The Silence of the Girls

by Pat Barker

  When it was over, he looked down at me; he seemed bewildered, almost distraught. I tensed, expecting him to hit me, not because of anything I’d said or done, or not said or done, but simply because I’d witnessed this. I’d witnessed his need. Instead, he turned on his side away from me and pretended to be asleep.

  6

  Everything changed after that night—and not for the better. Instead of Achilles’s brisk, efficient, matter-of-fact use of my body to get relief, there was immense passion; passion, but no tenderness. He made love—huh!—as if he hoped the next fuck would kill me. One moment, he was grinding me into the dust, the next, clinging onto me, as if afraid I might suddenly disappear. Some nights I thought he might actually strangle me.

  Iphis kept asking me if I was all right. I just nodded and got on with whatever I was doing at the time. More and more, I was venturing further out from the women’s huts, going first to the nearest campfires, where there were usually at least a couple of women I knew from Lyrnessus. I was outside, I had sunlight on my skin, I’d survived. We-ell, in a manner of speaking I’d survived. There were women in the camp, women who’d seen their sons killed, who still couldn’t speak, who stumbled about dead-eyed with shock. Literally—you could clap your hands in front of their faces and they wouldn’t blink.

  But nothing’s ever simple, is it? Incredibly, there were some women whose lives had changed for the better. One girl, who’d been a slave in Lyrnessus—and a kitchen slave at that, the lowest of the low—was now the concubine of a great lord, while her mistress, a plain, slack-bellied woman near the end of her childbearing years, had to scratch and scrape for food around the fires. Nothing mattered now except youth, beauty and fertility.

  We all coped in different ways. There were two women I particularly remember—sisters, I think. They spent all day in the weaving sheds, never went out, except for one brief walk in the late afternoon and then they always went together, arm in arm, and so heavily veiled I’m surprised they could see where they were going. It was as if they hoped, by observing all the restrictions of a respectable woman’s life, they could roll time back and undo what they’d become. I used to look at them and think: You’re mad.

  If anything, I went in the other direction. Every morning, alone and unveiled, I set out to walk around the camp. Some of these walks took me along the shoreline, past the various compounds, all the way up onto the promontory where the dead were burned. From there you could see for miles. On a clear day, you could see Lyrnessus’s burnt and broken towers. There was another walk, inland, through the dunes and onto the scrubland where muddy and trampled tracks led, eventually, to the battlefield. From there, I could see right across the plain to Troy and, even, now and then, catch the glint of sunlight on King Priam’s golden crown. He was almost always on the parapet, looking down on the battlefield, and beside him, leaning as far out as she dared, the white dot that was Helen.

  Nobody could believe the war had dragged on as long as it had. For nine years they’d been fighting on the Trojan plain, the front line moving to and fro—never very far; neither side was able to break through. What had once been fertile farmland was now a waste of mud, for in autumn and winter the two rivers that meandered across the plain regularly overflowed. The trees had gone, cut down in the first winter of the war to build huts and repair the ships. The birds had gone too. It was startling how few of them there were, just a solitary buzzard sailing across the desolation.

  I didn’t do that walk very often. It was painful to see Troy, where I’d once spent two very happy years.

  Gradually, I got to know the other “prizes”—women awarded by the army to the various kings. We met in Nestor’s compound because it was closest to the central arena and therefore convenient for everybody. Hecamede, who’d been awarded to Nestor when Achilles sacked Tenedos, mixed dishes of strong wine and handed them round with platters of bread, cheese and olives. She was about nineteen, I suppose—more or less the same age as me—sleek-haired, brown-skinned, quick and deft in all her movements; she reminded me of a wren. She’d been presented to Nestor as his prize for “strategic thinking,” since he was too old to take part in the actual raid.

  “Too old for anything?” I ventured to hope.

