by Peter Green
This won’t do at all. I’m getting maudlin. My task is to take these broken pieces and see where they fit together, not to cry over them. I have never had any patience with self-pity in others, and I have no intention of indulging it in myself. Besides, why should I? Many people would envy me my life. Even now. I have had wealth, and the taste to enjoy it. I have been granted the maker’s divine gift of song. I have loved and been loved. Sorrow is a natural condition of life: only the child demands unbroken happiness. But the child in me, I know, is still strong.
It is getting dark. Soon Thalia will come to light the lamps, her hair braided softly round that neat, beautiful head, her body alive with love, so that every part of her seems to sing as she moves. Yet Thalia is a slave. What then is slavery? And what is freedom? Which of us can truly be called free?
For a week now I have hardly stirred from this room. Reality recedes into the past, and I follow it.
Why should I dream of Sicily?
Perhaps Pittacus’ visit had shocked her, too, in some way; perhaps she had some notion of what had happened between us downstairs afterwards; but for whatever reason, Aunt Helen suddenly came out of her semi-tranced state, almost as though nothing had happened. Almost, but not quite. There was a curious inner glow about her, something quite indescribable but beyond question there: even my mother saw it. Aunt Helen came up to my bedroom the following day, and we smiled at each other, and sat for a little while without saying anything at all. I was still shocked, and apathetic: but I have a naturally resilient temperament, and already the first raw horror was beginning to fade.
She looked at me with those great golden eyes of hers, and put one hand on top of mine. She was tall and clean and beautiful and smelt like a spring garden. I felt a great upsurge of affection—and something more, something instinctive and physical.
She said, as though continuing a conversation begun long ago and in another place: “Growing up is so hard, my darling. For someone like you especially.”
“Why me?”
“Because you can see what there is to fear.”
We looked at each other. I nodded. Aunt Helen smiled, that deep, beautiful smile which seemed to irradiate her entire face. She said: “All power is divine, Sappho: and the power to create is the first essence of divinity. Those who make share, however humbly, in godhead. They fashion a world from chaos. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said. “Not the words. But I understand.”
Aunt Helen said softly: “Creation takes many forms. We should honour them all. To make, truly to make, is not an easy thing.” She looked at me. “It means labour and suffering. It means a pouring out of the self. It means self-surrender and love.”
“Love?” I shied at the word. Aunt Helen’s hand tightened gently on mine.
“Yes, love. You are right, there is something terrible about love, and we do right to stand in awe of it. But we deny it at our peril. It is the force that binds our many-sided world together—stars, seeds, the swarming life of ocean and forest. If we reject it, we reject ourselves, we are nothing. Aphrodite is a cruel Goddess; all true deities are cruel by mortal standards, and we question their divinity if we pretend otherwise.”
I shook my head, quiet, desperate. “It’s no good,” I whispered. “I can’t. I can’t”
Aunt Helen said: “Aphrodite has many moods, and many faces. Her gifts, like all gifts, can be abused.” For an instant ear eyes met in a kind of naked understanding. “You must have trust, Sappho. Whatever the appearances, you must have trust”
“Trust? In what?”
She hesitated a moment before replying. What she then said surprised me more than anything else.
“In divine protection. I think—how shall I put this, my dear?—that you possess, without knowing it, the precious gift which all seers, priests, and poets share to some degree: you stand a little closer to the Gods than other mortals. They speak through you, or will speak, when the time is ripe; and in return you will have their communion and protection.”
I shrank a little under the bedclothes: it was as though some ghostly finger had reached out to lay its indelible mark on my forehead.
“Why me?” I whispered. “Why me? Why can’t they leave me alone? That’s all I want, ever.’
Aunt Helen said, compassionately: “You will find, in time, that this knowledge creates its own solitude.”
There was a short silence. When Aunt Helen spoke again, it was in her ordinary, day-to-day voice: the alarming thought flashed across my mind that she might have been in some sort of divine trance herself.
