Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  It isn’t over. Aegisthus appears now and kicks him into the bath.

  ‘In you go, boy!’

  He plunges and gutters, sputtering lumps of blood.

  Farewell, Agamemnon, butcher meat, king of men. Remember Iphigenia.

  Why did she do it? We know why. Except that Iphigenia alone wouldn’t have put him under the axe – if only he hadn’t come home with Cassandra. He’d followed the murder of their daughter with the murder of their marriage. Some said so. Ah, but she’d already taken Aegisthus as her lover and lord. The axe had been sharpened, the banquet prepared, the bath poured.

  So she’d murdered him for all that his Trojan venture had cost her. But Clytemnestra saw no problem surrounding herself with the spoils of that hard-won war: the golden chariots, the bronze weapons inlaid with ivory, the silver necklaces, gold-studded dresses, drinking bowls of solid gold – and Asiatic women, captured, captivating, women wearing Idaean robes clasped with gold brooches. All the while, Agamemnon’s blood was turning black and rotten on the dungheap, where they’d emptied the bathtub, swilling his lifeblood away, the now cold gore. With genitals still stuffed in the mouth, the naked, memberless corpse was thrown to the dogs.

  Enough now? Surely enough.

  Not quite. When the dogs had eaten their fill, the bones were scraped together and given a quick burial. Drink-sodden afterwards, Aegisthus went out and danced drunkenly on the shallow grave. She came out and joined in. She was drunk too. Then the pair of them pissed on the grave, openly and together, the two pools of urine mingling, indissoluble, intimate. They were united in crime, inseparable. Even after the poor crude monument was put up, Aegisthus went out and pelted it with fistfuls of rock, yelling like a lunatic.

  ‘Where’s your sprog now, then? Not showing up to defend his father’s honoured bones? He knows what lies in store.’

  King now, he’d have murdered Orestes, he was so ruthless, but the mother refused to reveal his whereabouts. He’d have killed Electra too, but for her mother. Hardening his grip on power, but paranoid with it, he wanted both children dead and offered a reward to anyone who killed Orestes, contenting himself, according to the less bloody version, with marrying off Electra, still a virgin, to an old obscure peasant, burying her not in the ground but in the social wilderness. As good as dead.

  Yet one more variant on this. It’s Clytemnestra who gives away Electra to the peasant – a sham marriage and a means of concealment. But Electra manages to get messages to her brother and they plot their revenge, a web of lies and disguise. Orestes returns from hiding with a false identity and the news that Orestes is in fact dead. Aegisthus breathes a sigh of satisfaction and relief, little knowing that the dead man is standing right beside him.

  The dead man strikes Aegisthus on the joint of the neck, shattering the spine, chopping it so savagely that his whole body writhes, and he jerks in huge convulsions, shuddering horribly before he dies. Orestes throws off his disguise and is hailed by the people. A neat ending.

  And it could have ended there. Except that Electra was not quite done with him. She triumphed over his corpse.

  ‘You – you destroyed my life and my brother’s, though we’d done you no harm. You took my mother, though my father was still alive. Then the pair of you murdered him foully. You killed the commander of the great Greek army, though you yourself never went to Troy. Now you’re punished.’

  Clytemnestra stood and screamed and tore her hair.

  ‘Silence her!’ said Electra.

  And Orestes thrust the sword that had killed Aegisthus into his mother’s soft white neck. Electra seized the hilts along with him, helping him with his thrust as hard as she could, eager for complicity. And so Agamemnon’s bloody homecoming had been avenged.

  THIRTY-NINE

  A bloody end awaits Helen too – so thinks Menelaus as hot he breaks through Troy’s destroyed defences, eager to avenge a ten-year hate and sullied honour on one adulterous whore. Through streets of smoke and crimson gore he strides, and hence by quieter ways, till now the innermost chamber fronts him, and so he swings his sword, and with exultant words crashes into the dim luxurious bower, flaming like a god.

  High sits white Helen, enthroned, lonely, mournful and serene, awaiting her fate . . .

