in anger and supplication.

  No answer came.

  Jocasta could not sleep. The ever-restless sea brought a breeze into her tent which disturbed her. And perhaps there was something more; she could not tell. She lay wakeful, her right hand tucked between her legs. She resented the power of the gods, and resented the way human beings submitted themselves to their whims.

  Anxiety grew. She stepped over the snoring Hezikiee without waking her, to urinate outside the tent.

  Confronting the night, she walked barefoot on the beach, drawing into her mind soothing things: the murmur of the waves on the shore, and the moon undergoing its small changes. Could the moon, she questioned, be a goddess? She wondered what the stars were. Could they be the souls of the dead, as her mother had told her?

  Jocasta was often troubled by her own introspection. She hid it guiltily from others. Even now, on the mild murmuring shore, old worries returned. Although she was aware of her physical being, of her feet scratched by the sand beneath them, there was a moment when she also saw herself as possessing a detached self, a self which looked on coolly at her actions, possibly with contempt.

  She was aware of a change in the level of her consciousness, as if distant music had ceased in mid-chord. She stopped and looked about her. A man materialised from behind a bush of rosemary, rising slowly from a crouched position. She was startled, but would not show it.

  The man was old, offering her no threat. He told her not to be alarmed, raising a hand in greeting to show it was empty of weapons. His beard was white, his shoulders bowed. He walked with a staff. Coming to stand before her, he sank the end of the staff into the sand for greater stability. Once she could study his face by the pallid light from above, she had no more fear, for his aspect was one of shrewd benevolence.

  ‘You should be in bed at your age,’ she said.

  ‘The old and the guilty find little comfort in bed,’ he replied.

  In silence they regarded each other. A dog was barking distantly inland.

  His remark quelled her: she felt that this stranger had recognised her inner confusions. Relief and anxiety struggled within her, making her dumb. Perhaps he mistook her silence for foolishness.

  ‘Lady, how intelligent are you?’ he asked.

  She disliked the impropriety of the question. ‘I am a queen, if a wakeful one. Is that not enough?’

  ‘Probably not, although you may think it so. My intention was not to chall
enge you, although I perceive you are troubled in mind. I was considering – when you interrupted my musings – by what means I might measure how distant the moon is from us.’

  ‘Is the moon solid?’

  ‘I believe it to be as solid as is the world we tread.’

  ‘Is it made of silver, then?’

  ‘No more than is the sand beneath our feet.’

  ‘Why should you wish to know how distant it is?’

  He shook his head slowly. ‘If knowledge is there to be had, we should endeavour to obtain it, as we endeavour to eat the food set before us. The chances are that knowledge might make us better people. Or more sensible, at least. Is the moon, for instance, nearer to us than the sun, as I suspect? Why does it not burn us, as does the sun?’

  Jocasta breathed a sigh. ‘It is not intelligent to ask such questions. They are remote from our lives.’

  ‘Ah, lady, but not from our imaginative lives!’

  Jocasta thought about that. ‘Then I will put to you a different sort of question, a question for which I seek an answer, which affects all human beings.’

  ‘What question may that be?’ he asked as if humouring her, without any show of curiosity.

  ‘We live imprisoned in the present time as we move along the path of our lives. Yet we know that the past existed; it remains with us like a burden. So that past must be still in existence, although we cannot see it. Like a path we traversed on the other side of a hill, perhaps. I ask you if the future exists similarly – also unseen – and if there is one path only we can tread there. Or can we choose from many paths?’

  The old man leant on his staff and was silent. Then he spoke.

  ‘These times of which you speak are not like the moon, which has physical existence. It is mistaken to think of times as physical pathways. These times of which you speak are qualities, not quantities. You understand that? Perhaps you do understand, or you would not have asked the question.’

  She said gently, ‘But you have not answered my question. Is the future a single path or many?’

  The old man shook his head. ‘What will guide you through the future is your own character. Your character is your compass. It is a quality like time. They must be matched, I believe.’

  Jocasta thought of her own perceptions of the world, and found them limited. She longed to converse more intimately with this gentle old man.

  She rubbed the tip of her nose. ‘I don’t understand you. Your answers unfortunately are as incomprehensible as your questions.’

  ‘You think so? Someone must ask the questions. Someone must answer the questions. Of course, those answers may not be clear. Why should the moon be fixed, let’s say, a quarter of a million miles from us? Why should you, a fairly young woman, bother about what is to come, any more than what is past?’

  His responses baffled Jocasta. ‘We all bother about what is to come, don’t we?’

  The old man spoke again. ‘My name, madame queen, is Aristarchus, Aristarchus of Samos, a mathematician of Alexandria.’ He did not suppress a note of pride as he introduced himself, bowing over his staff. ‘I have in my life answered one great puzzling question. I have worked out – and my solution has been confirmed by certain Athenians – that it is not the sun that goes round the earth, but the earth that goes round the sun.’

  She gave a grunt of contemptuous laughter. ‘Divination! Often unreliable.’

  ‘Mathematics. Always reliable.’

  ‘Then you are surely mistaken. We can see that the earth is stationary and that the sun goes round it. Any fool can tell that, ancient Aristarchus.’

  Unperturbed, he replied, ‘Fools can tell us many wrong things. Fools mock me for my deduction, yet I have arrived scientifically at my conclusion. The earth is round, and travels about the sun in a grand circle. The earth also rotates on its axis, like a wheel, making day and night. At a lunar eclipse, we see from the earth’s shadow on the moon that it is a round body.

  ‘You must think more rationally. The old life of magic is dead, or all but dead. We are now in a new epoch, which offers much more than the old.

