by Brian Aldiss
Other people passed on the road without heeding the couple, as if they did not exist; they passed barefoot and in silence.
She stood there, arms hanging by her sides, gazing at the stranger, struck dumb by her own eloquence. She asked weakly if there was not a duty to be happy, or at least to avoid melancholy. Tiresias did not answer her question.
‘I am but mortal like you,’ said the stranger. ‘That you have adumbrated your problems implies that you can find answers to them. But it may not be so. Suckle from my breast if you wish to acquire wisdom.’
She drew back from the proffered sepia nipple, instinctively raising a hand in rejection of the request.
Seeming not to be offended, Tiresias withdrew his breast, pulling the worn fabric of his tunic across it. ‘It is but a symbol …’
She asked haltingly, ‘If I am full of fear, how can I myself quench that fear?’
He tapped with his stick upon the dry ground, as if impatient. ‘If you are full, there is at least no room for more.’
‘Speak straightly, I beg you, Tiresias, not in riddles. What am I to do? What will happen to me?’ There she stood, chin up, arms hanging by her sides.
He shaded his eyes to gaze into her face with a hand as weathered and withered as a fallen leaf.
‘I understand your fears well enough, lady. Time. I see whole regions of times past which are hidden from you, ages you will never know – though you may feel the weight of them – so why should you know of times to come?’
‘And … what … what age is this?’
‘This is the age that looks in two directions. This is the age when magic dies from the world. New things will be, but the ancient enchantments will fade away.’
She felt faint, unable to take in properly what he was saying. Her voice was faint when she spoke. ‘I feel those future times pressing upon me. A man who claimed he came from future times spoke to me. He told me I was simply a character in a drama.’
‘Your anxiety causes you to have such delusions, dear lady.’
‘I found him real enough. Save me, Tiresias!’
‘Jocasta, I have no power to save you, or even myself. Much has been taken from me, so that I am become only an observer. I foresee that you—’ Here he drew back. ‘No, why should I say that and increase your suffering?’
‘Speak, old wizard, tell me what it is you see in my future.’
He shook his head slowly, abstractedly, as if listening to the creak of his neck.
‘I see you are a protagonist in a drama already unfolding, as was told you in your vision. Do what you will, yours being merely the minor role you cannot influence its outcome. You are powerless in the toils of sin, and a perception of sin.’
His milky old eyes seemed to stare through her as he added, ‘Powerless but not innocent. Not innocent.’
At these words, she, the queen, flung herself down on the ground, digging her fingers like claws into the dust, then tearing at her long hair.
‘Oh, if there were rain – rain in torrents, rain enough to flood all those ages of which you speak, rain falling like a husband’s blows – all, all that rain falls on my heart. You cannot know my suffering. As a fish in water, so am I flooded by my troubles. I cannot tell it all.’
‘That may be so,’ agreed the old person calmly. ‘A bitter aspect of suffering is that it cannot be told. There are no words for it. But all women and men also experience such rain storms upon their inward parts. In that at least you are not alone, however alone you are in other respects. Farewell, Jocasta!’
Taking up his staff, he disappeared into the heavy showers which fell. Rain slanted down on his narrow shoulders. The dark clouds swallowed him and he was gone. Jocasta opened her throat to the heavens and cried her woe.
To an extent, she was soothed by her own cries.
She rose to her knees, to gaze at the arid landscape as if it were her younger life. Her thoughts travelled back to the time when her first marriage was over. After Laius had left her, she had lived alone in the palace, to wander barefoot through its courtyards, tended by Hezikiee and her other servants. She had forbidden music and singing.
When she had caught a first glimpse of the young adult Oedipus in the bazaar, he had his back to her, bargaining with a man at a fruit stall. Not recognising him, she had felt a twinge of desire. There was something about the strength of that back and the way the head was poised which held her less-than-idle interest. Besides which, he was a stranger in town, a new man.
Two days later, when she was in the agora, she came face to face with him. She immediately knew – knew with a leap of recognition beyond logic – that this was her son. That her child, left on the hillside to die, had become this fine youth. An immense joy had filled her, inflated her. He read that joy naked in her face. She could not conceal it.
That night, Jocasta addressed the many-breasted Artemis. She told the goddess that she needed to be close to her son. Her life was as empty as her courtyards. She was answered. Artemis spoke, laying down a harsh condition. If she confessed to the youth that she was his mother, he would hate her for having left him, a helpless babe, to die. Her guilty motherhood must be her secret, the price she must pay for having her son return to her.
She accepted the goddess’s jurisdiction. She invited Oedipus into the palace. She saw the scars on his feet, part-concealed by his sandals.
In the act of petting and pampering him, she saw no wrong. He was unlike the townsmen of Thebes: he had a wild side, while at the same time he was eager to study the writings of the philosophers. They talked long into the night, heads together, while the oil lamp flickered, giving birth to light and shadow. And one night, he had taken the queen into his arms, into the strength of his embrace. She had all but swooned from the delight of it. His lips met her lips. With gratitude and love, she had not for a moment dreamed of denying him that which he sought and took.
