It Takes a Thief

by Niels Hammer

  “But there are also exceptions, some do have the integrity and ability to think for themselves.”

  She knew full well that when she died she would die without regrets.

  “A lonely Barn Swallow does not herald the approach of Summer.”

  “No, but we’ve almost forgotten to eat. All the others have nearly finished.”

  “Let’s appease our human hunger so that we can survive as well.”

  The sauce was lukewarm – the implied pun was warm – and the beef juicy and tender upon his tongue. Someone had killed a Cow so he could enjoy the taste of roasted meat. How could he forgive himself for such a level of integrity? Just living with the open wound. Chewing slowly he listened to the rising and falling chorus of voices washing up and down the shell- and wrack-strewn table-cloth. Eight tunes potentially – but only two or three were speaking simultaneously.

  “A pity to send susceptible children to school that early. They will be maimed for life, at least the best of them, Shelley, Parnell. The majority becomes coarse, deprived of empathy.”

  “School is society’s baptism of fire.”

  “Then I waved and waved to get somebody to stop. There’s no chivalry left on Monday mornings. Women are supposed to do everything a man should do, everything, beside, of course, everything a woman always has done, so I had to change it myself.”

  Wanting it both ways as always – a given prerogative. The loneliness of foghorns in the mist.

  “Of course he did not want to tell me anything, but as the evening mellowed and he became more careless with what he said and more inclined to boast – ”

  Reconsidering his display of sagacity Mortimer chuckled with discreet delight.

  “He told me everything, though inadvertently, and I borrowed as many of the shares as I could, sold them and waited a couple of months. That was enough. Quite a killing really.”

  Though proud now of playing the black- and white-speckled game of gain and loss where the stench of rotting corpses was the only thing that was alive he would remain unaware of the heavy toll of acting contra naturam till death released him from himself.

  “Then I bought the shares back cheaply. There’s nothing like a good tip regardless of how it’s given.”

  To get the bad taste out of his mouth he began a neat fishing operation for tomatoes in the salad bowl with two smooth tools of Juniper. But Jennifer had put too much vinegar in the dressing or too little olive oil – as a reflection of her current dissatisfaction?

  “Believe me, Lizzie’s as hard as a nail and she watches Kitty like a dragon, but that really gave her a shock; Kitty, however, just enjoys upsetting her for she’s just as hell-bent as she is on getting her own way, quite regardless of the circumstances or of other people.”

  “But what happened really?”

  Eager to be shocked by the gruesome details Mary voiced her sisterly concern and having focused their attention to her heart’s content Jessie licked her lips to salt her words.

  “Well, Lizzie woke up suddenly. She did not know why, but then she thought she heard some faint noises from upstairs and became suspicious. So she went up to Kitty’s room and knocked. There was no answer and the door was locked. She became furious but remembered that there was a spare key in the kitchen, so she rushed down to get it and rushed up to open the door. The room was dark and Kitty was lying in her bed. The only way out was the window, so she opened it and looked down. There was someone stuck beneath it in the roses. Running out in the garden she found a boy lying entangled in the bushes. He was bleeding and moaning. So she had to fetch Kitty and a pair of garden shears and together they managed to extricate the poor boy from the thorns. But she did not want to call an ambulance and have the boy brought to a hospital for fear of a scandal. She’s rather stubborn and out of touch with present-day reality. Anyway, they carried the boy and his bundle of clothes into the house and placed him, enveloped in a sheet to avoid blood stains, on the sofa. He was of course stark naked and she had almost to wash him in iodine. So instead of chasing him away with a broomstick she had to nurse and feed him till he was well enough to go home in the morning.”

  Seymour sampled his Bordeaux with a clinical air – Mary was brimming over with empathy for Lizzie – Peregrine and Gilbert laughed at Lizzie’s plight while admiring the boy’s gallant attempt to escape – Mortimer guffawed suavely at la comédie humaine – Charlotte – Queen’s Counsel – folded her napkin annoyed by such an outrageous assault on common decency and Sally thought about how Kitty would have managed to cope with the delicate situation of reconciling both her mother and her lover simultaneously while he wondered at the sheer diversity of their reactions.

