by Peter Green
By the same author
Ancient History and Biography
Alexander the Great (1970)
The Year of Salamis, 480–479 b.c. (1970)
Armada from Athens: The Failure of the Sicilian Expedition, 415–413 b.c. (1971)
A Concise History of Ancient Greece to the Close of the Classical Era (1973)
The Parthenon (1973)
Alexander to Actium: The Historical Evolution of the Hellenistic Age (1990)
Alexander of Macedon, 356–323 b.c.: A Historical Biography (1974; 1991)
Essays
Essays in Antiquity (1960)
The Shadow of the Parthenon (1972)
Classical Bearings (1989)
Translations
Juvenal: The Sixteen Satires (1967)
Ovid: The Erotic Poems (1982)
Ovid: The Poems of Exile (forthcoming)
Apollonius: The Argonautica (forthcoming)
The Laughter of
Aphrodite
A Novel about Sappho of Lesbos
Peter Green
University of California Press
BerkeleyLos AngelesOxford
For
WILLIAM GOLDING
—ὁσσάκις ἀμφότεροι
ἥλιον ἐν λέσχῃ κατεδύσαμεν—
THE LAUGHTER OF APHRODITE
I
Two nights ago I went to the cave once more, hoping against hope. The sky was sharp and clear, star-pricked, yet holding the first hints of approaching winter. I knew the signs: what islander does not? There had been a sultry stillness at noon, with clouds gathering across the straits, eastward from Mytilene: monstrous storm-dark chimaeras that crouched, like mating lions, along the mountain ridges of Ionia. I walked in the garden, by the stump of the great fig-tree—memories, memories—and watched them. A flicker of summer lightning scrawled itself across the sky, as though the branching pain in my head had swollen to embrace the whole universe. I could feel the muscles flickering in and round my left eyelid—always the left, the unlucky side, the dark lobe of the brain.
My throat was raw, parched: yet I could not drink. Every sense in my body, each fold of skin and flesh seemed naked to the nerve beneath. All nature was a mirror to my passion and my despair: those obscene clouds spoke to me of more than winter. I shivered and sweated as though I had a fever, and the light linen robe I wore—too late for turning autumn—burnt my skin. It was ridiculous and humiliating, and the worst of all was—is—that I can no longer laugh at myself. Nothing frightens me more than that. All through my life one part of me has stood aside, amused by my own passions and inconsistencies, ready to prick the bubble of pretentious self-pity. But no longer. I am being pretentious and self-pitying now; I know it; there is no help for me.
The afternoon brought thunderous gusts of wind from the north-east, ripping down through streets and alleys with a noise like a split and bellying sail. I could hear, high above the city, the subdued roar of the great forest, and thought of other days when we had climbed the ridge, under a blue autumn sky, to gather fallen chestnuts and pine-cones.
(So still on the needle-carpet, the light slanting between tall treetrunks, catching and glinting suddenly on a golden shoulder-clasp, the flush of a young girl’s cheek, the wildness of blown hair.) The wind whipped up hard granular particles of dust, stung my face and lips: and with the dust came a few random rain-drops, hot, heavy, ominous. But by sunset all was clear again, and the wind had dropped. I called Praxinoa and put on a light shawl, and together we walked down to the headland. Lanterns flared on the quayside below us: the black boats bobbed at anchor still, and fishermen called to each other across rows of barrels. I could smell tar and seaweed and the faint tang of fish. Praxinoa glanced at me, troubled, eyes half-shadowed in the fold of her hood. But she said nothing.
The sun was melting-crimson now, spreading over the dark water like coloured oil. In a soft lemon sky the evening star, Aphrodite’s star, gleamed out clear. Now it seemed baleful, curse-laden; yet how often in past years had I not taken it as the very embodiment of fulfilled passion, the gatherer-home of beast, child, and lover? Aphrodite, Aphrodite, it has taken me a lifetime to see what lies behind that still, enigmatic smile. And now I know it is too late: the trap is sprung, my own remembered words mock my helplessness:
Some say a host of cavalry or guardsmen,
And some a fleet, is the finest sight of all
On the dark earth; but I declare the best
Is what you love.
