by Peter Green
Under one fear another, deeper one: what does Chloe’s love mean to her, how much is it worth, how deep does it run? Sometimes she seems the gay, casual dragonfly and nothing more, accepting devotion as her due, skimming over the bright surface of reality, as elusive and untouchable as Aphrodite herself, the Goddess of a thousand lovers. I can only trust, accept, take the moment of happiness and enjoy it to the full. Then I look at Lycurgus, bent over the balustrade beside me, fingers interlocked (fingers that know Chloe’s body as I know it), thick bleached hair falling across his forehead, and I think: This man is my lover’s husband; I am his guest, I enjoy his hospitality, and in return I sleep with his wife like any common adulterer. Why should my sex protect me from that name?
Breaking a long silence he says, with slow deliberation: “I love my wife. Because I love her, I desire her happiness with my whole heart. The fulfilment you find in each other is a source of joy to me too. You may think that strange. If you do, you should reflect that love can take many forms, not all of them easy or familiar.”
“Other passions can ape the name of love: isn’t that just as truer
“Indeed it is.” His eyes search mine. “There are many masks, and many false gods. But Love you can recognize, even when he wears a mask: his hands are outstretched, bearing gifts, seeking nothing. The empty hands that clutch at pleasure, the voice crying, ‘Give!’—these have no part in him.”
I nod, bemused: where have I heard such words before? Of course: from Aunt Helen, who is Lycurgus’ sister (the binding ties of blood, the whole world linked like a web) as she sat on my bed and offered me comfort: Aphrodite has many moods and many faces. Chloe’s bright features dissolve, are overlaid by the brutal, drunken, suffused mask of Pittacus, in his weakness and his lust.
“I understand, my lord.” Are his words aimed at me, then? Is the strength and purity of my love, rather than Chloe’s, being called in question? Startled, I realize that this possibility is something I have never, till now, so much as considered.
He scrutinizes me with odd fixity.
“Yes: I think perhaps you do.” He draws a deep breath. “Let me make one thing clear, and then we need never refer to the subject again. You are welcome in my—in our house for as long as you may wish. I bear you no ill-will or reproach. You are nor—he blinks quickly—“imposing on me in any way. I regard you only with affection and love. I believe in your love for Chloe: because I believe in it, I accept it.”
His words are so formal, so stilted, that they can be nothing but a shield held out to cover his naked, too-vulnerable emotions. I nod in gratitude, eyes brimming, unable to speak. It is only later, alone, that I begin to think about Lycurgus himself, to wonder what complex motivation could bring a man, any man, to declare himself in such terms.
On the twilight edge of sleep a question poses itself, unbidden and unexpected: Why have they never had children? But the question goes unanswered, slips over the smooth, black edge of the chasm, plummets, echoing, down to where nightmare and fantasy wait to rack the unconscious mind.
Ceremony, of one sort or another, governs our lives to a greater extent than we suppose. It is strange how my Sicilian memories constantly return to the formal, the ritual occasion: perhaps then, more than at any period of my life till now, I needed that sustaining framework which men build to contain and shape and enrich the random pattern of their individual existence. Without the hallowed and hallowing acts, words, observances which mark the year’s passing, enshrine the great facts of birth and renewal and dissolution, we would be no more than leaves blown down a grey, limitless valley, a whisper of rain-washed bones.
There were the small, private rituals: the pinch of incense dropped in the flame of Aphrodite’s house-shrine, the gesture with finger and thumb to avert the evil eye. There were the odd and often pathetic commissions which began to come my way: would I compose an epitaph for a child who died at three months of a fever? would I find comforting words to sustain an inconsolable widow in her bereavement? I never refused such a request; I knew—who better?— that a healing balm lies in such formal verses, they draw out and delimit the unresolved pain.
But many requests were of a happier nature. Looking through the yellowing papers on my desk I see the rough draft of a thank-offering to Artemis by Aristo, daughter of Hermocleitus. For a moment memory fails me: who was Aristo? What was her thank-offering? Then I see a long, beautiful, ivory-pale face, the robes of a priestess: she was dedicating her still unnamed baby daughter to Artemis’ service. I am a child who cannot speak—Where, I wonder, is the statue now? What has become of Aristo’s daughter?
