The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  I withdrew, agonized, trembling, ashamed. Neither of us referred to the incident again. Sometimes I thought she had forgotten it. Then I would catch her dark eyes watching me, in an odd, speculative way, and my turmoil of uncertainty would begin afresh. What she was feeling, or thinking, I had no idea, and my own reaction I thrust into the back of my mind, refusing to face its implications. Looking back, I can afford to be amused by my own naïvety; but it was not in the least amusing at the time.

  Now I watched her warily as she bustled in at Telesippa’s summons, very neat and unobtrusive, her black hair parted severely in the middle, her face in some odd way wiped clean of personality. Telesippa was still young enough to enjoy the novelty of ordering her about. She demanded hot water, and a clean dress, and hairpins, all in one breath. She stripped off her nightgown and pirouetted in front of the mirror: I have never met anyone who took such an unselfconscious and unashamed delight in her own body. Giggling delightedly, she flicked each nipple with thumb and first finger till they stood out hard and firm from her still half-grown breasts. Meg and I caught each other’s eye, and flushed, and looked away. Both of us were prudish to a degree about exposing ourselves in anyone’s presence: Telesippa worried us all the more, I now realize, because her lack of embarrassment implicitly challenged our own assumptions.

  While Praxinoa was brushing out her hair, Telesippa said: “What’s all this about Myrsilus? Will anyone be killed? Can we go and watch?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” said Praxinoa, still keeping up a hard, steady rhythm of brush-strokes. “You’ll have to ask your mother or Lady Cleïs about that sort of thing.” She sounded a little put out: why, I could not imagine.

  When we got downstairs we found the boys hanging around in a disconsolate group outside the lobby. The only cheerful one was Larichus, who beamed and said: “No school today, no school today—”

  “Be quiet, you little beast,” said Hermeas.

  Agenor’s eyes met mine. “Mother says we’re not to go into the streets. There may still be some fighting. She’s probably right.”

  Telesippa swung her plaits. “Why can’t we have some fun for once?” she asked crossly.

  “A curious notion of fun you have, sister,” Agenor remarked mildly.

  Telesippa put out her tongue. “You’re dull and mean and I hate you,” she said.

  Charaxus stood silent in one corner, frowning and biting his nails.

  “But what does it mean?” Meg said to no one in particular.

  There was an angry hiss of skirts behind me. “It means,” said my mother, in her best crisis voice, “that those who care for this city of ours will have to fight—fight, do you understand?—to restore freedom and justice and the rule of law. It may take months, even years. But we have done it once, and we can do it again.”

  None of us quite knew what to say to this. The noise outside had died away: all I could hear now was the long-drawn cry of some itinerant vegetable-seller trudging up the hill. Whatever was happening, life—and vegetables—had to go on.

  It was odd how little difference (despite all my :mother said) this change of government seemed to make. Somehow I expected everyone to go round with long faces, as though carrying an intolerable burden; but the market-place remained as busy and cheerful as ever, taverns and shops did a brisk trade, the same tanned, tarry sailors lounged about the quay, winking at girls or exchanging stories. Myrsilus did not, on the face of it, look a tyrant: he was a grey haired, grey-faced man of medium height and unremarkable appearance, and the worst his enemies could find to say about him was that he worked too hard: such grinding hours were more appropriate to a slave or a tradesman than to a man of reasonably good family occupied by affairs of state.

  A blazing summer morning: outside, in the plane-trees, the cicadas keep up their steady chirring, dancers with midget castanets. In the cool shade of the courtyard I sit, abstracted, while words gather slowly in my mind, globe themselves like resin from a cut tree-trunk, are written down. Solitude enfolds me. It is the day after my first, curiously unsettling, encounter with the young poet Alcaeus.

  “Don’t let me disturb you.” It is my mother’s voice, behind me; she can move more silently than her own shadow when she chooses. I jerk round, startled. “I’m sorry, Mama—I didn’t know—” Then I think: What am I supposed to be apologizing for?

