by Peter Green
The moon was at the full now. My skin prickled: I knew, without leaking, that the slave-girl—Thalia, yes, I remembered: how could I have forgotten?—had come softly through to the curtained archway from the bath-house, and was standing there in the shadows, watching me. Perhaps that is the answer, I thought: to drive out fire with fire. I sat down again and called softly: “Thalia.”
She caught her breath, startled. “My lady,” she whispered. She was behind me now: I heard the crisp rustle of her skirts, and the sound of her sandals padding across the floor. In the bronze mirror glimpsed a young, nervous face, eyes two great questioning smudges, hair braided in a heavy coil. She had no idea what to do with her hands; she either clasped them frantically, as though in agony, or else let them hang, awkward and inert, at her sides. I picked up the pot of lanolin and began to wipe off my make-up.
“Is the bath ready?” I said.
“Yes, my lady.” The same choked, breathy whisper. What was she feeling? Shyness? Fear? Embarrassment?
“Shall I bring your bath-robe, my lady?”
I paused, stretched luxuriously, and yawned like a cat: I could feel a quiver run through her as I did so, like the ripple moving Over a field of green barley, the spring breeze that sets leaves dancing and stipples a calm sea with fugitive shadows.
Desire? Surely not. And yet—
“Thank you,” I said, and turned to watch her move across the candle-lit room, picking her way with neat, short steps to the big Press in the corner, beside my bed. She was slighter than I had thought: there was a touching fragility about her movements. She had to reach up on tip-toe to fetch down the saffron-and-green striped robe, and memory stirred uneasily in me as I watched. Atthis, I thought: of course; yet the realization came without surprise, or indeed any violence of emotion. Atthis as an awkward schoolgirl, eyes starred with tears, waving good-bye to me on the quayside at Mytilene; Atthis, a chrysalis no longer, but the small, brilliant butterfly who burst on my senses when I came back from my five years of Sicilian exile. Even the coil of hair—and then I stopped short, remembering the miniature that hung in my study alcove, seeing the pathetic imitation of it that Thalia had achieved.
She came back with the robe, smiling shyly, her great brown eyes anxious and adoring at once. I turned back to the mirror and let her wait while, very slowly and meticulously, I wiped the last traces of make-up from my face. Then our eyes met in the mirror and I nodded, leaning back as she slipped the robe over my arms and wrapped it about me. Her hands—how well I knew the symptoms!—hesitated at each physical contact, in an agony of uncertainty. I smiled to myself, and then thought, disconcerted: It is not only the Goddess who is cruel. So many years her votary, and can I hope to have escaped her nature?
I walked through to the bath-house, beckoning Thalia after me. The water was steaming, fragrant with pine-resin. I lay back in it, letting the heat work through me, watching Thalia as she stood there, fingers unconsciously stroking out the folds in the heavy linen robe. I smiled at her, feeling nothing except the blessed warmth of the water, conscious of my power.
“Now,” I said, “you may wash me.”
She came to the side of the marble bath—slowly, very slowly— and I saw her tense her muscles to hide the trembling of her hands. She washed my back, and all the time her breath was coming faster and shallower. I felt nothing, nothing, nothing. Then I lay back again, and waited, smiling, still. As she touched my breasts the tremors ran faster and faster through her till she could hardly stand, and she snatched her hand away as though the water had suddenly become scalding hot.
Not yet. Wait. Be cruel.
She wrapped me in a heavy warm towel, and we went back to the bedroom again. I sat on the side of my bed, still in the towel, while she unpinned and brushed out my hair.
“Now the powder,” I said, and almost purred as she dusted my shoulders and feet with the fine-smelling talc Iadmon had given me in Samos.
Time enough, I thought, and took her hand in mine, and shook a little talc over my breasts, and guided her fingers to smooth it out. She was sobbing silently now, the tears streaming down from wide eyes, and I slipped my other hand inside her robe, caressing the high young breasts till they rose under my touch and her lips reached out to me blindly, and I tasted the salt of her tears. Nothing still. Nothing. You cannot drive out fire with dead ashes. Suddenly I felt active disgust surging up through the emptiness and the boredom— disgust with myself, with her, with the whole absurd situation. I flung her off me violently: she lay on the floor with hurt, bewildered eyes, staring up at me, terrified by this sudden change of mood. I wrapped the robe round me again, and found, to my astonishment, that I was shivering.