But, ironically enough, what I found myself asked to do most frequently—so often, in fact, that it became a fashionable craze among Syracusan high society—was to write and compose wedding-songs: processional chant, bridal farewell, ribald catches for the feast, formal epithatamion. There is only a limited number of things one can say on such occasions, and I said them all: night after night, as an honoured guest, I played and sang amid the raucous laughter and the rose-petals and the thump of the drums, till some sweating, frightened, half-drunk young couple would be thrust into their bridal-chamber, like haltered oxen ready for the sacrificial axe.
There, in pain and darkness, while the revelry went on outside, a girl would be deflowered on the great herb-strewn bed, and the proof of her defloration triumphantly displayed at the window by its grinning accomplisher, in the light of countless waving, smoky torches, to an approving roar from the crowd below.
One day, as I walked in the hills above the city the spring air cool on my face, the tall planes riotous with bird-song, my eye was caught by a splash of purple against the fresh-turned soil: a hyacinth, trodden into the furrow by some careless labourer’s boot, yet still retaining an echo of its lost, fragile beauty. The image haunted my mind for days afterwards: what could more aptly express the invasion of maidenhood, the shattering of transient innocence?
My wedding-hymns were, as I said, much sought-after: everyone agreed that no marriage ceremony was complete without the charming and delicate accompaniment I provided for it.
A short, characteristic note from Arion: “You will be pleased—at least, I presume you will—to hear that the judges awarded me first prize in the Himera festival. One cannot, alas, eat a wreath (unless one happens to be a donkey, and even then it would be somewhat short commons ), so I have been persuaded to give a series of public performances on the mainland, in Rhegium and Sybaris and such-like places, where gold is plentiful, but artistic discrimination, shall we say, a little to seek? The experience should prove nauseating, but profitable: a commonplace which (if all I hear from Syracuse is true) you are now discovering for yourself.” The letter concluded with a self-caricature in lieu of signature: a frolicking dolphin, its features unmistakable, a lyre tucked under one fin, moneybags dangling from its jaws, and a garland—slightly askew—perched above them.
In the streets black-clad women bow and sway, hair streaming loose and grey with ashes: their wailing rises in harsh, discordant waves throughout the city, from Ortygia to the distant heights of Epipolae, mourning for the dead Adonis, done to death by the boar’s tusks far away in the Syrian hills, the lost lover of Aphrodite. From his spilt blood springs the scarlet anemone, her thorn-flayed flesh dyes the white rose crimson.
Down the street comes the slow procession, shaven heads, a dead skirl of flutes, the bier borne aloft with the young dead God on it, who yesterday lay in his marriage-couch, many-garlanded, decked in flowers, fruits and honey-cakes piled about him, a bridegroom for one day only. Adonis is dead, keen the women, Adonis is dead, and the words sigh skyward, darkening heaven, The tender Adonis is dead. Cytherea: what can we do? ah, what can we do? Then the antiphonal answer, loud, despairing: Beat your breasts, maidens, rend your garments. Blood-dabbled cheeks, the slow thud of the drums, down to the sea by Arethusa’s spring now, the image cast on the waves: Woe for Adonis, the four months’ sojourner! But tomorrow is joy, is resurrecti
on, Adonis will rise again, deathless, ageless, like Aphrodite reborn from the foam, the year in his godhead, the tree of life branching out of him.
Soon after the festival of Adonis I caught a fever: nothing serious, but enough to keep me in bed, sweating and shivering, prey to fantastic dreams, my mind moving a little above and beyond reality. Chloe sat with me for hours, silent now, watchful, but—did I imagine it?—a little restless and impatient, as though fretting to be away. Then, on the third day, she broke the news to me: she and Lycurgus were travelling out to visit their estate near Enna. A pity, but the trip had been planned: they couldn’t put it off now. They would be away for at least ten days. “But you’ll be well looked after, darling. I’ve given them strict orders.”
