The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  I once discussed these visions with Alcaeus, after his return from Egypt. He was full of newly acquired esoteric lore that he had picked up from the priests at Memphis, and a little inclined to self-importance; but he knew enough—I now see—to be properly suspicious of my story.

  He said: “What does the Goddess look like when she appears to you?”

  “Very much the same as the cult-image here in her temple.”

  “Just so. How is she attired?”

  “In the same embroidered robe.”

  “And her, ah, mode of transport?”

  I said: “She flies down through the air in a chariot drawn by birds—sparrows, doves, I’m not sure.”

  “Where does the dream take place? What is its setting?”

  “A temple precinct. There are trees, and a stream, and sunlight overhead, and somewhere smoke from an altar.”

  “And what happens?” Alcaeus asked, sounding genuinely fascinated: he had developed a keen if irreverent passion for obscure cult-practices during his exile. “I mean, is there any formal ritual? Do you fall on your face in adoration? Are there other petitioners?”

  “No, nothing like that. I’m always alone. We just—talk. But—but it’s impossible to get too close to her, there’s a radiance, a power, I can’t explain—”

  He nodded, as though he took this part of it for granted. “She talks informally, then? Like a human being?”

  I gave an involuntary giggle. “Well, yes, very much so—I mean, I do summon her rather often, and generally for the same thing, you know how I am when I fall in love.”

  “No,” Alcaeus said with faint malice, “I fear I don’t; but I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Well, she makes some sort of comment like: What’s the matter with you now, Sappho? Why are you calling on me again? What girl have I got to win over for you this time?”

  “She has all my sympathy, if a mere mortal may presume to offer it to a Goddess.”

  “Then she asks me who it is that’s wronging me, and I tell her.”

  “And then?”

  “Then she generally says something like: Well, I hope you know what you’re doing: the girl may be very coy now, and avoid you, and not accept your presents; but in no time she will be the one chasing you, and showering you with gifts, and besotted with helpless love, and then you’ll appeal to me to get rid of her again—is it worth it?”

  Alcaeus said: “What remarkably sensible advice: why don’t you try following it once in a while?”

  I flushed. “Would you?”

  “Perhaps not.”

  How much older he looked: yet he was—what?—still only thirty-six.

  I said: “Well, what do you make of it all?”

  He considered. “I’m not sure. At first I thought it was all nonsense, you dreaming what you wanted to hear—the visual details are so trite, there are no other worshippers, it’s a private dialogue between you and the Goddess, rather as though she were your mother.”

  “What?”

  “But that last thing you told me: I don’t know. I just don’t know.” He frowned, then gave me his famous cool, ironic smile. He said: “Perhaps it would be better for you if it was all nonsense, don’t you think?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, think of the alternative: you spend a good deal of time calling down the Queen of Heaven to sort out your piddling emotional problems—and I don’t suppose that’s all, either; you’ve probably got her finding lost brooches by now, and healing warts, and procuring fine weather for picnics—and then, after all the trouble she’s taken, you consistently ignore her advice! Sooner or later, Sappho, the Goddess is going to stop finding you an amusing little plaything, and decide that you’re just a bore, a tiresome, self-centred, impertinent bore. When that day comes, my dear, I wouldn’t like to be in your shoes at all.”

  It was never easy to decide when Alcaeus was serious and when he was joking. Sometimes his most flippant remarks had an unexpected edge to them.

  I said, laughing: “Oh, you’re impossible.”

  “So you often tell me. But I exist. The same two statements might be made apropos the Gods, don’t you think?”

  “The Gods move in a different sphere: they do not resemble human beings.”

  “I grant you the different sphere. But if we can trust Homer, the Gods are rather like malicious children, with unlimited power and an irresponsible taste for exercising it on us poor mortals. So I should watch out.”

  “I’m grateful for your advice.”

  “Are you? I wonder.”

  It was then that he made me a present of the little glass phial he had procured in Egypt, the phial which contained nepenthe, the poppy of oblivion.

