The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  “Have you lost your minds! What in the world are you thinking?” cried Glycera; and she darted away, stood beside Charis, and wrapped an arm around her narrow shoulders. But the young men were between them and the door that led from the stables into the house.

  Cimon looked at Argyrus, who was smiling uncertainly, his mouth half-open like an idiot, and realized that it was going to be up to him to decide.

  “Come on,” he said; and he just wished he could have used the same imperious tone that he used with his slaves, but it was beyond him, and his voice died in his throat. He flushed red at the sense of humiliation, but he restrained himself. “Come on,” he said again, “now you come to bed with us and then we’ll send you home.”

  Glycera and Charis were left speechless. One of the horses, which had been increasingly uneasy for some time now, tossed its head and snorted. Argyrus, who was standing right next to it, jumped hastily away.

  “Come on, Charis, let’s get out of here,” Glycera took advantage of the situation to say; she took Charis by the hand and slipped through the door. But once she was back in the house, she wasn’t sure which way to go. It was dark, the shutters were closed, and there was no light. Only the glow of the hearth guided her to the portico that opened out onto the courtyard: but in the meantime, the young men had caught up with them.

  “Oh come on!” said Cimon. “What’s it going to take you? It’s not as if this is going to be the first time you do it, is it?”

  This time, Glycera lost control.

  “How dare you talk like that? Who do you think you’re talking to, eh, young man?”

  “I’m talking to two girls who came, all alone, to a man’s house,” retorted Cimon. He was satisfied, the answer had come trippingly to his tongue. And in fact, now the young woman stood silent, disconcerted.

  “Come on, then,” Cimon insisted: and he drew close enough to caress her cheek. Glycera recoiled. “We’ll pay you. Is that the problem? There’s no issue, then, we have plenty of money. Ten drachmas apiece. No, make that twenty. Come on, take off your clothes.”

  Glycera and Charis both felt their cheeks burn. Glycera opened her mouth to reply, but she lacked the words. Sure, we came here alone, it was our mistake. But now enough is enough.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here,” she said again, taking Charis by the hand, seeing that she was about to burst into tears; and she moved toward the door. Cimon remained motionless as he watched them go: once they got to the exit, they found it was locked tight, the bolts shot, and no key in the lock.

  “Surprise,” said Cimon. He displayed the key hanging from his belt. “No one’s leaving this place unless I say so.”

  “We’ll start screaming, you know,” Glycera threatened. Cimon rolled his eyes.

  “That’s fine, go ahead and scream, who’ll hear you? Why don’t you just act like adults? I’ll say it again: twenty drachmas apiece. You’re not whores or anything, we understand that. The most I’d think of paying a whore is one drachma. With you it’s different, we know you don’t do it with just anyone.”

  Glycera opened her mouth to reply, and only then did she realize that there, under her tongue, she still had the coins he’d given her. She spat them out onto the floor, jammed two fingers into Charis’s mouth, and made her spit the coins out, too.

  “Your money disgusts us! And so do you. Let us out of here,” she exclaimed, with tears in her eyes.

  Wonderful, thought Cimon. She’s starting to rebel. Like a young filly just waiting to be broken. Exactly what I dreamed of. Now this looks like it will be worth it.

  He saw Argyrus gulping uncomfortably and tried to catch his eye, still hesitant. It was up to him to make the decision, and this too was something he found exciting. Let the hunt begin, he thought. He reached under his cloak and unsheathed his knife. The blade glittered in the dim light. The two young women jumped backward.

  “All right,” said Cimon, “now we’ll see who’s the master, understood, you sluts? Come on, now, get naked. Naked. Now!” he shouted, when he saw that the young women weren’t moving.

  Clinging together, Glycera and Charis shivered in horror. This time Charis really was on the verge of tears.

  “I want to go home,” she implored, between sobs.