The pressure of her hand, a quick smile, that heavy, acrid scent: the crisp rustle of a new, kingfisher-blue dress. Something was gone, withdrawn, a spark, something powerful but intangible: she hates illness, I thought, yes, of course, how could she not hate it, with her vitality, her unquenchable zest for life? Excuses were easy to make, left a shadow behind. But Chloe’s shadow went with her, through the door, into the bright Sicilian sunlight.
I dozed and dreamed, woke, slept again. Always the same dream: I was in the temple, standing before the great image of the Goddess, the smell of incense and dried blood in my nostrils. There were the golden stars on the white robe, the flowered coronal, the eyes that looked into mine. The lips moved, but I could not catch the words they framed: wave-like chanting rose to drown the message, grew louder, louder, till suddenly a voice cried: “This is the Queen of Heaven,” and it was Chloe I saw, Chloe crowned and robed, green eyes bright in the half-light, a cold effulgence round her.
A priestess stepped forward, white, anonymous, bearing a black veil, and draped the Goddess like a mourner: the chanting changed its note, took on that terrible harsh plangency I knew too well: Adonis is dead, the thin voices called, Adonis is dead. Then, in a blinding flash of light, the veil was split apart, to reveal the passionate, hate-filled, distorted features of my mother; and I woke, screaming incoherently, to the startled faces of two maids keeping vigil by my bedside.
On the tenth day her letter reached me: a tiny note, hastily sealed, the bold, looping handwriting for once shaky and indecisive. All it said was: can’t go on. I can’t explain. Try to forgive me, darling. C.” The fever left me an hour after I bad read it: I sat up in bed, numb, unfeeling, all my facial muscles stiff, as though I had just recovered from a stroke. It was thus that the courier from Enna found me, late that same afternoon.
He came into my bedroom unannounced, sweat-stained, covered with dust from his long ride, and told me, in a few blunt, brutal phrases, that Lycurgus and Chloe were both dead, murdered by bandits in the wild hill-country beyond Agyrium. “Yes,” I whispered, “yes. I understand. Thank you.” He hesitated a moment, cleared his throat, and said awkwardly: “I’m sorry, my lady.” A long pause. “Well—” and he backed towards the door, tangle-footed, desperate to get away.
Long after he had gone I still sat there, staring at the wall, unable to move, nightmare and truth mingling inextricably in my mind, so that the crowned Queen of Heaven merged into that other figure my imagination saw so clearly—a torn, naked body abandoned among wayside rocks, its lily flesh carrion now, raped and bloody, those bright green eyes mere gristle for vultures’ beaks to tear, the last, desperate message an enigma no one would ever solve.
XI
Now the year moves on towards winter, and still the weather holds. The days are cooler, but still bright: the sea remains calm. Here from my hillside window outside Mytilene I can watch the heavyladen ships labouring down the straits, bound for Chios or Athens. Or, perhaps, Syracuse. I follow their progress against that pale, cloudless sky. For the first time I find myself, against all expectation, thinking: it is not too late.
I sit, face cupped in my hands, conscious of the blood’s slow pulsing behind my temples, through my whole frame, conscious of it, today, as a woman, having had the reminder that my creative strength—in its most potent, physical manifestation—remains undimmed. I am fifty years old; and I could still bear another child. His child. The yearning desire came on me unawares, pierced me with a terrible sweet agony, so that the very muscles of my womb seemed to contract, and my breasts to engorge like those of a nursing mother.
But I thrust the desire down, fought and conquered it: the Moon cannot follow Endymion, no enchantments are powerful enough to call back the migrant, vagrant heart. Let him squander his beauty and his strength on Sicilian whores, let him die—as he is sure to die one day—in some dark alley with a cuckold’s knife between his ribs, or as Chloe died, under a cruel, indifferent sky, broken, violated, a bare carcass robbed of all humanity, all power to bind or to enthral. Let him die, and let me find peace.