  I have been looking through the desultory, intermittent journal I began to keep at the time of my marriage. (Odd, that of all self-regarding habits it should be this one which I have always found it impossible to maintain with any regularity.) Because of their gaps and omissions, re-reading these entries has a strange, almost hallucinatory effect on me: some long-forgotten incident is vividly illuminated, as lightning will branch through the darkness during a storm at night, and then, abruptly, all becomes black once more. I feel, incongruously, an eavesdropper, an intruder upon the private thoughts of this twenty-five-year-old woman who is not myself but an alien stranger. I don’t think we would much care for each other if we met.

  “Seagulls overhead in the spring sunlight, swooping and yapping round the mast-head. Cercylas knows each different type, name, habits, breeding-grounds. To me they are just gulls. He says I should observe more closely, that a poet should understand the world around him. His range of knowledge is vast and unpredictable. Stars, mathematics, medicine—whatever can be named and ordered. He has a passion for tidiness.

  “A few moments ago we sighted the citadel of Corinth. Strange, to be coming back now, nearly five years later—five years!—with nothing changed, the blue waters of the Gulf, the long rocky coastline; it might even be the same thick-waisted merchantman, dipping gently along with its great patched sail spread to catch every last breath of wind. I sit on the after-decks and write, as I once sat with Arion. Cercylas is somewhere forward, he always leaves me to myself when he sees me get my tablets out.

  “How little I know of him, really. Even in the six months that passed before I could come out of full mourning, and get married, he remained tangential, enigmatic. He never speaks of his family. There has been no suggestion that we should visit Andros. He has been travelling constantly for years. If he ever was a merchant, he has long since abandoned his calling: perhaps he made a lucky early fortune. He is knowledgeable about jewellery, pictures, rare luxuries such as silk and amber. Sometimes I wonder if he has been married before. Absurdly, I can never bring myself to ask him. Even his age remains a mystery.”

  [Of course, the air of mystery, the elusiveness, was deliberately cultivated: Cercylas knew very well it would please me. I found out later, through various friends, that he was forty-four at the time of our marriage; that his parents had died during the great plague on Andros when he was ten, leaving him a large fortune; that he had trebled this fortune by the age of thirty, through clever speculation and trading ventures; and that he had never been married. Nor, so far as anyone could tell, did he care for boys. The aloofness was only half a pose. But he knew influential people everywhere, and the speed with which he persuaded Myrsilus to revoke my decree of exile was astonishing. I have sometimes wondered if he was not, in some very discreet capacity, a political agent for Periander.]

  “Corinth now a bright, colourful, exciting city, no sense of cruelty or oppression. Stroll down street of the goldsmiths, this time can buy what I like. Cercylas inveterate bargainer, which embarrasses me. Haggled over lapis ring till I begged him to come away, said I didn’t want it. Cercylas just smiled that infuriating lazy smile of his, went on arguing. Cot ring in end. Am wearing it now, with what Cercylas calls ‘a nice air of grievance.’

  “At dinner this evenin
g heard extraordinary tale about Arion, who, it seems, recently turned up in Corinth out of the blue, and to all appearances penniless. Last heard of making fabulous profit from much publicized Italian concert-tour, no reply to sharp letter from Periander saying it was high time he came back to his official duties; so Periander naturally suspicious. Arion’s explanation not calculated to make him less so. Arion said he sailed at once from Tarentum on receipt of letter, but crew plotted to rob him of his earnings. Let him sing one last song before being thrown overboard. Touching scene. While in water, miraculous school of dolphins appears, largest dolphin takes him on its back, lets him ride in comfort till they reach land. Arion deposited on beach at Cape Taenarum in southern Peloponnese, recognized, makes way home overland to Corinth.

  “Periander receives this nonsense with polite incredulity, keeps Arion under house arrest, waits for ship to dock. Crew brought, in for interrogation, captain explains that Arian booked passage at Tarentum, but changed mind at last moment and stayed in Italy. Yes, he was in good health then. Sudden appearance of Arion, crew flabbergasted when he tells his story, more so when Arion’s loot, or part of it, later found hidden in ballast of ship. Arion vindicated, crew executed, Arion becomes hero overnight, beloved of Gods, recipient of divine aid and so on. Large statue of Arion on dolphin’s back commissioned for public square.

