by Colm Toibin
And I would, I thought, talk to Orestes gently when he finally came back, as I would speak to his sister in the hope that I could live at ease with both of them now that order had been restored. I saw Orestes growing into a man, learning from me and from Aegisthus how to pull the reins of power, relax them, pull them again, tighten them when the time was right, exerting sweet control. I even imagined Electra subdued and quiet. Forgiving. I would walk in the garden with her.
I saw, as I held this small girl’s hand, the possibility of a bloodless future for us. It might be easy if Aegisthus learned to trust me. Perhaps the worst was over. Soon, it would all seem right. Soon, I would make Aegisthus believe that he could have what he wanted.
Orestes
Inside the palace, Orestes noticed a strange emptiness and silence. The servants, he thought, must have found a way to go out also to welcome his father in victory. He felt small and alone as he went towards his mother’s room, where she had told him to go.
He wished that his mother had sent someone to accompany him, someone maybe who was an expert sword fighter or skilled at target practice who could help him prepare for further displays of prowess in front of his father.
Inside his mother’s room, he found a place to sit. He put his sword on the ground and waited. He listened carefully. He stood up and went back to the corridor and waited there, looking up and down, but it was deserted. He decided to walk back towards the main door and perhaps find his mother and ask her if he could not stay with her, or with Electra.
As he moved forward, he heard voices. There were men talking in one of the rooms close to where the guards slept. He knew some of the guards there. One enjoyed sword fighting and challenged him to a game, suggesting they go out in the gardens behind the palace. Orestes wondered if this were the right time, worrying that his mother might come looking for him. But there was something about the man’s eagerness and smiling presence that made him feel at ease and ready to acquiesce. The three other guards in the room appeared more stern and remote.
‘Will you tell my mother where we have gone?’ he asked one of them.
Once the man assented, he felt more relaxed and followed the guard towards the gardens.
When they had fought for a while, two other guards whom Orestes knew appeared. One was friendly and addressed him by name, the other was more distant and preoccupied. Orestes wondered if one or even both of them had the skill to play with him if the other guard grew tired. But instead, the distant one came immediately to break up the sword fight.
‘Your mother said that we were to take you along the path that leads towards the road,’ he said. ‘That’s where the feast will be.’
‘When did she tell you that?’
‘Just now.’
‘Does my father know?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will he be at the feast?’
‘Of course.’
‘And Electra?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Aegisthus?’
‘We were told to take you there.’
‘Maybe we’ll have time for a sword fight before the feast,’ the friendly one said.
‘I think I should wait for my mother,’ Orestes said.
‘Your mother has already gone,’ the other one said.
‘Where?’
‘Where we’re going.’
Orestes considered this for a second. Both guards moved close to him, each with a hand on his shoulder. They walked Orestes away from the palace.
‘We should hurry so we can get there before dark,’ one of them said.
‘But how will the others get there?’
‘They’re using the chariots.’
‘Can we not use a chariot?’
‘The chariots are for the men who have come home from the battles.’
‘Give me your sword,’ the more distant one said. ‘I’ll give it back to you when we get there.’
Orestes handed him his sword.
Gradually, as the two men stopped talking and asked him to walk faster, Orestes started to believe that what was happening was not right. He should not have gone with them. A few times, when he turned his head to look back, he was motioned to keep moving by the one he liked less. When he asked how long it would take to find the others, neither guard replied. And when he finally said that he wanted to go back, both guards held him by his shirt and pulled him along.
Then he noticed that night was beginning to fall. He realized that he had been captured, or that someone had given these guards the wrong orders. He thought, however, that once his presence was missed at the palace, they would send out other guards to look for him. Since they had passed houses and been seen by people, these guards would be told in what direction they were moving. He pictured how angry his mother would be when she found that he was missing. He felt that he should convey this to the two guards, but their silence grew more severe and their movement forward more determined. These two guards, he thought, would be in trouble.
When it was dark, they found a place to rest. The guards had some food that they shared with Orestes. But still they did not speak. When he said that he wanted to go home, they both ignored him. And when he added that his mother would have sent out men to search for him, they also remained silent. When he stood up and asked for his sword back, they told him that he should go to sleep and everything would be fine in the morning.
It was only when he remembered the kidnappings that he began to cry. Electra had spoken about the boys who were kidnapped, warning him to stay within the precincts of the palace. He had known some of the boys who had gone missing. Now, it struck him, he was missing too. Maybe this was how the others had been kidnapped; maybe they had been lured away like this.
In the morning, the kinder guard came over to him and asked him if he was all right, sitting down and putting his arm around him.
‘It’s all going to be fine,’ he said. ‘Your mother knows where you are. We’re here to look after you.’
‘You said we were going to a feast,’ Orestes said. ‘I want to go back now.’
