The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  This little joke did not, I noticed, amuse the President. But then came a clause which rapidly changed his expression, while the Treasurer sat up in open delight. (He may not actually have rubbed his hands, but he gave a strong impression of doing so.) “In the event of my wife’s death, the above-mentioned estate, with all goods, chattels, livestock and other property whatsoever pertaining thereto, shall be made over, unencumbered and in perpetuity, to the City of Syracuse, for such public use as the Council may determine.” There followed a few details on the granting of freedom to certain household slaves: and that was all. Neither Draco, nor Aunt Helen, nor my mother, nor myself, nor Charaxus and Larichus, nor any of my cousins, were so much as mentioned. In death as in life, Lycurgus had effectively cut himself off from ties of family. Yet he had accepted me as a guest; he seemed on friendly enough terms with Aunt Helen. What had prompted such obscurely paradoxical behaviour?

  There was a moment’s dead silence. Then the President said: “Is that all?”

  The Notary-Public nodded and rolled up the will with a snap that had the air of finality about it. “Yes: that is all.”

  “Ah.” The President eased himself quickly to his feet. “Then we may as well adjourn.”

  “One moment.” The voice was lazy, but had an edge to it. We all looked round in surprise: the brown-faced stranger seemed rather pleased with the effect he had produced. “I don’t think that is all, you know,” he said mildly, and stretched out one hand towards the Notary- Public. “May I see the will, please?”

  The President blinked, coughed, and recovered himself. “On what authority?” he asked. “Who are you, sir?” It was only now I realized that the stranger must have simply walked in uninvited, exuding such calm self-confidence that no one had questioned his right to be there.

  “My name is Cercylas, son of Lygdamus: you might call me a very distant cousin of the deceased. Now: the will, if you please.”

  He stepped forward and, before the Notary-Public could stop him, had twitched the document off the table and was examining it closely. He held it to the light; he turned it upside down; he scrutinized the seal with particular care. Finally he handed it back All the time the Treasurer watched his every movement with sharp, wary eyes, as though expecting some sleight-of-hand substitution.

  “Well, sir,” the President said, “if you have no further questions—”

  “I think you are forgetting”—Cercylas looked from face to face—“the problem of this unfortunate young lady’s future.”

  “Her future can hardly be considered our official concern.” The President’s voice was icy, remote.

  “Oh?” I had seldom heard such a wealth of polite contempt injected into one syllable. “Lady Sappho is now, I would remind you, your guest, my lord President, the city’s guest, and you are bound to treat her according to the laws of hospitality.”

  I gasped; so did the Treasurer. He said: “This is the merest effrontery, sir.”

  “Not at all. You have heard the will read. This house”—he extended his arm—“has become your property; and Lady Sappho is resident in it.”

  The President and the Treasurer looked at each other: the President muttered something which sounded like “shyster quibbling.” I found myself scrutinizing one particular Amazon in the tapestry with almost insane concentration.

  Cercylas said: “Lady Sappho has achieved a considerable reputation here in the last year or two—a well-earned reputation, if I may say so.” He threw me a quick smile, with the same faint hint of complicity in it. “Any scandal —he stroked his short beard—“would be most regrettable. I’m sure you agree.”

  The Treasurer said quickly: “We shall, of course, make every possible allowance for Lady Sappho’s unfortunate position. That was always envisaged.” He looked to the President for support: the President nodded. “There is no question of immediate, ah, removal. Lady Sappho will have ample time to make other arrangements.”

  “How long?”

  “Well, now: a matter of months—”

  “How many months?”

  The Treasurer’s eyes snapped hesitantly. “Perhaps three—”

  “Three. Very well.” Cernylas’ grey eyes glanced round the room. “We have witnesses, my lord President.”

  There was an awkward pause: Callias scuffed his foot across the floor. Then the Treasurer said, a thin sneer in his voice: “Might one ask, sir, just why you are so preoccupied with this lady’s welfare?”

