by Peter Green
So the picture blurs and changes, shifts its proportions, reveals new, unsuspected facets. I still cannot be sure of anything, the search in the labyrinth leaves me twitching a broken thread. As with Pittacus and Aunt Helen, so with the rest. Did Antimenidas die for his beliefs, or—as he once, long ago, said of my father—because he no longer had any wish to live? Was Alcaeus a dedicated poet who became the pitiable wreck he is today through setting loyalty above expediency—or a shabby, posturing hedonist, using political defeat as an excuse for his sodden decline, a man without principles or self-respect, left clinging to two wholly sterile emotions: angry resentment and the continual nagging urge for sensual gratification?
Once I believed I knew the answers to such questions, even that—in accordance with the Delphic precept—I knew myself. Now my certainties are dissolving into air: the void engulfs me, all familiar landmarks have vanished, or taken on new, disturbing, ambiguous shapes.
So Alcaeus was released by the man who had once, long before, been his fellow-conspirator in adversity, and went home to young Lycus and a crapulous veteran called Bycchis he had picked up in Egypt and the wine-bowl’s illusive consolations. On the whole his fellow- citizens treated him politely enough but left him alone. He still went for long walks over the hills. His lampoons became steadily more scurrilous and personal, crammed with obscene, spluttering invective. No one took any notice till after Pittacus’ abdication, when he was warned several times about tiresome behaviour in public taverns and suddenly decided to go on his travels again. He wrote me several long, rambling letters from the Peloponnese, full of local mythology, queer legends picked up in mountain villages or lonely fishing-ports.
“Did you ever hear that Love was the child of the Rainbow and the West Wind?” one tattered, half-illegible letter proclaims. (I have to handle it carefully, or it will crumble into brittle fragments. Alcaeus always hated spending money on good writing materials—an unusual trait in a poet. Or perhaps I am justifying my own natural extravagance?) “A curious notion for horny Peloponnesian peasants to have got hold of, don’t you think? In Boeotia, by the way, I found two new tales concerning your beloved Endymion. They know nothing there about his strange interlude in the Latmian cave (what sort of lover was the Moon, I wonder? As cold as she looks?) but claim that Zeus invited him up to Olympus, where he promptly made advances to Hera, or she to him—more likely the latter, I should think, it’s strange the number of would-be seducers she collects for so staid and matronly a Goddess—and by way of punishment was hurled down to Hades, where, I don’t doubt, he met quite a few fellow-victims.
“The other story is that Zeus let him choose the hour of his own death. How can one reconcile these two traditions? I sometimes have a vision of Endymion on Olympus, casting wistful glances at Hera through the bars of his cell, and telling Zeus, every day or two, ‘Not yet, you promised.’”
The riddling Sphinx: the jester with a bundle of masks and a wounding word in season.
So many are dead now, my world cracks and slides like an old house when the first earth-tremors strike it. I think of my uncle Eurygyus, grubbing roots at midnight on the hills; of Phanias and my father, gentle men who died by the sword; of Chloe, white bones now under the burning soil of Sicily; of Irana, her young body so cruelly torn by childbirth; of Hermeas and little Timas, fever-racked in windy autumn; of Pittacus and Periander, who survived on their wits and died in their beds, revered as sages, praised by all men; of Antimenidas, who lived for honour and died so shamefully. These past months I have dwelt too much with ghosts: it is time to come up from Hades again, to breathe the living air.
I am small and neat in my movements, slender-waisted, elegant as a cat, bird-quick, a dancer still. He covered me with his hard male body, my breasts were burning flowers. I was Aphrodite, foamborn, immortal, and he my son, my lover, young as the returning spring, Adonis laid among the spears of green standing corn.
I must go, I must leave this place of death, so musty-yearning with old memories. I must follow the sun while I still may. Westward the bird flies, high and white over the barren mountains: there is, after all, a chance of freedom.