They were married with due ceremony. This man had solved the riddle of the Sphinx and so took his rightful place as King of Thebes, on throne and in bed.
It was now, kneeling, lodging her right shoulder against the mossy face of a boulder, that she saw, in that moment of blanch-faced perception, that she could have spoken. She could have said, ‘We cannot marry. I am your …’
She had been a young mother, only fifteen years and a few months when she had delivered her son. She was still young. Too young, too carried along by lust, to dare to speak. They had married. The trap had sprung, entailing secrecy.
At that moment of decision, she had had the power of choice. What, she demanded of herself, had impeded her? What external power or internal weakness?
Only later, when visited by a nightmare, did she perceive that she, like Oedipus, was faced by a riddle, the riddle of silence and guilt. For it was too late now to declare to her virile lover that she was not only his bride but his mother. She must remain for ever silent on that point – and for ever in fear that somehow, somehow the guilty secret, scuttling like a lizard among old stones, would escape into daylight and bring about her ruin and his.
How often, wakeful head on pillow, she had wondered whereabouts that lizard was among its rubble, if Oedipus had somehow found out the truth of their incestuous union, if the burden of silence darkened his mind as it did hers: if they were destined for ever to be isolated by this secret neither dare utter. Joined by the secret, yet sundered by it.
She looked back to her childhood, to the death of her mother and to her father’s leap to death from the battlements of Thebes. Staring into the night as into her mortal depths, she had wondered what had impeded her – had it impeded her? – developing into a real woman, free of this compulsion still to nurture her child. Often and often, even as she lay within his embrace, she found herself – yes, oh yes, and him! – in the grip of a disease. The disease that now manifested itself in the city state over which they ruled.
All these cogitations were stale. Yet her mind was forced to run over them again and again, like a rat in a trap
for ever seeking escape. She broke from them at last. There was no rain.
She found herself looking without interest at the arid countryside round her. To one side were low hills. On the other hand, plains stretched away as far as the eye could encompass, defined by the silvery glint of a river which flowed towards the distant sea. The mere contemplation of distance was a comfort to her.
Because she had never had to work in the fields, to wield a hoe or to herd sheep or drive pigs, she did not notice how greatly this arable land had fallen into decay. Thebes’ fields had died; what was once productive was now wilderness. On the wilderness, a yellow weed grew. It was enough for Thebes’ queen.
She said to herself, wiping her eyes with the hem of her garment, ‘I will just go down to the stream and wash my face. Then I will return to the palace. There’s no escape for me. I must face my destiny.’
She also thought that she could not – as had been her vague scheme – live anywhere as an ordinary woman. She was not an ordinary woman, and would never be. Her obligation was to be splendid; it was a role she had been chosen to play. She would return to Oedipus: but never again would she permit carnal embrace.
The waters of the stream calmed the pain under her eye. She lay on the bank of the river, bathing her face, gasping with pleasure as the chilly water soothed her bruise. A large salmon swimming by heard her splashing. It raised its head above the surface, contemplated Jocasta, and said, ‘For a land animal, you are beautiful, miss.’
‘I’m no miss. I am a queen. Go away!’
The salmon raised an imaginary eyebrow and replied, ‘But you wish to become a miss again. I can grant that wish.’ He coughed. ‘Pardon me. I have a frog in my throat.’
‘You cheeky little thing! How can any mere fish grant my wishes?’ So saying, she reached out quickly to grab the salmon, but it was not there. Her hands clutched water, which ran through her fingers.
The salmon reappeared in exactly the spot it had occupied the moment before.
‘Temper!’ said the fish. It regarded Jocasta with its large watery eyes. ‘You do not want your husband the king to enter you again. You require your spawning days to be done. Yet you are a lusty female. I could take away your lust. There is little lust in cold water.’
She leant closer to stare at this magical fish. ‘What could you possibly know of my affairs?’
‘Was not my brother served to you on a platter only last night?’ Even as it spoke, it leapt up from the water and kissed Jocasta. For a moment, the circle of its mouth was planted on her red lips. The chill of it was like a dagger running through her. The thrill of it traversed the entire course of her physical and mental existence. Then the contact broke and the fish was gone.
Jocasta lay there on the bank, shocked, unmoving. A strand of her hair dangled in the water. The sun made its steady progress across the sky. Still she did not move. Time for adjustment was needed; she knew that something had changed within her.
8
There’s little comfort, this being in what I call a probability sphere. It’s difficult to breathe. My lungs have always been my problem, dead though I admittedly am. I’m always sorry to see a human being struggling against fate. Of course, in some ages fate goes by different names, genetic disposition being one of them, destiny another. We all have to struggle, in our various ways, depending upon character. Can you show me anyone, rich or poor, who has no problems?
Take that old windbag, Tiresias. He – or she, whichever side of its character predominates – has gained knowledge, but little it serves to make his life easier. He wanders through life, belonging nowhere, settling nowhere.