  ‘The past has no existence, except in our memories, nor the future either, except in our expectations. Your future may lie within you, curled up, sleeping within your nature. You must not become a slave to appearances.’

  ‘I prefer appearances …’ She turned away. ‘I regret I am not able to talk more. Your speech only confuses me. Goodnight, Aristarchus of Samos.’ She walked away down the beach.

  He called in his weak voice, ‘Do not fear confusion. Doubt is a better guide than faith.’ The words were almost lost beneath the sound of the lapping of the waves, yet she heeded them.

  She stopped and turned back. ‘I apologise if I have been impolite. I am glad to have spoken to a wise and distinguished man. I regret that my mind is burdened. I make bad company. I’m sorry …’

  He raised a hand in benediction and farewell. She found there were tears in her eyes.

  The old man’s words were too unsettling. Surely she could not be as mistaken in her perceptions as his statements implied …

  He had said that both past and future were qualities. What else had he said? Had he said there was no future path? Had he said, ‘You must not judge by appearances …’?

  Perhaps there was sense in that remark, as in much he had said. Jocasta was disturbed to think that her response, about preferring appearances, which she had considered clever at the moment, was rather silly …

  Appearances differed so sharply from realities.

  In the early hours of the morning, when the moon sank beyond the shoulder of the hill, she dreamed she was blind and alone in the world.

  After his vigil, Oedipus slept. His slumbers were drugged, for once again Apollo had turned his face against him.

  Ismene wakened her mother, who was sleeping heavily. ‘Mother, the sun has come up, and so must we be.’

  Jocasta said heavily, ‘It’s not that the sun has come up. Rather the other way round.’

  Ismene laughed. ‘Wake up, Mother!’

  Jocasta lay where she was, fatigued by sleeplessness, trying to go over in her mind the conversation with Aristarchus. Had it happened or had it been a vivid dream?

  In a while, Antigone came to her mother, kneeling by her and looking earnestly into her face.

  ‘How are things with you, Mother? Did you sleep badly?’

  Jocasta put an arm about Antigone’s neck and kissed her cheek.

  ‘No, I slept well and had a beautiful dream.’

  Later, Antigone and Ismene walked with their brothers among the market stalls, followed by their personal servants. The stalls were pitched along the land that ran on the cliff above the beach and led to Apollo’s temple. There were decorative objects of bronze to be bought, mirrors and suchlike, and pendants of blue glass, wooden toys from eastern lands, perfumes, drugs, bangles, sandals for women’s feet, bright-dyed costumes, rugs from the southern climes, figs and foods of all sorts.

  Antigone bought a pair of gold sandals, which her handmaid carried for her.

  Among the jostle of people, some of them preparing for the festivities that night, were warriors, a strutting sort of persons. They drank at drink stalls and eyed the pretty women passing. One such youth was pressing through the crowds on his own. He addressed Antigone. He had a great thatch of dark hair on his head, suppressed by a metal and leather helmet, and a scanty beard on his chin. A long leather tunic covered his torso, crossed by a belt from which hung a sword. His features were pleasing enough, although his look was grim.

  He grasped Antigone’s arm, to detain her amid the crowd.

  ‘So you must be sister to King Oedipus,’ he said.

  ‘Take your stinking hand away from me!’ She was immediately furious that he, a stranger, should touch her. Her blue eyes, blazing, became darker than the Aegean sea.

  The warrior held firm. ‘I could dispossess you with one word!’ He would have said more, but Eteocles, rushing up, caught the warr
ior a stunning blow across the face with the side of his open palm.

  ‘You dare touch my royal sister!’ he shouted, preparing himself for attack. But the warrior was falling back with a bleeding nose which took all his attention.

  Polynices, jumping in, seized the warrior by the throat with both hands. ‘Who may you be, you wretch? Tell me or I’ll strangle you!’

  ‘They call me Chrysippus of Cithaeron,’ said the warrior, breaking free and grasping the hilt of his sword. ‘And you shall remember it.’

  Eteocles immediately took hold of the man’s sword arm, twisting it behind his back so that he fell over backwards to the ground. Whereupon Eteocles jumped on his stomach. Polynices got in a swift kick to his groin.

  Chrysippus of Cithaeron rolled over, groaning. Staggering to his feet, seeing himself outnumbered, he ran off through the crowd, shouting that he could unmask them all if he wished.

  The two brothers roared with angry laughter. Their sisters embraced them, praising their bravery before leading them to a stall where the stallholder was selling wine from full-bellied pigskins.

  ‘Wine for libation!’ said Ismene, filling four earthenware cups from the stall. ‘Teach a commoner to touch the sons and daughters of King Oedipus! Well done, brave brothers!’

  ‘Yes, hurrah!’ cried Antigone. ‘But why did that wretch call me the sister of Oedipus?’

  ‘The cur was drunk,’ said Polynices. ‘As we shall shortly be.’

  They all laughed, and dipped their noses into the cups, drinking until the wine ran down on the outsides, as well as the insides, of their throats.

  4

  A meeting was held in Thebes while the king and his family were away. Absence had made some hearts grow bolder. The main speakers were men in the prime of their youth, with golden hair and good sinews. Older men and women stood on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered. Children, those who had energy enough, ran about and played in the dust.

  ‘The curse that has come upon this town will soon kill us all unless we do something about it,’ said one youthful speaker. ‘We bring our green boughs to the altars of Pallas, and the sacred embers of divination, yet still the drought prevails, the River Ismenus dries, and still its waters turn to mud.’