I began to lose Atthis on the day Cercylas died. In some strange way he was the shield of her innocence; our crystal sphere, so delicate and transient, remained inviolate only while he kept unobtrusive guard over it. When Atthis heard the news, she stood quite still for a moment, grey eyes wide with shock, hands at her breast. She was fighting, innocent and terrified, to control an emotion that I saw too clearly in her face: the primitive, almost feral joy of a jealous woman who sees her rival—against all hope or expectation—suddenly destroyed.
She did control it; for the next month or so I tried to pretend nothing had happened, that my imagination was playing tricks on me. But her love had become more openly sensuous, the grey eyes were suffused and dark with passion. She exulted now in. her possession of me. I was hers alone: she would hold my love against the world.
But all the time I knew that this, too, was illusion. Half-waking, I still clutched at our dream, still sought (and found because I sought) the tokens of innocence in Atthis that had—like strong enchantments—held the daemons at bay. It was useless, useless. The crystal had cracked across, and in my own body lay the seed, the truth, that would leave nothing of it but a handful of glittering dust.
Yet even then I obstinately refused to admit that Atthis was so much less than the innocent dream-lover my mind had created—not only human, and a woman, but a jealous, solitary creature basked in the sunlight of my adoration, and matched my fantasy with her own, weaving a private world which we alone shared, intolerant of all intruders, engrossed and engrossing. We were always alone together; never, except on formal occasions, with other friends. And looking back I realize how little, even in our shared solitude, we spoke to one another. Words were dangerous, could destroy, reveal.
Afterwards, it was different.
On a warm summer night, then, while the candle-flames shone soft and steady above the glow of the branching gold, and through the open shutters we could hear the sea’s long murmur below us, I told Atthis that I was bearing Cercylas’ child. For a moment she said nothing at all. We were lying on the great bed, a little apart, in thin shifts because of the heat: Atthis had her chin cupped in her hands—a favourite posture—and was staring out at the night, at the soft, blue-black, star-pricked sky where gods and heroes took their ease, where Orion and the Bear hung in splendour, a guiding sign for the ships that sailed their lonely ways by darkness, for all lost travellers on land or sea. Her face was in shadow: I could not tell what she was thinking.
She said at last: “It doesn’t change anything,” but her voice was flatly desolate. “It doesn’t change anything,” she repeated, as though to convince herself. I could feel her withdrawing from me, hurt, confused, and, yes, a little resentful: how could I do this to her? The candle-flames winked and dazzled: as I sat up a vertiginous dizziness spun my mind like a top, the walls tilted sideways. I pressed both hands hard into the bed, breathing deeply. No, I told myself, no, not now, I must be strong now, I must hold her. Somehow, whatever the cost, I must hold her—
Aphrodite, great Goddess, grant me this prayer. Grant me this prayer only, and I will be your servant for ever, till death loosen my limbs. Let her love me, let her love be undying, now, always. Grant this, and I swear I will honour you above all gods and goddesses, while I have breath. Aphrodite, great Goddess, Daughter of Heaven, I beseech you, give me a sign. Now, quickly—
And in the silence of my heart I heard the divine voice that was everywhere and nowhere say: It is granted. She will love you, now, always, according to your prayer. According to my will and my decree. Let the Moon be the sign of it. Then my head cleared, and I looked up, those unhoped-for words still echoing down the corridors of my mind. Atthis had not changed her position: she lay quite still, hands under her chin, gazing out at the night-sky. The darkness had a soft, hidden radiance about it: and as I watched, over th
e invisible rim of the Ionian hills, effulgent, haloed with glory, the moon swung up, so swiftly I seemed to trace its silent passage between one breath and the next. In that pale, unearthly glow, Atthis’ features were suddenly revealed: a mask of white wax, mourning, pensive, with one glittering tear frozen on her cheek.
Aphrodite moved in me, a yearning, violent passion. I stretched out my arms. Atthis turned, and seemed, for a moment, to shake her head—a tiny, hesitant gesture, checked instantly. Her lips parted, and I saw the quickening rise and fall of her bosom. With slow, trembling intensity, her hands came out and clasped mine.
