The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  There, praise be to the gods, there was light, and voices, and smoke rising from the hole in the roof. Atheas leaned against the front door and was just about to call out, but the rain doubled in intensity, and as he leaned against the door to shelter from the downpour, he realized that it was hanging ajar. Without thinking twice, he rushed through it, crossed the rain-driven courtyard, and headed for the light of the hearth, where he could hear men’s voices. Only then did he call out.

  “Hey, young men! You in the house!”

  But no one must have heard him, because the excited voices continued, followed by another shout, this time a woman’s scream; it was inhuman, and it drowned out the other voices. It only lasted a moment, and then it stopped, abruptly. Atheas sensed the danger, but he was chiefly concerned with escaping the rain, and after all he was a big man, and he made plenty of noise. He looked into the kitchen and there, by the light of the fire, what he saw left him aghast. Two young men, one naked and the other dressed, were drenched with water and smeared with blood, and together they were forcing a naked girl’s head into a jar, and she was kicking convulsively. At the sight of this stranger suddenly appearing inside the house, both Cimon and Cratippus started; Charis pulled her head out of the water and instantly started screaming again in desperation. Atheas stepped forward and put his hand on the handle of his knife. A third young man, whom he hadn’t noticed, lunged at him shouting; Atheas stumbled and fell, dragging his attacker down with him, and since he was an experienced fighter, before his back hit the floor he’d already yanked out his knife and plunged it into the young man’s belly. Argyrus yelped, found himself on top of the man, and tried to get to his feet, but the knife shifted in his belly, and blood and guts spilled out onto the floor. The other two young men threw themselves at Atheas, kicking him in the head. Cratippus was the clearest-headed: he looked around, saw the knife that Argyrus had dropped lying on the floor, and bent over to pick it up. Meanwhile Atheas made an effort and pulled his own knife out of Argyrus’s belly. He swung it through the air. Cratippus stabbed him in the throat while using his left hand to shield himself from the man’s slashing thrust. Atheas’s knife cut three fingers clean off at a single blow. Cratippus screamed and leapt back, spraying blood in the air, while Atheas, Cratippus’s knife lodged securely in his throat, gasped and sobbed, choking on his own blood. Cimon kicked him again and again, frantically, unable to stop. Then he finally did quit kicking him and stood there, panting. Fascinated, he watched Atheas die, and it was only then that he shook himself and looked around.

  Disemboweled on the kitchen floor, Argyrus too was dying. Cratippus, pale as a sheet, had plunged his mutilated hand into the water, and kept pulling it out every few seconds. He looked at it, then plunged it back in, all the while repressing his impulse to vomit. There was no sign now of the two young women. His gaze went back to the intruder curled up on the floor in a pool of blood. Cimon bent over to make sure that he really was dead, and only then did he notice the man’s eyes. He recoiled with a gesture of horror, and a wave of superstitious fear rushed through his innards. Only a demon would show up in the middle of the night in the homes of men, with one eye different from the other.

  “Cratippus,” Cimon whispered.

  The other man didn’t answer.

  “Cratippus,” said Cimon, louder now.

  “What is it? Look what he did to me!” Cratippus complained, in a whiny voice.

  “Come see.”

  There was something so terrible in Cimon’s voice that Cratippus came over. He leaned over the corpse, and felt the hairs stand up all over his scalp.

  “A demon . . . ” he whispered.

  The young men exchanged a glance. That nameless demon who’d come there to die terrified them.

  “What should we do?” asked Cimon.

  “I don’t know . . . Wait! Bandage me, before we do anything else,” Cratippus went on. He displayed his hand. Cimon also had the urge to vomit, but he’d been drinking all evening long, and he was unable to hold it back. He puked right there, on his knees, surrounded by blood, all over the stranger’s corpse.

  “Bandage me,” Cratippus said again, once his friend was done puking. They found a clean rag, and Cimon bandaged him. They took a look at Argyrus, but he was clearly dead.

