The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  “Turn around,” he ordered. The young woman turned around. “Turn around again.” Cimon was having fun.

  “Spread your legs.”

  Glycera obeyed again, swallowing her shame.

  “You’re too hairy,” Cimon commented. “Women like you should be shaven.”

  Glycera didn’t answer. She was trembling with cold and her cut lip was hurting her.

  “Can I get dressed now?” she asked softly.

  Cimon didn’t even listen to her. An idea was occurring to him. Once, when he was listening to the grown-ups talk, he’d realized that flute girls, to remove their hair, use the flame of a lamp.

  “Don’t move from there!”

  He went in search of a lamp, checked to make sure it had plenty of oil, and then worked to get it lit. Then he handed it to the young woman.

  “Come on, show me how you shave yourself.”

  Glycera took the lamp, but still hadn’t understood.

  “What are you, stupid? You’d better learn fast. Go on, get the hair off between your legs. Use the flame.”

  Glycera’s eyes opened wide, and she was about to shake her head no, but her swollen lip made her decide it would be better to obey this time, too. Cautiously, spreading her legs as wide as she could, trying to avoid the thought that there was a man watching her, she ran the burning lamp between her thighs. She almost immediately burned herself, emitted a little squeal, then started over. In the partial darkness a faint smell of burning feathers spread through the air: like when you scorch a chicken, before putting it on the grate.

  “Is this all right?” Glycera dared to ask after a while. She’d burnt herself, and the smell of burning that rose from her body was frightening her. Cimon gestured to her to hand him the lamp, then he leaned over and examined her curiously. The result wasn’t exactly what he’d hoped for, and he didn’t especially like the smell either. As for his péos, worse then before! This time, too, his body wasn’t reacting; in fact, it seemed to have frozen in disgust. Nearby, Zeus Karios gazed into the empty air, ignoring them.

  Just then, Argyrus appeared.

  “What’s that smell? Hey, what are you doing?”

  “I’m screwing this slut,” Cimon lied.

  “What about the other one?”

  “In the storeroom. Go ahead and get her out, if you want.”

  Argyrus hesitated, then went over to the storage room and opened the door. Charis was curled up on the floor, trembling.

  “Come on out now.”

  Charis slipped out, saw Glycera, and ran to her side.

  “Come on, guys, let us go home,” Glycera implored. Cimon walked over to her and showed her his open hand, as if he were ready to smack her again.

  “You don’t call us guys. You call us masters,” he hissed.

  Glycera fell silent. In some excitement Argyrus broke in.

  “Come on, let’s go upstairs and screw them.”

  Cimon showed him the cushions.

  “Right here is just fine. Grab one of them. Which do you want?”

  Argyrus stared at Charis. He took a step toward her. Charis took a step back.

  “We’re virgins, we can’t stay with you. Come on, let us go,” Glycera said again. Cimon and Argyrus glanced at each other. Oh no, thought Cimon, you’re not going to make me look like a fool in front of my friend. He brutally shoved Glycera against the walls and gave her another slap; then, realizing that he enjoyed hitting her, he raised his knee and slammed it into her belly. Glycera shouted in surprise and bent over at the waist; Cimon pushed her to the floor and as she tumbled, he kicked her hard.

  “We’re virgins,” he mocked her, with a falsetto imitation. “We’ll take care of getting the mold out from down there,” he added; and then he gave her another kick. Argyrus grinned, walked over, and kicked her himself.

  “You’ll kill her if you keep that up!”

  Charis fell to her knees, and grabbed the hem of Argyrus’s garment.

  “So you’ll let me fuck you?” asked Argyrus. Charis, sobbing, shook her head no.

  The two young men walked a few steps away. Charis bent over Glycera and lifted her into a sitting position. Glycera was trembling, blood was oozing from her mouth, and the bruises where she’d been kicked were throbbing with pain.

  “What should we do?” whispered Charis.

  “I don’t know,” Glycera admitted in despair. They could hear the young men speaking softly, then Cimon saying in a louder voice: “No, they’re no good even for that. I’ve already tried.”