  Uza, also from Tenedos, hooted with laughter. “Don’t you bloody well believe it! They’re always the worst, old men, they think if you’d only do something—something else, something you’re not doing already—it’d be rock-hard. Nah, give me the young ’uns anytime.” Uza was Odysseus’s prize. No problems there, apparently. All very straightforward. When it was over, he’d lie looking up at the ceiling and indulge in long, rambling reminiscences about his wife, Penelope, to whom he was utterly devoted. “They all talk about their wives,” Uza said, stifling a yawn.

  It was never made clear what Uza’s profession had been before Tenedos fell, though I felt I could hazard a guess.

  Ritsa turned to me. “What about Achilles? What’s he like?”

  “Fast,” I said, and left it at that.

  I was glad to see Ritsa again. She’d been awarded to Machaon, the army’s chief physician, not so much for her looks—well, no, definitely not for her looks—but because of her skill in healing. She was a widow, older than the rest of us, and, in normal circumstances, wouldn’t have approved of married women talking like this in front of young girls.

  The youngest of us, Chryseis, was fifteen years old; the daughter of a priest, she’d still been living in her father’s house when Tenedos fell. Agamemnon had picked her from a row of captured girls lined up for his inspection; as commander-in-chief, he always had first pick, though it was Achilles who bore the brunt of the fighting. Chryseis was lovely—as girls in that first flowering so often are. At first, she seemed very shy, though later I discovered it wasn’t shyness at all but a formidable reserve. Her mother had died while Chryseis was still a child, so she’d been mistress of her father’s house from an early age and she’d assisted him in the temple as well. The dual responsibility had given her a maturity beyond her years. She said very little the first time I met her—whether from shyness, reserve or prudishness I couldn’t tell—but she was the focus of everybody’s attention. When she left before the rest of us, the conversation immediately turned to her—and it wasn’t malicious gossip either. They were all concerned for her. Though, in one respect, as Uza pointed out, she was better off than most of us: Agamemnon couldn’t get enough of her. “Never sends for anybody else,” she said. “I’m amazed she’s not pregnant.”

  “He prefers the back door,” Ritsa said.

  She’d know. Ritsa had a jar of goose fat mixed with crushed roots and herbs that the common women round the campfires relied on if they’d had a particularly rough night. She was too discreet to reveal that Chryseis had been to see her, but the implication was obvious.

  “Really?” Uza said. “Course, she is very skinny.” And she leant back, clasping her hands behind her head to draw attention to her own opulent curves.

  “He loves her,” Hecamede said.

  Uza snorted. “Yeah, till he gets tired of her. Do you remember what’s-her-name—oh, hell. Begins with a ‘W.’ He was supposed to be in love with her but it didn’t stop him handing her over to the men. And then there was—”

  “Do they do that?” I asked.

  “What?”

  “Hand prize women over to the men.”

  Uza shrugged. “It’s been known.”

  “It won’t happen to her,” Hecamede said. “He’s besotted.”

  “No, well, I hope you’re right,” Uza said.

  Ritsa stretched and yawned. “All she has to do is give him a son and that’s it, made for life.”

  “Mightn’t that be a bit difficult?” I asked. “If he prefers the back door?”

  A ripple of laughter. It seems incredible to me now, looking back, that we laughed; but we often did. Crucially, perhaps, none
of us had lost a child.

  Another woman who came to these gatherings, though less regularly than the others, was Tecmessa, Ajax’s prize. She’d been in the camp four years and had a baby son, whom Ajax was said to adore. Since Ajax’s compound was next to Achilles’s I’d often walk part of the way back with her. She was a big woman who found walking in the heat difficult so these were slow strolls with plenty of time to talk, but I found it hard to like Tecmessa or feel anything much for her except a kind of exasperated pity. Ajax had killed her father and her brothers and that same night raped her, and yet she’d grown to love him—or so she said. I wasn’t sure I believed her. Admittedly, I didn’t want to believe her. I found her adjustment to life in the camp threatening—and shameful. But then, she did have a son, and her whole life revolved around the child.