  Did she? Was she? Truth is, after marrying her brother-in-law Deiphobus, the tricky bitch did the dirty on him when we took the town, filching his sword and spear after sex and leaving the bastard weaponless when we broke in. Menelaus was on a mission, and I came in with him. Deiphobus didn’t even beg, I’ll say that much for the cunt. He knew it was useless. He spread his arms wide, like a bride on her wedding night, waiting for the first stab. Hoping it would kill him.

  No fucking chance. Menelaus gave him a quick jab in the belly. This was going to be a slow death. He ripped off the bastard’s ears, then his nose, then his cock and balls. After that he chopped off both arms and legs. The lower limbs took more effort. By now the torso couldn’t move about much, but what Deiphobus lacked in mobility he more than made up for in the vocal department. The mouth did plenty of screaming. Menelaus did other things to the face and stood back to view his handiwork.

  ‘I’m sorry you’re getting the heavy end of it,’ he apologised. ‘If Paris had been here he’d have been getting the lion’s share. But as he’s in absentia I don’t have that satisfaction, and, well, you see my position.’

  Deiphobus made terrifying sounds.

  ‘What, not dead yet, you cunt? Good – try this for size then!’

  The old genitals-into-the-gob trick. Or in this case, into the ragged chasm where the mouth used to be.

  ‘Helen suck your cock too, did she? You’ll have to suck your own now! Not for too long, though. That’s enough!’

  He hacked off the head.

  That’s when she came running in, a widow again, holding out her late husband’s weapons, eager to show her first husband that she was back to being a dutiful wife – not to the third husband but to the first, now her husband for the second time. If he wanted her, that is. Did he want her? Did she want him? She saw what was left of Deiphobus and screamed and froze. Couldn’t help herself. Menelaus went berserk.

  ‘What, blub for your Trojan cunt-licker, you whore? Snivel to my fucking face, would you?’

  He ran at her but slipped in the gore and slithered all the way to the wall. Helen unfroze, turned and ran. Menelaus got up, cursing, and slipped and slid again, crashing into one of Deiphobus’s still bleeding legs. What a fucking farce! He picked it up and hurled it after her, then charged.

  She tore through the streets – a lot quicker than Menelaus in all his battle-garb. He ripped it off as he ran. The people saw her, saw the chase, and the cries went up.

  ‘It’s the whore! Stone her! Stone the whore!’

  Mostly they were women, picking up stones as they ran. But Menelaus and his men reached her first. She’d sought sanctuary. Different versions deposit her in various temples – Athene, Apollo, fuck knows – I wasn’t on that little run myself. Penelope opted for Aphrodite, whose little slut cowered in a corner of her temple in bad need of some protection at that point. Aphrodite was nowhere to be seen. Menelaus dragged Helen to the altar and threw her on it. She struggled to her knees, and he raised his sword . . .

  But he never used it. She knew all she had to do was let her dress fall. It was worth a try, and if that was the extent of Aphrodite’s intervention, who knows, maybe it was enough. And that’s what Helen did: she stood up and let her robe fall to her waist. The famous breasts bobbed out. He hesitated – fatal error – and swore. Fuck.

  The rest is history.

  He had not remembered that she is so fair. And that her neck curves down in such a way. And he feels tired. He flings the sword away and kisses her golden-sandalled feet and kneels before her there, kneels before the altar, Aphrodite’s acolyte, the perfect knight before the perfect queen.

  Was that how it was? Something like that. Probably. When he paused, she knew she had him
by the balls. She let fall the rest of the robe, all the way to the floor. He stared into her gorgeous fucking face, down to her breasts and belly, to the dark triangle where her hand was reaching. A gesture of modesty? Hilarious. Or a signal. As if to say to him, what a waste, eh? What a fucking waste.

  What a fucking waste of men. Of lives lost for this. A pair of tits and a cunt.

  His sheep’s eyes lost their anger, liquid with lust. He hadn’t been with her for so long. And a little ageing had added to her charms. She was the dream-fuck of all time and she was ripe for him, the perfect wet whore. Slowly he lowered his arm. She smiled.

  ‘Sheathe your sword here,’ she said, taking the empty hand and thrusting it between her legs.

  The other hand opened, the great blade clattered to the ground, the beacons were lit on Ida, on Tenedos, all the way over the ocean and across to Aulis and Mycenae and Lacedaemon, where it all began. The war was over, the boys were coming home. The Spartan whore was coming home. She was going to be queen again.