  Argyrus insisted. At last, the two went back to them.

  “All right, fine, so you’re virgins,” Cimon admitted. “And we understand that. That little thing down there is the only capital you possess, your one guarantee of finding a fleabag just like you, who will marry you and keep you from dying of hunger. If you were clever, you’d understand that it’s in your interest to serve us, your lords, you’d have a lot more fun and would still get plenty to eat. But these two aren’t all that clever,” he added, winking at Argyrus.

  Argyrus snickered.

  “Anyway, if you really want to preserve it intact, that little thing down there, there are plenty of other ways of giving a man pleasure, and tonight we’re going to start teaching you a few. Someday your husbands will be grateful to us.”

  Glycera and Charis exchanged a glance. They were both weary and frightened, they only wanted to be done with it.

  “If we do what you want, then will you let us go home?” Glycera asked at last.

  “Of course we will,” said Cimon. “I already explained that to your girlfriend before, but she didn’t really understand me all that well. In fact, let’s see whether she understands better now than she did before. You, what is it I got you to do, earlier?”

  Charis blushed bright red.

  “Go on, explain it clearly to your girlfriend,” said Cimon, mockingly.

  Charis hesitated, then she lowered her eyes and shook her head.

  “Let her be,” Glycera exclaimed, with an air of defiance.

  “Why, really!” Cimon retorted.

  “If you let us go now, we won’t say anything to anyone,” Glycera said all in a rush. She couldn’t understand whether these young men realized what they were doing. Certainly, Cimon had beat her, and before that he’d threatened her with his knife, but now why had he started arguing with them? Sometimes her father would come home from the assembly and report that some man or another had delivered a series of grandiose speeches, but then he’d spit and conclude: that one there is all talk. Perhaps their neighbor’s son was just all talk?

  “Then I guess you really haven’t figured it out,” said Argyrus. No way, thought Cimon, I’m the one here who calls the tunes.

  “You stand guard over this one here,” he ordered. “I’m going to take this one into the other room, and we’ll see if she acts like a little less of a smartass when she’s all alone.”

  This time, though, Argyrus rebelled.

  “We have to stay together, that was the agreement. Whatever one of us does, the others have to do it too. In fact, I say to wait for Cratippus. He’ll definitely teach you two to obey,” he boasted, addressing the young women.

  Cimon, darkly, said neither yes nor no. His péos was still shrunken and cold. In the end, he decided to stall for time.

  “You know what I say? These two peasants need a little more time to think it over. Let’s lock them up in the storage room again; you’ll see, spending time in the dark will enlighten them.”

  Argyrus was disappointed, but he didn’t dare oppose him. Ignoring their objections, they pushed the young women back into the charcoal cellar and barred the door.

  “Let’s go drink!” Cimon ordered.

  A distant clap of thunder led him to look out into the courtyard. The gray sky was so dark that it seemed dusk al
ready. This season the days were short. Anyway, we have the whole night to tame them, he thought to himself.

  He prepared the hot wine. This time he forgot to offer a libation to the goddess. While they were drinking, they heard the young women calling out from the darkness of the storage room.

  “Let us out of here! We’re freezing to death!”

  Cimon stopped drinking, annoyed. As if they needed that! Still, it was true: it was cold in the house even next to the fire, and the young women were nude.

  “Go look upstairs, see if you can find a blanket.”

  Argyrus climbed the stairs and then came back down with a quilt. But Cimon had a different idea now.

  “I know what’s suitable for them.” They went into the stables and found a horse blanket. They pulled the door to the storage room partway open, tossed in the horse blanket, and shut it again. Then they went back to drinking.

  “Next time we let them out, we must be pitiless,” Cimon reasoned. “We’ll beat them silly, I’d like to see whether they spread their legs after that. The wretches.”

  “And in the meantime, they still haven’t called you master,” Argyrus pointed out, with a giggle. Cimon darkened.