  “Our host claims to know true story, but warns that this cannot now be revealed, since it would make Periander look a fool. According to him, Arion was determined to stay in Italy and enjoy his enormous success: the last thing he wanted was to come back to Corinth and surrender bulk of Italian windfall to Periander’s treasury officials. Besides, Periander now very moody and unpredictable after his son’s death: court retainer’s position no longer quite attractive. Arion, understandably, determined to vanish and start new life. Goes aboard ship at Tarentum secretly, after dark, stays below throughout voyage. Bribes crew to put him off on island of Zacynthus, and to inform Periander that he is still in Italy. From Zacynthus takes another boat, sailing for Ionia by the long haul round the Peloponnese, well out of Periander’s way.

  “Boat unfortunately wrecked off Cape Taenarum by sudden storm. Arion washed ashore still clutching strong-box, but meets agent of Periander’s travelling to Gythium. Recognition, panic, dolphin-story invented on spur of moment. Arion returns to Corinth—what else could he do?—bribes friend to secrete half his Italian gold in ship’s ballast when it docks. Thus cuts losses, saves head, keeps reasonable proportion of loot, gains useful publicity. (After all, Periander bound to die soon, well over seventy now.) Just the kind of thing the old fraud would do.”

  [I thought this second version of the story true when I heard it; on the whole I still do. Arion’s own explanation bristled with improbabilities, and came much too symbolically pat: after all, the dolphin is the emblem of Lesbos. This kind of thing was a habit with him. His birthplace, I happen to know, was not Antissa—as he always used to claim—but Methymna: he made the change, of course, because Antissa was where the severed head of Orpheus was washed up. Arion put it about that he was Orpheus’ descendant, and had inherited the divine gift of song from his illustrious ancestor’s buried skull. This got him enormous respect everywhere—except, of course, in Methymna. Yes, the unpublished version must be true.

  But I have always been a little puzzled as to how he found anyone who would plant that vital evidence for him at such short notice; and since then I have heard some most remarkable (and far better authenticated) tales concerning dolphins. So a lingering doubt remains in my mind. Does it matter, after all? Arion is dead now: it is his work that lives and by which ultimately he will be judged. If posterity chooses to make a legend of him, that should at least preserve his art from oblivion.

  Why, then, do I so stubbornly, and at such cost, still labour to discover the truth concerning myself?]

  “The shocks and disillusions of home-coming. Fixed pictures to be eradicated from the mind, the acceptance—so damaging to one’s self-conceit—that life can go on while one is somewhere else. Ridiculous, but at the back of one’s mind—my mind—there lurks the unformulated notion that a place, people, need my presence to exist at all, that when I go, time stops, and the puppets stand motionless till set going by my return. But the harbour has been rebuilt, there are new houses and shops, everywhere the eye receives an unfamiliar image. Odd how strong my attachment to this dream of timeless, unchanging peace. If it came true I would be bored to death inside a month.

  “But I still can’t face, emotionally, the facts that my rational mind had known and prepared for long ago. I feel that everyone is conspiring to play an elaborate practical joke on me, that sooner or later they will wipe the skilful lines from their faces, brush the white powder from their hair, and put everything back as it was before. I can’t really believe that Aunt Helen is nearly fifty and has, despite everything, married Myrsilus; or that my brother Charaxus, by some legalistic juggling, is now master of the square grey house on the citadel, or—worst admission of all—that I am married, a young matron (disgusting phrase) whose life, however sensitive and generous my husband may be, is now totally different, metamorphosed, part of a new, unfamiliar pattern.