  “One might” Cercylas turned and faced me. His eyes were warm, amused, affectionate. He said: “A conventional reason, Pm afraid, but none the less adequate for that: because I am going to marry her.”

  The strange thing was (as I said in a letter to Meg a month later) that the moment he spoke the words, I knew they were true: and not only true but inevitable, as inevitable as tomorrow’s sunrise. The knowledge had nothing, then, to do with love or desire. It was rooted in recognition: if ever I have believed in the thread of the Fates, it was at that moment. Here was my destiny, prepared for me before time, no more to be refused than the breath in my lungs, and, inexplicably, as familiar. I sat there bemused, while they all looked at each other, uncertain how to deal with this preposterous situation, searching for adequate social phrases to mask their embarrassment, anxious only to be gone. Of course, I was in mourning: that made everything much more difficult.

  But at last, with some semblance of dignity, they filed out: the President nodding briefly, his eyes hooded, withdrawn; the Treasurer cold and glittering, a snake disturbed—and, snakelike, running the tip of his tongue in and out, nervously, between hard, thin lips; the three clerks with heads averted, saying nothing at all. But Callias the banker (whom I had met once or twice before) smiled, and gave me his hand, and said that I should let him know if he could be of service to me; and Lycurgus’ little estate-manager shook his head sadly, as though unable to believe the things he had seen and heard that morning, and wished me happier days, his thick Sicilian accent distorted still further by emotion, tears starring his eyes.

  So I was left alone with Cercylas, in that great, white, sunlit room that had been Chloe’s creation, the room where her personality was omnipresent still, as though independent of the physical self it survived; where her vivid smile, like her scent, still hung invisibly in the air.

  He stood by the open window, head a little bent, so that the sunlight struck gold from his thick hair, hands clasped behind his back. How old was he? Thirty? Forty? I could not tell. There was something unchangeable about him, something that defied the ordinary ravages of time. (How tragically ironic that sounds in retrospect!) He was a man clearly accustomed to wealth; yet the hard, spare lines of his face betrayed no weakness, no self-indulgence. If privilege had left any mark on him, it was in that quality of leisured irony with which he confronted men or situations, and which can only spring from unquestioning self-assurance.

  I said: “I must thank you for your help. It was—most opportune.”

  He smiled gravely. “And I must apologize for an intolerable impertinence.”

  I gave a quick glance round the empty room. “At least,” I said, “the impertinence would appear to have served its immediate purpose.”

  “Well, yes: you might put it that way.” He moved slowly into the middle of the room, as though feeling out its atmosphere and character. By a small occasional table he paused, apparently to examine the bric-a-brac littering it. He ran one finger over an Egyptian cat, carved in lapis lazuli; then his eye fell on a small, exquisite scent-bottle. I felt my heart contract.

  “Lydian,” he said, picking it up. There was a quick, iridescent gleam as he held it to the light. He unstoppered it, sniffed delicately. Our eyes met.

  He said: “She would have wanted you to have a remembrance of her, Sappho.”

  I nodded, and stretched out my hand, past all surprise now, accepting. The twined gold snake-ring glinted on the third finger, the marriage-finger; and he touched it once, quickly, as he put the bottle into my
hand. Then we stood quite still for a moment, facing each other: the floor was paved in great squares of alternating black and white marble, like a chessboard, with us the two last remaining pieces.

  He said, following my glance: “At the court of the Great King in Babylon there is a terrace, chequered with squares such as these, where Nebuchadnezzar and his nobles play at chess after dinner Each piece is a slave, who moves as the player bids him.”

  I gave a tiny gasp: it was like having another mind inside one’s own skull, I felt transparent as air.

  “And what is the forfeit?” I asked.

  “Ah.” He sounded pleased, as though I were a pupil who had passed some unspoken test. “The loser’s slaves are forfeit to the winner.”

  “But here, now, there are no slaves.”

  He said: “No, indeed. Here we must make our own moves—”

  “And suffer for our own mistakes.”

  “Just so,” he said, and as though by common instinct we both moved together, away from open ground, and sat down one on either side of the table where wine, fruit, and cakes had been set out. I struck a hand-bell, and the door-slave came, a little slow at first, a little surly, to fill our cups.