  The gradual ebb in the conversation suggested a general wish for a change of air – and as he found his light thin shoes with his toes they rose in unison – mellow with ox-flesh and abundant wine – from the table of left-overs and empty bottles and filed slowly – making pleasant remarks about pleasant and common matters – into the sitting room for ease and greater comfort. In a way he regretted that the Port and walnut ritual had become unfashionable because of a tabu as the cant again had become so much stronger than the cunt – for the greater the difference the greater the attraction – but as a compensation there were petits fours – Mango fruits and Armagnac. If he had known that he would have eaten a little less – but having withdrawn to a corner with three cakes on a large plate decorated with nodding Buttercups – a large glass of Armagnac and an Alphonso Mango he had chosen after discreetly smelling them all to ascertain their relative ripeness – he peeled it and nibbled at one of the cakes – cherry and marzipan – to delight in a bitter though not a too strong almond note. Sixty milligrammes or so would be enough to cause a metamorphosis – but he continued the count-down here and now with a tiny sip of Armagnac – and it evoked a flowery – a peachy – a dark-red rose note. Waiting a little impatiently till his receptors had reached a neutral state he crushed the amber-yellow Mango flesh between his tongue and his hard palate before letting the air from his lungs pass very slowly out through his nostril – to distinguish lime – apricots and a peppery citrus turpentine – β-Phellandrene perhaps –

  “Ralph, why are you sitting here all alone?”

  “To enjoy your delicious petits fours and your precious Armagnac and this lovely Mango. Take a slice and crush it with your tongue and dissolve your whole being in its flavour. That is life. Both the Mango and the petits fours are a real treat, and the Armagnac very rich in rosy tastes – just what I like best and combined they are even better. I would have liked to join you, but I have difficulty doing two things well simultaneously, so not to be distracted I sat down here.”

  “Only women can do two things well simultaneously, but I’m glad that you like my cakes. I took great care with them. Peregrine is also partial to cakes, though he has to watch his figure.”

  “But you don’t, your emotions consume the calories.”

  Instinctively trusting his sincerity she nodded pleased by the assurance that it would not matter how much she indulged herself as long as she could act whole-heartedly in the staged drama of life. Following in her queenly steps he settled in the soft leather sofa to take part in the lively exchange of recent impressions – beside Seymour who sat nursing his glass – sniffing and sipping – to ease the strain of being an honest doctor in a soulless age.

  “No, I certainly never liked her, and do you know what happened at Geraldine’s party?”

  The straight tone of her voice – tangible disgust in three dimensions.

  “No, but maybe I have a suspicion of what might have happened.”

  “But I can’t, so why don’t you tell us.”

  Jennifer’s bait was swallowed whole – the brightening of her eyes – taking aim –

  “It’s rather embarrassing in a way.”

  To increase the suspension and hold the attention of her au
dience. Any judiciary process had au fond to be flamboyant and theatrical in order to camouflage its inherent shallowness.

  “Then there’s all the more reason to tell it, come on, Charlotte! Don’t torture us.”

  “Well, she looked deeply into my eyes, sighed hoarsely and licked her lips, like a cow coiling her tongue around a tuft of grass. I felt disgusted and turned away immediately.”

  The delight of being offended had been classified as legitimate while the compliment – the basic purport – titillating and challenging – was treated with pretended indifference.

  “Yes, she’s a proper bitch, at least when she wants to.”

  Jennifer’s considered evaluation was not a depreciation but a statement in accordance with social or rather anthropological reality – for as a genuine savante she soared parsecs above such petty assassinations – formed by idiosyncratic or parochial parameters.

  “She’ll stop at nothing, I mean, she’s naturally omnivorous.”

