The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  “Well, you didn’t, my dear,” Ismene said: I could well believe it. Mica’s emotions were always kept alarmingly well under control. Agesilaïdas smiled reassuringly at his wife, as though to say: These girls’ problems are now my responsibility. He was about the same age as Cercylas, and had, like him, a curiously ageless appearance: there was hardly a touch of grey in his thick-springing black hair.

  Mica said, flouncing: “I’ll go and fetch her, she’s only trying to attract attention—”

  I said breathlessly: “No, I’ll go, Mica—I’ve got a bit of a headache, the fresh air will do it good—” which was, I suppose, an even more transparent excuse than Cercylas’. Mica looked surprised and a little cross; Ismene smiled in gratitude; Agesilaïdas gave me one quick, penetrating glance, then turned back to Melanippus. I slipped out of the house, picking up my skirts as I ran lightly down the garden to the orchard-gate, heart pounding, a dazzle of sunlight in my eyes, the air alive with murmurous bees and the heavy scent of roses and jasmine and honeysuckle. I knew where I would find her.

  The swing still hung from the apple-tree, its ropes green with age: she sat there, almost motionless, except for a tiny to-and-fro pivoting on one down-pointed foot. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she seemed to be staring at the grass immediately in front of her: the coiled plait of deep auburn hair shone like burnished copper where the light struck it.

  I stood there, trembling, throat dry, unable to say a word. Then she looked up, and her grave face broke into that glorious, transfiguring smile I remembered so well. She rose, arms outstretched, and came to me. Her every movement was simple, beautiful, certain. “My love,” she whispered, “oh, my love: at last.” As our lips met I saw, over her shoulder, a petal of apple-blossom, caught by some gentle spring breeze, circle slowly down to join the white drift in the grass below.

  Something had died in Aunt Helen: that was the first thing I realized about her when we met again, and it gave me a far greater shock than I was prepared, at the time, to admit. The fact that she looked older had little to do with this impression. Aunt Helen today, in her mid-seventies, is still more striking, physically, than almost any other woman I know. But there was this strange absence, a sense of darkness, as though some inner light had gone out. The only other person who affected me in the same way (when I met him I did not know his past history) was an ex-priest who had broken his vows. Perhaps this was no coincidence.

  The effect, I found, was to reduce our once-intimate relationship to something much more careful and distanced. Five years before I would have told her all about Atthis, for example: now the very idea of doing so filled me with acute distaste. As time went on I was forced to admit that on occasion I not only actively disliked Aunt Helen but was also a little afraid of her.

  I find it hard to believe that her chequered sexual career was responsible for this change in my feelings: perhaps I underestimate my own prudishness, but I doubt it. I think, rather, that in my later childhood I had come to regard Aunt Helen as the embodiment of all aristocratic virtues, a person endowed with faith in much more than a circumscribed religious sense: and to find her following a course of increasingly shabby expediency during and after Pittacus’ rise to power shook the foundations of my own world more than I knew. We had become almost literally strangers to one another.

  So when she came round to see me, a few days after Cercylas had dined with Myrsilus, I was polite, deferential, friendly; but very much on my guard. There were too many unsolved mysteries between us, somewhere the truth had lost itself in a quagmire of private jealousies, political lies, and that lust for power which is so much stronger and more corrosive than any physical passion.

  We made rather awkward social conversation for a while, and all the time Aunt Helen watched me, her great topaz eyes opaque now and heavy-lidded, her mouth set in those sharp, determined lines that are the signature, on a woman, of ruthless ambition and pride. There was a silver bowl of roses on the low table between us, I remember: one or two crimson petals lay scattered across the polished surface, like tiny shallops becalmed.

  Aunt Helen said: “You know, I miss your mother. We never agreed about anything, but I respected her integrity.”

  “I miss her too, Aunt Helen. I think towards the end we were beginning to—understand one another.”

  Aunt Helen’s eyes narrowed a little: I could see her trying to work out just how much I knew. She said: “Perhaps we only ever appreciate our parents when they’re dead and can’t annoy us any more.”

