Helen of Troy

by Margaret George

  I felt tears starting behind my eyes.

  “So look about you, see everything, remember it, hold it close to your heart.”

  What did I see? A great company of men, the disappointed suitors. There they were, the lives I might have had, had I gone with those men. There were many cakes—poppy, linseed, sesame, honey, sweet oil—laid out on the tables. There were piles of the sweetest dried figs—as it was not the season for fresh—and dates from Egypt and barley bread and honey from a mountain near Athens. There were slices of roast meat of all varieties—ox, kid, sheep, heifer—still steaming on their platters, just sliced from the turning spits. There were huge amphoras of the best wine, some from as far away as Mount Ismarus in Thrace, and so many lined up that our stores seemed inexhaustible, trumpeting our generosity.

  But all of it faded—the music, the talk, the food, the wine—as I was terrified by the realization: I am married. I, Helen, was a married woman.

  What does it mean to be married?

  We went away. We went away in a chariot just at twilight, making for Mycenae. Menelaus took the reins and I stood beside him, and the horses made for his home. We rattled down the hill—on the gentler side, the path that horses and chariots could descend. The guests ran out after us, pelting us with quince apples, with myrtle leaves, and then, in a shower from heaven, thousands of braided violets. They landed in the chariot, they struck our feet, and we crushed them underfoot, releasing their delicate slight scent.

  Menelaus’s quarters in the gray citadel of Mycenae: a great winding labyrinth of stone passages and little rooms, each with its own hearth. The attendants welcomed us gladly, and lit the fire in the chamber that had been laid, awaiting Menelaus’s return.

  We were alone. Just he and I, standing in this chilly stone chamber, watching, awkwardly, the fire lapping against the wood. We were as stiff as the wood, as unmoving as the stone around us.

  Menelaus finally spoke. “Helen . . .”

  I turned to him. “Yes. I am here.”

  Silently, he enfolded me in his arms. He was much taller than I, and when he enveloped me, I was pressed against his chest and all the rest of the world was black.

  “I cannot believe my fortune, that you chose me . . .”

  I turned my face up to his. I had never kissed anyone before and did not know what to expect, what to do, but it felt natural.

  We kissed. He embraced me, pulled me tight against him. It was so odd to be touched this way, to have someone be so familiar with my person. Now this stranger was putting his mouth on mine. It frightened me and I felt trapped.

  Now his hands were clasping the sides of my face, pulling me up toward him, as if I were not close enough. His fingers got caught in my hair, pulling it, and it hurt. But I dared not cry out, say anything. Somehow I sensed that if I did so, this first time, I would insult him.

  “Helen . . . Helen . . .” he was murmuring, and his breath was coming faster.

  I felt nothing. Nothing but my heart pounding in panic. Stop! I wanted to say, but I knew it was hopeless, and at the same time I felt foolish. What had I truly expected, when I asked what it meant to be married?

  “Helen . . .” He stumbled toward the wide flat sleeping place that sat in one corner of the room, spread with fur pelts and fair linens.

  I followed him; I let him take my wrist (again, the old symbolic gesture). I was short of breath. I did not know what to do, only that there was one dread test left to me, this test that must be passed in private.

  Softly, he led me to the flat linen-spread surface, and knelt on it, drawing me after him. My hands felt icy. I breathed slowly.

  Do not think about it, I told myself. I folded myself by his side.

  “Helen . . .”

  He reached out to pull away my gown. I stiffened and wanted to stop him, but I commanded myself, Do not interfere. He has the right to touch you, to take off your garments.

  Do not think about it.

  The fire was flickering, making snapping noises. Menelaus seemed glad to notice it, to comment on it. Then he turned back to me.

  “My dearest,” he whispered. His hands stroked my shoulders. I shuddered at the touch, but willed myself to stay still. “My dearest . . .” His words were lost against my throat.

  He drew the last of the clothing separating us aside. I felt chilled, embarrassed, vulnerable. Let this be over!

  He was holding me, he was . . .