  “They’re going to call me master. They think they’re better than slaves! But a slave woman like Andromache is worth ten of those fleabitten wenches. They don’t even know how to give you a hard-on.”

  Argyrus drank and pondered.

  “Are you sure we’re not going to get into trouble?”

  Cimon looked at him with contempt.

  “Hey, little boy, if you’re so scared, you can just go home!”

  Argyrus shook his head and remained silent. Cimon went on.

  “We won’t get into any trouble. For a couple of fleabags! We can do whatever we want to them, get that into your head. They’ll kiss our feet to thank us for deigning to fuck them.” There, that’s an idea he liked. They’ll kiss our feet. But he realized, now that he thought about it, that he wasn’t quite so sure that they wouldn’t get into trouble. Those two were capable of making plenty of noise, once they got home. Yeah, he thought vaguely, his thoughts jumbled up thanks to the wine, when they get home, that is, if they ever do . . .

  Atheas sat waiting quietly on the roots of a centuries-old olive tree, which sprouted from the soil like the tentacles of some giant creature. The man with different-colored eyes had followed the young women from the city almost to their home without once finding a genuinely suitable place for the ambush; but then he’d found it, right where the lane that led to Eubulus’s property turned off from the road. Atheas knew these parts, he’d already performed similar services for Eubulus before, and he’d even been to his house. There the olive grove extended all the way to the road, bounded by nothing but by a dry-laid stone wall: it was easy to find a place to spy on those passing, without being seen. A distant rumble led him to raise his eyes to the ash-gray sky. As long as it doesn’t start raining, he thought. To pass the time he pulled out his knife, tested the blade against his fingertip, smiled with satisfaction, and started peeling the bark off an olive branch. Back in the city, the comedy must have just begun: there’d be a long wait, but he was used to that.

  11

  On the stage another actor had appeared, or rather, one of the those who had previously played the part of a woman, but now dressed in a different costume and wearing another mask: unrecognizable. This time he was a man; an old man, too, judging by the white hair, the stooped posture, and a detail that made the audience laugh: the long phallus, which he wore hanging below like all male characters, was so shrunken and pendulous that it slapped between his thighs like a wet rag. He walked along, leaning conspicuously on a grapewood cane with a golden knob, but at a certain point he stopped and brandished it for all to see. The spectators recognized the cane: it was the emblem of authority that the people had granted to the ten magistrates appointed after the catastrophic Sicilian expedition; these men had been entrusted with the task of supervising the proceedings of the assembly. Many had refused to accept that innovation: the assembly is free, the people are sovereign, this stinks of tyranny! But in the end the majority had approved it: they were that frightened at how badly the war was going.

  The magistrate walked forward, coughing and spitting. The real magistrates, who at that moment were sitting in the front row next to the priest of Dionysus, shifted uneasily. Already, we’ve accepted this position, do you think it’s easy? And now, to have the piss taken out of us at the theater!

  The magistrate bowed ostentatiously in his colleagues’ direction, then he cleared his throat. The old men of the two choruses looked up at him respectfully, waiting. Without even noticing them, the magistrate started muttering to himself. At first he spoke so softly no one could hear a word he said.

  “Louder!” someone cried from the audience. The magistrate waved his cane threateningly in that direction; little by little, however, he did raise his voice. He was musing worriedly to himself about the effrontery of the women. Already he didn’t like the festivals of spring, when the women get drunk and climb onto the roofs, to mourn the death of Adonis; now look, the same thing was happening, but out of season! An evil omen, the magistrate was grumbling. Like that time that they were debating the expedition to Sicily in the assembly, and that idiot Demostratus was arguing in favor, and then we saw how well that turned out! And in the meantime his wife was on the roof dancing, half naked: alas and alack, Adonis! An evil omen, the magistrate said again, beating his cane on the ground in irritation.

  The audience chuckled: certainly the magistrate was imitating one of the real magistrates, but which one?