  Why? Why the stopped blade, stuck in time? Was lust stronger than hate? Did the oldest of flames rekindle in heart, or groin, or in both? See how Zeus looms, hovering protectively over the cowering woman, not strictly intervening, not even speaking, but putting the silent question to Menelaus nonetheless, the question woven into his lips and eyes and brow. Are you sure about this? Is it what you really want, to murder my only mortal daughter, my one girl, the Queen of Sparta, who made you, a thing of nothing, into a king? Go home without her and you will die old and alone, a forgotten corpse in the stallion lands of Argos, a fistful of dust, whirled by its winds into oblivion. But spare her, and the deathless ones will whisk you off to the world’s end, sweep you to the Elysian Fields, where life glides on in immortal ease, all because you are Helen’s husband, the rightful one, all her former lovers dead, and the gods will count themselves glad to count you the son-in-law of almighty Zeus. All that. Or you can kill her right now – and you cut the cord between you and the rewarding gods.

  If that’s how it was, then did the poor bastard ever really have a choice?

  I keep on saying it, but truth isn’t simply the first single casualty of war, it’s a multiple one. Everybody sees everything differently, tells it differently. Some of the versions are packed with dialogue and some with mostly monologue – Helen’s. She has a lot to say, and she blames everybody except herself.

  ‘First there was that odious old bitch Hecuba, out of whose ugly cunt crept Paris, the snake. Then that ancient doting dimwit Priam, who ought to have ordered the infant cut to pieces in front of him the minute he dreamed about that firebrand, the old fucker.’

  Helen could swear like a trooper when it suited her, and right now it suited her mood, suited her most. Her life depended on it.

  ‘He put him out to Ida instead, to take his chances. And look what happened – he grew up to be a handsome bastard, a philandering bastard, and was made sole judge of a beauty contest. And not any old beauty contest, no, just the most important contest in history, that’s all. The rest is the history of the Trojan War.’

  ‘Got anyone else to throw your own shit at?’ asked Menelaus.

  Oh, yes, plenty. That wasn’t even the half of it, as Menelaus well knew. She was merely the excuse for war, his gold-grubbing big brother’s excuse. She was bought and sold for her looks, a plaything of men. After which, he buggered off to Crete and left her unprotected with that back-stabbing womaniser who had Aphrodite on his side. Aphrodite was to blame. How could Helen compete – or withstand her?

  ‘Aphrodite saw to it that I wasn’t in my right mind, I tell you, when I ran away with him. She got into my brain.’

  ‘And he got into your cunt!’

  ‘I was a slave of love. I was made irresistible to him, and he to me.’

  ‘Are you done?’

  ‘No. After Paris was dead, don’t you think I tried to get back to you? Even before he was killed, I tried. Time and again I was caught on the battlements with ropes for a descent. I told Odysseus. Ask him. Once I was nearly hanged in the attempt. They pulled me up half strangled. Ask the sentries.’

  ‘I can’t. They’re all dead by now. Or better be. Are you done?’

  ‘No – that brother of his, I didn’t choose to marry him. When did I ever have a choice with you men? He forced me into it with his talk of raising up seed to his dead brother, the unnatural barbarian, and all the while you arsed around outside the walls and couldn’t bring them down, though I was longing for it. Call yourself a soldier? You weren’t even a king till you married me. You can take your full share of the blame, along with the gods.’

  Ah, the gods. As if the gods would have bartered Argos to the barbarians. People who’ve run out of reasons always blame the gods when they can’t confront reality. And if not the gods, then the stars, their parents, their lineage, their children, their country, their leaders, the latrine-lickers – anybody but themselves. Even the fucking cat would catch the blame if he didn’t catch the mouse. Aphrodite? There was no Aphrodite. She wasn’t even in the fucking room. Aphrodite was Helen’s wetness, the lust between her legs – or so argued the impartial Penelope. The Spartan whore saw Paris and her cunt itched. She saw Troy too in his retinue, and she turned her back on Argos, the treacherous tart, dazzled by the east. A Spartan palace was a hut to her now. No soldier dragged her by the hair. She couldn’t wait to get on board, to hitch up her dress and present the purple crack.