You could say of him that he has high consciousness. So, for that matter, has my character Jocasta. Jocasta has the ability to look inward. She perpetually questions her own identity; now she attempts to change her wanton nature. Whereas, many of the people of Thebes at this time have hardly enough awareness to patch a sailor’s trousers, as my mother used to say.
Even Jocasta is forced to externalise her thoughts, as if they are not real enough as thoughts, and imagine she is kissed by a fish. Well, perhaps we are no better these days …
She and Oedipus lived in a period when a particular form of human consciousness was developing. Our whole humankind was emerging from Dreamtime, where instinct alone guided them through their brief lives; their essences were not yet sufficiently developed to take on the burdens of decision. Their failings and hardships were ascribed to external factors, chiefly to gods of various sorts and conditions. Now they are gaining the power of choice, of discrimination. I’m not sure how much good this mental development does them. I’ve known peons working out their lives in the fields who were a deal happier than Oedipus and Jocasta. And many others living the life of cities.
Peons are hardened to horticulture early in life. They marry and copulate, much like their animals, from whom they learn nothing of romance. They get drunk at festivals, they rear children with no real care. They laugh, they are brutish. They fall ill and die. It’s all over. Never for one moment have they been troubled with deep thought, or wondered whether the world was round, flat or oblong.
I say they were happy – though it’s certainly not my idea of happiness. Mindlessness is not contentment. An unexamined life is no real life.
So you ask me what then is happiness. I don’t know a better answer to that disconcerting question than that happiness, or at least contentment, is the satisfaction that comes from a job well done, from doing something at which you excel. Happiness, yes, in such a case, it makes good sense – happiness is the reward for a particular excellence.
It is useless to pursue happiness for its own sake. Like a snake – when you clutch it, it will turn and poison you.
I seem to remember my old friend Aristotle saying that happiness was a by-product of achievement. He was right. I notice he cast a glance towards his wife when he spoke!
With the wick of their consciousness turned up just a little higher, humans are now faced with moral choices. Some are, some aren’t. Jocasta has more or less made a moral choice. Only she can perform her actions or achievements, or – you might say – make her decisions. Nevertheless, she needs a salmon leaping out of a river to help her. She was never bound to do anything to which there was an alternative. Now, if I read the story aright, she has reached a point where she has no alternative.
My dramas show people in times of difficulty making – having to make – decisions. Yet there is some terrible slothful thing in Nature which renders their power of choice damned, perverse, self-defeating. Sometimes it seems to me – and this is as true of my own times as of Jocasta’s – that to get through life we have to wade through something like an unseen mud, which for ever holds us back from successful resolution.
I don’t say this by way of complaint, incidentally. I’m merely saying that this is the way life is. Perhaps in one of these future ages of which Tiresias likes to talk, matters may mend of themselves – for instance, when human consciousness enlarges its petty sphere a little further.
With some practice, humankind in future generations may become more capable of abstract thought.
Until that better day, if we ever reach it, well –
– well, Jocasta will remain in trouble.
Oh, I must apologise for interrupting the narrative, but it is no pleasure to stand here on the sidelines, having to listen to my own story retold.
9
The balcony overlooked the parched old Theban street. The buildings hung together like old cloaks on a rack, looking to one another for support. Shadows were lengthening, as the Greek world moved towards evening. Swallows were busy about the rooftops, sailing headlong after flying insects, to staunch the hungry twitterings of their babes in the nests below the eaves.
Antigone sat on the balustrade of the balcony, gazing into dusty distance, while her uncle Creon held forth nearby. He was standing, or rather leaning, against the wall of his house. Creon considered it unmanly to sit down during th
e day. Eurydice, his wife, had no such qualms; she sprawled in a rattan chair with her bare feet resting on the balustrade.
‘Another of Oedipus’ many problems,’ Creon was saying, after quaffing orange juice which a slave had brought him, ‘is his belief in the inflexible will of the gods. I fancy Jocasta is just as bad. I’ve tried many and many a time to talk them out of it. This delusion, this absurd belief in gods, warps the mind.’
Antigone said nothing. She still burned with indignation to think of what had happened to Sersex. She stared down into the street below, her pale brow wrinkled in a frown.
‘Still, we did see the Kindly Ones flying over the palace just the other day,’ said Eurydice. She raised a limp hand from her side to illustrate flight. ‘They were real enough.’
‘We imagined we saw them, dear,’ said Creon kindly. ‘However, that was simply an illusion. We were brought up to believe in all these superstitious things. It was the ignorance of our fathers, and their fathers before them. Now we live in a new age. Imagination is a bad thing. I did not see the Furies. You did not see the Furies. Antigone did not see the Furies.’
‘I hate to contradict, Uncle, but I did see the Furies, as plainly as I see these swallows now, swooping about the eaves. The old one beat them off with a broom.’
Creon responded tartly, ‘You probably imagined the broom too. You young girls are far too impressionable.’