The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  “Of course. That’s very understandable.”

  “I’m quite sure it’ll be all right again—later.”

  “Can I tell her that?”

  I smiled. “By all means.”

  “I’m so glad. I thought—I don’t know—” Her mind trod delicately round the approaches to some dark emotional forest, took fright, and hurried back to the open, sunlit plain. “But if it’s just your feeling upset and ill and wanting to be alone—well. That’s good. I’ll tell her.”

  “When are you going to Pyrrha?” I asked.

  “Oh, in two or three days. I do so hope she’s enjoying it there. They say a change of air can work wonders, don’t they?”

  I nodded.

  Ismene said: “What she needs most is some fresh interest, don’t you agree? Young faces, new friends.”

  “A very sound idea.”

  “You know—you will forgive me saying this, won’t you, my dear?—at times I did feel there was something a little, well, morbid about the degree of her attachment to you. Perhaps this separation may be for the best in the end, help to give her, I don’t know, a sense of proportion, would you say?”

  At this point I began to wonder uneasily whether Ismene was quite the simpleton she appeared. But all I said was: “Perhaps; I do hope so. It would make me feel a little less bad.” And that was no more than the plain truth.

  She picked a loose thread out of her embroidery, and said, without looking up: “You remember my cousin in Lydia? I think you met her here once—”

  “Polyxena?” I had a blurred recollection of a tall, dark, rather striking woman, married to a well-connected Sardis merchant whose beard, rings, dress, and scent had all been a little too exotic for Mytilenean taste.

  “Yes, that’s right. Well, I thought it would be pleasant for her two daughters to come and stay for a while—Atthis does so need friends of her own age, and somehow she’s never got on very well with the other girls here, I don’t know why—” Ismene’s voice trailed vaguely away again.

  “I’m sure,” I said, “that you’ve acted for the best.”

  “I think so too,” Ismene said placidly. “Well: I mustn’t keep you here chattering. You need as much rest as you can get.” She put down her embroidery, and so did I. We looked at each other for a long moment.

  I was still wondering just how much she knew, or guessed, when—furred and gloved against the winter wind—I stepped into my waiting carriage and rattled away down the drive. To this day I have not made up my mind. But one thing I do know: by bringing Anactoria and Cydro to Three Winds, Ismene, all unwittingly, did more than any other single person to turn an amorphous group of likeminded friends into what is remembered today as the House of the Muses.

  Anactoria’s portrait has the red rose in her hair, as it was on that first day we met. Mica caught all her most elusive characteristics— the secret, glinting smile, the near-transparency of skin, the oddly elongated features and hands that might, in another girl, have looked awkward, ugly even, but in her merely served to enhance a rare and delicate beauty. She was tall and looked taller because of the black tresses she wore piled on top of her exquisitely shaped head. Cydro, by contrast, was short, plump, excitable: a generous, outgoing character whose passions and enthusiasms sometimes seemed to be compensating for her sister’s all-too-perfect self-containment. It was strange to see that luminous, alabaster-like complexion—the one feature they both shared—on so wildly inappropriate a face.

  My daughter Cleïs was born with the first spring flowers: out on the hills, as I lay in labour, I could hear the thin crying of lambs, and under the eaves—earlier than for many years—a pair of swallows bickered and preened, old friends that I had come to know, in a way, better than many human acquaintances. (But then, swallows are mysterious creatures, oddly human themselves, with their absurd family quarrels, their speechlike chirruping, their inexplicable tameness, and the uncanny ability they display, on occasion, to penetrate one’s moods—even, I sometimes think, one’s thoughts.)

  It was, against everyone’s predictions, a quick, easy, and surprisingly painless birth. When Praxinoa placed the child in my arms—this miraculous creation of flesh, this no-longer-part of my most intimate self—I felt a physical upsurge as total and as overwhelming as that experienced during the act of passion, with something more, a tenderness that reached out to embrace the world, that transcended the prison of my interned mind.

  This was my daughter, my love, my immortality. Gently I stroked the damp wisps of fair hair, and sensed, under my fingers, that soft, throbbing centre where the skull’s bird-thin bones had not yet drawn together, where beneath one stretched membrane the vital spark flickered so precariously. When those tiny lips closed, with instinctive knowledge, about my nipple, when the warm milk flowed, I experienced an indescribable agony of pleasure: I was all mothers, I was life itself, rich, inexhaustible, the force that moves corn-ear and rutting beast, the slow tides and the circling summer stars, the poet’s song, the dance of creation.