  “Your health,” Cercylas said.

  “Long life, my lord.”

  He paused a moment, the cup half-way to his lips, as though considering. Then—“Long Life,” he said, drained the cup at one draught, and tossed the dregs on the floor.

  I said: “Are you really a distant cousin of my uncle’s?”

  He gave me a level look. “All men are distant cousins,” he said. “Shall we say that between some the distance is considerable?”

  “Then—why did you come here this morning?”

  “To do exactly what you saw me do.” He nodded at the slave, who sprang forward and refilled his cup with quite remarkable promptness. “You see, your position here is not only embarrassing: it might also become dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?”

  He sipped at his wine. “Oh yes. Because, you see, that will is, beyond any reasonable doubt, a forgery. No doubt certain—omissions surprised you. You did right to be surprised.”

  “But who—why—?”

  “Very simple,” Cercylas said. “Lycurgus was a, wealthy immigrant with no immediate relatives except his wife. He was not, as you may have gathered, over-popular among the more conservative members of Syracusan society. I fancy the gentlemen who have just left found the opportunity too tempting to resist.”

  “But that’s impossible—they’re—”

  “Gentlemen, as I said.” The ironic note was back in Cercylas’ voice. “A second copy of your uncle’s real will may be hidden somewhere in this house still, but it would do you very little good to produce it.”

  “I see.” I laid my hands flat on the table in front of me, palms down, and studied them. “Then what am I to do?”

  Cercylas leaned back, considering. “There are several possibilities. You could try, for the time being, to continue your life here in Syracuse— the commissions you receive might help you to a certain independence. But that has obvious drawbacks.”

  I nodded.

  “You could make a formal plea to Myrsilus to have your term of exile curtailed; but—for various reasons—I doubt whether he would prove agreeable. You could try your luck with Periander in Corinth, though I gather the old man is not exactly reliable these days.”

  “I found that out for myself.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  “You seem to know a great deal about me, my lord Cercylas.”

  “Indeed I do: I have made it my business.” The tone was warm, amused, ironic: I could not tell just how seriously be meant what he said. But again there came over me that strange sense of inevitability, of recognition.

  I said: “Have you any further suggestions?” The palms of my hands were damp against the table’s inlaid surface.

  “Only one. Which you know.”

  “That was not a suggestion; it was a statement of fact.”

  He smiled charmingly. “I have apologized for what I said then.”

  “But you still believe it.”

  He made no direct answer to this. Instead he said, after a moment: “Do you want to go back to Mytilene?”

  “Yes. But—”

  “It could be done, Sappho: if you were willing.”

  We looked at each other.

  “Why me?” I whispered. “What can I give you? What can I ever give you?”

  “Have I asked for gifts?” He laid his own hands briefly over mine. He said: “I remember once, as a child in Andros, seeing a man buy a caged bird, a rare, exotic creature, in the market. When he had paid for it—and he paid a very great deal—he stood there, within full sight of the stall-keeper, and opened the cage, so that the bird flew free.”

  I said: “I take your point, my lord Cercylas. Did the man wait to see whether the bird had been trained to return to its keeper?”

  For the first time, Cercylas looked momentarily disconcerted. Then he laughed. “How old are you?” he asked.

  “If you know so much about me, you should know that too.”

  “Perhaps I do. Shall we say, old enough to face emotions without the shield of wit?”

  “If you like.” We both smiled.

  “Well,” he said, rising to his feet, “you have three months’ respite, at least.”

  “I’m grateful for that: more than grateful.”

  His eyebrows rose a fraction. “Are you? I wonder.” He smoothed down the folds of his summer cloak. “Do you always enjoy postponing inevitable decisions?”

  I said: “Only Fate, my lord, is inevitable.”

  “Just so.” He smiled. Then he put one band inside his cloak and drew out a sealed package. “I nearly forgot,” he said. “I promised I would deliver this to you in person.”

  “Promised? Promised whom?”