  “The fleabags!”

  They’d forgotten about them. They started looking for them everywhere in the house. They found them in a corner. Charis was trying to loosen the rope that bound Glycera’s wrists, but she was shaking so badly she couldn’t get it untied. With shouts of triumph, they started kicking them both.

  “You filthy pigs, so you wanted to run away?”

  Cratippus and Cimon looked at each other.

  “We need to kill them quickly.”

  Both of them thought of the knife, but neither of them felt up to it. They said nothing, so as not to have to admit it.

  “Let’s choke them,” Cimon suggested at last.

  “Yes, and let’s start with this one,” Cratippus agreed, pointing to Charis. They searched for a long time until they found the rope. Then they tied it around Charis’s neck, hitting her when she tried to resist. Cimon started dragging her back and forth; Cratippus, with just one hand, couldn’t help him. Cimon dragged her across the floor, but Charis struggled and writhed, she’d managed to get a couple of her fingers between the rope and her throat, and gasping and rattling, she was still able to get some air. Exhausted, Cimon finally stopped.

  “That won’t kill her, the bitch.”

  “We should have just drowned her,” Cratippus admitted. They started kicking Glycera again, and then they dragged Charis into the kitchen. But there they saw that the water jar had rolled to the floor and was now empty.

  “The pond!” Cimon suggested. Cratippus gave him an inquisitive glance.

  “Behind the stables. Where the horses drink.”

  “Right,” Cratippus acknowledged.

  Cimon regretted saying it the very instant the other man agreed. As a child, the pond had always frightened him; it was a sinister, isolated place, and the water was black. Ever since he had learned to walk he had been told time and again not to go near that pond, that the silt and muck could swallow him up. To instill even greater fear in him, they told him that there, in those black waters, lived demons, and that on moonlit nights Empusa came there to slake her thirst, to rinse her fangs of the blood of the children that she’d devoured. Not many years ago, he’d still believed it. Now he no longer did, but still, where had that demon come from who was now lying dead on the floor? Cimon wished he hadn’t said anything. But Cratippus had already taken possession of the idea, and was urging him on.

  “Come on, drag her.” Cimon bit his lip and started dragging the young woman toward the stables again. Exhausted, Charis was kicking ever more feebly.

  23

  I dreamed it again! Andromache woke up with a start and a moan of terror, and sat bolt upright on the straw mat. It had been some time since she’d last dreamed it, but this time it happened again: the beach outside the city, in the baking sun, the long lines of blindfolded men in chains, skeletal from starvation, pushed forward and knocked to their knees, and other men awaiting them with bloodied knives. Only in the dream it all happened in silence, without screaming, without laments, without cursing, without the sucking noise of the waves washing out, and it was all that much more horrifying.

  “Andromache! Did you have a dream?”

  Moca had come over beside her, she was speaking softly. Andromache held her breath and looked around. In the room where the slave girls slept, on the floor covered with straw mats, there was no one but the two of them.

  “I was dreaming. Sorry I woke you up.”

  “I wasn’t sleeping! The sun’s only just set. But you, why were you already asleep? Are you not well?” Instead of answering, Andromache opened her eyes wide.

  “Did I sleep th
at late? Has the master come home?” she asked in fright.

  “Don’t worry, there’s no one here,” Moca reassured her. “So did you have a nightmare?”

  Andromache shrugged her shoulders.

  “It happens from time to time.”

  Moca looked at her, and in the dim light her eyes glittered like a cat’s.

  “Did you dream it?”

  Andromache nodded.

  “You were talking. But with such a strange accent!”

  In spite of herself, Andromache smiled.

  “When I’m awake I try to talk like all the others here. But clearly, in my dream, I go back there . . . ”

  “Is that how you talked back there?” Moca asked, interested.

  “Our ancestors were Spartans, many years ago. They came to the island and founded the city. At least, that’s what my father told me.”