So, in that silvered darkness, I at last possessed Atthis: her narrow hips were mine, and her high white breasts, and the glory of her unbraided hair. We made love with a hard sensual violence of which I would never, in my long dream, have believed her capable. Then, at last, we lay still and naked in the moonlight, and looked at each other with new eyes: two grown women, sensuous, passionate, bound now by subtler chains than those of innocence, by the cataclysmic desire which is Aphrodite’s coveted and deadly gift to mortals. According to my will and my decree. As, much later, I drifted into sleep—the moon was down now, the candle-flames guttering I seemed to hear the Goddess’ voice whisper: Remember what you have sworn, and then, faint and far away, a peal of thin, clear, cruel, childish laughter.
XV
On one of those bright midwinter days that come just before the year’s turning, I sat with Ismene, in her private chamber at Three Winds, physically uncomfortable—I was over five months pregnant—and emotionally, for several obvious reasons, more than a little uneasy. Ismene, sensing my mood, had given me some embroidery to do while we talked: it was an occupation which I had never much liked (I still don’t), but for once I found it distracting. Besides, it kept my hands occupied.
Ismene said cheerfully: “Well, you’re through the worst of it now, darling.”
“So they tell me.” I tried hard not to think of Irana. Her child had been born dead two months before, after a horribly protracted labour, and she herself had died in an hour or so, from loss of blood and heart-failure. “My brother wants me to live with him,” I said carefully. “He doesn’t think I should be left alone in my condition.”
“That’s only natural.” Ismene was so apt to see the best in everyone that I sometimes wanted to kick her. “You’ve both had a cruel loss—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Charaxus didn’t care a fig about Irana, and you know it. He got the inheritance: that was all he wanted. Now he’s busy looking round for another heiress. Presumably to give him an heir.”
Ismene said: “Why do you dislike your brother so?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve always found him mildly repulsive, and he seems to take a pride in cultivating all his nastiest natural qualities.”
“But that’s very unkind, Sappho, don’t you feel?” Ismene’s guileless blue eyes were full of cloudy concern. How, I wondered, had Agesilaïdas managed to domesticate her emotions in this odd, rather distasteful way? She was not sad, or anxious, or under any sort of obvious stress: indeed, her face was as placid, and almost as unlined, as a child’s. But her hair had turned white between spring and autumn, and she gave the impression—I find it hard to explain exactly what I mean here—of having deliberately relinquished her sex. The result was a strange kind of neutral innocence, childlike again, so that there were numerous topics which, all at once, it became quite impossible to discuss with her.
I said: “I’m sorry. I suppose I am unkind. But I couldn’t bear the thought of living in that house again. Especially now.”
“We’re all rather worried about you, my dear. You’ve been so moody and strange.”
I bent my head over my embroidery and thought: I wonder what you felt when you were pregnant? Nothing, I suppose. Except what tradition told you you could feel. Did you ever wake up and realize that you’d been invaded by an alien personality, that you’d lost your will, become nothing but a seed-pod, a cockpit for explosive natural forces? Of course not. You wouldn’t understand a word of it if I told you, either. Why am I here? Why am I talking to you, of all people?
“I’m sorry, Ismene,” I said, and reflected that I spent a good deal of time, just then, apologizing to thick-headed people for words or actions that needed no excuse. Then, changing the subject: “When are Mica and Melanippus getting married?”
“Late spring, we thought. There’s so much to do over the estate—”
“You really are going to sell, then?” I still somehow couldn’t accept the idea of any change at Three Winds. Sitting in this familiar room, so charged with memories, so tranquil and reassuring—the same scent of herbs, the same old, heavy, well-waxed table—I felt as though one of my life’s foundation-stones was about to be knocked away.
“Not the house, of course. Or the gardens, Hippias will have them when he comes of age.” Hippias was eleven years old then, a fair, slender, grey-eyed boy, with an uncanny resemblance to both Phanias and Atthis: I liked him very much.