  Cimon was perplexed. He’d pulled out his knife, these young women were supposed to obey, and instead none of what he’d imagined was happening. Those two were whining instead of undressing. It’s not as if he could just slit their throats. He’d need to give this some thought. And before thinking, have something to drink, to sharpen his mind. There, that was the kind of thing real men did. No real man would start an evening like this without plenty to drink. That had been his mistake: but now they could correct it quickly.

  “You’ll go home later. Now come with me. Come on, get moving,” he said to the two young women, in a slightly gentler tone of voice, but still threatening them with the knife. Stumbling, Glycera and Charis moved in the darkness. He knew the house well. They walked down the portico; there was a little more light now. At the far end of the courtyard was the door to the storeroom, with a bolt on the outside of the door: next to it, on a bench, were the ritual oil jars with their handles wrapped in colored wool, consecrated to Zeus Ktesios, protector of wealth. Cimon had to go back into the house to look for the key; he knew where his father kept it hidden, more than once he had gone to steal wine without telling him.

  “Don’t let them run away,” he told Argyrus, putting the knife in his hand.

  “Let us go home,” Glycera supplicated him immediately, the instant Cimon was gone. Argyrus snickered. “What do you take me for, a baby? You’re not fooling me.”

  “Please,” Charis added, drying her tears. Argyrus shook his head, obstinately, keeping his eyes downcast. If it had been just him, he would have done it, too, just to get out of this awkard situation; but in his friend’s presence he couldn’t.

  Cimon came back with the key and opened the door. The storeroom wasn’t much more than a broom closet, low-ceilinged, dark, windowless. By the dim light that came in through the door, he swept away an armful of spiderwebs and found a jarful of wine, which he brought out.

  “In you go,” he ordered the two young women; and when they failed to move, he gave them a shove. Argyrus pitched in, too: together, they pushed them inside, locked the door, and shot the bolt. Left alone in the dark, the two young women started shouting.

  “Are you sure that no one can hear them?”

  Cimon nodded.

  “There are no neighbors. My father brings our slaves specially, when he needs to punish them, instead of whipping them in the city.”

  They took the wine jar over to the hearth, sat down, and broke the seal with the knife.

  “Wait, I’ll go get the goblets,” said Cimon.

  He came back with a small goblet made of black pottery, a mixing bowl, a dipper, and a small amphora of water.

  “We’ll blend it good and proper. Cold out, isn’t it?”

  Argyrus agreed, it really was cold, even there next to the fire. The two young women shut up in the storeroom kept shouting and pounding on the door.

  “You think they’ll keep it up for a good long while?”

  “Let them.”

  They poured the wine into the mixing bowl, then they heated a little water in the dipper. When it came to a boil, they poured it into the wine.

  “There!” said Cimon, well pleased. “Nothing better than that, in the winter. To the goddess,” he added, sprinking a few drops into the flames.

  Taking turns, they dipped the black vessel into the mixing bowl and drank. The hot wine immediately cheered them up.

  “More?”

  “More.”

  They talked about what the young women were going to do once they let them out. If you ask me, they’ll just undress immediately, without a lot of objections. That’s what
I think too. But if they do object, so much the better. That’ll just be a different kind of fun.

  “More?”

  “More.”

  Now they were starting to feel the heat.

  “What do you say, shall we get them out now?”

  Argyrus hesitated.

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Cratippus?”

  Oh right, there’s Cratippus, too. He’d forgotten about him. Cimon wasn’t sure he really wanted Cratippus to be there. The minute he gets there, he’s bound to want to take the lead. On the other hand, there are three of us, and all three of us need to be united: the masters of the city.

  “All right, let’s wait. As long as he doesn’t take too long, I’m ready to fuck,” he declared. And just the opportunity to say such a thing to a friend, without sounding like a ravenous little boy, but instead like a man, a man who was really about to do it, and who already had the young woman ready and waiting, well, that too was a satisfaction . . .

  Argyrus yawned.

  “Listen, I’m feeling sleepy. I didn’t get much sleep last night. What if we took a nap?”