“Well, I mustn’t sit here talking all day, darling; you need rest and quiet.”
“I’m feeling much better now,” I heard myself say; and then realized, rather to my surprise, that it was true.
What none of us, I think, had ever realized was just how much, in his own quiet way, Uncle Eurygyus had over-shadowed Aunt Helen during his lifetime. We would, no doubt, have ridiculed such a notion: to all appearances it was she who had the whip-hand over him. But after his death, and once she was through her mysterious period of withdrawal, Aunt Helen—there is no other word for it—blossomed out. She lost no time in erasing all traces of her husband’s more curious habits: the day after our discussion upstairs she went through the house in a kind of purifactory fervour, like Odysseus after the slaying of the wooers. Despite my mother’s protests (once she had someone in bed she liked to keep them there) I got up to watch the fun.
The fortune-tellers and old crones and seedy oriental priests who were always hanging about the back yard found themselves sent packing for good. Aunt Helen made a small bonfire of the withered garlands and dream-manuals, the astrological charts, the malodorous roots and herbs, the accumulated apotropaic junk of several decades. Cobwebbed bottles full of doubtful-looking liquid were smashed or poured down the drain. For several days the house was almost uninhabitable: every slave-girl was busy scrubbing, washing, and cleaning. The smell of sulphur became quite unbearable.
So far, my mother was pleased to approve; she had obviously been itching to do much the same thing herself. It did not occur to her (knowing her temperament, I should have been surprised if it had) that Aunt Helen’s distaste for the hocus-pocus of superstition was based, not on rational common sense, but on a deep and genuine religious instinct. Such a notion would have struck her as paradoxical, or, worse, merely frivolous. She dealt with a lot of the world’s more intractable realities in this way.
Besides, Aunt Helen led an irregular sexual life; and in my mother’s view nobody who did this could possibly have a right attitude to the Gods. How she arrived at such a conclusion altogether defeats me: but (as often happens with those who proclaim their trust in pure reason) the workings of her mind were largely conditioned by her emotions.
Religious faith, and the visible pattern of ritual in which that faith is enshrined, have played so all-pervasive a part in my life that I find it hard to remember, at times, how late I came to them. As a small girl I would be dressed appropriately for festivals, but no one told me what they meant; I knew about the Gods, yet only in the sense that their names and functions were a familiar part of my childhood landscape. My father’s attitude to the divine I can only guess at; my mother’s was one of respectful indifference. She conformed socially (for so independent a person it was curious how sensitive she was to public opinion ), but never went beyond that; the whole field of religious experience, in the personal sense, she was content, to leave unexplored.
When Aunt Helen took me, without question or explanation, to the old, small temple of Aphrodite that stood on a spur of the citadel, facing out across the Aegean, I hung back in the forecourt, heart pounding, so frightened I could scarcely stand. She waited, very easy and patient, smiling under her widow’s veil. It was a fine spring day; a breeze off the mainland whipped white flecks from the ruffled cobalt water, and the sun struck down with unexpected heat, burning my cheek. Everything glittered, shone bright, was exultantly alive. I t
hought: But what am I afraid of? Before the mood could pass I said to Aunt Helen: “All right. I’m ready.” We went in together.
It was cool and quiet and shady after the sunlight. Here and there light flowed down, a slanting shaft between columns. Candles flickered: I smelt incense, and the faint, sweetish aroma of fresh-dried blood. The walls were hung with pictures: I looked at the one nearest me, and saw Aphrodite rising from her foam-born shell, golden-haired, virginal, immortal. At the great central altar the sacrifice had been concluded: two girl-acolytes, in white robes, stood by, heads bowed, while the priestess chanted the final litany, her voice high and pure and remote, like a young boy’s. The words were half-familiar, yet it was as though I had never heard them before: they sang through me, illuminating and transfiguring:
“Queen of heaven,
Mother and Virgin,
Star of the morning,
Born from the foam,
Mother of seasons,
Adored and adoring.
