House of Names

by Colm Toibin

  The guard stayed with him for a while, but did not speak again. Later, as Orestes lay in bed alone, the figure of Leander came sharply into his mind. He pictured him as decisive, watchful. He would make no mistakes. He put Leander’s level-headedness, his clear-eyed sense of purpose, against an image of his mother and Aegisthus. And it struck him forcibly that in any battle between them, Leander would prevail. He did not know what would happen then, but he made the decision as first light came that he would do as he was asked. He would go to the house. He could always claim, if his mother remonstrated with him, that, since she had not told him, he had no idea Leander was part of the revolt. He would warn Electra not to tell his mother that he knew. He could say that he merely went to see his friend to inform him of his own imminent departure.

  He woke late, and quietly left the palace by the side door, walking by the graveyard and the dried-up stream. He veered between feeling brave and feeling nervous. He kept his head down as he passed people on the lanes and crossed a small, busy marketplace.

  When he arrived, he thought it odd that the front door was wide open and that, even in the hallway, there was no sign of any servants or any of the family. Everything was deserted, silent. He started calling out names, Cobon and Raisa, Ianthe and Dacia, and then calling his own name, as Leander had done, so they would know he was not a stranger.

  But then as he moved farther into the interior of the house, there was a smell that was familiar to him from his time with the old woman, when the occasional goat or lamb fell off the cliff and started to rot.

  That smell came to him now more powerfully than ever before. When he called out the names again, his own breath was fouled by the sharpness of the stench coming from the main room of the house.

  There was, he saw, a mound of bodies with the buzz of glistening black flies all around them. The mound had been neatly made, dead body placed on top of dead body, each balanced against another, creating what was close to a single mass. He had to turn away to vomit. When he returned and noticed something moving on a piece of white flesh, he saw that the skin was alive with wriggling maggots.

  Worried why he had been sent here and whether anyone might be waiting in one of the other rooms, he found a piece of cloth and, putting it over his nose and mouth, looked around the house, gasping with shock when he found the bodies of Theodotus and Mitros lying on a blood-soaked bed with flies all around them.

  He went back to the main room and, in disgust and fear, dragged one of the bodies from the top of the mound by the ankles, letting it land with a hard, lifeless thud on the ground before turning it over to see the face of Raisa, her throat cut from ear to ear, her eyes wide open.

  As far as he could make out, all of Leander’s family were dead, and all of the servants. And as the buzzing flies landed on his own face and hands, and as the fetid and rotting smell seemed to intensify now that he had dislodged one of the bodies, he decided that he should go back to the palace and find Electra, that he should, before he did anything else, tell her what he had seen. She would return with him and then he would not be alone when other people arrived to find the mass of bodies.

  As that thought came to him, he heard a low whimpering and he wondered if some animal, a weasel or a rat, had burrowed its way into the mound of bodies. But then he heard a girl’s voice. It was deep within the pile of inert bodies so that all he could do was begin to separate them to locate its source. When a hand reached towards him, with the flies fierce all around it, he recoiled, darted to the corner of the room. And when he turned, he saw Ianthe tunnelling out of the mound and getting to her feet. She screamed when she saw him, screamed in fear, trying to bury herself once more in the pile of corpses as though they would offer her a place of safety.

  ‘Ianthe, it’s Orestes,’ he said. ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  He went back to the pile of bodies and pulled some more away, finding among them the body of Cobon and the body of the woman who had given refuge to Theodotus and Mitros when they had escaped, and the bodies of two children huddled together. Ianthe, when he attempted to reach her, was like a wild animal whose lair had been desecrated. She curled up and struggled to shelter under one of the bodies so he could not get to her. He called her name and said his own name again, but his efforts to pacify her made her scream more, call out in dread, call the names of her mother and her father, call for Leander.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he said as he took her by the wrists. He lifted her and held her body, which was covered in a slime of blood, against him. From the strength of her resistance, he presumed that she did not have a serious injury. When he managed to get her outside, away from the stench and the flies, he saw that the blood on her clothes and on her skin was not her own blood.

  ‘You must come with me,’ he said. ‘Away from here.’

  When she finally spoke, he could not at first make out what she said because of her sobbing. He had to ask her over and over what she was trying to say, imploring her to speak more slowly. And then he heard the words.

  ‘You did this!’ she said.

  ‘No, I did not!’ he replied.

  ‘The men who did this were your mother’s men.’

  ‘My mother’s men are not mine.’

  ‘We were getting ready to flee. Theodotus and Mitros had just arrived,’ she said in between sobs. ‘Mitros was so weak. He wanted us to leave him behind but we would not. You had someone watching us, you must have known we were going to escape.’

  ‘I had no one watching. I did not know. I didn’t know anything.’

  He forced her to walk with him, having to pull her forward several times as she tried to go back to the house. They went together through the lanes and then into the market space and then into the open area in front of the palace; people who saw them edged out of sight, frightened by Ianthe’s unkempt appearance and by the dried blood on her clothes and on her hair.

  In the palace, Orestes found Electra, who took Ianthe into her room.