  Oh, I cannot relate it. It was painful, and invading, and then it was over. So quickly.

  “Helen . . .” His head rested against my shoulder. “Helen . . .” With a great sigh, his voice trailed off. He slept.

  In the teasing light of the fire, when he was absolutely still, I moved and drew up the soft woolen covers. It grew cold in the chamber. I slid as far away as I could, pulling the covers after me.

  XIV

  The day stole into the chamber cold and gray. The glorious sunshine of the day before had fled, and I felt the encroaching, encircling grasp of the stone walls like the heavy weight of Menelaus’s arm flung across my shoulders.

  He slept, his light-lashed eyes closed. In the dim light I could study him, watch his face—the first time I was able to do so.

  He was my friend, my ally. I had sensed that from the moment I met him; and if one must marry, then let it be to a friend. That I had felt uneasy at the final surrender that was part of marriage should not undermine the rightness of my choice.

  He breathed in, out, sleeping carelessly. He had done so much to win me; now he rested.

  Like Heracles after his labors, I thought, and giggled. A man must rest.

  But the labors of last night . . . why had I found them so off-putting? I was supposed to swoon at the ministrations of Aphrodite, but they had left me unmoved.

  Aphrodite. I solemnly invoked her in my mind, not daring to murmur the words aloud. If by any human failure or weakness I did not call out to you at the time I desired guidance in choosing my husband, please forgive me. Your greatness may have blinded me, so I looked past the most obvious goddess of all. I, Helen, beg you to come to me now.

  For a life without passion will be too long, even if it is short.

  Menelaus stirred and looked at me. He moved his arm—its dead weight lightened as it came to life again. Then he reached out both arms and enfolded me.

  “Dear Helen,” he murmured. “Now it begins. Our life together.”

  I laid my head on his shoulder, smooth with its relaxed muscles. “Yes. May the gods grant us a blessed one.”

  All would be right. It would have to be. I had chosen, and there was no going back.

  Clytemnestra and Agamemnon arrived the next day, although before that we had ventured out into the palace and played a bit with their daughter, pretty Iphigenia, sturdily walking, and babbling away with words that were enchanting, even when they were incorrect.

  “Well, well!” Agamemnon chuckled, as he did everything, loudly. He had an ugly gleam in his eyes that he tried to mask, but it was unmistakable. He kept looking at me, looking at Menelaus, narrowing his eyes. I knew he had spent last night with us in the chamber, in his mind at least—the chamber that he had promised us was ours in privacy.

  Menelaus tried to keep his face expressionless—out of respect for me, I suppose. But what would he say when he and his brother were alone, as would happen sooner or later? Clytemnestra, too, was eager to speak to me in confidence. I dreaded it; I wished they would go away. I did not care to speak of it; I felt it would be a dreadful betrayal of Menelaus. Or was it a betrayal of myself?

  “And after you drove away in the chariot, and everyone’s hands were stained from the flowers and fruit they had tossed after you, we went back into the palace and . . .” It had been quiet after we left, with the strange hush that descends after great bustle.

  “And now,” said Clytemnestra, holding her arms wide, “you have all the years of your lives to be together!”

  “I wonder how long that will be?” asked Menelaus. />
  “Do you mean, how long will you live?” Agamemnon demanded.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s what I mean. People in our families do not live a long time.”

  “How morbid! Why would you speculate about that today, of all days, Menelaus?”

  “I was just . . . wondering how many years of happiness I’d be granted.”

  “How old is the oldest person you have known—or known about?” I asked Menelaus, trying to steer the subject onto more cheerful ground.

  Agamemnon answered. “I suppose Nestor, and he isn’t all that old. There was a man in Argos who claimed to be eighty—a wizened little cricket of a human who lived in a tiny house. I saw him once, with Father. But of course no one could prove how old he really was.”

  “Do you think anyone could ever live to be a hundred?”

  “No,” said Menelaus. “That would be impossible.” He smiled and took my hands. “But fifty years of happiness will equal a hundred dull years.”