As he started to cry again, the guard did not say anything. When he stood up and tried to run away from them, both guards handled him roughly and made him sit between them.
After a while, there was a sound of voices in the distance. His guards looked at each other warily and forced him to hide with them in the bushes. Orestes determined that he would not call out until those who were approaching were very close, so that they would be able to find him easily. He could see that his two guards were afraid as the voices became louder.
As he was getting ready to shout, his guards stepped out of the bushes and began to embrace a number of men who were leading along lines of prisoners. Orestes saw that the prisoners were fettered to one another in groups of three or four. Some of them had cuts and bruises on their faces. They bowed their heads as they moved slowly by, while their guards and the two men accompanying Orestes were urgently whispering and offering darting exchanges of news.
*
A few times, he cried, or sat down and refused to walk any farther, or remonstrated with the guards, but each time, the guard he liked came and put his arm around him and told him that there was no problem, there had been a change of plan, that was all, and he would see his mother and his father soon. When Orestes asked him where exactly they were going and when he would see them, the guard told him not to worry, just to follow, walk as best he could.
They walked all day, letting lines of prisoners moving in the same direction get ahead of them. When Orestes became tired and asked for a rest, his two guards looked at each other hesitantly.
‘We have to keep moving,’ one of them said.
Men they met who were going towards the palace always appeared to know his guards. Each time they encountered them, one guard remained with him while the other moved towards the men to exchange further news in dark whispers before a friendly gesture as they parted.
All along the way, Orestes noticed the vultures ho
vering on trees or in the thick undergrowth, often bickering fiercely with each other or flapping in the sky above, watching.
On the second day, late in the afternoon, Orestes observed smoke and then he saw that a house and a barn were on fire. As they approached, there were lines of men waiting some distance from the buildings. They were all tied together, standing sullenly, as some of the guards butchered pigs and killed chickens and others gathered together a flock of sheep. A man and two boys stood watching.
Suddenly, a thin woman came running from the barn. She was screaming. First just cries, but then words, including words of abuse hurled at the guards. As she ran towards the man and the two boys with her arms outstretched, one of the guards lifted a pole and, using both hands, swung it at the woman, hitting her full in the face. The blow must have broken bones and teeth, Orestes thought, but before the woman folded and fell to the ground, curling up, there was a second or two of pure silence.
His guards moved him on. He was shivering and crying now, and he was hungry.
Over the days that followed, although he walked between them most of the time, the guards did not threaten him or speak to him roughly. Mostly, they said very little. A few times when he asked about his father and his mother, they simply did not reply. But he heard them talking at night, and he learned that great numbers of the men tied to each other and forced to march were the soldiers who had returned with his father. Others were slaves whom his father had captured.
From stray remarks, he also learned that their orders were to take him somewhere and then join the forces moving back towards the palace. When they talked openly in front of him, they spoke of men and places whose names he did not recognize. The one he liked less was constantly telling the other not to say anything more, adding that they could talk as much as they pleased when their task had been completed.
When he asked his guards one day who gave them orders, they almost laughed at him. When he asked where they were going, they told him he would find out in due time. He studied the guards’ faces then and left silence in case one of them would mention his father or his mother. But they told him that the less they spoke, the more progress they would make.
Once, at night, he was close enough to overhear more of what his guards said when they whispered. They used the name Aegisthus but only casually and in passing; there was no mention this time of his father or his mother. Although he was desperately tired from walking, and sleepy now, he tried hard to stay awake and listen, but the talk was about land, hectares of land, land with olive trees and orchards, land that was close to a stream and was sheltered. One of them spoke of building a house and how this was a good time to build because of the slaves and the soldiers who could carry stones.
The people in the villages and houses along the way, he saw, were afraid. Sometimes there were signs that a house had been burned or damaged. If they demanded food from houses, it was quickly provided; if they sought shelter, which they did less often, they were given a place to sleep in a barn or a shed. But as they moved farther along, there were greater distances between the villages and many of the houses they passed had been ransacked. They carried what food they could, but often they were left with nothing.
One evening, when they had walked all day without food, the guard whom he disliked announced that he would go in search of a cottage or a smallholding away from the route that they and the others were following. He would be back before dark, he said, as he left Orestes and the other guard in a clearing between trees that he said he would be able to identify easily on his return.
Orestes slept for a while. When he woke, hungry, it was almost dark but the guard had still not returned. As the moon rose, he noticed the other guard watching him. He thought to close his eyes and try to go back to sleep, or pretend that he was sleeping, but he thought that now might be a good time to sit up and see if he could encourage the guard to talk, to explain maybe where they were going and why they had left the palace in the first place. As the guard remained silent, he wondered how he should start.
‘Will he be able to find us in the dark?’ he asked eventually.
‘I think so,’ the guard said. ‘The moon is full enough.’
