Jocasta: Wife and Mother

by Brian Aldiss

  He sat up and scratched his chest. Speaking half-jokingly, he said, ‘It’s funny – the world’s grown so old, you would think by now that women would understand how a man works. Some women are so stupid.’

  She punched his shoulder. ‘I am not stupid!’

  Polynices laughed. ‘It’s amazing – you make any generalisation, a girl will always take it personally.’

  ‘No, I don’t!’ she shrieked, hitting him with a cushion.

  They were brewing up for a lovers’ quarrel when an uproar broke out below them in the taverna.

  Polynices buckled on his gown and crept down the creaking wooden stairs. He peered over the rail at the scene below, content enough to escape his irate lover for a while.

  Two burly men had brought a bleeding body into the premises, half-supporting it, half-carrying it. The owner of the taverna was trying to drive them out again, shouting that it was unlucky to have dead bodies in a place of refreshment. The men were shouting back that the body was not dead. Other people there, customers and suchlike, were joining in the quarrel. The incident permitted a diversion in the dismal affairs of Thebes.

  The newcomers laid the body across a table. It was the body of a youth. Thighs, legs and belly were stained with blood.

  Tears were pouring down the face of the older man. The tears filtered through the hairs of his beard, dripping off their extremities. He dashed them away, to speak in a choking voice.

  ‘This is my poor son, Sersex, who never harmed anyone. That brute beast, the king, has cut his balls off!’

  Cries of dismay and fury rose on all sides.

  Polynices was angered to hear his father spoken of in these terms. Nevertheless, he had not quite nerve enough to rush onto the scene and challenge the hairy man. He had not put on his sandals, and that, he told himself, deterred him.

  At this juncture, the son Sersex showed signs of life. Raising an arm, he wrapped it round his father’s neck for support and looked feebly about him. Someone brought him a beaker of water. His father’s words had a varying effect on the throng of taverna-goers. After their first outcry, they became silent, with a tendency to shuffle and to cast their glances downwards. Some men put money down before the owner and slunk away.

  The taverna-owner said, mutedly, ‘You’d better mind what you’re saying about the king. Times are bad enough without that sort of thing.’

  The father of Sersex was Apollodorus by name, a horse dealer, a brown-visaged man with no good reputation. He threw his hands up against his head and howled in misery. Why, he asked rhetorically, were all Thebans cowards? He was from Macedonia where men had courage, Macedonia in the mountains, where men fought for what was right. Also, Macedonian sheep were bigger than Theban sheep, and their rivers wider. When Macedonians were boys, they threw boulders at each other, whereas Thebans threw only pebbles. He hated Thebes with a noble hatred, he now declared in his wrath; he spat on its pavements, and worked in the accursed town only to remain near his son, because his son, his dear son, had been captured here and made a slave.

  Here, Apollodorus interrupted himself for another howl. Then, turning savagely on his audience, he accused them all of being nothing but slaves themselves, because they tolerated the rule of that villain, Oedipus. Some men in the crowd tried to hush him, but Apollodorus shouted them down. He knew a thing or two about Oedipus. He had kept quiet about it until now, for fear of his son being harmed by the intelligence, but the fact was— Here he paused, as if aware that he was going too far but, as a torrential river will carry a boat over a waterfall, so the tide of his rhetoric bore him onward.

  The fact was that Oedipus was the slayer of his predecessor, King Laius. The king was himself a regicide, a king-killer.

  At this statement, the taverna-owner and another man, his cousin, seized the utterer of these traitorous remarks and, assisting themselves with kicks and blows to his kidneys, attempted to evict Apollodorus. Polynices slunk away into the shadows.

  ‘What my father says is truth!’ cried Sersex in a thin voice, slightly revived by the water he had been given. ‘Old Swollen Foot killed Laius! The crime hangs heavy over all Thebes.’

  Customers of the taverna, agitated by this intelligence, denied the truth of it utterly.

  But an old person seated in a dark corner, by name Tiresias, raised his feeble voice to demand proof of the remark.