  We stayed in Mycenae for ten days, and Menelaus showed me all his haunts and the secrets of the landscape. The citadel itself was built halfway up a hill between two mountains, and from its ramparts you could see the sea—something we never could do in Sparta. The first time I saw it, a flat shining expanse, I cried out in excitement. I had never seen the sea.

  “My love, how can that be?” he asked.

  “I was kept locked up,” I said. “It was . . . it was for my own protection.”

  “Now I will protect you,” he said. “And if you wish to see the sea, you may look your fill.”

  “Can we go closer? Even sail on it?”

  “Let us go closer first,” he said. “Sailing can come later.”

  There were caves in the high hills where he and Agamemnon had played as boys, and where he still knew hidden entrances, overgrown with vines. I liked imagining him as a boy, wondered what he had looked like then.

  He showed me the great storeroom of the citadel where the treasures of his house were kept—huge stores of olive oil, of finely woven cloth, of gold and silver, and of bronze tripods and armor. The armor had been captured from various foes in raids and battles, most forgotten now, remembered only for the spoils they had yielded. They gleamed on in the dark of the storeroom while their owners had long ceased to gleam.

  “Take what you like!” he said, gesturing around the room. But I had no desire for any of it. When I did not reply, he opened a cypresswood box and took out a gold goblet.

  “My wedding gift,” he said, presenting it to me.

  It was as large as a bucket, and very heavy. “This is not for mortals,” I said. “Unless it be Ajax of Salamis.” My arm ached with holding it. It had a pattern of little circles stamped all over its body and its handles were pleasingly curved. I handed it back to Menelaus.

  “I said it is yours.” He pushed it back at me.

  “You have already given me wedding gifts,” I said. “Truly, I am content.”

  “I want you to have something from my father’s house,” he said. “Atreus won this in battle, and he always prized it. My mother kept it by her place at feasts, and now you must, too.”

  The gold was warming under my hands, and I saw I must not refuse. But still I was loath to take it.

  Menelaus took a strand of my hair and wound it around the cup. “The same color,” he said. I could see the pride and possessiveness in him as he entwined his cup with my hair. “Oh, Helen!” he said. “You never saw the sea, you could not look upon it. Now I will take you there. You can have your fill of it now.” He leaned forward and kissed me.

  Our last night in Mycenae: cold, as I suspected all nights were there, even in high summer. We ate together at a long wooden table, and I dutifully kept the large goblet by my place, although I never could have drained it. Menelaus kept refilling it, as if to secure it to me. Afterward we lay back on pillows in the megaron and enjoyed the warmth of the fire and the sweet music of the bard, who sang of battles and brave deeds of men who lived before our times.

  “Always before our times,” said Menelaus. “The age of heroes is over, now that Heracles is dead.”

  “How do you know?” said Agamemnon. He never missed an opportunity to question or contradict. “Did the heroes themselves know they were living in the age of heroes? Did it have a big sign saying, ‘All ye underneath, know that you live in the age of heroes’?”

  “Agamemnon, you sound so stupid sometimes!” Only Clytemnestra would dare say that to him, although I had thought it. She laughed.

  “It’s not a stupid question! I think heroes make their own age,” he said.

  “And only later, someone calls it the age of heroes.” He looked around, his eyes again seeking mine. I wished he would stop it. I dropped mine. “It is not over yet. Not if we decide it goes on.”

  “You need to fight mighty foes,” said Clytemnestra, “and I don’t see any about. Heracles killed them all off.” She leaned forward and tickled his ear. “No, my lion, you will have to content yourself with cattle raids and minor skirmishes. That is the problem with times of peace. But who would wish otherwise?”

  Agamemnon grunted and brushed her hand away as if it were an annoying fly. But Clytemnestra, feeling playful, kept on.

  “Cheer up, my love,” she said. “Perhaps a dragon will come along and menace a city. Or another sphinx.”

  “Stop it,” Agamemnon warned her. “I won’t be teased.”

  His raised voice caused the bard to stop singing, tuck his lyre under his arm, and steal away.

