Electra

by Henry Treece

  I fell to my knees before the snake and gazed at it. Its bright eyes looked back into my own, unblinking. It was quite still, as though it were carved in ebony by some cunning craftsman of Crete.

  For a moment, I wondered whether to hold out my own hand to its mouth, so that it could bite me also, and let me go away with the others of my kin. Then a different feeling came on me, telling me to rise and crush the serpent with my heel, if only to test whether there was a god or not, or whether all this suffering was an accident, like the strong oak being blown down by a chance gale.

  And it was while I was wondering which of these things to do, doctor, that you came on your mule, with your black slave walking beside you, through the farmyard gate.

  EPILOGUE

  Later, washing his hands in the bowl that his apprentice held for him, the Hittite doctor said, ‘We must not believe everything a patient tells us, must we, boy?’

  The young Libyan’s smile widened and showed his white teeth; ‘All Greeks are liars, master. Is that what you are teaching me?’

  The doctor dried his long fingers carefully and put back all his golden rings. ‘Not exactly, my lad. Some of them, the rough ones, Dorian and Spartans, often try to seek the truth—but not the dispossessed, the once-great, the city folk. They still hold on to their dreams. I tell you, boy, great palaces may fall with fire and storm, but those dreams can last a thousand years unharmed.’

  The black boy emptied the water away thoughtfully. ‘Master,’ he said, ‘was this old woman the great Electra, do you think?’

  The doctor gazed across the far blue hills. ‘There are hundreds of women called by that name, up and down this strange country,’ he answered, cleaning his finger-nails with a little scalpel.

  ‘Yes, I know; but was she the great princess, in her time? She seems to know much of what went on in palaces and tombs.’

  The Hittite smiled distantly and said, ‘These stupid poets make our work harder than it need be. Any child, from Ephesus to Leucas, could tell you what Agamemnon wore, what food he ate, his words as he died. And they will all be different.’

  ‘What I cannot understand is why she says so little about Troy. There were great heroes and great battles, master, yet she does not speak of them.’

  The doctor shook his head slowly and his golden ear-rings made a small tinkling sound. ‘Perhaps she was too young to be interested, or too old to remember, boy. Perhaps we all remember only what happened to us, not to other folk, half-way across the world.’

  The boy stood beside him, his head on one side, his fingers tracing the pattern on the doctor’s carved chair. ‘Now you seem to be saying that she was Electra, master,’ he said, smiling.

  The Hittite stroked his black beard. ‘In our trade, my son, a man has to consider all manner of approaches, and he can never be quite certain. In this case, there is only one thing I am sure about. From my examinations, I would say with my hand to my heart that she had never borne a child.’

  The Libyan boy said, ‘But, master! The still-born in the Iron Valley, Medon and Strophius the farmers!’

  The doctor waved his hand like a fan. ‘When you are an old, old man, with no one to gainsay you, might you not swear that you led a company, under the arrows, against Thebes?’

  The boy sat in the dust and began to collect pebbles together and build them into a small pyramid, always trying to lodge a bright red one on the top, but never getting it to stay.

  ‘There are too many things in life that puzzle me, master,’ he said. ‘Life is like an oracle that one can read five ways.’

  The doctor patted him on the head and said, ‘It will never get any easier, little one, however old you grow. That is all a man ever learns, to tell the truth, though it comes to him in five ways.’

  Suddenly the boy stopped playing with the pebbles, and, gazing up, asked, ‘In all truth then, master, what have you learned about this woman?’

  The Hittite answered very slowly, ‘I have learned only what I have seen here, at this ruined farm. When we came through the gate, there was no little black snake. Nor had the dead ones died recently. They had been so for many a season, for their hides were like tanned leather bags, that held only the worm. And the old woman, who calls herself Electra, had tried many times to hang herself Her neck was scarred with the deep marks of a rope. But there was another thing that puzzled me, much more than all this. She spoke of the mad visitor who broke off the blade of his knife in her man’s side.’ The boy stood up, his eyes white at their rims. ‘Yes?’ he said. Putting his hand inside his robe, the Hittite drew out a copper-bladed Mycenaean dirk with an ivory handle. ‘See,’ he smiled, ‘it is as entire now as when it first came from the smith’s forge. How else could it have cut the throats of the three dead ones here?’

  The boy did not speak, his eyes were fixed on the blade as it caught the sun’s falling light.

  The doctor put the dagger away, slowly and carefully. ‘If you mean to become a good physician,’ he said, ‘you must learn more than herbs and philtres. You must learn to keep your eyes open. They are your most precious instruments—not your scalpels and your pincers and your probes.’

  At last the apprentice shook his woolly head. ‘Why does the god make it so difficult?’ he said. ‘And who is this old woman?’

  The doctor stood up, ‘Let us go in,’ he said, ‘I am hungry after this hard day.’

  And as they walked back to the ruined house he said, ‘I do not know anything about gods, my boy. Nor does this strange old woman. This she has been trying to tell us, all through her story. It is the one thing about her which interests me, or else I should have left her a gentle poison and gone on my way, which is often the best with ancient folk who will never get well again.’

  And at the door he said, ‘“Who is she? ” you ask. She may have been a temple dancer in her youth. But I would guess that she is one of the sort who dwell too much in the past, and dream that they were princesses, or priestesses, or maenads. The bloody tales they heard at their nurses’ knee will never let them go, and in the end they become the creatures of their own dreams. These valleys and villages are full of them still and they can never let the past die in peace. The old ghosts are always with these strange people.’

  The boy held open the door for his master. ‘Perhaps it was a good thing that the incomers put an end to Mycenae, after all,’ he said.

  The Hittite smiled. ‘We are doctors, my son, not poets,’ he answered. Then he stepped across the threshold.