  Her other passion was eating. There was a particular dish Hecamede often served, a mixture of dried fruit, nuts and honey, so cloyingly sweet that a mouthful or two at the end of a meal was as much as most of us could manage. Tecmessa could down a whole tray of it. The rest of us watched incredulously, now and then exchanging glances, but nobody said anything.

  Once or twice, Tecmessa really annoyed me with well-meant but irritating advice on how to make the best of things. I should try to make Achilles love me, she said. “He’s not married, you know, he’s only got one son, that’s nothing for a man in his position. He could’ve married her, but he didn’t.” The son was called Pyrrhus, apparently, and Achilles hadn’t seen him since he was a baby. The boy was being brought up by his mother’s family. “It’s not the same,” she insisted. “It’s not like having a child and watching it grow up.” The message was clear: there was a vacancy and I was a fool if I didn’t try to fill it. “Look at me—Ajax worships the ground I walk on.”

  I thought: Well, yes, look at you. If your life’s that bloody marvellous, why do your jaws never stop?

  One day, she appeared wrapped in a heavy mantle in spite of the heat. As she was bending down to pick up the little boy’s toy battleship, the folds of cloth fell open to reveal black fingermarks round her throat. She knew we’d seen. For a long time, nobody spoke.

  Then: “Trouble in Paradise?” Uza asked, addressing herself, apparently, to vacant air.

  Ritsa shook her head, but it was too late. Tecmessa had turned an ugly, blotchy red. “It’s not his fault,” she said. “He has these awful nightmares, sometimes he wakes up, he thinks I’m a Trojan.”

  “You are a Trojan,” I said.

  “No, I mean a fighter,” Tecmessa said.

  On our way home—her word, not mine—that day, Tecmessa went over the events of the previous night, how she’d had to beat Ajax with her fists to make him stop. “He can’t help it.” Poor woman, she obviously needed to confide in somebody, but really I was the worst person…“Does Achilles have nightmares?”

  Silently, I shook my head.

  “He will. Sooner or later, they all do. One night he’ll wake up and think you’re the enemy.”

  “Well, if he does, he’ll be right.”

  “You won’t say that when you’ve got a child.”

  When, I noticed. Not if.

  Up to that point, I’d always believed I wouldn’t get pregnant. After all, five years of marriage had failed to produce a much-needed son, but then it’s a well-known fact that a barren mare will sometimes foal if she’s covered by a different stallion. I started to wonder. There was Tecmessa with her little boy, and all over the camp women were pushing big bellies in front of them or carrying tiny, mewling babies in their arms. Those who’d been here longest had children already fending for themselves around the fires. And yet, I was convinced it wouldn’t happen to me. Admittedly, I wasn’t relying on conviction alone, I still washed him out of me every morning—against my own best interests, Ritsa would have said. And part of me understood perfectly well that what Nestor had said was true: This is your life now. There was nothing to be gained by clinging to a past that no longer existed. But I did cling to it, because in that lost world I’d been somebody, a person with a role in life. And I felt if I let that go, I’d be losing the last vestige of myself.

  I parted from Tecmessa at the gate of Ajax’s compound and walked the last few hundred yards alone. I was aware of the common women all around me, tending fires and carrying cooking pots, getting ready for the warriors’ return. Of all the women in the camp these were the most wretched. Many of them carried the curious circular bruises that came from contact with the butt end of a spear. They lived around the fires, slept under the huts at night; the youngest of them were no more than nine or ten years old. I’d thought their lives were altogether separate from mine, but now I understood that Agamemnon at least would sometimes donate one of his concubines to his men for common use. When he was tired of her, perhaps, or she’d done something to displease him or simply because he thought his men deserved a treat. Had Achilles ever done that? I had no idea, I knew only that the camp had suddenly become an even more threatening place.

  As I entered the compound gates—they were left open by day—my mind filled with dread of the coming night. There were baths to be prepared for Achilles and Patroclus, who both had a hot, perfumed bath at the end of each day’s fighting, with the first of many drinks set ready to hand. There was no actual work involved in this for me—the common women boiled the water and carried the heavy cauldrons—but I always made sure Achilles’s bath was ready on time because it made a difference to his mood, and Achilles’s moods governed everything.