  ‘Electra,’ Orestes said. ‘They have killed all of Ianthe’s family. I found them. They are all dead.’

  Electra went towards the door as if to guard the room from any intruders.

  ‘She told me who ordered the killings,’ Orestes said.

  As Ianthe cried out further in fear and pain, both Electra and Orestes moved to help her.

  ‘Why did you bring her here?’ Electra asked.

  ‘Where else could we have gone?’ Orestes asked.

  Electra looked at him darkly, impatiently.

  With Orestes waiting outside, Electra bathed Ianthe and dressed her in fresh clothes. When she finally called him back and they both were holding Ianthe as she whimpered and shivered, they were suddenly confronted by their mother, who had arrived in the room with two guards.

  ‘What is this girl doing here?’ his mother asked.

  She spoke with a mixture of pure fury and command that Orestes had never heard before.

  ‘She will stay here for the moment,’ Electra said.

  ‘Who gave orders that she come here?’ his mother asked.

  ‘I did,’ Electra said.

  ‘Under whose authority?’

  ‘Under my own,’ Electra replied, ‘as my father’s daughter and my mother’s daughter and the sister of Orestes and the sister of Iphigenia.’

  ‘I know whose daughter you are, and whose sister. Do you realize that there has been a revolt? She cannot stay here.’

  ‘In a day or two she will go,’ Electra said calmly. ‘I have given her my word that she can stay.’

  ‘I do not want her near me,’ his mother said.

  ‘She will not leave this room,’ Electra replied.

  ‘I can assure you that she will not!’

  Orestes looked from his mother to his sister, noting that neither of them even glanced at him. In their rage, he had become invisible to them. As they stood glaring at each other, he was determined not to give in to the temptation to say that he was the one who had found Ianthe. He would not insist tha
t she was here on his orders. He knew that it was best now to keep silent. For the moment, he would need to keep his mother’s gaze on his sister and away from him.

  Not long before, he might have wondered why his mother did not ask what had actually happened to Ianthe, or asked himself why his mother did not demand to be told why Ianthe’s clothes, soaked in blood, were on the floor, or why Ianthe remained immobile and impassive in the room, like some captive, helpless creature.

  Now he did not wonder. Now it was clear to him. His mother had ordered the killings, just as she had ordered the kidnappings, just as she had wielded the knife that killed his father.

  He watched her with cold anger.

  *

  Later, as he dined alone with his mother, he noticed that she was subdued and complained of a pain in her head.

  ‘Your sister,’ she said, ‘has become a great thorn. One would imagine that now of all times she would come and sup with us and keep us company. When I pray at night, I thank the gods for what they have given me. I thank them for you. At least, my son has returned and is with me. I thank them, despite everything, despite all the disappointments, despite all the treachery.’

  Her smile was warm and kind, with a hint of forbearance and resignation. But there was something in her posture and her voice that let him know in ominous undercurrents that she was fully aware of what he had done, of his part in the release of Mitros and Theodotus and his going alone, without consulting her, to the house of Leander, where he had found the dead bodies. In her tone, he also detected a warning, a suggestion of the steel and the hardness she had displayed in Electra’s room, and he could not wait to be away from her.

  ‘Come kiss me before you leave me,’ she said as he stood up. ‘It is a time when all of us must take care. We must watch everything and listen out for even the smallest whisper.’

  *

  Orestes’ guard was missing and there was no replacement standing near his door. He slept fitfully, waking after a while to the sound of someone in his room. As he sat up in fright, Electra whispered to him to be quiet, not to stir.

  ‘Your mother is asleep and the guards who are loyal to her did not see me as I came here,’ she said. ‘I have one of my own guards at the door. If you hear a sound, it will be a warning for us to be silent, completely silent.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘Now that Aegisthus is not here, we can act. She has lost her protector. She will not want to be alone with me now, or even close to me. When she walked in the garden with me today before you came back, she kept her distance, but she will not walk in the garden with me again. She will take no more risks. She is afraid.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of what I will do to her.’

  Orestes felt for a second as though he had stopped breathing.

  ‘There are loose steps on the way down to the sunken garden,’ Electra continued. ‘She goes there every day. It is part of her walk once I have left her. In the afternoon tomorrow you will go with her. You will behave normally. Three guards will follow you, but as you approach the steps, two will overcome the third and then they will withdraw. It will be done quietly. Do not look too closely. Do not draw attention to it. The knife you will use will be under the loose stone on the third step as you walk down. There will be only one chance. If you miss the chance, she will have both of us killed.’

  ‘You want me to stab her?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘Yes. She killed your father with her own hand, she ordered your kidnapping and the taking of Theodotus and Mitros. She ordered the killing of all their families.’

  ‘I saw them killing Iphigenia,’ Orestes said, almost as a way of changing the subject, distracting her. ‘I saw that.’

  ‘It does not matter what you saw,’ Electra said.

  ‘It was my father,’ Orestes said. ‘I saw my father watching –’

  ‘Are you afraid?’ Electra asked.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of killing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Once it is done, the guards who are loyal to us will open the palace gates and others will come to dispatch the guards who have remained loyal to her. They will kill the men whom she sent to destroy the family of Theodotus. The palace will then be ours.’