  Back in our cold chamber, we would huddle under the wolfskin covers that overlay the wool blankets. Menelaus would encircle me with his strong arms and begin to murmur endearments, moving against me ever more insistently.

  I had not overcome my revulsion for the sexual act and continued to fight the impulse to push him away, to put both my palms on his wide chest and shove.

  In the past ten days, something alarming had become clear: I hated to be touched. I had never realized that before, as anyone touching me had done so only in a passing manner. Even my mother, when she embraced me, did not linger, nor did she invade my person. My attendants, when I bathed, averted their eyes and used sponges to apply the perfumed oil and the olive oil to rub on my back afterward. My brothers draped their arms carelessly over my shoulders, but only lightly, and only for a moment.

  This was different. And my aversion to it was growing; I was not becoming accustomed to it. I dared not show it and found for the first time in my life how difficult it was to pretend—something I had never had to do. I knew without anyone telling me that I must, at all costs, keep it from Menelaus. But how could I, forever? For a little while, yes, but . . .

  Where was Aphrodite? Why did she spurn my abject apology? Without her I would never cross to that other land, that fabled place where women not only welcomed such behavior but sought it out and . . . sometimes . . . instigated it themselves. Every morning I begged her to come to me in the evening; every night it was clear she had turned deaf ears to my plea. As Menelaus moved closer to me, his breath warm against my ear, I was as cold inside as the waters of the Styx.

  In the sunlight it seemed of much less import, of course. The next morning, as we jounced in our chariot toward Sparta, it was easy to forget the secrets of the dark. I looked at Menelaus’s strong forearms as he stretched them out to hold the reins; now—perverse goddess!—I found them appealing, now that they were not reaching for me.

  “Our new quarters will be waiting,” he said, flicking the reins. “What shall we find, do you think?”

  While we were away, Father and Mother were readying our apartments, the place where I would live as a married woman. My old chambers, the chambers of girlhood, would be left behind—until I had a child of my own to fill them.

  “They are on the east side of the palace,” I said. They had stood empty for many years; I had heard stories about a great-aunt who had lived in them with a pet monkey and poisonous plants. The monkey had eaten some of the leaves
and died—but she, with her knowledge of herbs, had given him an antidote and he had recovered. Or so the tale went. We children were forbidden to explore the rooms.

  “Morning sun,” he said. “Good to wake up to.” He laughed and flicked the reins again, and the horses leapt forward, making the chariot lurch; the woven leather-strap floor bounced. I clutched his arm to keep my balance, and he looked fondly at me.

  We were keeping to the green lowlands of the river watering the valley of Mycenae, leading to the coast. We passed through Argos and by Tiryns with its high walls. We would keep the sea on our left for a good long time before turning inland toward Sparta. I could hear the roar of the waves against the shore and smell the salt air; two small boats were bobbing farther out. I had a great wish to set sail and feel the water all around me.

  “You have sailed, have you not?” I asked Menelaus.

  “Oh, yes. To Rhodes—Troy—Crete. My grandfather is in Crete, and we used to visit him often.”

  “Someday I wish to meet him,” I said. But what I really wished was to see Crete. I would have gone to meet him there even if his grandfather had been a parrot.

  We jounced along in silence. Then I said, “And you’ve been to Troy? Is it as splendid as everyone says? Is it true that jewels encrust the walls of the palace?”

  “Nothing like that,” he said, amused. “The walls look like any other walls, except for the paintings on them. The colors are very bright, brighter than ours. Perhaps that started the rumor about jewels.”

  I wanted to ask him about the handsome men there but thought it would sound peculiar. “Do the people there look like everyone else?” I finally asked.

  He laughed. “Yes—how else should they look? Hair made of leaves or five ears?” The chariot lurched as we swerved to avoid a rock. “They seem well fed and strong,” he said. “They have that look—that look of a people who are proud, though. A people who know they command not only themselves but also the land around them. Even the king, old Priam, is an impressive figure, almost unnaturally strapping and youthful. He has fifty sons! I suppose making them keeps him young.”