  Mary’s impression – a kernel of admiration for emotional honesty buried in the soft mesocarp of a polite reservation. Inadvertently her analysis was also a depreciation of Charlotte although her sympathy would neutralise its impact. Various colours of laughter had arisen and subsided in the gentle evening air. Mortimer’s overbearing as a man of the world – Jessie’s titillated as a woman – Sally’s astonished as a fellow mortal and Seymour’s intrigued as a healer of wounds.

  “I could of course not accept such a proposition as a compliment.”

  Another polyphony of laughter echoed through the room. A social escape mechanism.

  “She just happens to be born like that, I suppose. For her it’s simply natural.”

  Sally tried to mitigate the impact of the generally benevolent prejudice.

  “Oh, I know, but it was rather unpleasant to be accosted by such a Lesbian nightmare in heat.”

  Her metaphor increased the pitch of the hilarity and sharpened his irritation – in spite of knowing better.

  “I wonder why you use the term Lesbian in such a connection?”

  “But what else should I say?”

  For an instant a fine girlish reflection from the past clarified the features of her face.

  “In love and sometimes even in desire character is of greater significance than gender; and there are several terms which are connotatively more appropriate, such as bisexual or androgyne or even gynaikophile though they are all more or less derogatory. Both historically and culturally the term Lesbian is a misnomer, though already Horace made the mistake of writing mascula sappho even though the passion Psapphō suggests was of a different nature from what he knew and from what you seem to think.”

  “A different nature? If she were in love with another woman then where’s the difference?”

  “Neither Psapphō nor Alkibiadēs sought identity in gender; they knew themselves and felt free to love whomsoever they wanted regardless of sexual identity; the present trend to find identity in gender rather than in personal characteristics would have appeared inauthentic to them both. Psapphō was a happily married woman, and she had a daughter whom she loved. But the crux of the matter is that she was completely feminine; Alkaios, who knew her, said that she was pure or holy, ἄγνα, and that her smile was like honey. There’s not the slightest whiff of a masculine sensibility in her poetry although she was in love with several women who shared her passions and her worship of Aphroditē. The feeling she expressed for them fused the sacred with the sensual. While the sensual or the neurophysiological response might more or less have remained unchanged in spite of a time-span of two thousand five hundred years, the equally important arousal of a sense of the sacred or of sacred awe seems almost to be non-existent now. So to use the term Lesbian for the kind of female homosexuality prevalent to-day is factually wrong or anachronistic.”

  “But does that not depend on how you read her poetry?”

  “Naturally, but the underlying affective states are unmistakable, regardless of how you read it.”

  If disregarding von Willamowitz-Moellendorff and other heroes of that kidney.

  “Can you quote any of her poetry, just to give an impression of what you mean?”

  Well-meaning though sceptically ironic – assuming that nothing definitive could be assumed about anything – he appeared to disregard the nearly contemporaneous evidence in the Corpus vasorum as well as the plain and homely smell of truth.

  “Maybe I could as it is a kind of poetry which it is very easy to learn by heart; but it also requires a commentary, so if you think it worth while I could give you an impression and send you two thousand five hundred years back in time for a quarter of an hour.”

  “All right, we’ll brace ourselves for the shock of such a time travel.”

  Jessie’s encouragement – curiosity and kittling smoked out his partly reluctant contribution.

  “But don’t interrupt me too much as I might get distracted and forget a line or two –

  ποικιλόθρον’ ἀθανάτ’ Αφρόδιτα –

  παῖ Δίος δολόπλοκε – λίσσομαί σε –

  μή μ’ ἄσαισι μηδ’ ὀνίαισι δάμνα –

  Πότνια – θῦμον – ”

  “You had better translate it.”

  “Yes, of course, but even though you may not all have understood the denotations you might have been able to appreciate the interchange of long and short syllables and probably even the change in pitch although my rendering failed to do justice to the melody of the Greek, so

  Rainbow-flowered! Deathless! O Aphrodita!