“Get out,” I said. “Out of my sight.”
“I don’t understand—I thought—”
“You thought, you thought—what right have you to think?”
The dry tinder of my frustration flamed up in sudden fury. It must have been a comical sight: two small women, inarticulate with rage and fear, drifting rapidly towards physical violence.
“I love you, my lady.” It was a thin, supplicating whisper, almost inaudible.
“Get out!” I screamed, my last shred of dignity blown away. How dare this nothing behave like a human being, blackmail my senses and my emotions with her cheap tricks? My fingers crooked themselves in an atavistic reflex, became long-nailed claws; and the girl fled. I heard the frantic patter of her feet down the stairs, the slam of a door in the servants’ quarter.
Well, I thought grimly, Praxinoa should know how to deal with that situation by now. I took a deep breath, willing the rage in my body to subside. Little by little the blood began to pulse slower through my veins, the violent pounding of my heart sank to a quiet, regular beat. I walked across to the window and flung the shutters wide. Cold and pure, the moonlight streamed down over the mountain: somewhere an owl whickered, and from a tavern by the harbour there came the distant sound of singing, the plangent thrum of a lyre.
The moon is high, I thought; but where is Endymion? My flesh crawled with desire and humiliation. This last time. This time he must come. Aphrodite, cruel goddess, I implore you, make him come now, quickly. Now before it is too late.
A dog barked: strung out across the strait I could see six faint dots of light, where the night-fishers were waiting for the shoals to rise. Slowly, like a sleep-walker, I pulled on a heavy woollen robe and my black travelling-cloak. Slowly I pinned and braided up my hair, binding a single sprig of rosemary into it. But I put on no scent, and left my face bare of cosmetics. The day he first kissed me he said, laughing: “Why do you paint yourself like an old whore?” My hand had flown out at him before I thought; he caught both my wrists, imprisoned them with strong, callused fingers, and held me at arm’s-length from him, like a child or a doll. “Wipe that damned mess off,” he said at length, and let me go. The wind blew through his thick brown curls. “Whores need it. You don’t” And tears of rage and gratitude stinging my eyes, I did as he told me.
I walked out into the silent corridor, down the stairs, across the courtyard. There were no signs of Praxinoa: presumably she was comforting the wretched Thalia. I tiptoed quietly through the lobby, Scylax was nodding in his cubby-hole, though I knew very well he was awake: we played an elaborate conventional charade on such occasions to preserve the domestic proprieties. Apollo twitched and snuffled, curled up at the old man’s feet, hunting long-dead hares up the hillside of his dreams. I slipped through the front-door, taking care to leave it open, and walked back past the fountain and the shrine to the garden-gate. Once outside, however, I turned away from the town, and set off up the mule-track into the mountains.
The moon shone down on me as I moved, and my shadow danced, faint and fluttering, over the silvered stones. When I stopped for a moment I could hear the minuscule sounds of small nocturnal creatures in the brushwood, and, away to the right of me, the cool clear chatter of water on rock. My footsteps, as I crunched over loose shale, sounded preternatur
ally loud. But presently the path was swallowed up by the pine-forest, and here I walked ghostly-silent, on a thick carpet of fallen needles, with only the occasional random moonbeam to light my way.
The cave lies about half-way up the ridge, close beside a little spring. It is not really a cave at all, but a hollow formed by three gigantic rocks, tumbled together earthquake-fashion against the steep fall of the mountain. Others besides us must have used it: the floor of the hollow is covered with a thick layer of dried grass. The spring gushes out from the rock-face into a worn stone basin, bright with green weed, and spills over down a narrow, stony runnel. There is a tiny shrine beside it, sacred to the Nymphs, a whitewashed niche with a lamp and some cracked clay figurines and, sometimes, a withered bunch of flowers.
