Electra

by Henry Treece

  I could see the torches for miles now, on either side of Mycenae. It was as though, the procession would never end. Then I fell asleep and did not wake until the dawn.

  Midway through the third day, servants brought tall waxen images of us, dressed in our clothes, and set them up on the platform, so that the soldiers below would think we were still there. It would not do to send them away feeling that we had been too weary to look down on them and bless their expedition.

  On the fourth day, when the Mycenaean chariots were bringing up the rear, Agamemnon himself came to the queen’s chamber to hid us farewell.

  He had put aside his parade armour and best clothes now, and it was to accompany him to the ship in three wagon-loads, there was so much of it. He came into the room like a farmer going to market to sell cows, his beard all over the place, his rough hair bunched up with wire to keep it out of the way, his horse-hide breastplate only loosely laced, his kilt hitched up round his thighs to make walking easier. He carried his special sacred iron helmet under one arm. With its flaps down, it looked like another head that he carried, for even the hog’s hair plumes were of his own colour. The thought made me smile to myself, that the High King had two heads—in case he mislaid one!

  The king saw my smile and bent over me in my bed. ‘So, my Amber Princess is more like herself again,’ he said, as he kissed me. ‘She can smile at her father at last, hey?’

  I reached up and held him about the neck, drawing myself up towards him. ‘Father,’ I said, ‘take me with you to Troy. I am tired of being sick and alone. I should grow well again straightaway if you would take me with you.’ I do not know what made me say this. It just came to me.

  Agamemnon undid my hands from about his neck as gently as he could. Then he smiled and said, ‘Why, you goose! We shall not be away for more than one harvest! You can hope to see us again before the snows come down on Acetylene. These Trojans will throw open their gates and run screaming as soon as they see our numbers, my dove. So why disturb yourself with such a long journey for so short a time? Lie still and get better, and when I come again we can play among the apple-trees and forget what swords look like! ”

  He turned from me, bowed towards my mother, and was gone.

  15

  I am too old for any woman to be, doctor. My body is like a wrinkled empty wine-skin, and I do not know what is truth and what dream. I do not know if what I tell you ever happened. Yet I must say it, for it is in me to say.

  You smile; I can tell you that once, when I was a young woman, I watched them throw an old king over the rocks, into the sea beside Corcyra. He was white-haired, the pharmacos, the Healer, of his folk, and he went over laughing and calling out to men he knew in the crowd, as though he was thankful to go. I stood and wept to see such an old man falling out of the sky to the fishes. But now I can. understand why he laughed. He was glad to be rid of it all. He was glad to know the truth for certain at last. And that is how I am now.

  I would go gladly, for I am weary of not knowing the truth, weary of hearing my tongue tell lies as though I remembered it all. So let us smile together, doctor. I will tell you more of my dreams, and we shall smile. I will forget that I am a queen, and will smile with you.

  Ah, that makes it easier to remember, now. So I will tell you that after the king my father went down to the ships at Aulis, a great calm came over me. I was a sick child, but I was calm. Not calm like a lawgiver who thinks on all the world before he makes his utterance, but calm like a cold stone, or a dead partridge; feeling nothing, wanting nothing, content only to be left in my quietness.

  My mother would say, ‘Why do you stare in front of you, Electra? What do you see?’

  If I bothered to reply, I would say, ‘I do not know why I stare, mother. I see nothing. What is there to see? Why should I see anything?’

  Sometimes she would get angry and answer, ‘It is many months since your father went away, and soon you will know what it is to be a woman. Yet you are still thin, though we feed you on the best we have. You sit about in the palace rooms while the other girls go laughing and singing in the sun. If you would only work at the loom it might be better, but your hands do nothing that is useful. They lie for ever in your lap. Are you still dreaming, my own?’

  I shook my head. I could not find words to tell her that such a dream as I had had needs to come but once in one’s life.

