There are no binding oaths between men and lions—
wolves and lambs can enjoy no meeting of the minds—
they are all bent on hating each other to the death.
So with you and me—
POET (Stepping aside from the action.) Oh! If you could see the way they look at each other …
What do they see?
(An intense whisper.) I wonder if he’s scared—look at him, he may be yelling and shaking his spear but when it comes right down to it he wants to stay alive. And I can even imagine, we could leave here, now, we’ll get drunk together somewhere and we’ll talk about like, “Hey remember that battle, when was it four days ago when you guys had us pinned against the wall and then out of nowhere that young spearman got your charioteer and you guys got thrown … that was intense.” “Yeah, yeah, and how ’bout that bird that came out of nowhere, that was kinda freaky.” “Yeah, that thing just landed in the middle of the field and for a minute we were all staring at it. Was it a heron?” “No no no, it was an egret.” “Oh we call ’em herons.” “No, isn’t the heron with the blue tinge to its upper wings?” “Weeellll, uhhh, I think we call that an egret …”
But … no. Whatever he may have been thinking, this is what Achilles said:
ACHILLES
Now you’ll pay at a stroke for all my comrades’ grief,
all you killed in the fury of your spear!
POET
With that,
shaft poised, Achilles hurled and his spear’s long shadow flew
but seeing it coming glorious Hector ducked away,
crouching down, watching the bronze tip fly past
and stab the earth …
HECTOR
You missed, look—the great godlike Achilles!
All bluff, cunning with words, that’s all you are—
But now it’s for you to dodge my brazen spear—
POET
Shaft poised, he hurled and his spear’s long shadow flew
and it struck Achilles’ shield—a dead-center hit—
but off and away it glanced and Hector seethed,
his hurtling spear, his whole arm’s power poured
in a wasted shot. He stood there, cast down …
he had no spear in reserve …
… Yes and Hector knew the truth in his heart
and the fighter cried aloud,
HECTOR
My time has come!
And now death, grim death is looming up beside me,
no longer far away. No way to escape it now.
Well let me die—
but not without struggle, not without glory, no,
in some great clash of arms that even men to come
will hear of down the years!
POET
And on that resolve
Hector swooped now, swinging his whetted sword
and Achilles charged too, bursting with rage, barbaric.
And fire flared from the sharp point of the spear Achilles
brandished high in his right hand, bent on Hector’s death,
scanning his splendid body—where to pierce it best?
The rest of his flesh seemed all encased in armor,
burnished, brazen—Achilles’ armor that Hector stripped
from strong Patroclus when he killed him—
That’s right! Hector is wearing Achilles’ armor, my god, and so there is Achilles, spear in hand, and he’s looking at himself, in a way, at an image of himself—he’s looking for a weak spot, and he knows exactly where that is, ’cause it’s his armor …
… one spot lay exposed,
where collarbones lift the neckbone off the shoulders,
the open throat, where the end of life comes quickest—there
as Hector charged in fury, brilliant Achilles drove his spear
and the point went stabbing clean through the tender neck …
Hector crashed in the dust—
godlike Achilles gloried over him:
ACHILLES
Hector—surely you thought when you stripped Patroclus’ armor
that you, you would be safe! Never a fear of me—
far from the fighting as I was—you fool!
The dogs and birds will maul you, shame your corpse
while Achaeans bury my dear friend in glory!
POET
Struggling for breath, Hector, his helmet flashing, said,
HECTOR
I beg you, beg you by your life, your parents—
don’t let the dogs devour me by the Argive ships!
Wait, take the princely ransom of bronze and gold,
the gifts my father and noble mother will give you—
but give my body to friends to carry home again—
ACHILLES
Beg no more, you fawning dog—begging me by my parents!
Would to god my rage, my fury would drive me now
to hack your flesh away and eat you raw—
such agonies you have caused me! Ransom?
The dogs and birds will rend you—blood and bone!
HECTOR
I know you well—I see my fate before me.
Iron inside your chest, that heart of yours.
But now beware, or my curse will draw god’s wrath
upon your head, that day when Paris and lord Apollo—
for all your fighting heart—destroy you at the Scaean Gates!
POET (Performing a brief ritual.)
Death cut him short. The end closed in around him.
Flying free of his limbs
his soul went winging down to the House of Death.
ACHILLES (Doing a kind of victory dance.)
Now,
come, you sons of Achaea, raise a song of triumph!
Down to the ships we march and bear this corpse on high—
we have won ourselves great glory. We have brought
magnificent Hector down, that man the Trojans
glorified in their city like a god!
POET
So he triumphed
and now he was bent on outrage, on shaming noble Hector.