  “Oh, as far as I’m concerned, you go right ahead,” Cimon conceded, indifferently. “Go up to my room, it’s the first one upstairs.”

  “I’m going,” said Argyrus. And he really had slept badly the night before, on account of a mouse that had fallen onto his bed from the ceiling rafter, but the truth is that he wasn’t accustomed to drinking. He only knew that he needed some sleep: he dragged himself up the stairs and flopped down onto the bed.

  Cimon’s head was spinning too, a little, but not enough for him to want to go to sleep. He preferred to sit there by the fire, and think of his two victims locked up in the storage room. There! he thought. My father was only smart enough to heap up barley and fava beans, firewood and charcoal in there. But I’ve locked up two live eels in there, and I’m about to skin them alive. Satisfied, he started thinking about what he’d be able to do with them: like the owner of a hog, watching it fatten and savoring in advance all the uses to which he’ll put it. Now they’d stopped their crying, and he could no longer hear a sound. They can’t have run away, can they, Cimon wondered uneasily. But the storage room doesn’t even have a door, much less a window. Still you never know. He got up with some effort, headed over to the portico, went back to get the knife, and then leaned against the barred door.

  “Hey! Are you dead or alive in there?”

  He heard them moving behind the door, and that one of them was crying, but there was no reply. Cimon felt a surge of irritation: when the master speaks, you reply. Now I’m going to show them what’s what.

  “Listen up, you two,” he said loudly. “I’m going to open the door now, and one of you can come out, but only one, understood?”

  He slid back the bolt, turned the key, and pulled the door slightly open. Nothing happened.

  “I said come out, don’t make me lose my temper, or it will just be worse!”

  He heard the two young women whispering something, then the little one appeared in the opening. Cimon grabbed her by the hair and hauled her out. Charis shouted, stumbled, and came close to falling; Glycera, inside the room, also shouted something, but Cimon had already slammed the door shut and shot home the bolt.

  Charis’s face was streaked with tears and her eyes were rolling with fear. Cimon smiled complacently: that’s how I like her, nice and hot and frightened. He grabbed her by one arm and dragged her into the interior of the house. In one of the rooms there were beds, benches, and cushions. Right from the very start, he’d decided that this was where it would happen. It had been in that very same room, a year before, when he still had no whiskers on his face and he was just beginning to discover the secrets of life, that he had glimpsed, though a crack in the door, his father taking Andromache from behind, both of them standing. She was leaning forward, bracing herself with both hands on a stool and shutting her eyes tight . . .

  “Take your clothes off,” he ordered. Charis looked at him, trembling.

  “Come on!” she managed to say. “You must be kidding!”

  Cimon showed her the knife. The young woman looked around: there was no one to appeal to for help.

  “Charis! What’s happening?” Glycera shouted from the storeroom. Charis opened her mouth, but Cimon strode closer and stuck the tip of his knife in her face.

  “You don’t want to worry your girlfriend, now do you?” he hissed. “Tell her that everything’s all right. Go on, answer her!”

  “Everything’s all right,” said Charis, in a tiny voice.

  “Louder!”

  “Everything’s all right!” Charis repeated.

  “Now take your clothes off,” ordered Cimon.

  Charis swallowed her tears and, without looking him in the face, started undressing. It’s working, thought Cimon, incredulous. What a good idea to just let one of them out.

  Charis took off her cloak, then her good outfit, then an old chiton she’d slipped on underneath. Her teeth were chattering, out of fear and the cold. She stood there naked, with one arm she concealed her breasts, with the other her crotch. She looked down at the floor as her teeth chattered. Cimon stared at her and saw nothing, none of what had tormented Charis for years, so much so that she had brusquely stopped the games with her girlfriend: the small hairy mole on her left breast, the thighs that were too skinny for her age; he saw only a miracle, a female standing in front of him, to use as he pleased. Not a mature hetaira, who gave orders instead of taking them, who counted her money before getting to work with a sigh on a squeaky bed, as in his only experiences before this, and which he remembered with a wave of disgust: no, this was an obedient young girl. He walked over to Charis, held her close, ran his hands over her back, nibbled at her neck, and got to the mouth. Only once in his life had he held in his arms such a trembling creature, a young roe deer that had somehow wound up in the horse corral; he’d cradled it at length, and then slit its throat and taken it to the kitchen.