When I got there all was still and the cave empty, as I knew it would be. But it was early yet. The lamp in the shrine was flickering; I took the oil-jar from the ledge where I had hidden it, and filled the lamp. The wick needed trimming: that took up a little more time. Then I prayed to the Nymphs, who are kindly deities, and have always been near me in country places: but my words seemed to echo through a great emptiness, as though the tutelary spirits of this place were either gone, or sleeping, or indifferent to me. So I dipped my face in the stone basin, bracing myself against the shock of the icy water, feeling my skin tauten and glow at that astringent touch. I drank a little, remembering, as I did so, that I had not eaten all day. Yet I felt no hunger: indeed, at that moment I could not have stomached food of any sort.
When I had drunk I came back, sat myself down at the mouth of the cave, wrapped in my cloak, and waited.
The pines were sparser here, and I had a clear view of the moon and stars overhead. He must come now, I thought: he must, he must. At every crack of a twig, each faint rustle in the darkness, I started up, tense with expectancy. For eight days now, nothing. Not even a letter or a message. No explanation, no apology. People shrug and make evasive answers to my enquiries. I can see the pitying contempt in their eyes.
Time passed; the moon moved inexorably across the sky, and the Pleiades followed. It was after midnight now, and still I kept my vigil alone.
When the first grey was streaking the eastern sky I walked quickly down the mountain track, numb, not letting myself think, a dead husk. A kitchen-maid at the well behind the courtyard stared at me as I came in, and I saw her furtively gesture with finger and thumb against the evil eye. Thin, hot wires of pain twitched under my eyelids, behind my temples: the skin seemed drawn tight over a burning skull, and fiery granules rasped through every nerve.
I lay down on my bed as though it were a rack, while the mocking light lanced through the shutters, and cocks began to crow in chorus, and day swung up, bright, autumnal, full of false promise. Let me sleep, I prayed, let me sleep or let me die. Then I remembered the small, iridescent glass phial that Alcaeus had brought me from Egypt, and which (for reasons I can only surmise) I had hidden away at the bottom of a cosmetics-chest, and forgotten for twenty-five years. Now his words came back to me, the hard yet epicene malice in his grey eyes as he said: “For you, my dear, nepenthe: the blessed gift of forgetfulness. A paradox, you think? Now, perhaps. All your senses are open to the sun: you turn lightwards like a budding flower. But later—later you will understand. Not, I fancy, that you will be grateful for my thoughtfulness on your behalf. The gods have bestowed some rare gifts on you, Sappho, but gratitude is hardly one of them.”
“Nepenthe?” I repeated, too bemused by his smooth, barbed words to be angry as I should. (I was not so young and foolish then, either: it was, I recall, just before my twenty-fifth birthday. )A.,
“Yes indeed. Homer’s true prescription. You should be flattered, my dear: this little bottle cost me more than I care to think about.”
“You must have had some good reason of your own for giving it me, then,” I said spitefully. Alcaeus’ closeness with money was notorious.
“Perhaps so,” he agreed, a gleam of amusement in his eye. “You must exercise your admirable wit on determining the motives behind my generosity. I may say it works extremely well. It was sold me by a quite terrifying priest in Memphis, and I would no more have dared ask him for proofs of its effectiveness than have desecrated an Egyptian tomb. But I tried it on young Lycus the other day, with most spectacular results.”
I took the glass phial from him awkwardly, embarrassed despite myself at the reference to Lycus, a black-eyed creature whose dark, lustrous hair was as long as a girl’s, and who could hardly have been more than fourteen when Alcaeus picked him up on his return from Egypt. Lately, too, he had—out of sheer mischief—been encouraging the little beast to make eyes at my young brother Larichus.
“I haven’t told you the dosage yet,” Alcaeus said, watching me closely. “That, as you’ll realize, is rather important. Three drops in a little wine will give you a good night’s sleep. Five drops will make you pass out for twelve hours. Ten drops”—he gestured expressively—“is a really lethal dose. It need never be repeated, my dear. So be sure to have your coin ready for the ferryman before you take it.”
Now, years later, I turned the glass phial over and over in my hands, resenting the cold insight which it symbolized, the curious malice that had governed its giving, yet unable to deny my need for the forgetfulness it held. I took the little jug of wine which Praxinoa had left on my bedside table (when did that start? four years ago? five?) and poured out some into a cup, and mixed it with water. Then I opened the phial and sniffed: the very odour was sweet, drowsy, soporific. Carefully I measured the drops: one, two, three. An imperceptible pause. Four. Five.