Piercing the tendons, ankle to heel behind both feet,
he knotted straps of rawhide through them both,
lashed them to his chariot, left the head to drag
and mounting the car,
he whipped his team to a run and breakneck on they flew,
holding nothing back. And a thick cloud of dust rose up
from the man they dragged, his dark hair swirling round
that head so handsome once, all tumbled low in the dust …
So his whole head was dragged down in the dust.
It’s so—(He shakes his head.)—if you’d seen it, the—the waste … Just like … (He blinks, seems to have lost his place.) there was one time … uhhhh … (Trying to remember.) … yes yes (Shakes himself.) … it was a terrible hot day during the Conquest of Sumer—(He stops to correct himself.)—I mean the Conquest of Sargon—uh—the Persian War—no—
the Peloponnesian War
War of Alexander the Great
Punic War
Gallic War
Caesar’s invasion of Britain
Great Jewish Revolt
Yellow Turban Rebellion
War against the Moors in North Africa
Roman-Persian War
Fall of Rome
Byzantine-Arab War
Muslim Conquest of Egypt
First Siege of Constantinople
Arab-Chinese War
Saxon Wars
Viking raids across Europe
Bulgarian Siege of Constantinople
Zanj Rebellion in southern Iraq
Croatian-Bulgarian War
Viking Civil War
Norman Conquest of England
First Crusade
Second Crusade
Third Crusade
Fourth Crusade
Children’s Crusade
Fifth
Sixth
Seventh
Eighth
Ninth Crusade
Norman invasion of Ireland
Mongol invasion of China
Mongol invasion of Russia
Mongol invasion of Afghanistan
Mongol invasion of Vietnam
The Hundred Years’ War
Chinese Domination of Vietnam
Polish-Lithuanian-Teutonic War
Hunger War
Fall of Constantinople
Wars of the Roses
War of the Priests
Muscovite-Lithuanian Wars
The Spanish Conquest of Mexico
The Mughal Conquest of India
War of the Two Brothers
The Spanish Conquest of Peru
Thirty Years’ War
Pequot War
First, Second and Third English Civil Wars
Cromwell’s conquest of Ireland
Cromwell’s conquest of Scotland
The 335 Years’ War
French and Indian Wars
Second Cherokee War
American Revolution
French Revolution
Haitian Revolution
The Napoleonic Wars
The Bolivian War of Independence
Argentine War of Independence
Mexican War of Independence
Venezuelan War of Independence
War of 1812
Colombian, Chilean, Peruvian, and Ecuadorian Wars of Independence
Lower Canada Rebellion
Upper Canada Rebellion
Second Seminole War
Mormon War
Pastry War
Honey War
First Anglo-Afghan War
First Opium War
The Land Wars
Crimean War
American Civil War
Sioux Wars
Second Anglo-Afghan War
The Boer Wars
Cuban War of Independence
Spanish-American War
Mexican Revolution
World War I
Russian Revolution
Third Anglo-Afghan War
Irish War of Independence
Afghan Civil War
Japanese Invasion of Manchuria
Saudi-Yemeni War
Spanish Civil War
World War II
Palestine Civil War
Arab-Israeli War
Cold War
Korean War
Cuban Revolution
Tibetan Rebellion
Vietnam
Bay of Pigs
Sand War
Six-Day War
Laos
Cambodia
The Troubles
Prague Spring
Nicaraguan Revolution
Salvadoran Civil War
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan
Contra war in Nicaragua
Second Sudanese Civil War
Iran-Iraq War
Falklands War
Israeli Invasion of Lebanon
U.S. Invasion of Grenada
U.S. Invasion of Panama
First Intifada
Afghan Civil War
Rwandan Civil War
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Chechnya
Afghanistan
Kosovo
Iraq
Chechnya
Afghanistan
Rwanda
Darfur
Iraq
Haiti
Pakistan
Lebanon
Kenya
Zimbabwe
Congo
Gaza
Somalia
Georgia
Iraq
Pakistan
Afghanistan
Libya
Syria …*
PART SEVEN
FUNERAL GAMES
Denis O’Hare, NYTW, 2012.
PHOTO: JOAN MARCUS
THE POET is slumped in the chair, lost. He lifts his head, sees the audience and makes his way back to the story.
POET Hecuba opens her mouth:
Because all this time, uhhh … they were all watching—the Trojans, from the top of the rampart: his mother Hecuba, his father, his brothers, Helen. All of the Trojans, watching Hector die.
(THE POET opens his mouth and lets out a cry.) Ooooooooohhh …
(THE POET begins to wail in Ancient Greek—great, sung sorrow.)
[Translation:
My child—my desolation! How can I go on living?