  ‘How do you know that two of the guards tomorrow are with you?’ Orestes asked.

  ‘I have worked and prepared for tomorrow. She will not suspect you. No one knows how brave you are.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  Electra thought for a second and smiled.

  ‘That is what I have prayed for,’ she said. ‘That you would turn out to be brave. I know that you are brave.’

  ‘I have killed before,’ Orestes said.

  ‘We will have all our enemies dealt with once we have the power,’ Electra continued, ignoring what he had said.

  Orestes was silent.

  ‘The plan is in place,’ Electra continued. ‘You are the only one who can do it.’

  ‘Can we not capture her? Send her away?’

  ‘Send her where? Listen, one of the other guards will come into the corridor soon. I cannot stay here with you. I will not be free to see you until this is done. I will remain in my room with Ianthe until the word has come that my mother is dead. I will pray to the gods for it to succeed.’

  ‘The knife will be there?’

  ‘It is there now. The third step, the stone that is loose.’

  She left him alone then.

  As the night wore on, he knew that he would do as his sister had asked. He would revenge his father’s death. The next day he would do everything to make his mother trust him. He would be kind to her and appear meek and willing to do as she said and then he would be brave.

  In the full light of morning, he found himself almost envying his mother that she could be decisive enough to kill a whole family and then calm enough to walk in her garden or sit at meals talking casually. She must have been the same, he thought, on the day she killed his father. He remembered her smiling at the palace doors, all warmth.

  She knew how to kill, he thought. She knew what killing was like. But then it struck him that he did too, that he had not waited for Leander’s instructions before he had killed the guard and the men who came to the old woman’s house. He had taken advantage of the moment. The only thing he could do now was ask for help from his father’s spirit, ask for strength, but ask also for the gift of not making his strength apparent until the moment it was needed.

  He would not have to ask for courage, he thought. He had courage already.

  *

  When they met in her room, his mother told him that she would have to expedite his departure.

  ‘Soon,’ she said, ‘some of the roads will not be safe. It is a dangerous time. Dinos has sent a message saying that he can ensure your safety now. He will meet you halfway, but he will send some of his men ahead so they will find you earlier. It is best if you leave at first light. I have chosen the most trusted and able guards to protect you for the early stage of the journey. We don’t know what will happen here. For the rebels, as I have told you, you would be the golden prize, your father’s only son.’

  If his mother could pretend with such breathless ease, he thought, then he could also pretend. He concentrated on every inflection of his own voice, every gesture. He made himself seem willing to acquiesce, but also fully involved with all the details as though he had power and needed to weigh them up. He made it seem as though the only thing on his mind was how he might best begin his journey.

  As they ate together, he listened attentively to his mother while trying not to watch her too closely. When he told her that he was tired and had not slept well, adding that he would go to bed early this evening, she said that she would go to bed early too so she could be up before dawn to see him on his way.

  He stayed with her as she prepared to go for a walk in the garden. He avoided looking at the guards waiting outside her door to accompany her as he said, as casually as h
e could, that maybe he would walk with her too, that the walk would help him sleep once night came.

  As he had invoked his father’s help, he also envisioned what was coming as something that the gods had ordained and that was fully under their control.

  His mother picked some flowers and then looked at the sky and the sun, talking about the heat, expressing the view that Orestes’ room was best in winter, retaining the heat, but it was also the worst in summer. As she made towards the steps to the sunken garden, she wondered if perhaps he should change to another room when he returned, a cooler room.

  When they had descended three or four steps, Orestes heard a gasp from one of the guards. He looked behind and saw him being overpowered by the other two.

  His mother heard it as well and turned. She was almost facing him as he bent over to find the knife. Instantly, when she saw him picking it up, she let out a cry and tried to get past him and force him down into the shrubbery below. But he moved in towards the wall and managed to pull her to him and stab her in the back and then withdraw the knife. With all his strength, he pushed her so that she fell into the overgrowth.

  When he found her, she was lying on her back. He could see her eyes clearly, the panic in them, as he tried to stab her in the neck. She defended herself with her arms, holding him until her strength gave out. All she could do now was cry for help. He stabbed her in the chest and neck and then held her down until all the life went out of her.

  Clytemnestra

  There will come a time when the shadows fold in on me. I know that. But I am awake now or almost awake. I remember some things – outlines come to me, and the faint sound of voices. What linger most are traces, traces of people, presences, sounds. Mostly I walk among the shades, but sometimes a hint of someone comes close, someone whose name I once knew, or whose voice and face were real to me, someone I once loved perhaps. I am not sure.

  There is one remnant that comes and persists, however. It is my mother at some moment in the distant past; she is helpless, being held down. I can hear cries, her cries, and the shriller cries of a figure above her, or lying on her, and then louder cries as the figure flits away, a figure with a beak and wings, with the shape of wings, the wings beating in the air, and my mother lying breathless, whimpering. But I do not know what this means or why it comes to me.