I turned my back on the headland and the harbour, and the winking lights of Mytilene that lay beyond: still in silence we walked up towards the house. There was a smell of thyme and hay in the air, and when I looked out over the dark-glinting water I could see, where the male lion clouds had crouched, a refulgence, a radiance under the dazzled stars. I touched Praxinoa’s sleeve, and we stood there in that stillness till the moon’s rim thrust up over the mountains and swung clear, riding full and silver-pale, stippling the straits with its cold, colourless fire. I glanced up at the black ridged mountain rising inland above us, seeing in my mind’s eye that familiar twisting path between rocks, smelling the scent of pine and rosemary, the dark, close goatish odour of the cave. With a shiver, I walked on, Praxinoa following, up the long, stony land by the pine-grove. The owls were hunting early: there came that faint whickering, unearthly cry and the small squeal of some trapped animal. (Ghosts, lemurs, witches, avoid this house: the formula muttered three times, the furtive gesture with finger and thumb, the rosemary and garlic. My Ionian friends worked hard to dispel my island superstitions about owls. They never quite succeeded.) Burning, burning. Down the shoulder of the hill, beyond the apple-orchards and the first farmsteads, the lights were springing out over the city.
Praxinoa had the big key, worn with long use, and stepped in front of me, a black, subdued shadow, to open the garden-gate. The wards rasped harshly: the gate itself was peeling, its rusty iron studs matched by the weeds clustering under the wall. We passed inside and walked down the flagged alley to the fountain. Here I paused again for a moment, listening to the soft chuckle of the water, observing the black-and-white chequerwork thrown up by marble in moonlight: all familiar as my own body, yet now strange, alien, disturbed, and disturbing.
Like my own body.
From the dark house came a flicker of light, a snatch of broadaccented island song. I recognized a lullaby: the new dark girl in the kitchens, with the smudged, searching eyes and the fatherless two-year-old child. A runaway, Lady Sappho, Praxinoa had said, disapprovingly. A slut. She should be sent back to her master and branded. Sometimes, after nearly forty years’ intimacy, Praxinoa can still surprise me. But do I know her at all? What unimaginable thoughts can one woman conceive who belongs, body and soul, to another, who is at once her servant, her protector, her guardian, and her slave? Yet I cannot begin to conceive a world in which Praxinoa would have no place. This, too, frightens me. What is left beyond the familiar landmarks? Over what sheer ocean must I set out while autumn turns to winter? Too late, too late.
As we approached the house I heard old Apollo stir and growl, with a rattle of his chain. He was a Cretan mastiff, ten years old now and the ugliest beast conceivable, with grey-flecked jowls and a rheumy, sour expression that never changed, even during his moments of slobbering, over-demonstrative affection. It was Cydro, in one of her more irrepressible moments, who had had the notion of giving him his grotesquely unsuitable name—and of installing as our porter and doorkeeper a Scythian near-dwarf who bore the most disconcerting resemblance to him. It was, I must confess, somewhat entertaining to watch the reactions of visitors when confronted with Apollo and old Scylax for the first time, simulta
neously. But now the joke had gone sour, and I found myself hating dog and slave with equal violence for their dumb, patient, submissive loyalty.
Scylax heaved himself up awkwardly in his cubby-hole as Praxinoa and I approached: the big house-door still stood open, and the lamps were ready for us, wicks fresh-trimmed. He scuttled sideways, like a big black crab, with those odd, pale-blue Scythian eyes that seemed so incongruous in the seamed, leathery, toothless face. He was hoping, I knew, for a word, a joke, a quick pat on the shoulder: behind him Apollo uncoiled in equal expectation. Really, I thought, in a gust of irritation, they not only look like each other: to all intents and purposes you can treat them identically.
With the briefest of nods I took the lamp he gave me and went straight through the lobby, past the little shrine of Aphrodite—the candles were flickering down in their sockets, the smile on the Goddess’ face was shadowed, foam-cold, with (I thought) the cruelty of the sea in it too—not stopping, not thinking, barricading my mind against the silence and the memories, up the staircase where little Timas’ statue stood forlorn in its niche, and the tapestries still hung that Congyla had brought back from Colophon, along the corridor to the two big rooms at the end that were my private sanctuary from the noisy, imperative clamour of the heart.