  Apollodorus had managed to jam himself in the threshold of the taverna. He now shouted that a man he knew had a brother-in-law whose friend had witnessed the regicide. It was on the road to the eastern coast where three roads met, called Triodos. There Oedipus had set on Laius and stabbed him to death.

  There were now angry voices raised in contradiction. They repeated the well-known and accepted story, that Laius in his wanderings had been set on by a gang of three robbers.

  ‘Four!’ someone shouted.

  ‘Five!’ corrected someone else.

  ‘Three it was!’ cried another. ‘Don’t contradict! It’s always been three.’

  ‘Anyway, several robbers it was who killed Laius.’

  With that, they kicked Apollodorus, father of Sersex, still protesting, out of the taverna, and then Sersex himself, weeping and holding his bloody crotch. After all, they were only loud-mouthed Macedonians. Who were they to insult the Theban king?

  Macedonians were known liars, and bred small sheep, no match at all for local flocks. Or not in the days when local flocks had been healthy, before they became accursed.

  6

  Semele was sitting in the sun on a vine-shaded bench, her favourite piece of wood, an unpolished disc of oak. One hand idly waved away the flies forming a halo around her head. The flies winged in upon her, golden with the afternoon heat.

  The shift Semele wore was old and patched. Swallow’s wings had been stitched into it, in the region of the heart. She sat cross-legged and barefoot.

  The afternoon was Semele’s. Earlier excitements were forgotten. She was talking to Jocasta and Antigone, who remained silent, as if a semi-doze were the best thing life had to offer. Although they were only half-listening, Semele was only half-addressing them. Her gaze was directed at her toes, as though they required instruction as well as washing.

  The burden of the old is that youngsters have heard all their stories before. It is the burden of youngsters that they have to listen to the stories over and over again.

  ‘It was different when I was a girl,’ the old woman was saying. ‘You’ve no idea. It was a better world then, altogether better, before the volcano at Thera erupted.

  ‘Somehow, the whole place was more peaceful. You were safe then. I used to sing a lot. I was so happy. I met the great god Pan once, did I tell you? I was walking in the forest. I had been singing then. They’ve cut down all the trees now, to make boats, more’s the pity. But there was Pan, half-man, half-goat, coming towards me. Priapic. I didn’t fancy that up me, I can tell you! I turned and ran for my life.’

  Jocasta said nothing. She knew the story. She continued to sprawl on a cushioned bench, her feet up, her hands linked behind her dark head.

  ‘And what happened, you may ask,’ her grandmother continued. She tugged at one of her frizzled locks. ‘I outran Pan. He couldn’t run so fast because his hard member got in his way.

  ‘My mother beat me for it. I don’t seem to have had a father, not that I can remember. I believe my mother generated me within her own womb with a fox’s brush and the juice of an onion. I’m the purer for it.

  ‘Men didn’t have the same control over you then that they have nowadays. You could go anywhere on your own. Well, it was a woman’s world in many ways, more mystical, so you would expect it to be better. There were more flowers about in those days, before the volcano went off.

  ‘What a drama that was. You’ve seen nothing like it, Antigone, nor likely to. Are you listening, girl? When that volcano went off, there was no day for two or three nights. Before that, the world was a better place. More flowers, more fruit. Fewer maggots in app
les. We were more content. Gods walked the earth. The mosquitoes weren’t so bothersome. The stink of the volcano may have killed them off.’

  ‘In which case,’ interpolated Jocasta, propping herself on an elbow, ‘they would have been more bothersome before the volcano.’

  ‘No, they were more bothersome afterwards. I ought to know.’

  ‘But, Grandmother, that’s not logical, because—’

  The old lady gave a brief imitation of rage. ‘Don’t talk about logic to me when I’m trying to tell you something. You could learn a bit of history. Why don’t you listen? Even the food was better in those distant days. Oh, that I should have to live into this new age, when my daughter’s daughter, and even my daughter’s daughter’s daughter, has no respect for me …’ She shook her aged head slowly, glaring about her from side to side, as if in search of invisible daughters who would respect her.