  “That’s true.” I smiled. “I don’t think Mama wanted to be appreciated; at least, not by me. It was always when I felt most affectionate—and I did, you know, quite often—that she would, without fail, produce her most outrageously irritating tricks.”

  Aunt Helen picked up a rose-petal and sniffed it thoughtfully. “You’re so like her, Sappho: do you mind my saying that?”

  “Of course I don’t mind: I know it myself now.”

  “Yes.” She nodded. “Your exile taught you a good deal, didn’t it?”

  I smiled again: my fingers moved sensuously over the heavy linen folds of the new dress I had put on, for the first time, that afternoon. I said: “Should I be grateful?”

  “Perhaps. You’ve come back a rather formidable person—distinguished poet, lady of fashion, political unknown quantity, married to a man who’s just as charming and an even greater enigma.”

  I said: “Do I have Sphinx-like qualities? How delightful.” Privately I was wondering just what Myrsilus had asked Aunt Helen to get out of me and when she would come to the point. There were one or two questions I felt like asking myself too.

  Aunt Helen said abruptly: “When did you last hear from Antimenidas?”

  “I had a letter just before we left Sicily. He was in Babylon then.”

  “And Alcaeus?”

  I shrugged. “You probably know more than I do. He never writes.”

  “Perhaps not letters.” Amused, I recalled the scandalous poem about Aunt Helen’s sexual adventures which my mother had passed on to me. Alcaeus was rumoured to be the author, and the memory obviously still rankled.

  “Oh?” I looked as blank as I could.

  Aunt Helen said: “Supposing they were recalled from exile, granted an amnesty—do you think they could be relied on to behave themselves?”

  So that was it. “But surely,” I said, prevaricating, “the Council are responsible for such decisions. Why come to me?”

  Aunt Helen shrugged. “In the last resort, of course, the Council must decide. But it’s a difficult problem. You knew them both—perhaps better than anyone. You were in their confidence, you’ve heard from Antimenidas recently—you must have some idea of how they feel.”

  “Even if I do,” I said, “I’m by no means sure it would be right for me to answer such questions.”

  “The Council would treat your opinions as confidential.”

  “I see,” I said; and the pattern was, indeed, only too clear.

  “Your own position is still a little anomalous,” Aunt Helen said. “You’re here on probation, as it were. This would be an excellent moment for you to show where your true loyalties lie.”

  I sat staring at the rose-bowl, considering the double-edged implications of that last remark. Since my return from Sicily I had carefully avoided any situation which might force me to declare myself. I had cultivated a pose of individualism, emphasized my absorption in purely personal relationships—and of course, to a great extent, the pose was scarcely more than the truth. Now, abruptly, I had to decide where I stood, to whom, if anyone, I owed allegiance.

  By compounding with Myrsilus’ regime, had I not forfeited the right to oppose it? And did I, in the last resort, want to? Had I not moved nearly as far from the aristocratic ideal as Aunt Helen herself? No one, least of all myself, any longer believed in their heart of hearts that the old days would ever return. Antimenidas had said as much, on the day before that last, disastrous assault on the citadel. To judge fro
m his behaviour in exile at Pyrrha, Alcaeus had known it too.

  But would that knowledge alter their sense of irrevocable committal? I could not believe it then, and events proved me right. I remembered Antimenidas’ letter, his last, fiat words in the council chamber: I am going to kill you, Myrsilus. By my head I swear it. The Gods, and his own pride, had condemned Antimenidas to a life that could only end in tragic failure: there was no other way for him.

  But Alcaeus, with his agonizing blend of political certitude and physical cowardice, faced a still more nightmarish future—grumbling, resentful, impotent submission to the regime he detested, and which found him, not dangerous, but mildly ridiculous: a pathetic anachronism, a seedy, sodden, decadent aristocrat only tolerated because he had once written a handful of good poems about flowers$ and birds, and the changing seasons, and similarly harmless topics.

  Would it not, I asked myself, be wiser, and more merciful, to deny these men the home-coming that must surely kill them? All I had to do was express my honest opinion: that from the moment those two landed on Lesbos, Myrsilus, if no one else, would be in mortal danger.