Holy of holies,
Lady of light—”
“What must I do?” I whispered.
“Listen. Pray. Wait.”
I knelt there, my eyes on the great image of the enthroned Goddess. She seemed to float in air above the altar, divine, majestic, the Queen of Heaven indeed. I stared, entranced, at the thick tresses rippling down below her flowery coronal, at the white linen robe with its intricate woven hem and pattern of golden stars. The Goddess’ eyes seemed to look straight into mine: a soft, amused, enigmatic smile played round her lips.
Presently the priestess began a long prayer; and again, without warning, I experienced that strange sense of weightlessness and release. I seemed to float up, up, through thin, clear, dazzling air, till at last I hung poised in immeasurable space: I looked down, and below me—many-coloured, intricate, splendid—lay the world of men. Far away, like waves on some remote dream-shore, the voice of the priestess rose and fell: “The Gods below and above the earth acknowledge your sovereign power. It is your hand, Lady, that sets the stars in their courses and gives light to sun and moon. At your bidding spring returns after winter; by your universal power winds blow, seeds quicken, buds swell and burst, the corn stands heavy in the furrow, the grape hangs full on the vine. You bring together bird and beast after their common kind; it is your potent divinity that lights the spark of passion in all living creatures the world over, that decrees where and when the spark shall fall-O Cyprus-born, Child of the Sea-foam, Lady of Beasts, Paphian, Evening Star, Daughter of Heaven, immortal Aphrodite . . .”
The voice faded: there was a strange ringing silence in my ears. The Goddess seemed to grow bright, haloed with a cold, unearthly radiance like that of the full moon. Did those lips move? My name, I heard my own name, uttered quietly, lovingly, several times over: so might some devoted mother address her favourite, wayward child. I am here, I whispered. I am here: and the tears welled up, the cold fear in my heart melted. I bowed my head in adoration: words sang through my exultant mind like swarms of bright migrant birds, winging southward in the sunlight over green capes and a blue dazzle of sea.
When, at last, I looked up, everything was quiet and still: the priestess and her acolytes had vanished. The sacred flame still curled upwards from the high altar; the Goddess still looked down on me with her quiet, enigmatic smile. But now I saw, clearly, that this was an image only, of wood and skilfully painted wax, robed, bewigged, adorned with jewels. The vision, the radiance, these were gone, as though they had never been. The candles flickered: two middle-aged women were praying quietly at a side-shrine. The old man who sold incense and sacred pictures and small votive offerings had dozed off over his stall.
I knew, then, that the Goddess had manifested herself to me; that she had been bodied forth in the image men made to receive her, and had called me by name to her service. The words, the bright words, still ran through my head, in intoxicating patterns and rhythms. How serve her? How thank her? How but by using the gift she had released in me? The sacrament of song, the sweet agony of creation. Winged words, Homer had said, and till now the phrase had meant nothing to me: but now, now, I saw, I knew, the iridescent upsurge, the poised bird-swift beauty. Inspiration, they had told me, was a spring, a cold clear rising spring, watched over by the Muses: but now that spring rose in my own heart, a transfiguring flow. All new, all changed, the gates of my mind opening on a strange, unimaginable country.
Presently this exultation, too, died down, leaving only a deep, steady glow in the core of my being. All things are possible, I thought, and then, wonderingly: I am not afraid. I need never be afraid again. I blinked, smiling: the afternoon world, the here-and-now of my physical existence closed gently around me. Aunt Helen took my arm, and together we walked out into the sunlight.
It was several days later, and without any direct reference to what had happened in the temple, that Aunt Helen said: “The gifts of the Goddess can be dangerous, Sappho.’
“What do you mean?” I was curious rather than alarmed.
“I mean”—she hesitated again—”that some part of your inner self is forfeit, now and for always. What you have surrendered you will never be able to redeem. Or only at a price you cannot pay and survive. Whether it will be worth the sacrifice, you alone can tell.”