  ‘We mainly ate horse meat. Mare’s meat, of course. You could get womb trouble if you ate stallion’s meat by mistake. Your womb turned to wood. There was a woman in the next village whose womb turned to wood, and she had eaten stallion’s meat by mistake. She told me so. I forget her name. Quite a big woman. Some say she gave birth to a little wooden boy, which she burned on a fire at midnight.

  ‘Mare’s steaks were – ooh, indescribably delicious. Prepared in a mixture of mare’s milk and blood and wine and garlic and honey. You poor creatures have no idea …’

  She muttered on in this manner, while the sun scarcely moved overhead. One of Semele’s griffins frisked into the garden. Having cocked a leg against the statue of Artemis, he went to lie down at his mistress’s feet, resting his great nose against her heel. She continued to reminisce. The griffin fell immediately to sleep.

  Silently listening, Jocasta tried to enter into her grandmother’s world. The shrill old voice gradually faded under the unvarying orchestra of the cicadas. She thought herself back to childhood, when her adored mother, Glauce, was still alive, and gracious in everything. She saw herself small again, clad in a loose robe, walking amid tall grasses. A lamb skipped by her side. She heard her mother singing in her beautiful voice.

  In those early days, she had been surrounded by the glow of religion; the religious nimbus contained everything; the golden mystery seemed to emanate from Glauce and cling to Jocasta’s every action. Singing and music were a part of it.

  It was not of food that she thought. The gods were everywhere about her childish self. She had moved among them in an enchantment. Every tree had its own meaning, clothed in leaves as if in thoughts. When she ran naked among the unconsidered chrysanthemums of autumn, it was a kind of question, and perhaps also an answer. She had wondered so much as a child. Why did the light follow the sun? How was it the seasons changed? Why did bright intelligent lambs have to become boring sheep? The luxury of thought was hers, gold as honey.

  Then her father had killed himself for the good of Thebes.

  Then they had all cried and cried, and ceased to eat.

  Glauce stopped taking an interest in her daughter, or in anything else. She became pale. She desired only to sleep. She smelt unpleasant.

  And then Glauce had died. It was not only the trees that lost their leaves, their meaning. The central stage became bare with its enchanting mother gone. The songs were no more. Jocasta’s feeling that she now had to live, not life itself, but somehow only the thought of life, distressed her. She wrenched at her mind as if it were an uncomfortable garment, to make it escape pain, to attend again to her grandmother’s ramblings.

  ‘My mother, Cytotox, was a brilliant cook. She was strict, mind you, but she fed us well. She had her own magical recipes. That’s where I got my magical talents from. She took the trouble to teach me magic. She baked all our bread. Got up before daybreak to do it, made a terrible row with the oven – what passed for an oven in those days.’

  Semele took up a stick and tried to draw in the dust a picture of how her mother’s oven had been. She could not get it right. Tut-tutting to herself, she erased the attempt with the sweep of a foot.

  ‘I’ll never forget the taste of Mother’s bread,’ she said, with a sigh. ‘It had little crispy weevils in it, and daisies.

  ‘There was something about that bread, I don’t know what it was. We kids, we always had the shits. Up at dawn every day, almost shitting ourselves, running out of the house with fingers stuck up our backsides. I used to go in the next field, and a whole lot of little blue-eyed flowers – I forget what they’re called, but a whole lot of little blue-eyed flowers used to come up there. They smelt lovely – much better than shit. But where my brother went, only thistles came up, big ugly thistles with very sharp spikes.

  ‘That shows you the difference between the sexes, doesn’t it? Men shit thistles, women shit magical flowers.

  ‘Of course, there are other differences—’

  ‘Grandmother, do you think you could perform a magical office for me?’ Jocasta enquired, breaking in on the monologue.

  ‘You’re never content, are you? Always wanting something,’ said Semele, displaying an old tooth or two in a grimace. ‘What is it this time?’

  ‘My mind is burdened, Grandmother.’

  ‘There’s always something wrong in this family …’ Semele turned to Antigone. Antigone had let her hair down, and was sitting hunched up, with one arm about her knees, while with a finger of the hand of the free arm she picked her nose abstractedly. ‘And what are you sulking about, miss? What’s your problem? Why are you so quiet?’