  Yet Alcaeus and Antimenidas were my friends: could I, by a word, condemn them—perhaps for ever this time—to the living death of exile?

  Aunt Helen’s eyes were fixed on me, scrutinizing my least change of expression. I think she thoroughly relished the dilemma she had placed me in, the moral responsibility she was forcing me to face. She judged my reaction shrewdly—just how shrewdly, I only found out when it was too late. She was aware—more clearly perhaps, than I was—of the complex, half-realized hatred I felt for Myrsilus: it seemed to amuse her. I only wonder, knowing what I do now, just why she felt so anxious to get my opinion: not for one moment do I believe that it can have carried any real weight with the Council.

  No; I think that, for personal .reasons I can only guess at, she was determined to implicate me in the chain of events which led from the Council’s decision, and which—by answering her as I did, as she knew I would—I morally condoned.

  I said: “The past is done with. Let them come home.”

  “If you were Myrsilus, would you say the same?” Her voice held a faint edge of mockery and something else, something I could not identify.

  “I can only speak for myself, Aunt Helen.”

  She nodded. “So be it,” she said.

  The Council proclaimed an amnesty three days later. Cercylas happened to be outside the City Hall while the notice was being nailed up. He heard one labourer say to another: “Myrsilus getting cocky, eh? Thinks he’ll live for ever.” To which his mate replied: “I don’t blame the old swine: never had a day’s illness in his life. I give him a good thirty years yet.” “Thirty more years of Myrsilus. Hades.” That crude comment, had I but known it at the time, held the key to the entire mystery.

  I cannot point to any precise moment in time when it could be said our group was formally established. On my return from Sicily I found myself much involved with the practical, artistic side of the city’s religious festivals: I trained choirs and led them; I taught young girls the musical techniques I had learnt from Arion, I composed hymns and odes and the inevitable wedding-songs. A good many of these last were ready to hand: Syracuse is a long way from Mytilene, and I fear some of the citizens who commissioned an original composition as a mark of prestige were fobbed off, all unawares, with second-hand goods.

  My reputation as a poet had preceded me, and it was then—with Cercylas’ encouragement and support—that I put my first volume of verse, Winged Words, into circulation. One of the original copies lies before me as I write. There are a good many pieces in it I would like to suppress now (what writer does not regret his juvenilia?) but, I suspect, more through embarrassment at their naïvety than because of their technical deficiencies. At the time they were immensely successful, and I became a social catch as a result: though I suspect what intrigued most people was guessing the identity of my presumed lover from hints in the text.

  Thus I became, almost without realizing it, the unquestioned leader of a group of friends, all girls, all with strong artistic interests. (For some reason Mytilene, unlike most cities, has few male artists: Arion, Alcaeus, one or two dull antiquarians. Antimenidas would have said, if asked, that this was due to our Cretan ancestry.) Atthis, Mica, and my cousin Meg formed the original nucleus. Telesippa would make occasional appearances, obviously not quite certain whether it was smarter to be seen with us or with the rival group under Andromeda’s leadership, the most prominent members of which were Gorgo and her sister Irana.

  Thus, already, conflicting tensions had been set up, cross-loyalties between group and family. Charaxus was my brother, but he was also Irana’s husband and tended, rather surprisingly, to take on her prejudices or affectations. While Gorgo and Irana were enthusiastic supporters of Andromeda’s so-called New Art group (which was, in effect, no more than a social off-shoot of the Myrsilus regime) their brother Ion, like his father—my uncle Draco, that is—remained staunch aristocratic conservatives. But Draco was also, through Aunt Helen, in the curious position of having Myrsilus as a brother-in-law. Social life in Mytilene could be very difficult at this period. Things have improved during the last decade or so, but every family still keeps its private list of people who must never, on any account, be invited to dinner at the same time.

  So our group tended to attract like-minded followers, and thus to develop its own characteristic atmosphere. Friends introduced other friends, visiting guests from Miletus or Colophon or Lydian Sardis. Soon we found ourselves keeping more or less open house: every day there would be discussions, picnics, concerts, poetry-readings. Shy beginners would ask my advice, beg me to criticize their work. The movement was launched before we knew, in so many words, that a movement existed at all.