In the study all was still. I paused a moment on the threshold; one shutter had blown to, and the moonlight cast a cold, latticed beam on the shelves of scrolls, the plain white walls, the oddments that littered my writing-table—a glittering quartz-crystal picked from the river near Pyrrha, a sea-urchin’s shell, a Lydian scent-bottle, a pair of golden knuckle-bones, four or five wax tablets, a new papyrus-roll (untouched for a month and more), an onyx ring. I carried the lamp in, and sat down. The first thing I noticed was a sealed scroll carefully placed where I was bound to find it: for an instant my heart swooped upwards, breath catching, and the tremor began to run through me again, wave upon wave, till I held the lamp closer and saw the seal and recognized the device of a merchant whom I disliked intensely and who—till recently—had always been only too ready to supply me with imported goods on credit—the alabaster lampstand from Egypt, that only revealed its pattern when light shone through it; the bale of flowered silk, the Syrian ear-rings, the striped cushions; the pair of inlaid chairs with the running deer pattern (I was sitting in one of them now); the ivory-faced dining-couches, the Asian rugs, the creams and scents and lotions—yes, I knew, all too well, what would be in that letter.
There was a discreet tap on the door, and Praxinoa appeared, a nervous slave-girl (Thalia, was it? Erinna?) at her heels. I told them to light the lamps in my bedroom and heat the water for a bath. No, I said, I would not eat. Praxinoa shook her head sadly. There was a fine dish of quail waiting for me, she said. I suddenly felt weak and small and childish. No, I said, no, and Praxinoa caught the edge of hysteria in my voice and whisked the girl away. I heard them talking together quietly in the bedroom next door, and then the chink of metal, the sound of water being poured, a crackle of twigs as the fire was lit under the great copper pan in the bath-house beyond. Presently Praxinoa came out again, and I Inlaid the soft, familiar pad-pad of feet moving away down the corridor towards the stairs. The girl, still in the bath-house, began, shyly at first, to whistle a haunting little tune that was quarried from my earliest childhood memories: I had first heard it in Eresus, sung by women as they worked at the loom. I sighed, got up, and moved into the bedroom like a sleep-walker.
On either side of my dressing-table, like sentinels, the great seven-branched candlesticks stood, a candle burning clear and steady in each branch, light glinting on gold scrollwork and wrought iron. They were not the gift I would have asked for, and the giver—though long dead—still had the power to make me uneasy in retrospect with the lingering memory of his harsh, half-hostile, uncompromising masculinity. When Antimenidas came back from service with the Babylonian king in Judaea, the candlesticks had been a reconciliatory gesture, but a challenge, too. From some looted Jewish temple, he said carelessly, black eyes flicking from me to the enlaced, five-pointed stars worked into the juncture of branch and stem. There was supposed to be a curse on them: something to do with the spilling of priests’ blood. But that was idle gossip: common soldiers, old marketwomen. It was difficult to tell, from his tone, which category he despised more.
But the magic was in them, running from stem to branch like Dioscurean fire: Antimenidas knew it, and so did I. He knew, too, that between pride and covetousness (they were beautiful and unique objects) I would never get rid of them. I remember him striding to and fro in the south colonnade, iron-shod boots ringing on the flags; a tall, powerful, awkward figure with his close-cropped greying hair and the white puckered sword-scar down one cheek, a braggart soldier who (like all his family) would frequently, and without warning, slip into a mood of delicate, perceptive seriousness that caught one unprepared after the roughshod cynicism or political rant which had preceded it. I liked him better than either of his brothers: which, I suppose, was not saying much. But one thing that he told me, on that spring morning nearly a quarter of a century ago, has stuck in my mind ever since.
“You find a people’s roots in odd places, Sappho,” he said. His voice had an abrupt, jerky quality, as though he were consciously trying to subdue its natural rhythms. “Six years as a mercenary teach you a lot. Books—” He broke off, fumbling for words, leaving the unspoken sentence to hang derisively in mid-air. “You and my beloved poet-brother can tell me all the old stories about our Pelasgian ancestry. But I have seen—” He stopped again, fists clenched, frowning. “I served with Cretans, you know that. Hill-Cretans.”