  Antigone frowned and hung her head, resting her forehead on her bare knees without replying. Her predatory finger slid gracefully from its nostril.

  ‘Leave her alone, Grandmother,’ said Jocasta. ‘You know perfectly well why she’s upset.’

  ‘These young girls nowadays …’

  ‘Grandmother dearest, listen to me. I want you to conjure up a man called Sophocles. Can you do that for me? I met him, or his ghost. He said he came from – what was it? – “another probability sphere”. I wondered if you had conjured him up?’

  ‘Certainly I did not.’ She wrinkled her withered jaw, looking offended. ‘We didn’t have “probability sphere” in my day …’

  ‘He said he had – or will have – written a play about Oedipus. He claimed – well, he claimed that I was just a character in his play and have no real life. Could that be?’

  ‘You were dreaming, girl!’ said Semele.

  ‘I do sometimes feel my life is a dream, that there is something deeply untrue …’ Her voice faltered. ‘No, I didn’t say that. But my mind is full of ill omens. I desire to speak with this old man, Sophocles, again. Could you manage that?’

  Semele rose stiffly to her feet and walked about muttering. She left behind her a small damp mark on her oaken seat. The griffin that had been sleeping close to her heels jumped up with a yelp and began scratching himself vigorously.

  Semele said she felt that nothing could be done until the next full moon, when the world would be cleansed. In any case, the season was wrong for the conjuration of an entire man. She might manage the conjuration of a small grey monkey, such as she had once seen at a fair in Lamia. Really, some people expected too much of an old woman …

  Besides, times had changed. You had to face it. If some people were just characters in someone’s plays, then they had to put up with it. In any case, the idea was absurd.

  In the middle of her mutter, the side gate slammed and Polynices entered, pushing past the sentry stationed there. The normally cheerful youth looked pale and drawn. Seeing the little group, he raised his hand in a manner less of greeting than of defence, and hurried into the palace.

  Antigone jumped up and followed Polynices. Her mother and great-grandmother called after her. The girl disappeared without a backward look.

  A wave of fear overtook Jocasta. Chill rippled in her as if she were turning to water. She tried to explain it to herself, only to find herself uttering inanities. As if we had no homeland … The folli
es of our fathers … Without models for goodness … Something ill is about to happen … Sons and husbands and daughters … How do we … What do we think?… Why deny ourselves?

  By her side, her grandmother rubbed her old hands together with a sound like sandpaper. ‘Don’t know what you’re on about. Conjuring up a man is never easy. Depends on the moon. The phases of it. Otherwise you get a woman instead. And the aspects. Sometimes at full it is white, white as death. Other times, yellow as horse’s teeth … Sometimes creation, sometimes murder … Funny – both from the same source … As from the womb, some good fruits, some mouldy apples …’

  ‘Oh, forget about Sophocles, Gran!’ Jocasta exclaimed. ‘If you can’t, you can’t! Why make a fuss?’ She gathered her gown about her and rushed off to follow Antigone.

  ‘I’ll give you Sophocles!’ yelled Semele, shaking her fist at her retreating granddaughter.

  Something ill, running true to Jocasta’s premonition, did indeed happen. Antigone listened to Polynices’ account of the occurrences in the taverna. She heard how Sersex’s father Apollodorus had spoken against Oedipus. Coupled with her grief for the castration of her lover – though indeed she had not loved him greatly – Antigone felt that her father had defiled a natural law, that he had offended against the very concept of morality.

  ‘Was not Father a Prince of Corinth? Can he really have been a vagabond and a killer in his youth?’

  ‘That depends on whether you are going to believe the word of a Macedonian. All the same …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘His behaviour towards Sersex … well, it suggests there was something in what Apollodorus claims. He claims it was Father who killed Laius.’

  Antigone looked aghast. ‘You don’t believe that, do you? Surely – surely it is against all probability? I don’t believe it.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Hercules! This terrible family of ours! All suppression and secrecy … I can’t bear it. I won’t be part of it …’