  It was Cercylas who found the name for it: one day he came home to find nine of us sitting over nuts and fruit and twice-diluted wine arguing about Homer, counted the heads, and said: “I seem to have strayed into the house of the Muses. Ladies—goddesses, I should say—please forgive a mere mortal for intruding on your deliberations.” We laughed and made him stay: the evening was a great success. After that we developed the habit of inviting one, sometimes two, male guests to our formal discussions; and the title “House of the Muses” stuck.

  When, much later, I came to be regarded as the talented, famous director of a highly exclusive finishing-school for girls of good family—an uncomfortable role, which I myself never completely accepted— it was at least as much to imbibe a way of life, a philosophy, that parents sent their daughters to me f on all over the Aegean world, as to acquire mere practical or technical instruction in literature and the arts. Indeed, to begin with we had no plans for formal teaching at all. But it naturally happened that those with musical or poetic problems consulted me, and would-be painters took their difficulties to Mica: very soon the pattern of our relationships was established and went on, almost without change, to the end.

  Of course, that pattern contained—as our enemies were not slow to point out—a strong erotic element. But then the same could be said for every profitable pupil-teacher relationship, where love, no less than pure reason, can enlarge the dimensions of human understanding. In particular, when I look back I see that the very foundation-stone of the House of the Muses was the love which Atthis and I bore one another—that bright, transfiguring passion that irradiated our whole world, the generous sun from whose light and warmth all who wished could draw sustenance. We were inseparable, happy in each other and our shared life, needing no other fulfilment.

  Yet, oddly, we were not lovers as the world understands that much-debased phrase: not then. Those were the halcyon months of innocence. At any time, I knew, I could have taken the final step to complete and seal our intimacy; but always I held back, unable to explain this reticence even to myself, only knowing instinctively, without words, that such perfection was fragile and transient, a fine crystal globe ready to shiver into glittering
dust at the first touch of—and there I pause, pen in hand, not wishing to stand self-condemned by setting down that hard word “reality.”

  Charaxus meanwhile had other ideas about what constituted the good life and highly individual methods of pursuing it. By dipping heavily into his (or, more accurately, Irana’s) capital, he bought and fitted out one of the largest merchant-vessels ever seen in Mytilene harbour. He hired a crew, a good one, and paid them top rates. He then, without consulting either Larichus or myself, and by exercising his titular authority as head of the family, put aboard every last jar of top-quality oil and wine he could scrape together, stripping our personal reserves as well as his own for the purpose.

  By the time we found out what he was at, the ship lay hull-down on the horizon, bound for Egypt: and Charaxus had gone with it. Everyone in the city said he was out of his mind: kind friends cheered Irana up with tales of pirates and storms and sea-monsters. To be quite honest, I don’t think the death of her husband would have made much impression on that resilient little heart, but the prospect of losing her inheritance was almost more than she could bear.

  So when, in due course, the look-outs reported Charaxus’ merchant- man beating northward against the wind from Chios, most of Mytilene came crowding down to the, quayside to see her dock. It was a bright morning in late autumn—too late, the pessimistic had said, for the long haul to Crete and the islands. But Charaxus’ luck had held; and as the great bow-anchors went rattling down, and the heavy-laden, broad-beamed hulk swung slowly in to her moorings, I found myself more than a little envious of my brother’s achievement, of the gamble that had succeeded against odds.

  He came down the gang-plank, rubbing pudgy hands together, smiling, self-satisfied, and—unless I was much mistaken—even fatter than when he had left. His complexion, above that great black bush of a beard, still had the same unhealthy, lard-like pallor; he seemed mysteriously immune to sunlight, it was as though he had spent all his life underground. My envy, which had contained a streak of unwilling admiration, now turned in a flash to sharply hostile resentment. I have never known anyone with such a gift for getting himself disliked as my brother. He caught sight of me (I was in a group that included Larichus, Atthis, Ismene, and my cousins Agenor and Hermeas), waved, grinned, and vanished—clutching sheafs of what I took to be lading-bills—behind innumerable excited harbour-officials.