  He was half way across the room to the door as he turned and said: “Oh, your cousin Megara. And her mother.”

  “You mean you have just come from Mytilene?”

  He nodded; springing surprises seemed to be one of his favourite pastimes. “A month ago,” he said, and then, as though the fact required some explanation: “You see, I travel a good deal.” An instant later he was gone: firm footsteps echoed across the lobby, the watch-dog barked twice, a door slammed, and I heard chains and bolts rattle. I stood there, the package in my hand, staring at the empty doorway.

  I know nothing about him, I told myself helplessly. Nothing at all. Nothing: everything. I felt as though all individualism, all ability to make decisions, to control my own life, had been suddenly paralyzed in me. With slow, leaden steps, my limbs moving like those of a sleep-walker, I went back to the table, sat down, broke the seals on the package, and began to read.

  There were three separate letters enclosed, each very different in appearance and character. The smallest also looked the most intriguing: battered and dog-eared by much travel, annotated in several unfamiliar scripts, smelling faintly of musk. On the back, just under the seal, my mother had made her own characteristic contribution. “Forwarded unopened,” her jagged, unformed handwriting proclaimed—which I took instantly to mean that she had prised the seal loose with a hot knife and knew every word of the contents by heart. I unfolded this letter carefully: words that had travelled across so many seas and frontiers deserved respectful treatment.

  It was from Antimenidas and had been composed three months previously.

  “Greetings,” he wrote, “wherever you may be from humble mercenary captain—now discharged—in the City of Earth and Heaven, the Abode of the Gods, the—oh, I forget the rest of Babylon’s honorific titles, and she can very well do without them. She is vast and splendid and terrifying, and means to be: a desert mirage come true. The Great Whore, our Jewish captives call her, and it is an apt description. Magnificence touched with vulgarity, lush abundance concealing a cold, savage heart.

  “When we trudged down the last long road
from Judaea, and passed under the great Ishtar Gate, with its bulls and dragons and lions golden-bright in the sun, with its towering lapis-blue crenellations, out to the Sacred Way, I felt fear for man’s presumption and pride. How long, I wondered, before the walls of Babylon fall, as the walls of Jerusalem fell to us, when we stormed that last redoubt and fought our way, street by street, to the Holy of Holies itself? Will the priests of Babylon die as these old men died, their thin bodies arched over the sacred scrolls they could no longer protect, their blood on our careless swords? Will the King of Babylon be borne into captivity as, then, the King of Judaea rode chained behind us through the Ishtar Gate?

  “As you see, I am not the stuff of which true professional mercenaries are made: squeamish, homesick, superstitious, I prefer the risks and heartbreaks endured by Odysseus to an ignominious death which lacks even the smallest touch of honour. Odysseus, at least, came back to Ithaca in the end. So, the Gods willing, shall I. I am nearly forty years old; it is time to make an end of wandering.

  “How prosy and sententious all this sounds! And how remote from the gossip, the exciting details of heroic feats-at-arms you will want to hear about! Well, two tit-bits for your entertainment. By luck rather than judgment I unhorsed a most elegant Jewish cavalry officer, and took his sword: this splendid weapon was forged in Damascus, and has an ivory hilt inlaid with gold. The sword so went to my head that I killed a regular giant with it, a great creature five royal cubits tall (well, perhaps a hand’s breadth short of five) and now they are making up ballads about me in Babylon. This is rather embarrassing, because the giant was a shambling ass, and (I suspect) feebleminded: I found killing him no more trouble than spitting a kid.

  “I still wear your amulet: as you see, it has brought me safely through all dangers so far. I hope that very soon I shall be able to return it to you personally, on the soil of our native land. (Why does exile produce such worn, emotional platitudes? They must satisfy some dreadful need in our starved minds, I suppose.) Meanwhile, to tip the scales of fate, I have a gift for you in my baggage: it is bulky, and of a most awkward shape to pack (you should feel flattered), but so appropriate that I could not resist it. The Gods grant us both a speedy homecoming, and happier days.”