  “And is that why the Athenians killed them all?”

  Andromache shrugged her shoulders.

  “I don’t know. It’s the war.”

  Moca fell silent, ruminating.

  “But did they really kill them all?”

  Andromache sighed.

  “There were some who were away. Traveling, for business. I heard that they all went to Sparta, and that the Spartans gave them a new city, somewhere, in their lands. A very small city,” she concluded, in a faint voice.

  Then a sudden thought struck her.

  “But what are you doing here? Why aren’t you in the country?”

  Moca shrugged.

  “Cimon came, he sent all three of us back, me and the stable boys. He told us not to come back until he returned to the city.”

  Andromache was astonished.

  “And didn’t he tell you why?”

  “The masters give orders, you know that very well.”

  “I’d like to know what he’s doing there, all alone tonight,” Andromache said under her breath. Just then, a clap of thunder split the silence, and raindrops began to beat down on the roof tiles.

  “Wait, is it raining?”

  “So it would seem.”

  Andromache leapt to her feet, uneasy.

  “How long until dawn?”

  “What dawn are you talking about? I just told you it’s early evening!” Moca said, in astonishment.

  Andromache wasn’t even listening to her. She felt strangely exalted. The dream that had just been interrupted came surging back into her mind vividly, and in fact it hadn’t all been a nightmare, after all. It had turned into one toward the end, but before that she had dreamed of the goddess, the protectress of Melos, who was calling her. How strange dreams are, you forget them right away, if you don’t tell them to anyone they vanish like dust, but instead this time the way the dream began had returned to her, just as she’d already almost forgotten it. The goddess, white, immense, was calling to her . . .

  “I want to go see what that fellow is doing down there,” she said, looking around for her sandals and starting to lace them up.

  “Have you lost your mind?” asked Moca.

  “Maybe I have!” And really, deep down inside she felt something inexplicable, some joyful excitement, as if the goddess had entered into her and ordered her to get moving.

  “How will you be able to get out?”

  “I know where the master keeps the keys,” said Andromache, blushing; but in the darkness Moca didn’t notice.

  “Exactly, that’s the point, the master! What will he say?”

  “The master!” Andromache said slowly and contemptuously. “What do you think he’ll do? Do you think he’ll kill me? Fine, let him! It would be better to die than to go on living like this. At least the dead no longer suffer.”

  “Oh, stop talking nonsense! Calm down and go back to sleep!” said Moca, clearly agitated. “What snake bit you tonight?”

  “I couldn’t say,” laughed Andromache. “But maybe I’m a snake myself! And if the goddess exists . . . ”

  “What goddess! You still believe that the gods care a fig about us! We invoked the gods tirelessly, and they never listened to our prayers.”

  Andromache stared at her.

  “You too, eh?”

  “Certainly,” said Moca. “I wasn’t born here, you know.”

  “Right. Sorry. Say, do you want to come with me?”

  Moca shook her head hastily.

  “Oh, no, not me! I have no wish to get myself a whipping! I’d better stay here, so I’ll be able to care for you, after the master has you flogged.”

  Andromache laughed.

  “The master! I’ve already told you, if the goddess exists, it would have been better for him to die the day he bought me.”

  Moca shook her head, unable to understand.

  “Which goddess are you talking about? Athena, perhaps?”

  Andromache spat contemptuously.

  “Not her. Our goddess of Melos. I dreamed about her earlier. She’s been calling me.”

  Moca sighed.

  “You really have gone crazy. At least keep quiet, so they don’t hear you leave. And try to get back before morning.”

  Andromache slipped out of the house. Moca sat there for a while, listening carefully, but she heard nothing: the house was empty, the master was at the theater, the young master was in the countryside, and the slaves still at home were fast asleep at that hour. At a certain point, she thought she heard a door creak, but it was only because she was listening, otherwise she wouldn’t have heard a thing.