… now death and fate have seized you dragged you down!]
And all around the ramparts, Hector’s family wailed with the grieving Hecuba.
But his wife, Andromache, wasn’t at the wall, she was inside weaving, she hadn’t seen a thing. Busy drawing his bath … she’d talked herself into the idea that he was coming home, he’d need a bath …
… then she hears the women wailing, she hears her mother-in-law’s voice, she recognizes that voice—she’s never, ever, heard that voice sound like that before—her heart pounds, her legs go numb—
ANDROMACHE
—Oh I know it …
something terrible’s coming down on Priam’s children.
POET That’s an awful moment, isn’t it? It starts with uhh, a bad feeling or an intuition or why did the phone ring at 3 o’clock in the morning? Or I didn’t get a phone call, or, he didn’t come home or it’s late, it’s really late, he should have been home by now, I should have heard by now, the plane should have landed by now, he should have called …
She starts to walk, trying to keep herself calm, trying not to panic—but her heart begins to race and she starts getting that weird throbbing and she starts, her eyes start to go kinda dim—she can’t actually see where she’s going—and she comes out and even before she gets to ask a question she looks out across the plain and she actually sees her husband, dead, being dragged behind the chariot—
And she starts to yell at him—
ANDROMACHE
Now you go down
to the House of Death, the dark depths of the earth,
and leave me here to waste away in grief, a widow
lost in the royal halls—and the boy only a baby.
Hector, what help are you to him, now you are dead?
What help is he to you? Think, even if he escapes
the wrenching horrors of war against the Argives,
pain and labor will plague him all his days to come.
POET You know what she’s really saying? She’s saying:
I told you so.
Hector’s body disappears in a cloud of dust.
Achilles drags his prize to the Greek camp and dumps it in the sand—next to the Argive ships. The Greeks cheer and drink and celebrate. But Achilles’ fury just won’t end … and so he drags Hector’s body round and round Patroclus’ tomb, day after day after day. And the thing you have to ask yourself is: It’s been TEN DAYS!!!!! What’s there left to drag?
(THE POET shakes his head.) No no no, you’d be wrong, see, because THE GODS. The gods look down and—I mean really, after all their meddling, after leaving Hector to die, well now they change their minds …
They wrap Hector’s body in—oh, a magic shield of STORM—Zeus loves him after all—and so Hector’s body is perfect, just—unharmed. Sweet-smelling.
Impossible.
So. For ten days, the Trojans have been watching from a distance: the dust rising, funeral pyres smoking, the Greeks carousing and singing songs of the Triumph of Achilles. And … and Hector’s father, Priam, decides to go—even though he’s almost eighty years old—he decides to slog through all the battlefields to the Greek camp, to ransom himself, his kingdom, all his treasures, to Achilles to get his son’s body back.
He sets off with only one old charioteer in the middle of the night. It’s dark and dangerous and—just as Priam and his driver start getting tired, a young man with fabulous sandals appears in front of them.
HERMES What are you old
guys up to—? You’re crossing into Greek territory now, you’re about to cross enemy lines—with your wagon full of treasure. You’ve lost your minds. Listen (Wink.)—I’ll help you, I’ll show you the way.
POET Priam asks him who he is. But the young man goes … (Shhh … finger to lips.).
They sweep unseen across the battlefield, past the ramparts, past the sentries and when they get to the massive gate—so big that it usually takes eight men to push open the doors—the young man, their guide, simply whistles (He whistles.) and the gates fly open.
HERMES Old man, I’ll tell you who I am. I am Hermes. (Wink.) And I can go no further.
POET Then he’s gone. (Snap.) Priam looks up to see Achilles—standing up from the dinner table. It’s like staring into the face of a deathless god. Breathtaking.
PRIAM Great Achilles—You are surprised to see me here, an old man. I am Priam, King of Troy.
I’ve driven a wagon, full of treasure, all the way here from my city. I will ransom—everything … Look how I kneel at your feet.
I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before —
I put to my lips the hand of the man who killed my son.
POET Achilles says, he says—
ACHILLES You amaze me, old man. Get up!! Don’t kneel at my feet!
PRIAM You have a father. Remember your father. You’re so far away from home, your father’s probably suffering right now, no one is there to help him. Your father needs you, and you’re far away in Troy. What would he give to have you home with him? I’m asking you now, as your father would ask me, give me the body. Let me have the body of my son.
ACHILLES I never cried before I came to Troy. But in these last forty days, I find myself crying almost every day. I have reason to cry—and so do you, old man.
POET And they both start to weep … Priam crying for his dead son, Achilles crying for his aging father, so far away, and for his dead friend, Patroclus, and for himself.
An Iliad Page 5