  She says: “Another poem?”

  “Yes, Mama.” I shrink into myself a little: the reaction does not escape her.

  “Anyone might suppose you had something to bide.” The eyes are darting, curious; she glances down towards the wax tablet in my lap.

  “Of course not—” But instinctively I put one hand over the tablet. My cheeks flush hot with vexation.

  “If you’d rather not show me—”

  “It’s not finished yet.”

  “I see.” (I never cease to be amazed at the degree of sheer incredulity my mother can inject into those two words.) “I thought perhaps it might be the kind of poem”—her eyelids snapped nervously—“you would prefer not to let me see at all.”

  There is no possible answer to this. I wait, stiff and silent, for her next move.

  “Really, Sappho, poetry is no excuse for sulkiness.”

  I know better by now than to deny the charge.

  “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  “You sit about indoors far too much. It’s bound to make you peevish, especially in this weather—”

  “I was out yesterday—”

  “Yes. And I know very well where you went.” She moves restlessly from foot to foot, as though her clothes chafe her. “Helen has no business to involve you in this—this religious mania of hers. It’s quite intolerable. The atmosphere in those temples is thoroughly unhealthy. Nasty hocus-pocus, just the sort of thing calculated to impress adolescent girls. What you need is something to occupy your mind—”

  “Yes, Mama. I’m sure you’re right.”

  She pauses for a moment, considering. “You spent a long time talking to that ill-mannered young poet last night.”

  “He did most of the talking.”

  “You didn’t discourage him, I noticed.”

  “He’s insult-proof, I think.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t attentive enough for your liking.”

  “If you really want to know, Mama, he frightened me.”

  My mother hesitates. “Oh, Sappho, my dear, I wish I knew whether I could trust you. Sometimes you seem so hard and hostile and alien. It’s a sad thing when one can’t be certain of one’s own daughter’s loyalty.”

  Her gift for bringing in just a touch of pathos at a crucial moment verges on the uncanny.

  “Of course you can trust me, Mama,” I say impulsively; and I mean it.

  She hesitates, then moves away abruptly and takes a short turn down the colonnade, her shadow fluttering beside her: she always walks close to the pillars, where the sun can reach her face. She seems to be weighing up something in her mind. At last she comes back, and stands over me, her body blocking out the light.

  “I would like you to do something for me—for us,” she says, in a strained, intense voice. “No. Not for any individual. For the city.” She hesitates, then adds: “Before I say any more, I should warn you that it might involve you in very real danger.”

  This flicks a raw nerve in me. “My father died for the city,” I say hotly.

  There is a short silence, broken abruptly by the clatter of my writing-tablet as it drops to the ground.

  My mother says, almost as though talking to herself: “No one would suspect you. Why should they? What concern has a girl of your age with plots or politics? You can pass unnoticed, almost as though you were invisible. Your world is made up of quarrels and jealousies, of picnics, new dresses, dancing, poetry, idle chatter, foolish whispering in corners about boys. You can go to any house, at any time, and no one will so much as notice you. Afternoon visiting is a pastime you enjoy, I believe.”

  “What is it I have to do, Mama?
” I ask. Already I am regretting my generous impulse; already the hot needles of irritation are probing at my self-control.

  “We need someone to carry messages between—certain houses. Myrsilus has spies and informers everywhere. There can be no more open meetings.”

  “I see.”

  “You accept?”

  “Of course,” I say.

  There is a pause.

  My mother says: “Don’t you want to know the names of those involved?”

  “It’s not hard to guess.” Then I look at her and say: “Myrsilus must know them all as well as I do, Mama. Why does he let them remain at liberty?”

  “Because if he imprisons or executes half a dozen of our most distinguished citizens, there will be nothing to choose between him and a naked tyrant like Periander.”

  “Perhaps,” I say thoughtfully, “he’s holding his hand till they commit themselves, so that he can make a show of giving them a fair trial.”

  My mother stares at me, surprised. “So your head isn’t always in the clouds. Of course. That is one of the two major risks we must face.”