I nodded. I knew all about Antimenidas and his private obsession with Crete: to hear him you would have thought every noble family on Lesbos descended from Bing Minos in person. A strange legend he had pieced together, from soldiers and merchants and wandering minstrels, from beggars on the waterfront, from any Mediterranean traveller who would talk for the price of a drink. He told us of great maze-like palaces built in the old days, of black ships and strange goddesses, of fire and rapine and a terrible tidal wave roaring inland over harbour-works and cities and the proud, rich, peacock-elegant nobles in them. Some—not many—escaped, sailing northwards, away from that vast convulsion, bringing their knowledge and art and leisured way of life to the coast of Ionia and the islands.
Few people believed Antimenidas, especially since he seldom spoke of these things unless he was far gone in wine. But sometimes I wonder, still. It is true (and a thing which foreign visitors frequently point out to us) that our freedom and elegance and individualism compare very well with conditions elsewhere in Greece—especially as regards women. When I heard Antimenidas speak of those magnificent Cretan court ladies—legendary perhaps, but vital and believable— who were the equals of men and in ways more than a match for them, I found no difficulty in imagining such beings. How should I, when the freedom I enjoyed so nearly matched their own?
I said: “Hail, brother-Cretan.”
Antimenidas seemed not to have heard; he was pursuing some private path of thought, and finding it unexpectedly stony. At last he said: “When we were fighting in Judaea they didn’t like it, my Cretans. There wasn’t much you could put your finger on. Just a feeling in the air. But I found out finally.”
He stopped again, frowned, rubbed his nose, and said: “They had a tradition that these men of Judaea were their kin, that they’d sailed to Crete, generations back Interesting, don’t you think?” The black eyes met and held mine. “A tenuous thread, perhaps. But then so was the thread that Ariadne paid out in the labyrinth; and that led to a bull. Or a king. Or perhaps both. I wouldn’t presume to argue with you on such matters, my dear.”
It was a sunny day: but my hands and feet seemed suddenly ice-cold.
So, last night, I sat between the candlesticks and Owed at my shadowy, flame-tinted image in the great bronze mirror. Night was kind to me, hiding the grey streaks in my thick, wiry-springing black curl
s, smoothing out the lines from nostril to mouth, the fine web of laughter-wrinkles round my eyes. What unimaginable blood runs in my veins, what history has gone to make up this I, this time-bound self? The robe scorched my flesh, as though it were Deianira’s. Too-swarthy skin, irregular features in a wedge-shaped face, small bird-boned body. I smiled bitterly. How could this two-cubit I ever touch the heavens? The question—and the answers I had sought to it—echoed mockingly in my mind.
I raised both hands to my cheeks, as though protecting myself against—what? Self-knowledge? Time? Despair? The rings on my fingers glinted in the candle-light, each a wrought, tangible reminder of past passions: the entwined gold snakes, the great cold sapphire, the double signet with the lapis inlay, the dark Egyptian scarab. At my throat hung the necklace of gold pomegranates, a family heirloom so old that no one now knew its history. How many Persephones, I wondered, had worn it down to the cold abyss before me?
I loosened the girdle of my robe, and let it fall in a heap at my feet as I stood up between the candlesticks, naked and burning. Changed, the voice whispered, all changed. No, I cried silently, no: I am what I was—and my hands flew up, touched my breasts, seeking reassurance, knowing them high and firm as they had always been, seeing the nipples dark and neat in the mirror before me, my hands moving as though of themselves, as though they were the hands of some other person, over my still-slender hips and firm, smooth, gently curving belly. The fire raged in me, I was quicklime. Tonight. It must be tonight, I thought.
I remembered, hot with shame, the words I had scratched on a scrap of papyrus a week before. Come now. Quickly. Quickly—buying love-charms like any village girl, humiliating myself to that filthy old hag—oh yes, she knew, she knew too well who I was—intriguing with contemptuous, moon-faced sluts for nail-parings and scraps of hair, open utterly now in my extremity of desire, a scandal to put my brother’s in the shade. Wryneck, wryneck, draw that man to my house—the crucified bird flickering on its wheel in the firelight, the spells and burnt herbs and small, obscene sacrifices, there is nothing I have left untried, no shameful trick to which I have not stooped. But if the Goddess has betrayed my devotion and my trust, where else can I turn? She is cold and capricious as the foam from which she was born, and her eternally renewed virginity the cruellest deception of all.