  Then one day after her baby had come to nothing and I was twelve, she said, ‘We are rebuilding the shrines to the Mother, up and down Hellas, daughter. The men have been away so long that we women fear we are forgotten of Zeus. Now we are bringing back Hera. She may take pity on us and bring good fortune to our houses. If you would like it, I will put you with one of the priestesses so that you may begin to learn the Mysteries. That would be something for your heart to feed on. Shall it be so?’

  But I shook my head. ‘I have seen enough of my sister, Chrysothemis, mother. She is a priestess, but her heart is still hungry. I have no wish to be like her, the kernel of the nut rotten inside me.’

  My mother laughed in scorn and beat her fine hands together as though she wished to hurt something, ‘You must not judge by Chrysothemis,’ she said, ‘Your sister is the god’s punishment on this House. She is like the image of a thing—not the thing itself. All is pretty without, but empty within. She is like a sea-shell that seems to hold the voice of Poseidon inside it, howling gently along its whorls; yet it is but an echo of nothing, and if you crush the shell beneath your foot it is only white dust. It is nothing.’

  I said, ‘She makes great show of her prayers and sacrifices, mother. Is that nothing?’

  Clytemnestra’s lips withered from her teeth and she answered, ‘Her prayers fly no farther than the roof-tree rafters. Her sacrifices are but the little death of birds and beasts. The glow about her libation cup is only the sunlight gleaming on the glaze. It is not the light from within. But if you learned the Mysteries, it would be different; you have the inner light.’

  I said, ‘All you have told me of Chrysothemis is what I know about myself. I am as empty as a husk, mother, and I am content to be so. If you find my emptiness a burden on you, then give me the foxglove to drink and I will go away. I ask no more than that.’

  My mother began to weep then and to pull at her hair. Then she dragged me to her and held me so close that I could scarcely breathe, ‘Oh, my dove, my dove,’ she kept saying. I truly think she loved me at that time; and, in my strange way, I loved her. Yet, when I thought about it, it was a bitter small love that seemed always on the edge of ending, as with a honey-cake that must finish as one bites on at it, however small the bite. There is an end to it, once the edges have been broken into.

  Then one afternoon, as I sat dabbling my hand in the water of the fountain that bubbled up in the small court, one of the slave-women stood behind me and touched me on the shoulder.

  ‘Lady,’ she said, ‘a man has come to the palace at your mother’s order. He has brought a playmate for you. It is a boy of your own age, a gentle boy who will not hurt you. His company will be good for you, the queen says. Will you come and receive him, lady?’

  I scooped up some gleaming water and splashed it against my face to cool it.

  ‘What is the boy’s name?’ I asked.

  The woman said, ‘I think it is Rarus.’

  I nodded and said, ‘That is a strange name. It means one who was dropped before his time.’

  The woman shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘They say he was found below the south wall, and was saved from the dogs by a man of Mycenae, a tavern-keeper.’

  I felt the truth in me and said, ‘And that man’s name is Aegisthus. He is bald-headed and smells like a goat. Is that not so?’

  She seemed shocked by my words and pulled her shawl up to her mouth. “I cannot say, lady,’ she answered. ‘I was sent to fetch you, not to talk of these things.’

  So, to save her more anxiety, I went with her and did not tease her with further questioning. It was as I had
thought; Aegisthus stood in the Great Court, before my mother’s canopy, rubbing his hands together and licking his lips as though his mouth was dry. The young boy that the men had given me, that night when we held the snake together, stood behind him, dressed in greasy hides, his hands bound by a hempen cord, like a lamb being delivered at a shrine, hobbled so that it cannot make away before the priestess comes out to take it inside and lay it on the stone.

  That hempen cord unstoppered the anger in me. I ran forward as best I could in my weakness and shouted out, ‘Cut him loose, the poor thing! Is this how a playmate is brought for me?’

  The man Aegisthus bowed so low, I thought he would fall over. His hands seemed to go in all directions at once, as though he did not know what to do first. He looked like a man in mortal terror.