  “Who do you think it is?” whispered Polemon. Not even Thrasyllus had guessed it yet. Still, he was sure he’d heard that manner of speech before, that way of half-uttering certain words, he’d definitely heard it from one of the magistrates. One of the older magistrates. Sophocles! Why of course, Aristophanes is making fun of Sophocles. Old as he is, and yet he’s taken the job, no thought of turning it down; and rich as he is, he still takes the stipend!

  The whole theater was whispering: Sophocles, Sophocles! Some of them were scandalized: such a respected man, the greatest poet! Others snickered: serves him right, that’ll teach him. We can’t stand these old relics, clinging to their posts until Charon himself comes calling. Inevitably, the whisper reached all the way to the front row. Sophocles, sitting with his colleagues, pretended not to notice: bolt upright, his bleary eyes practically shut, hidden behind his great white beard, very similar, now it was clear, to the beard dangling from the actor’s oversized mask.

  On the stage, the Old Man hurried to complain to the magistrate.

  “Oh, if you knew their full effrontery! All of the insults they’ve made, besides dousing us with water from their pots to our public disgrace, for we stand here wringing our clothes like grown-up infants that have just pissed ourselves,” he concluded, dismayed.

  The magistrate was listening with an angry demeanor: pretending nothing at all had happened, he wiped a drop from his phallus with the hem of his garment, and then resumed his monologue, without bothering to give the Old Man so much as a glance.

  “By Poseidon, justly done! For in part with us the blame must lie for dissolute behavior and for the pampered appetites they learn. Thus grows the seedling lust to blossoming: we go into a shop and say, ‘Here, goldsmith, you remember the necklace that you wrought my wife; well, the other night in fervor of a dance her clasp broke open. Now I’m off for Salamis; if you’ve the leisure, would you go tonight and stick a bolt-pin into her opened clasp!’”

  The audience laughed: that monologue was in verse, in the style of Sophocles. The great playwright sat motionless in the front row, his eyelids drooping more and more: he was pretending to sleep.

  “Another goes to a cobbler,” the miserable magistrate continued, unfazed, “a soldierly fellow, always standing up erect, and s
ays to him, ‘Cobbler, a sandal-strap of my wife’s pinches her, hurts her little toe in a place where she’s sensitive. Come at noon and see if you can stretch out wider this thing that troubles her, loosen its tightness.’ And so you view the result. Observe my case—I, a magistrate, come here to draw money to buy oar-blades, and what happens? The women slam the door full in my face. But never fear, I’ll show them what’s what!”

  Suddenly the music of the tambourine started up, and before the astonished eyes of the old men and the old women a very fast farce began. A team of actors dressed as policemen swarmed onstage, swinging clubs, and pretended to yank at the door of the Acropolis, trying to force it open. The magistrate encouraged them, leaping here and there. But the door swung open of its own accord before they had a chance to force it, and Lysistrata came out with her hands on her hips in a black fury.

  “Stop this banging. I’m coming of my own accord . . . Why crowbars? It is not crowbars we need but common sense!”

  The policemen scampered in all directions. In Athens, for greater security, the policemen were all public slaves, and barbarians, what’s more: Scythians. They spoke Greek badly, they understood even less, and before laying hands on a citizen they awaited orders. That way no freeman was forced to do that dirty work, to arrest their fellow citizens, torture slaves in preliminary judicial investigations: let other slaves do it, everyone thought. Still, though, the morale of the police force wasn’t particularly high. The magistrate might bellow and curse, but it was all pointless: his underlings put no real effort into it.

  “Come on, just try laying a finger on me!” Lysistrata challenged them. Delightedly, she waved her tits and ass under the noses of the terrified Scythians.

  The magistrate, exasperated, pounded his cane on the ground, so hard that the golden knob sprang off, fell on his foot, and rolled down the steps. The Old Man hastened to pick it up, and tried to put it back on: no good, the knob wouldn’t stay on. The magistrate was in despair: look at the people he was surrounded with! When a couple of policemen, gathering all their courage, decided to make one last effort, Kleonike burst onto the stage: she strode out of the Acropolis and confronted the magistrate brutally.