  Too many ghosts, too many aching memories. I sit in this empty, mourning house, while the shadows lengthen, and fear, like some faceless beast, lurks behind a closed door.

  The pins have begun again. Now, yes, and now, and now again, the squeeze of giant claws. Cleïs, ah Cleïs, I loved you more than life, my golden daughter—no, not more ‘than life, because it was life, my life, my own vanished youth that I fought for with such blind frenzy, all other considerations cast aside—even your love. I wanted to defy time, prove myself immortal. But all I can see now are your eyes when you knew what I had done to you: the hatred, the half-incredulous contempt. Hippias? you whispered, and suddenly I felt old, wrinkled, dirty, full of shameful lust, without dignity, ridiculous.

  But he wanted to marry me; he pleaded, he wept, Cleïs; did he weep at your feet, Cleïs, did he clasp your knees? Did he praise your body as he praised mine?

  Hippias was yours; he loved you, and I took him as I had, years before, taken his sister: when we were together it was Atthis’ eyes that looked into mine. I made him my slave, I thrust him down into the lime-pits of desire. I was Circe, Medea, Calypso, a strong enchantress, with a wand to break the years.

  Can you forgive me, Cleïs?

  Can I forgive myself?

  Too late, too late, too late.

  Too many ghosts, the running feet, the laughter, the pleasure-filled days and years, moments of shared tranquillity in the garden, sunlight under trees, a saffron-yellow robe, roasted nuts for breakfast in autumn, a moonlit altar and the rapt face, never forgotten, of some nameless girl leading the dance; warm lips in darkness, flower-scented hair against my cheek. Ghosts, lovers, all gone now—Gongyla who was like a wild rose, quick-moving Hero, Gyrinna beloved of the Muses, Timas who died so young, Eunica of the soft, adoring eyes, dark Anactoria, laughing Cydro—beyond the wash of the sea, down the quicklime years that scar and erode, gone, all gone, brittle leaves blowing in drifts under the great chestnuts, the waved handkerchief, the ship sliding out and away from the quayside, prayers for safe landfall on journeys long forgotten, crumbling, time-worn letters, withered coronals.

  When summer turned to autumn—do you remember?—I came back to you, Atthis, to your soft arms that I had shunned for so long, to your yearning tenderness and your passion. If this night could be twice as long, we prayed, if our love could endure for ever—But before the year’s turning it was over again, this brief and agonizing reunion, leaving behind it bitterness, misery, broken promises and perhaps a broken heart. Who was to blame? Why did it happen this way?

  Did I come back because I loved you, Atthis? Or was it from mere pique and hurt pride, the need to be irresistible, a Goddess, Aphrodite in mortal guise? Violet-tressed, holy, honey-smiling—Sappho: again, it is Alcaeus’ voice that returns to mock me, words spoken by a pool in a sunken garden, a life ago. Goddesses—as I know, now, to my own cost—can brook no rivals. But the whispers, the sidelong glances, the snickering laughter among Andromeda’s f
ollowers: Anactoria, Atthis, and Anactoria. Anactoria, Anactoria—

  “Do you love her?” I asked, that first momentous night. “Do you love her?” And Atthis sadly, her passion spent, knowing me perhaps better than I knew myself: “It’s you I love, Sappho. Always you.” Look, I seemed to hear the Goddess say in cold amusement, how scrupulously I have kept my word. “I’m no good to you,” I said. “You should stay with Anactoria. I can only bring you unhappiness, my darling.” And she said: “If you want me to be her lover, Sappho, if that will give you happiness, then I will. But only for your sake.” “And to satisfy desire,” I said cruelly.

  “Yes,” she said, “to satisfy desire: empty, meaningless, torturing desire. Have you seen them slake lime, Sappho? Do you know the barrenness, the burning of it, the bone-consuming death by water and fire?”

  “Hush, my sweet,” I whispered, fearful suddenly, thrusting this dreadful image away, “don’t talk like that, you don’t know what you’re saying—” and I took her in my arms again and felt her respond with a violence that had something desperate about it: it was as though she had consciously abandoned all hope of happiness.