  “And the other?”

  “Betrayal.” The word hangs in the bright air for a moment, like some small, almost visible cloud. Then—as though the point were not worth further consideration—she goes on briskly to reel off a list of the expected names—Phanias, Pittacus, Draco, Deinomenes. At the end of it she hesitates again. “There is one other house, Sappho.”

  A pause.

  “Yes, Mama?”

  With apparent irrelevance she says: “A pity you feel so strongly about our young poet.”

  “He had me at a disadvantage. It was so embarrassing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The long-suppressed question bursts out. “Why did you show him my poems?”

  My mother blinks once or twice, and laughs. “Good heavens, why shouldn’t I? Is there anything terrible about that?”

  “I wish you’d asked me first. After all, I wrote them, and they’re private.”

  Nothing irritates my mother more than any suggestion that she does not have the right to manipulate her children’s lives for their own supposed benefit

  “Any normal girl would be only too glad for a successful young poet to consider her work. Gratitude has never been one of your stronger virtues, Sappho.”

  It suddenly strikes me, at this point, just what my mother is up to. The lessons would be a convenient cover: two poets were bound to adore each other. At the same time Alcaeus’s reputation should prevent any awkward entanglement. My mother has probably arranged the whole thing in advance. The only possibility her plan failed to allow for was that I might be disobliging enough to detest Alcaeus on sight.

  I stare, bemused, torn between laughter, tears, and angry resentment In a way almost too ridiculous to think about I have, it seems, become a conspirator. The wax tablet, with its unfinished poem, still lies on the ground at my feet.

  VI

  Phanias’ house stood—stands—a little outside the city, up in the cool foothills overlooking the sea, with mountains and pine-forests behind it and an uninterrupted view across the straits. It was built by Phanias’ grandfather: a remarkable man, round whom the crust of legend had already begun to accumulate in his own lifetime. He chose a site on a shallow rise, facing south to catch the best of the winter sunlight—and perhaps, too, so that he could enjoy the constant sight of his own land. As far as the eye could reach along that flat, fertile coastal strip, to the last southern promontory, everything—olive-groves, corn-land, vineyards, pasturage—was his inalienable freehold.

  This great estate he had built up over the years, worked on with tireless energy and bequeathed intact to his son and grandson. (It was a standing joke in Mytilene that the family produced one male heir only to each generation, thus avoiding any division of the estate: a tribute, as one wag put it, to the power of wealth over desire.) But at the time I am thinking of, Phanias had two daughters only: his wife Ismene was almost thirty and after seven years’ barrenness seemed unlikely to bear a male heir at all.

  If I shut my eyes I can see the house in every detail: I know it as one can only know a place where one has experienced extremes of happiness or despair. I know the deep cistern where small green lizards lie, motionless except for a faint palpitation in the throat, waiting to catch those tiny flies that skim across the surface of the water. I know the trim walled kitchen-garden, with its orderly rows of cabbages and onions, its sweet-smelling herbs—thyme, rosemary, basil—its weathered bee-hives and its fishpond. I know the stables, and the old barn with the olive-press, and the paddock (there was one big oak-tree in it: I could still climb blindfold up to its central crotch), and the rose-arbour--and the apple-orchard. The house itself had the same comforting sense of tradition and permanence and simplicity: I always found myself touching it, running my fingers sensuously over wood or stone. It was built of fine-squared white ashlar blocks, with heavy cross-beams and iron-studded oak doors; yet the dominating impression was one of airy lightness. On the south side there was a wide, shady upper terrace paved with black and white marble. The two deep wells never ran dry, even in the height of summer.

  Phanias’ grandfather had called the house Three Winds. No one in the family knew why; but no one would have dreamed of changing the name.