“What about the orchard?” I asked.
Ismene said: “Well, we had a very good offer, you see—” She broke off, blinking with mild embarrassment. “A big fruit-farmer. I doubt if you know him—”
“So do I.”
“And the capital would be so—I mean, we do need it, and the orchard won’t be any real use to us, we’re planning to live in Pyrrha after Hippias—” Her voice trailed away. After a, moment she said: “Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” I blinked, and just managed to stop myself saying “I’m sorry” again.
“You do understand, don’t you? I know the orchard had sentimental associations for you—”
I stared at those guileless blue eyes, that smooth, uncomplicated face, and thought—irritation and guilt curdling in my mind—that innocence, or ignorance, of this magnitude ought to be treated as a criminal offence. How could I ever, ever hope to talk to Ismene about Atthis?
“Yes,” I said, “I understand.”
“You’ve been so kind to Atthis. We’re really grateful. Sometimes I feel”—she gave a tiny tinkle of nervous laughter—“that she needs more than I, her own mother, can give her. She’s a strange child. I’ve never understood—” Ismene broke off again; her thought-processes tended to have this random, truncated, wandering pattern, which in the end, however, generally added up to some sort of coherent statement. I waited, with as much patience as I could. “Yes?” I said.
Ismene patted her hair. “Well, it’s so difficult for you now. We wouldn’t want you to have the extra bother.” The seeming irrelevance hung in the air between us.
“I don’t understand.” In fact, I understood now all too well.
“Atthis told us you’d been”—she made a little hesitant gesture with one hand—“upset. Please don’t suppose we want to pry, my dear. But we have Atthis’ welfare very much at heart. We couldn’t help noticing that you’d, well”—again the slight hesitation—“seen a good deal less of each other recently—”
“Yes.” I made no comment.
“She said she thought you were under a great strain. She was very understanding, Sappho.” Ismene looked straight at me, the mildest hint of reproach in her eyes. “You must realize how attached she is to you, how much she has come to depend on your love and support and example—”
“Of course I appreciate that,” I said. Just what, I wondered, had Atthis told her? And what could I tell her now? To put the blame on immortal Aphrodite? She will love you, now, always, according to your prayer—oh yes, that was true, and more than true: her devotion remained constant and uncomplaining, her passion grew from day to day, became deeper, more violent. But my prayer, characteristically, had made no reference to my own affections: their constancy had been taken for granted, and the Goddess was now administering a sharp, salutary lesson to me.
The plain truth was that, at this period, I could hardly bear to have Atthis anywhere near me. Partly because my own sw
ollen body filled me with such repulsion that I shrank from letting her see, let alone touch it, and partly because (in my semi-hysterical state) I found her childish, self-centred, and quite unbearably demanding, I began to treat the poor girl in the most unforgivable fashion. I was by turns abrupt, cold, imperious, and irritable. I lost my temper with her, rejected her tentative advances, snubbed her intellectual pretensions, took her many kindnesses for granted, and attacked her furiously whenever she gave me the slightest opening. She bored me so much at times that I found myself wondering what on earth I could ever have seen in her. Finally, after a flaring, hysterical quarrel, I told her to get out and stay out, to leave me alone. With sad, bewildered reluctance she said: “If that’s what, you really want—” and went away like a beaten child, weeping, unable to understand how love could suffer such humiliation.
I know too well now that it was self-hatred which drove me to this cruel, meaningless, despicable behaviour. Atthis was the living embodiment of my destructive egotism: it was myself I could not bear to face. This blindness does not last, Alcaeus had said, and now, in her chosen time, the Goddess bad opened my eyes. Atthis was right to fear foreknowledge. Bitterly I recalled Alcaeus parting words: The responsibility will be yours alone. My prayer had been answered, and one human life given an irrevocable twist by it. Now I was left with the consequences of that fulfilment.
I said to Ismene: “I think we got on each other’s nerves a little—it was all my fault, I haven’t been myself for the last few months—”