  “I love you,” I said over and over again, “I love you, I love you—” as though mere repetition could, spell-like, exorcise the daemons of doubt and terror in my mind. Strange, that it was then the bright years began, the long summer of happiness and fame.

  How easy it is to forget the summer storms!

  There were further reconciliations, further quarrels: our relationship seemed set for ever in this soul-destroying, inconclusive pattern. Never, I think, did I seriously consider the possibility that it might change, let alone be ended. But one autumn day, five years ago, during yet another racking, hysterical exchange of insults and bitter recriminations, Atthis suddenly broke off, put her head in her hands, and sat there quite still and silent for a moment. Then she looked up, her face as expressionless as I had ever seen it, and said, with quiet finality: “I’m leaving you, Sappho.’

  I heard the words, but my mind refused to accept their meaning: how much, while pursuing my own inconstancies, had I taken her faithfulness for granted over the years?

  I said stupidly: “Do you mean you no longer love me?”

  She shook her head. “I still love you,” she said. “I shall always love you.” Her eyes suddenly were bright with tears.

  “Then why this? Now?” My anger had evaporated, leaving only bewilderment behind.

  Atthis said dully: “Because I can’t stand any more. I’ve reached the limit of my endurance. Just that. Didn’t it ever occur to you that I was human, that I had a breaking-point?”

  I shook my head, shocked into unthinking frankness: it was true, I had never treated Atthis as a free, individual being, she was part of my self-created universe, just as I—bitter irony—was part of hers.

  “No,” she said, with a sad little smile, “of course it didn’t, how could it have done?” Then the tears welled up, and for a moment she wept, silently, hopelessly. “Do you think I want to leave you?” she whispered, after a moment. “Do you suppose it’s easy for me, now? In two months, less than two months, I shall be forty. I look into my mirror and see the future written there: darkness, waste, decay. What I am, you made me. Without you—” She spread her hands in a tiny, hopeless gesture. “But I have no choice, my love. This is my only chance.”

  I stared at her as though I were seeing her for the first time, jolted into a fresh awareness, torn with pity by the signs of age which for so long I had, somehow, managed to ignore: the almost imperceptible change in the texture of skin and hair, the dulled brightness, the deepening lines round eyes and mouth and throat. I thought: I am still the child who ran through the green corn-fields of Eresus, nothing must change for me, the world is poised timelessly in that bright dream, the shadows stand still for ever. Until I awake. Until we both awake.

  What I am, you made me.

  We looked at each other for a long moment in silence. Then I heard my own voice say, very gently: “Go then, my love. Go freely, and with my blessing, in friendship.”

  She smiled through her still flowing tears. “You mean it, don’t you? You really mean it. Thank you. I must. I don’t want to, I—oh, Sappho, I can’t find words—” She bent her head and sobbed openly now, without restraint.

  I said: “I only ask one thing of you. Don’t wipe the past from your mind. Don’t blacken our love with hatred. Whatever you say, whatever has happened, despite the anger and the bitterness, I did love you, Atthis. I love you still.”

  She looked up, anguish in her eyes.

  I said: “Our love was good: never forget that. It was precious and beautiful, it enhanced life. Remember all we did together over the years, all we talked of—” and then suddenly, in an agony of nostalgia, I began to recall this incident and that, moments of laughter, the happy memories, garlands woven in springtime meadows, expeditions, home-comings, private shared intimacies—“Do you remember when—?” till at last she said: “Please—don’t make it more difficult for me—” and, filled with remorse, I fell silent.

  At last I said: “Where will you go? What will you do?”

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  “You have Three Winds still. That’s comfort of a sort.”

  “Is it? Now?” The sudden bitterness in her voice took me aback. She gathered herself together with a conscious, visible effort and said: “I may as well tell you now. You’ll hear about it soon enough, I don’t doubt. I’m—going to Andromeda.”

  The ground seemed to slide and lurch under my feet: for a moment I thought in a wild way that this was the onset of an earthquake, that we would both be killed—supreme irony—at the very instant we had chosen to part. Then, as I steadied myself, I heard Atthis saying: “I’m sorry. I know how it must seem to you. Please, please try to understand—”

  “Yes,” I said, “I understand.”