  Praxinoa and I are jolting up the paved drive of Three Winds in a mule-cart. Though autumn is in the air the sun is still high, and we both carry parasols. Our mule-driver is a sour, taciturn little man, who prefers (I suspect) animals to human beings, and sits hunched on his box, whistling through broken teeth. I am still excited by the idea of being allowed out on my own, with only a slave-girl as escort. Anyway, Praxinoa doesn’t count as a slave. She is becoming, if not a friend, at least a privileged confidante.

  Between us stands a basket of candied fruits, a present from my mother to. Ismene. I am holding a roll of my latest poems: some are very bad indeed. But this, as my mother has been at pains to point out, does not really matter. What matters is the message on the back of the roll, which has been written with some preparation made from milk, and will become visible when held near a fire. I am going to pay a call on my friend Mica (whom I do not particularly like) and leave her my poems (which, being only twelve, she is too young to appreciate). I am a month short of my fifteenth birthday, very conscious that I have an important, grown-up job to do.

  For this reason I am a little stiff with poor Mica, who is waiting for us in the stable yard and comes running out at the sound of our wheels clattering up the drive. She is short and cheerful and unrepentantly plump, with the clumsy gestures of a puppy. But her hands are exquisite, the hands of an artist. Which, surprisingly, she is.

  “Sappho, you’re really here, oh, it’s wonderful, I’ve been so excited, and you look so beautiful in that dress, pale yellow, lovely, and Mama says we can play in the paddock—”

  “Play?” I am practising some of my mother’s more subtle intonations; this one—a rising note of gentle incredulity—I find very effective. Mica flushes, and breaks off in mid-flow. The mule-driver hawks, spits on the cobbles, looks interrogative: Praxinoa collects the fruit-basket and the parasols and stands behind me. I tell the mule-driver to come back an hour before sunset; he nods briefly and clatters off, still without saying a word.

  “Mama’s expecting you; come and see her.”

  We walk through cool, white, arched corridors to Ismene’s private living-room, away from the central hall and courtyard. She is working on a big tapestry—centaurs and Lapiths--and rises, smiling, when we come in. Her hands are very like Mica’s, and she is plump too; but in her the flesh has assumed different, more harmonious proportions. The room smells of sweet grass and wax: the table and presses are old, beautifully polished, smoothly warm to the touch.

  “Sappho, my dear: how good of you to come.” She is hardly taller than I am, but holds herself very erect. Her thick black hair is drawn back in a chignon: I notice, to my surprise, a few fa
int streaks of grey in it. There is a worried preoccupation at the back of her eyes that belies the welcoming smile. Mica dances to and fro beside me, irrepressible, adoring.

  “Mama—doesn’t she look wonderful?”

  Ismene considers me gravely. “A most exquisite young lady,” she says, and means it.

  I beckon Praxinoa forward with the fruit, and make my small— carefully prepared—speech. I see Ismene’s eye on the roll of poems: how much, I wonder, does she know? Then my eye strays to the wall, where there is a small, vivid, striking likeness of her, painted on wood, and hung to catch the afternoon light: again that imperceptible anxiety about the eyes, caught with extraordinary skill and unobtrusiveness.

  “Do you like it, Sappho?” says Mica eagerly. “Do you think it’s the way Mama looks?” I realize, amazed, that the picture is her work: how can this coltish, ridiculous child possess such insight? Then I catch the thought up, ashamed: who am I to question the unpredictable manner in which the Muses dispose of their gifts?

  “Yes,” I say, “I like it very much.”

  “Can I paint you too, Sappho? Can I? Can I? Please say yes—”

  “Your guest must make up her own mind, Mica,” Ismene smiles.

  Sitting for my portrait, I decide, is a more lady-like way of passing an hour or two than playing hide-and-seek or other childish games.

  “That would be very pleasant,” I say graciously.

  She actually claps her hands with excitement.

  “Oh, thank you—” she cries, and is gone, in a helter-skelter of flying feet, to collect her paints and brushes.

  Ismene says softly, “Poor Mica.”

  “But she’s so happy—”

  “My dear, it’s not easy, being a talented child. You know things before you’re old enough to understand them. Or to bear them.”