  Child of Zeus! Wile-weaver! I do beseech you,

  Do not now, O Lady, subject my soul to

  heart-aches and anguish.

  Now, ποικιλόθρονos means either a throne elaborately ornamented or flowers of various colours, as in the Iliad where it also denotes flowers as magical erotic charms; the image is in any case associated with multiplicity, change and brilliant colours to suggest the various ways in which love may be expressed; and a child of Zeus, is really the equivalent of Zeus, if Zeus can be equated with the ultimate cause, that which is unlimited, undetermined, infinite and absolute. So Aphrodita is one of the forms in which this absolute level can be manifested, but Wile-weaver on the other hand suggests that Aphrodita also is the maker of snares and traps which catch the unsuspecting and innocent unawares, so as to replace innocence with bitter-sweet experience. The underlying suggestion is that an emotion comes and carries one away like a great wave or a great wind. Passion cannot be mitigated, diluted or thought away. Both ἄση distress and ὀνία grief have fatal connotations. Πότνια also means Mistress and Goddess. There is no English equivalent. But the poetic-scientific quality of the Greek is untranslatable. In English it appears as trivial though not if being aware of the sharp emotional truthfulness.”

  “So she is really just invoking her own emotion to come to her aid as a sort of self-affirmation.”

  “No, not at all, Jennifer, such a left brain hemisphere reduction does not obtain here, for to her the affective state was so strong that it swept her away; the same turn of phrase can by found both in the Iliad and in the Odysseia. The emotion she had filled the entire world and the emotion was Aphrodita, the force of Love. And she did not experience it as a projection because of its strength, though first and foremost because of its nature, for she was aware of love as a primal force in nature. The love she felt made her one-sinewed with that universal force, as expressed in Sophoklēs’ magnificent fragment, so it was this universal, this all-encompassing force, called Aphrodita she invoked to become one with it. But now I’ll continue with the next stanzas but omit the Greek.

  Though come hither, if now before you ever,

  listening to my call in the far off distance,

  heeded me, and leaving your Father’s Hall c
ame

  yoking your golden

  Chariot. With densely whirring wing-beats

  did the swift and beautiful birds then bring you

  from the Sky and down to the dark Earth through the

  air in between them.

  Here Psapphō expects consistency and coherence in Aphrodita’s behaviour, although Aphrodita as a liminal Goddess is fickle. Leaving your Father’s hall suggests the contrast between the absolute and the relative world of cause and effect. The Hall of Zeus is Aphroditē’s abode, her home, her original state. When she leaves that dimension she becomes activity, she becomes responsible for specific acts. And Golden is Aphroditē’s epithet par excellence, and the most likely birds are Rock Pigeons; densely whirring wings suggest the urgency of her mission. There is a similar observation about Pigeons in the Odysseia, and it shows not only the strength of the Homeric epics but it also indicates how close Psapphō and the culture of Lesbos were to the Homeric world with its underlying Hittite strata. The atmosphere of Knōsos was still alive.

  Suddenly they settled, but you, O Blissful!

  with your deathless face smiling down upon me

  asked what ever ailed me again and why a-

  gain I kept calling –

  She has really seen Aphrodita as she now says but that does not mean she is naïve, but the more alive we are the more all Nature becomes alive. Children imbue their toys with life, the life they have in them. When they grow older they become clever; and the rational mind is a wonderful servant but an all-destructive master. It places the intellect as a filter in front of experience. The emphasis moves from the right hemisphere to the left. Aborigines who live in close contact with Nature feel the life in trees and animals and know that they all have a spirit. When living becomes automatic this degree of aliveness vanishes; the world then becomes deanimated, desacralised and dead, because the life around us cannot any longer be recognised for what it is. Aphrodita was so real to Psapphō that she came down to Earth to alleviate her of her suffering. She saw and felt her as a substantiation of life, love and desire.