  Uneasily, she decided to try to get some sleep herself. But thoughts continued to crowd her head. She imagined Andromache leaving the city, deceiving the sentinels with some contrived excuse. She imagined Cimon and his friends alone in the big deserted house. Right, and just what was it they wanted to do? Certainly something bad. Like all of the other house slaves, Moca was afraid of Cimon, and hated him. But she didn’t limit herself to hating him. None of the others would have dared to lift a finger: at the very most, they might spit in the water they brought him for washing every morning. But Moca was a Thracian and where she came from they knew about other things, things whose existence the Greeks hardly even suspected; sure, the Greeks tried to do them as well, but in comparison with the Thracians they were like so many children. Moca carefully tugged at the unstitched hem of her pillowcase, rummaged inside, and pulled out an object wrapped in bandages. It was a small clay doll, a kneeling man, with a tiny phallus wrapped in twine bindings, and instead of a head, a rabbit skull. The little rabbit man was all abristle with needles. Moca checked to see that the locks of Cimon’s hair she’d glued to the skull were still there, then she looked for one of the hairpins she’d taken out before lying down and, with a wicked smile, she started poking it into the doll. Cimon, she thought. If that lunatic Andromache gets there, and he finds her, it’ll go badly for her. In the darkness, Moca hesitated. Until now, she’d restrained herself, but maybe the time had come to stop holding back. She pushed even harder on the hairpin, driving it through the doll’s head. But the hairpin was too big, and the bone broke with a sharp snap. Moca, fascinated and horrified, saw one of the two tiny jaws move almost imperceptibly, as if gnashing at the empty air. Staring into the rabbit’s empty eye sockets, she uttered in a low voice one of the spells she knew. She wasn’t certain what effect it would have, but she knew that something was about to happen, and that whatever it was, Cimon wouldn’t like it.

  Andromache was walking quickly through the darkness. Getting out the gate had been no problem: on festival days many country folk set out for home from the city late at night. The road was full of puddles after the downpour, so Andromache had taken off her sandals and was walking barefoot. At any other time, she would have been afraid to walk alone like this in the middle of the night, outside the city walls, but the state of exaltation into which she’d awakened after dreaming of the goddes
s had not yet abandoned her. It didn’t occur to her that she might run into dangerous people, and she thought little or nothing about what she would say to Eubulus, the next day, to justify that escapade. As she walked, she wrapped herself tight in her cloak to ward off the cold and thought about her master’s son with hatred; she had no idea of what he might be doing and why he had sent Moca away from the house, but she was almost suffocating from the urge to be there and see for herself. In the sky above, the clouds were beginning to part and a yellow moon, almost full, appeared. Andromache walked past the place where Atheas had remained on the lookout until the downpour had begun, and continued on into the olive grove. Eubulus’s house appeared to her under the light of the moon, with the roof tiles still gleaming with rain. She started to go around the building, intending to enter through the stables, where she felt sure she’d be able to find a way in; but just to make sure she tried the front door, and found it ajar. She pricked up her ears: there was no sound in the house, but the horses in their stalls were kicking restlessly. With her heart in her mouth, she realized that something very strange really was happening. She pushed the front door open and went in.

  In the hearth room, the statue of Zeus Karios was casting its shadow onto a floor flooded with blood. In the middle of the front hall, a mannequin sprawled facedown, and a little farther along, there was another mannequin—both of them dressed in clothing spattered with dark stains. Andromache stopped, biting her lip, and then leaned over the first mannequin and turned it over. It was a complete stranger, and he had a knife planted in his throat. In the dim light of the hearth, she didn’t notice the different colors of his eyes. She hesitated a moment, then she seized the knife and managed to extract it from his neck, though not without great effort, so deep had it been driven in. She stood up, inspected the other corpse, and recognized one of Cimon’s friends. She wiped her blood-smeared hands off on Argyrus’s garment, then once again stopped to listen. In the stables a horse whinnied. Still barefoot, Andromache moved off in that direction.