  We all went quiet as his chariot approached. Always, even before removing his helmet, he’d go round to the stables and check to see his horses were properly rubbed down and watered. Only then would he strip off his armour and throw it to his squires to be cleaned. Often, instead of sinking into the hot bath that had been so carefully prepared, he’d plunge into the sea. Far out beyond the breakers, he’d turn on his back and float while in the camp behind him his bath water grew cold. Usually, Patroclus followed him down to the beach and stood on the shoreline, watching. He always looked anxious at these times, though I couldn’t for the life of me see what there was to be anxious about—a man who swam like that was hardly going to drown.

  At last, slowly, Achilles would wade ashore, striding unsteadily through waves that broke against his knees until he reached dry land. There, he’d stop and shake himself until his long hair, spiked black with blood, flailed around his head and drops of water puckered the surface of the sand, forming a circle all around him. Then, the blood washed off, he’d stand for a moment, wiping the spray from his eyes before he emerged, blinking, into the light. He seemed reborn. Then he’d throw his arm across Patroclus’s shoulders and together they’d walk up the slopes of sand and shingle, take the cups of wine that were handed to them and enter the hut to prepare for dinner.

  7

  I was praying for something good to happen, anything—anything that would change the way I lived. At the time, it felt as though day followed day and night followed night with no sense of progression, but looking back, I can see there were changes, though they seemed trivial then. One evening, for instance, when Iphis and I were waiting in the cupboard, Patroclus came in to fetch more wine and, seeing us sitting there, said, “Why don’t you come in?”

  We glanced at each other. This was unexpected and any unexpected development was alarming, but we were conditioned to obey, so we got up and followed him into the other room. There, I sat on a chair as far away from Achilles as I could get, and sipped sweet wine from the cup Patroclus handed to me. I hardly dared breathe. Achilles looked momentarily surprised, but otherwise paid us no attention.

  When Patroclus left, taking Iphis with him, I got into bed as usual. By now, I’d worked out that the alteration in Achilles’s behaviour was connected to the smell of seawater in my hair. I tried to stay away from the beach, but I couldn’t; I needed that immersion in the cold, salt, unforgi
ving depths and I seemed to need it more and more as time passed. So I went on coming to his bed with the stench of sea-rot in my hair and the tightness of salt on my skin, and braced myself to face his lust, his anger and his need, afraid—too afraid to talk to anybody. And understanding none of it.

  That became the pattern of our evenings, Iphis and I being invited into Achilles’s room before it was time for bed. Sometimes Achilles and Patroclus continued the conversation they’d been having over dinner, going over the day’s fighting, deciding what needed to be emphasized in next morning’s briefing. If the day had gone well, this conversation didn’t last long. If it had gone badly, Achilles would erupt, spewing out contempt for Agamemnon. The man was incompetent, he cared nothing for his men—or anything, except his own greed. And worse than that, he was a coward, always staying behind “guarding the ships”—while other people bore the brunt of the fighting. “And”—here, Achilles raised his cup for more wine—“he drinks.”

  “We all drink.”

  “Not like he does.” Achilles looked up at Patroclus. “Oh, c’mon, when have you ever seen me drunk?”

  Eventually, after a good deal of soothing from Patroclus, Achilles would pick up his lyre and begin to play.

  As soon as he was absorbed, I was free to look around. Rich tapestries, gold plates, a carved chest inlaid with ivory…Some of them, I suppose, he might have brought with him from home, but most had been looted from burning palaces. The full-length bronze mirror: I wondered where that had come from. I didn’t wonder about the lyre, because I knew. He’d taken that from Eetion’s palace, the day he’d sacked Thebe. Eetion killed, his eight sons killed, men and boys slaughtered, women and girls carried off into slavery—and only the lyre remained. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.