  “Charaxus very wary with me, Irana simpering but hostile. Obviously afraid I intend to make trouble over the house. Full of talk about trading investments, profits, improving the estate. So boring. Charaxus at twenty-two a horrible little prematurely middle-aged tub of a man. Repulsive: couldn’t bear to touch him. What does Irana feel when he makes love to her? If he makes love to her. And now he has poor Agenor working for him: he hasn’t changed, still dark, shy, devoted, with that terrible air of responsibility which always makes me feel so obliged, even after spending half an hour in his company chatting about trivialities. Charaxus has kept Meg on, too, as unpaid housekeeper and—I suspect—handy permanent scapegoat for his poisonous temper. She kept hinting broadly that life would be so much more bearable with me and Cercylas. I have no doubt it would be—for her.

  “Pittacus’ wife died a month or two before my—our—return. I’m sorry. I was fond of Chione, though I seldom saw her. She had no pretensions at all, and very little breeding, but she was warm, generous, spontaneous: a real person. Their boy Tyrrhaeus has grown into a weak, surly lout with a taste for the bottle: he seems to have inherited all his father’s worst qualities. Friends tell me he goes round a good deal with Larichus now. Must try, tactfully, to stop this. Larichus too innocent (and beautiful) to be true, very easily influenced and anxious for popularity, a disastrous mixture. What can I tell him without making myself look the bossy, interfering, married elder sister I’m so desperately anxious he shouldn’t see me as?

  “This morning, in the market, I suddenly came face to face with Andromeda and Cargo. They were standing together at a stall beside the fountain, where caged birds and other pets are on sale daily. Andromeda had a gaudy red-and-green parrot perched on her shoulder and was arguing with the stall-keeper, a thin, hunchbacked little Syrian who looked extraordinarily like some rather unpleasant bird of prey himself, with his balding head, coarse black hair, and the red, loose folds of skin under his jaw. (Can people come to resemble the creatures they keep?) Our eyes met: we quickly looked away again, like strangers. Or enemies. There was nothing to say, no possible point of contact between us.

  “She has not changed at all: still the same short, rough-cut black curls, still the awkward movements, the rather large, clumsy hands, the brown, tomboyish face. What was appealing in a schoolgirl has become incongruous past belief in a grown woman of nearly thirty. As we stared, embarrassed, first at each other, then anywhere else, the parrot screeched harshly: “Do you love me, then? Do you love me? Do you love me? after which, tickled, I suppose, by its own brilliance, it burst into paroxysms of mindless laughter. Startled, I turned my head back, and saw the open expression of derision on Andromeda’s face. She whispered something to Gorgo, who grinned and nodded. The parrot went on laughing till I was out of ear
shot.”

  [Dishonest again: the one thing I leave out of this account is the fact that I found Andromeda as overpoweringly attractive, in the purely physical sense, as I had ever done. While that wretched parrot was having its fun (I found out, afterwards, that Andromeda had bought it months before, and now—the joke having worn a little thin, even for her—was attempting to sell it back again) I stood there in so violent and humiliating a state of excitement that I could only just control my features. She knew that, too: she always did. It was dreadful: I didn’t even like her any more, she was coarse and inartistic and (as I soon learnt) afflicted with absurd social pretensions, which her father’s position let her gratify to the full.

  Aphrodite must have been in a splendid joking mood that day: perhaps it was then that her capricious divine mind formulated the notion of using Andromeda, when the time came, as one of the instruments for my destruction.]

  “Today we found the house. We both knew it was right the moment we saw it, yet it was wildly different from anything I had planned for in advance. An abandoned farmstead on the hillside above the straits, a mile or so south of the city. Pear-trees in the garden, lizards flickering in and out of the ancient, crumbling stone walls. We had only come out to see the place on impulse—it was a fine day, the carriage was harnessed up. Why not? This is the sort of thing that makes Cercylas so endearing. No hesitation, no argument, an instant picking up of one’s mood.

  “The owner’s agent struggled with locks and bars and nailed-up shutters, helped by a most inefficient slave who only succeeded in making things worse, but one couldn’t, somehow, be cross with him, the day was so perfect: doves cooing from the roof-top, that wonderful scent of thyme and marjoram, the excitement as room after room was opened up, light flooding in on bare floors and walls, the certainty that this was right, that it was where we belonged. We tried to look critical and unenthusiastic, but I don’t think we convinced the agent for one moment. His slave was grinning like a split melon when we left.