  “Come on now, turn around and get down on all fours,” he whispered. But now, unexpectedly, the young woman rebelled.

  “I told you I don’t want to! I’m a virgin!”

  Cimon suddenly froze. The young woman’s laments weren’t helping him concentrate one bit. You’re a virgin, so what? Soon enough you won’t be one any longer; all women have been through it. But that wasn’t the only thing. Even though he was holding tight to this young woman’s body, feeling her panting respiration and the hard little apples of her breasts against his chest, down there in his nether regions something wasn’t working properly. He realized to his horror that the same thing was happening to him that had happened those other times. However excited he might be in his mind, his body wasn’t responding. But he wasn’t face-to-face with an experienced woman who knew how to remedy that situation; he was on his own this time. I have all the time I want, he thought, in an attempt to reassure himself. He grabbed Charis by the shoulders and bore down with all his might.

  “Hey! Stop hurting me!”

  Now Charis really was scared, and in her panic she was trying to understand what was the best thing to do: obey him, maybe?

  “I’m not going to hurt you if you obey,” he whispered, as if he’d been listening to her thoughts. “Now I’ll show you what to do.”

  9

  The empty space beneath the deserted stage suddenly filled up. The chorus had returned, this time in costume. The spectators counted: ten, twelve . . . It’s only half the chorus, which means that the other half will be wearing different costumes. They really spared no expense!

  “Do you know who pays the chorus?” Kritias asked Eubulus.

  “Demodocus, of Eleusis. He practically went bankrupt.”

  Kritias shook his head. The people are clever. The rich pay for the chorus, they chase after glory, all so they can have their names affixed to the victory plaque: and in
the meantime they ruin themselves financially and underwrite democracy, and the people enjoy themselves: all without paying a cent! When we’re in charge, Kritias made a mental note, this too will be something we review.

  The twelve had wrinkled masks, long white wigs, and clothing full of colorful patches: a group of old men. Usually the chorus entered to the sound of music and at a brisk march, boldly taking its place on the stage, but this time the chorus members came in stumbling and tripping and dragging their feet: each of them carried on their shoulder a torch and an olivewood log, and the last one was dragging behind him a colossal cauldron, full of blazing embers. The chief, first in line, set the pace by singing.

  Come on, friend, get moving, and step by step lead us forward,

  muster your strength even if the log is heavy and weighs down your shoulders!

  Marching wearily, the chorus joined in the song. We have lived so long to see even this, the old men ululated: the women taking possession of the Acropolis, barring the Propylaea with locks and bolts! And to think that we raised this blight in our own home! Huffing and puffing and coughing, the old men reached the foot of the stage. The flute that had accompanied their entrance fell silent, then it resumed at a more insistent rhythm, unleashing the chief’s next lines.

  Come, let’s hurry to the Acropolis in all possible haste,

  let’s lay our bundles of wood all about the citadel

  and put an end to this scandal:

  and on the blazing pile burn with our hands

  these vile conspiratresses, one and all!

  All the women in a heap—and Lycon’s wife first and foremost!

  he concluded triumphantly, after scrutinizing the audience. Everyone knew the Lycon in question, at his house it was the woman who commanded, in fact it was even said that she beat him: it’s true that he was old and she was young, and the daughter of a wealthy family. The audience chuckled and Lycon shrugged: deep down it almost pleased him. At home he’ll tell his wife all about it; no doubt, she’ll make him pay, but in the meantime just think of the satisfaction, they mentioned me in the comedy!