  Then he stared towards Clytemnestra, as though appealing to her. She was standing on the top step of her throne-place, under the awning, her hair uncombed and wild, her black robe in rags about her—for she had set this fashion among the women recently—and her white face like the mask that Maenads wear when Dionysus must be killed again. Her teeth showed small and sharp between her stretched lips. Between them, she said to Aegisthus, ‘Well, man, do as the god’s daughter orders you. Cut the cord. Must you be told twice?’

  At the time, I took small account of her words and of his quick obedience to them. It did not seem strange to me that a great queen should speak so to one who was little better than a slave, or that such a man should fall into a sweat and slash at the hempen cord, as though death sniffed at his heels. It was much later that I looked back on this sunlit afternoon and recalled the terror of Aegisthus again; then I saw deeper into it, saw that her power over him was great

  from the start, great in the deepest sense, power that struck down to his darkest vitals, the power of the priestess over common mortal man.

  But then I was not concerned about such things. I only wanted the boy, Rarus, to be set free away from this hateful fellow of the tavern who had frightened me at night when I was younger.

  I took the lad by the hand and led him away to where the grass stood wild in the garden, among the secret laurel bushes and the luxuriant acanthus with their purple spiked flowers. His hand was damp, as though he was afraid of me, but when I sat beside him and stroked his thin cheek, and told him that I would be his protector for ever, he smiled again.

  ‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I will love you always.’

  I liked to hear him say this, in his rough Cretan dialect, but some contrary thing rose in me, after the way of young girls, and I said sharply to him, ‘Do not call me lady. I am more than that; I am a princess. You must remember that, whenever you speak to me and others are about.’

  He lowered his head, like a dog that has been struck with a whip. I was sorry at the change my words had made in him, and so did my best to undo the harm.

  ‘When you say you will love me, what does that mean, Rarus?’

  He did not look up, but plucked at a piece of braid that hung from my shoulder and said quietly, ‘I mean that I will follow you, and fetch things for you, and take messages, and lie at your door by night so that no one may come on you unawares.’

  Ill as I still was, his meekness suddenly offended me, and I said,’ No more than that? No more love than that? Is that your love?’

  The tears splashed on to his knees and he made no effort to hide them. ‘Princess.’ he said, ‘it is as much as I am able to do. Must I be taunted for what I could not prevent?’

  Then I was indeed melted by his humbleness, and saw nothing to offend me in it. I put my arms about his neck and hugged him to me. ‘forgive me, Rarus,’ I begged him.’ I am grateful for your love, and you shall have my love too. We will be lovers like two stones lying on the path, two trees standing on a hill, two clouds in the sky. Our love shall spring over the gap between us and be all the sweeter for that.’

  So poor Rarus came to be my playmate, my innocent lover, and he was always like a sword that was riveted within the scabbard, or a bull whose horns have been sawn off. He was the gentlest of companions.

  16

  As for the man, Aegisthus, he never left our house from that day when he brought Rarus to be my playmate. At first he was put to work in the kitchens, among the women, carrying meal-sacks or scraping dirty dishes. But gradually, as the winter came and went, he moved into the palace rooms, and was always standing near my mother. To see them together, both in their rags, one would have thought them brother and sister, not queen and servant.

  No one remarked on this, in my hearing at least. I think that two years after the warriors had gone, and the land was in the hands of women and children and old folk, a new spirit had come about. I think it was the folk of Laconica who began it, for they often said it was vanity to wear fine clothes, or to keep a good table. But our people went even further, and neither cut nor combed their hair— which was a thing the true Laconians were very particular about.

  What I am trying to say, doctor, was that in these days it was impossible to tell whether a woman was a lady or a slave by the clothes she wore, or the food she ate. It was hard enough to tell by the speech she used, for now the noble folk copied the common folk in their words and accents. I spoke to my mother about this once, and. she laughed, and. said., ‘What does it matter, if we can under-stand one another? All else is vanity.’ I said, ‘But once you threatened to whip me for mentioning certain parts of the body. You said that was how slaves talked.’