Why not? Now. Quickly. Without pain.
No. It would give him such satisfaction. To be proved right after a quarter of a century, what exquisite delight! No. With a decisive gesture I put the stopper back. Then, before I could change my mind, I took two quick steps to the window and flung the phial out. I heard the small, brittle, final sound as it smashed on the flags below. So much for that I picked the cup up, conscious now of my utter exhaustion, of the dry, burning agony in my bones and nerves. Sleep. I must sleep. But another thought struck me, and. I went quickly out, down the corridor towards the silent, shuttered room that belongs to my daughter Cleïs. I had not thought of her all yesterday, or for several days before that: it is a week now since she went to stay with Megara, in the square grey house on the citadel, and I feel as though some stranger, a casual guest, had departed, leaving no trace of her presence behind. Because she has rejected me, I must, in self-defence, erase her from my consciousness.
Ah, Cleïs, my lovely one, it was not always this way. You were like a golden flower, and we loved each other, Cleïs, the hatred, and the violence and the terrible unforgiving, unforgettable words had not happened. Guilt, jealously, bitterness: is this all the harvest of our sweet spring together?
Everything was still in place—the bedspread with its chequered pattern of green, yellow, and black, the carved obsidian toad with the jewelled eyes, the portrait you painted of Atthis just before my illness (no, I must be honest, that always made me uneasy: what could have been going on in your mind, even then?), the scattered rugs and carelessly rolled books.
But then I looked closer, and saw—why only now?—that you had, after all, taken some things with you, all fragile, personal, private possessions: your birds’ eggs; the purple scarf Hippias gave you (not that, I can’t face that yet; give me time: must we always acknowledge our guilt?), a few small trinkets of no particular value, your worn, much-scribbled-on copy of the Odyssey, with your own pictures in the margin—do you remember how amused I was by your Polyphemus? So irresistibly like Pittacus after his third bottle—and what else I could not be sure: the room was there, on the surface it was the same, and then the small twinges of absence would begin to nag at my mind, another missing piece fall into place.
It was broad daylight by the time I got back to my own room. Once again I sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the cup of drugged
wine. This time I. took a sip, realizing as I did so that I was very scared indeed. I had nothing but Alcaeus’ word for the nature of this drug, and it would not be the first time he had played an embarrassing practical joke on me. But something obstinately drove me on: whatever else, I was not going to, could not, let that man intimidate me.
I took another sip.
The only effect I noticed at once was a very faint numbing of the tongue. The taste (which the wine could not disguise) was intriguing: heavy, sweetish, yet with a dry, musty-fresh underflavour that put me in mind of a threshing-floor at harvest-time.
Just as I was nerving myself to swallow the rest I heard a vague commotion down below: old Scylax expostulating, an indistinguishable gabble from Praxinoa, and a third voice—high, edgy, irritable—which I instantly recognized as belonging to my brother Charaxus. After a moment or two there came footsteps on the stairs: my defending forces had clearly been routed. He strode in without even bothering to knock, sniffed, blew out his lips disgustedly, and flung the shutters wide open. We looked at each other for a moment without saying anything.
Though for years I refused to admit the fact to myself, I have always had an instinctive and total antipathy towards Charaxus. It is ironic that the one action in his life which (however infuriating at the time) at least convinced me he was a real human being should, by a series of misunderstandings, have merely driven the wedge deeper between us.
I stared at him now, observing the unhealthy little paunch he carried before him like some oriental badge of office, the squat barrel-body set on short, slightly bowed legs, the plump fingers with their expensive, vulgar rings. Though it was autumn, the walk up the hill had left him sweating: he mopped his forehead and grunted. His little argument with Scylax could not have improved matters, either. He really is a hog, I thought, with tranquil loathing. A white, larded, bristly hog, rooting after truffles, and evil-tempered when disturbed. Then it occurred to me that my own appearance must leave much to be desired just at that moment, and, unexpectedly, I giggled. Perhaps I was a little hysterical. Or perhaps that Egyptian drug had unexpected properties.