  What I am, you made me.

  It was as though something solid and physical had broken inside my body. I thought senselessly: Andromeda has driven a fine bargain, a fine bargain, a fine bargain—

  Atthis walked to the door, with that quick, springy step of hers, paused, turned, whispered, “Good-bye, my love,” and was gone.

  I felt my thumbs curl inside my clenched fists, like a small, miserable child’s; and it was a schoolgirl phrase, almost comic in its inadequacy, which had to bear the full burden of my grief.

  “Honestly,” I told myself, “honestly, I wish I was dead—” So might Cleïs, now sixteen, have greeted the end of another minor flirtation.

  I do not know how long I sat there, numb, mindless, before the first pain knifed through me, with such sudden violence that I screamed aloud, and I became aware, in agony and horror, of the warm blood flowing, as though it would never stop, as though it were my life that lay spilt across the marble flags.

  I must have fainted, because I woke to my daughter’s horrified scream, saw her face bent over me, framed in a cascade of golden hair, saw the terror, the instinctive physical repulsion, the mouth strained in an ugly rictus as she screamed again, and the scream broke, changed into loud hysterical sobs.

  I whispered, smiling: “It’s all right, darling. It’s all right.” I think I must have been wandering a little, because I suddenly said: “Oh, please, Cleïs, do stop making that dreadful noise, it’s so out of place here, my darling. Never forget, this is the House of the Muses.” Then Praxinoa’s face was there too, black hair against gold, and I heard the sound of shouts and hurrying feet just before my eyes darkened and I fainted for the second time.

  My mind is made up. I must go, now, quickly, alone: leave Mytilene, take ship to Corinth and thence once more to Sicily. It is a forlorn hope, but there is no other way for me. I ache for his hard, faithless body: that is all of life that remains, the rest is dust, despair, broken dreams.

  XVI

  Nothing has changed in Corinth to the outward eye: old men still sit playing draughts and drinking under the plan
e-trees, ships are still hauled, black and cumbersome, over Periander’s great slipway to the Gulf. In these crowded, clamorous streets, down by the docks or beyond, at the throbbing heart of the city, where armourers and potters and goldsmiths ply their trade, you can still hear the tongues of every land spoken, still brush shoulders in a dozen yards with Moor and Numidian, Greek and Arab, Egyptian merchant or dark-bearded Phoenician sailor. Periander is dead now and his seemingly impregnable dynasty fallen; but Corinth remains what it was, the city of ambition, opportunism, and anonymity, where a tide of faceless, soon-forgotten travellers daily ebbs and flows across the Isthmus. For the anonymity at least I have nothing but gratitude.

  These words are being written in a dark, uncomfortable waterfront inn, which bears above its main door the sign: Accommodation available for unescorted women.” I know very well what this means—in Corinth, of all places. But I have no choice: I cannot afford to be recognized. In any case it is for two nights, no more, and then I sail at dawn on a fast Sicilian galley, Syracuse-bound with mails and packages from the East. We have one scheduled stop only, at Leucas, just outside the Gulf, to pick up fresh water and provisions. I am in luck: the weather may break before the end of the month, and this will be one of the last runs to Sicily until next spring.

  When I first approached him the captain looked at me curiously, recognizing my accent, impressed by my manner: why was this strange, small, middle-aged lady from the islands so desperately anxious for a passage to Sicily? Why was she travelling alone, without so much as a maid in attendance on her? His doubts translated themselves into a price which even he seemed half-ashamed to mention. But I paid it without argument and in gold pieces. Knowing my own spendthrift nature too well, I had, soon after becoming a widow, hidden away a secret reserve: not even Charaxus, for all his financial nose, had suspected its existence. Only Phaon, all unknowing, could turn the key in that rusty lock.

  So I sit here in Corinth and write, by the flame of one smoking, ill-trimmed lamp, while, outside, the tavern next door is loud with drunken singing—a crew has just been paid off—and prowling cats scream in angry passion among the refuse. The shutters are barred, but there seeps through them the smell of tar and decaying fish and meat being grilled over charcoal. I can hear a woman’s shrill, drunken laugh, the thrum of a lyre, water slapping and knocking against the quayside.