  My mother yawned and scratched her thighs, under her coarse robe, like a fisher woman, then said, ‘That was in the past, Electra. Today, we live in the present. The rules have changed. If we are to please the gods, we must all be equal, and act alike, just as the animals act alike, and the fishes swim alike. One lion roars like any other, don’t you think?’

  I agreed with her, but said that men weren’t lions.

  ‘Yet we were pleased enough to call your father Lion of Mycenae, were we not?’ she asked.

  There was no answer to that, so I was silent, though I knew that if I had been more clever I might have argued against it.

  She said, ‘Each age requires different manners from men. In this age, when we all wait for victory over our enemy in Troy, we must use the manners of humbleness, of degradation, so that the gods will think we are poor slaves to be treated kindly. Think on that, Electra, and count every humbleness as a prayer for victory.’

  I left her then, convinced by her words, and from that moment I began to speak as roughly as any field-slave. I delighted in going for days unwashed, the dust thick on my legs and body, my hair tangled and even verminous. When Rarus tried to comb it for me, I pushed him aside, laughing and said, ‘Don’t be such a silly little idiot! Why, I’ll wear a cow-pat for a hat if I choose!’

  He looked so shocked that I started to say even worse things; until he began to cry. Then I began to cry, too, because I did not like the new self that was growing in me. It is a terrible thing when one first begins to recognise the self in one; all was so simple before, but now it was like learning to live with a stranger in one’s body and heart.

  I think that Rarus was just starting to see the self too, and was feeling unsure, grieved at the death of his childhood. I know that we lay together in the straw that night, in a byre, and cried one another to sleep. That was how it was in the new Mycenae, and, indeed, in all Hellas. Folk lay together in the straw, taking comfort from each

  other, in a world that had lost its certainty, and stood shipless and warriorless, surrounded by the darkness of no news. It was as though, with the going-away of the men to Troy, Hellas had gone blind and deaf, and was waiting, waiting, waiting, for life and strength to come back to it one day, no one knew when, after the monster had been finished, after Troy’s stranglehold had been broken. It was like waiting, in the deep snows of winter, for the first spring sun to shine once more. It was like waiting for the dead to rise again and stretch their limbs and yawn and walk about the burial chamber.

 
You must know, doctor, that in those days, after the great empire of Crete had long decayed, and the foraging ships of Minos no more roamed up and down the middle sea, bringing daily news from everywhere, we of Hellas had come to lead a closed life, without knowing it. Each kingdom had been so busy with its own affairs that there seemed to be no time, and no need, for news of anything outside Hellas. Now, with the men gone, and the old urgency gone, all the drilling finished, and the ships fitted out and away, we were like lost creatures, with nothing to do but wait.

  Those of us who spoke about these things said that this was the most important moment in the story of the world. This was the moment when the gods would decide whether everything should come to a stop, whether Hellas should go on growing, or whether Troy should now be master, and all our folk sink back to savage slavery. You can see that it was a time of great importance in our hearts; yet you can also see that, with nothing to do but tend the crops and the flocks, and wait, many of us fell into a sort of despair, feeling that our lives were wasting away while all the great things were going on across the sea, at Troy. That is why such unusual things happened in Hellas; we did not know which way to turn, while we were waiting helplessly, our future depending on others whom we could no longer see or talk to. We lost touch with the men, as though they had all died.

  Certainly we got news—but nothing that we could trust. Sometimes a carrier-pigeon would drop out of the sky in some village square, with a message tied to its leg that said Troy had fallen, or that

  Agamemnon had been killed, or that the loot-ships would be home next spring…. Sometimes a pirate smack would put into one of the coastal places and tell strange yarns of what was going on at the world’s edge. Sober, the pirates might say that Hellas was triumphant, but when the grateful landlord, who had three sons in the expedition, had given them skin after skin of wine, they would switch their story round, and, out of sheer devilry, say that Ajax and Achilles and Menelaus had been hung in chains to rot from the highest wall of Troy, and that all the Greek ships had foundered.