If I had not been in so deep a state of emotional shock after Chloe’s death, I might have derived much quiet, malicious pleasure from its immediate consequences. No one could decide whether I was to be treated as Chloe’s ex-lover (in which case they could patronize me with impunity, and get me out of the house in the minimum decent time), or as an honoured family guest, virtually Lycurgus’ adopted daughter (which meant, since the will had not yet been read, that I had to be treated civilly, at the very least), or as a distinguished resident foreign artist who might well add to the city’s cultural prestige.
The result, in terms both of hypocrisy and embarrassment, was memorable. Slaves veered between veiled insubordination and oily obsequiousness, while the visiting deputation from Syracuse’s Council of Nobles confined themselves almost entirely to official condolences and platitudes: they might have been hedging their bets on a doubtful starter at the races.
When the Notary-Public revealed the contents of Lycurgus’ will, however, this saving uncertainty was abruptly removed; and I began to realize, for the first time, just how precarious my position could become when I stood alone, an exile and a woman, in this alien city.
It was an odd group which gathered to learn Lycurgus’ last wishes and bequests: the President and Treasurer from the Council of Nobles, attended by three rather scrubby-looking clerks; a dark, jowly, middle-aged man, with a close-shaven skull and a large signet-ring, who turned out to be Lycurgus’ banker; the manager of his Enna estates, a short bearded Sicilian Greek who spoke in so broad an accent that I could barely understand him; myself, feeling both an intruder and an unwelcome embarrassment to everyone (yet Lycurgus had, after all, been my uncle by marriage); and a stranger who said very little to anyone, a lean man of something over middle height, with pensive grey eyes, fair hair, and an abstracted manner.
Of course, the most curious thing about this assembly was the absence of relatives—that chattering horde of aunts, cousins, spinster sisters, half-brothers and the like, who descend on the dutifully mourning family like hungry crows in winter, ready to peck up any crumb that may be thrown to them. For that matter, where was the family itself? There were no children of Lycurgus’ marriage; and all his family connections lay in Mytilene. Chloe herself had been an orphan, with (as far as I knew) no living blood-relatives. I sometimes thought it was as though they had both, in a curious way, tried to cut themselves altogether adrift from the normal network of human relationships.
So we sat there, in that white, high-ceilinged room which Chloe had done so much to make beautiful—the thick Milesian rugs, the honey-yellow sheepskins, the wine-and-blue tapestry, Amazons embattled against Theseus, which ran the whole length of one wall, the strange, haunting Egyptian statuettes—and drank sweet wine, and ate small honey-cakes, and watched the Notary-Public fuss over his sealed and beribboned documents.
Then I became aware that the taciturn stranger had come out of his revery, and was watching me. I looked up: those extraordinarily clear grey eyes met mine without any embarrassment or dissimulation: He raised his eyebrows fractionally, as though to say: What are we doing here? And I felt my lips twitch in the ghost of a grin.
I stud
ied him carefully for the first time, matching his own frank scrutiny. He had thick, crisp fair hair, worn rather longer than the fashion, and sun-bleached in places till it was almost white. By contrast, his face was tanned—the metaphor is just—to the colour and consistency of leather. He wore a short beard; his hands were unexpectedly delicate—not weak, rather the opposite, a wire-drawn elegance, tension concealing strength.
The Notary-Public cleared his throat gently to attract my attention: he was ready at last, and wanted a perfect anticipatory tableau. The will, yes, that was the will he had there, a single sheet of parchment with Lycurgus’ seal dangling from it: and despite myself I craned forward a little, curious, expectant.
It was one of the briefest wills I have ever heard; and also one of the most unexpected. Lycurgus left his entire estate to Chloe: there were no other bequests whatsoever. “Since under Syracusan law,” the Notary-Public read, in his thin, precise voice, “women are deemed beings incapable of reason, and therefore debarred from inheriting property in their own name, I appoint my friend and financial adviser, Callias, son of Sotades”—the shaven banker smiled, and rubbed one finger across his nose—“as administrator of the estate on my wife’s behalf, her decision in all matters being final.”