“It will be worth it,” I said, glowing, confident.
“I hope so, my darling. I hope so.”
It has taken me nearly forty years to understand the full force of those words.
Then I said, not quite knowing why: “Aunt Helen—what do you believe in?”
She turned down the corners of her mouth in that familiar, wry gesture. “Survival,” she said, and then, unexpectedly: “Will you promise me one thing?”
“Of course—”
“Whatever may happen, don’t judge me too hard. Try to understand.”
“I promise,” I said, bewildered. “But what—?”
“You’ve promised,” she said. “That’s enough.”
I turned over lazily in bed, still half-asleep, listening to the early-morning clamour from the street outside. It seemed quite extraordinarily loud—horses clattering to and fro, studded boots scraping over the cobbles, a babble of loud, anxious voices, somewhere in the distance a trumpet-call several times repeated. Then (quite inaudible as usual) the city crier making one of his interminable proclamations. I buried my head in the pillow.
“Sappho—”
“Oh, go away, Meg.”
“Something’s happening, something important—”
“I can’t stop it.”
“Listen.”
I blinked my eyes open. Meg was bending over me, her long black hair hanging unbraided round her face, her flat, little-girl breasts with the pale nipples exposed inside her loose nightdress. I sat up quickly. Down the bill, somewhere near the market, the crier was still at it. Meg moved across to the window and unbolted the shutters.
“. . . wherefore the so-called Council of Nobles is hereby dissolved, and the city of Mytilene placed under martial law until such time as all rebels and enemies of the State shall have been apprehended. And that for the duration of the said emergency the said Myrsilus, Leader of the People, shall exercise full and plenary powers, including those over life and limb, until such time as an elected Popular Council take office. And furthermore, that an amnesty is hereby declared, in favour of all who by word or deed have lent support to the usurping government during the said Myrsilus’ enforced and illegal exile, provided they do make public protestation, on oath, of their allegiance to the said Myrsilus and those ministers whom he may, in the lawful discharge of his duties, appoint to hold office . . .” This final sentence put something of a strain on the herald’s lungs, and he stopped at the end of it, presumably to get his breath back. I told Meg to close the shutters: there was a draught blowing right through the bedroom.
“But I want to hear the rest—”
“Haven’t you heard enough already?” I snapped. The violence of my own reaction surp
rised me. “We’re back where we were ten years ago. Government by tradesmen.”
Meg giggled. “You sound just like your mother,” she said.
“Well, I want to go and see the fun,” Telesippa announced, swinging her blond plaits and looking a good deal more than twelve. “When something exciting happens, all you two can do is sit and talk.” She swung out of bed, prinking her toes. “Praxinoa!” she yelled.
We had recently, as a special growing-up privilege, been given a slave-girl all to ourselves. Praxinoa was a solid, phlegmatic-looking eighteen-year-old, a Sicilian Greek from some village near Syracuse, born in captivity and sold by her master when he went bankrupt. We were all (though we would have died rather than admit it) just a little afraid of her. When you are -fourteen, four years makes a great deal of difference. Besides, Praxinoa was so big, so muscular, so unselfconsciously physical in her response to life. She was given the tiny corner garret that had been our lumber-room: the first time I went in there—without knocking: one could not, somehow, knock on a slave’s door—I found her standing, naked, in an old hip-bath, sluicing herself down with water. She held the water-pot balanced on one shoulder: her legs were slightly apart, and drops glistened on her full, heavy breasts.
Shock and embarrassment literally took my breath away: I just stood there staring. I felt my cheeks burn crimson, and was conscious, at the same time, of a secret excitement so keen it almost hurt. She looked up, smiling, shaking the thick, rather oily black ringlets out of her eyes, quite unconcerned. Then she saw my expression, and her face changed too. She stepped quickly out of the bath, turning away as she did so, so that I saw the wide white spread of her hips and buttocks. She took a towel and wrapped herself in it.