  Look, there she is, doing just that. There on the web is the cunt that caused the Trojan War. Abducted? Abducted my arse! She went like a fucking arrow from Sparta. And as for being caught on the battlements of Troy – any decent woman would have thrown herself off the very first day. Hecuba said she’d begged her a thousand times to get her fancy arse out of the city. And would she? But then Priam had a soft spot for her, didn’t he? So did Hector. So did the old sober buffers up on the walls that day. Fact is, once they’d seen her they never saw straight again.

  There was even a story that the famous breasts weren’t real, that at crucial moments, when her destiny depended on it, Aphrodite intervened and lent her her own. False tits. So what? Men don’t much care whether tits are tits or something else, so long as they can get a good eyeful of them. Or, better still, a couple of fistfuls. Stick a pair of tits in front of most men and their brains are in their balls. Truth doesn’t much matter any more. Nothing fucking matters.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Penelope, ‘she was a whore. How could she be anything else? Look at how these Spartan girls are reared – prancing about with boys and scarcely a stitch to cover their snatches, as good as naked. It’s in the blood.’

  Menelaus was eloquent in her defence by the time he got her home – it had been a long journey. They met a big contingent of his people who’d have marched her straight off to a stoning party to pay for all those Spartan lives, young men cut down cold for a hot whore. And here was the worst cuckold in history standing up to defend his own disgrace.

  ‘She has proved invaluable to Greece and Sparta in the end, quite apart from all the rich pickings we’ve brought home. Think of the bigger benefits of the war, the sharpening of nautical knowledge, the increased military skills, better weapons, a better army, experience, a gathering of fleets from all over Greece, a more united set of peoples. War can be an effective educator, worth its price. Pain can be a better teacher than beauty or joy. Yet the beauty she was born with, though it brought about the mother of all wars, that very beauty has made it all somehow worthwhile, hasn’t it?’

  Hadn’t it?

  Yes, of course she was worth it.

  ‘Right,’ said Menelaus, ‘let’s put all this behind us, shut it down, deep down inside, enjoy oblivion together, all the rest of our blind lives.’

  Sometimes amnesia can be a blessing. That’s how it was for the pair of them.

  However it was, they left Troy together as man and wife, cuckold and whore no more. At Cape Malea they were hit by a storm and their ship was driven off co
urse – Crete, Cyprus, Phoenicia, Ethiopia, Libya; they did the rounds. In Egypt they were held up again by contrary winds – so they say. And did an Agamemnon. Menelaus got hold of two Egyptian kids – and I don’t mean goats – and slit their throats to blow the winds back to Argos. Which worked – so they say. It must have worked, mustn’t it? Because back they came. The Egyptians chased after them but they got away. That’s what they say.

  They also say that in Egypt Helen was presented with a golden spindle. But some women think the spindle was a euphemism – it was a prick, a golden one, absolutely erect, balls and all. Some people will say anything. Especially Penelope. She put the prick up on the web.

  Back in Sparta, Helen soon settled down, ran the palace, renewed her relationship with the daughter, held parties, mixed drinks, gossiped about Paris and Troy, and all of that almost as if none of it had ever really happened, as if it had been just a good story, nothing more. As maybe it was. An old story of old time. A myth.

  *

  Old stories long to be retold. And when they are, they reopen old wounds that start to bleed again. An awful lot of lads bled to death at Troy – that was no myth. Helen didn’t bleed, though, and that was no myth either. That’s the strange thing, strange but true. She died in her bed, the place she knew best. But that’s another story.

  There are dozens of them. Menelaus actually found her in bed when we took Troy. She was shagging Deiphobus for the last time. Menelaus killed him and forced her on the bloodied sheets. We all crowded round and waited our turn, a gang of rapists round the bed. Everybody wanted a piece of her. Every man wanted to say he’d fucked the most expensive whore in history. So she never made it back to Sparta. She was gang-raped to death. In other stories, she did make it back and did live idyllically but was driven out of Sparta after Menelaus died and swung from a tree on Rhodes, hanged by an angry and embittered war-widow, Polyxo.