Neither of them spoke for a while then, but Orestes could sense that the guard was uncomfortable with the silence. The man must know everything, he presumed, but he could not think of a question that would cause him to explain.
‘Is it much farther?’ he asked quietly.
‘What?’
‘Where we are going.’
‘A few days, maybe,’ the guard said.
They looked away from each other, as though afraid. It was clear, he thought, what his next question should be. He should ask where exactly they were going, but it struck him that if he did this directly, the guard would not tell him. And if the guard refused to answer one question, then it might be hard to ask any more. He had to think of a question that the guard might unthinkingly answer, that might give him even a hint about their destination.
‘I like you better than the other one,’ he said.
‘He’s all right. Just do what he says.’
‘Is he the one in charge?’
‘We’re both in charge.’
‘But who gave you orders?’
He had, he knew, asked a question whose answer might matter. Whatever came in reply might let him know how things stood. The guard sighed.
‘It’s a difficult time,’ he said.
‘For everyone?’ he asked.
‘I suppose,’ the guard said.
Orestes could not think what this might mean. He felt that he should abandon all caution and ask a question with the word ‘father’ in it.
‘Does my father know I am here?’ he asked.
The guard did not respond at first. Orestes was almost afraid to breathe. There was no wind, and no sound even from dogs or other animals in the distance. There was just the silence between them that Orestes knew not to disturb again.
‘You’ll be looked after,’ the guard said.
‘Other boys were kidnapped,’ Orestes said. ‘My mother and Electra will worry that I have been kidnapped. My father too.’
‘You have not been kidnapped.’
‘I’d like to get my sword back,’ he said.
‘It will all be fine,’ the guard replied.
‘Are you sure I have not been kidnapped?’ he asked.
‘No, no, not at all,’ the guard said. ‘Just don’t worry and come with us, and then you’ll be fine.’
‘Why can’t I go back?’
‘Because your father wanted you to come with us.’
‘But where is he?’
‘We’ll see him soon.’
‘And my mother?’
‘Everybody.’
‘Why are we walking?’
‘Stop asking questions and try to sleep. We’ll meet everyone soon.’
He slept then and woke to their voices, which sounded hushed and worried. He remained completely still and listened as the guard who had been away said that he could find no food, nothing at all, just deserted houses with no sign of life, the larders empty, no animals in the fields. But there was worse, he said. Someone had poisoned the wells. He had met a soldier whose two companions had been poisoned. He had been warned not to drink water from any well. So he had come back not only without food but without water.
‘Who poisoned the wells?’ the other guard asked.
‘They think the farmers did it, the farmers who are hiding now in the uplands, but they haven’t found any of them. They don’t have time to search.’
One of the guards shook Orestes, who pretended that he had been asleep.
‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘We have no food and no water, but we have to go. We’ll find something along the way.’
Orestes began to feel thirsty even before they set out. Even one drop of water, he thought, would make a difference. He tried to imagine the day ahead, divided it into steps. How many steps would he have to take in a da
y? As a way of distracting himself, he pretended that he had only ten steps more to take and then there would be water and a rest. And then after those ten steps, he imagined there were only ten steps more as they walked on.
After about an hour, he noticed the smell of something rotting. He looked at his two guards, who were holding their noses. As the smell grew more intense, he saw two bodies with flies buzzing around them lying near each other on the road ahead, with vultures feasting on the flesh. From the clothes, he presumed that they were part of the contingent marching towards the palace, the men who would stop and share news with his guards and who seemed at times almost relaxed and confident. As they drew up right beside the dead bodies, the stench was so unbearable that they moved quickly on, but not before Orestes caught a glimpse of the two men’s faces, the eyes wide open, the mouths contorted, as though the men had died while screaming or shouting. Once they had passed this scene, none of them looked back.
Orestes could sense that they were more determined than usual to make progress. There was, he saw, nowhere to stop in any case, as habitation became more sparse and the land itself more barren.
He wondered, as a way of keeping at bay the desperate thirst and then a craving for food, and in between spasms of weakness when he thought that he would not be able to go any farther, why he had never fully relished the days when he had been free to wander in the palace. He wished that his mother were here, or somewhere close by, so that he could go to her and lie near her.
When they stopped, exhausted, the guards seemed almost unwilling to resume the journey. They sat on the ground, grimly staring ahead. All around was silence, broken only by the sound of crickets, with lizards darting from under one stone to another hiding place.
Later in the day, when the shadows were longer, they spotted a house in the distance. By this time, Orestes was shivering as though it were cold and holding on to the two guards as they made slow progress. His tongue, he felt, was beginning to swell. He had been obsessively swallowing whatever saliva was left in his mouth, but now there was nothing, his mouth completely dry and his throat sore from the swallowing.
