by Pat Barker
Although, as I say, I avoided looking at Achilles, I was always aware of him, sitting at the table he’d once shared with Patroclus, in this crowded hall, surrounded by men who adored him, utterly alone.
As was I. With Patroclus dead and Iphis gone, I was more alone than I’d ever been. Up to the moment Iphis was taken away, I’d have said I was inured to loss, but evidently I wasn’t, because I missed her desperately. I was friendly with most of the women in Achilles’s compound, but there was nobody else I was close to, or wanted to be close to. I just sat, blankly, at the loom, served the wine at dinner, trudged mile after mile along the beach; expected nothing. After each meal, I went back to the women’s hut, climbed into the bed I’d once shared with Iphis and pulled the covers over my head.
* * *
——————
Then—I suppose it must’ve been four or five nights after the funeral games were over—this period of bleak peace came to an end. At dinner, just as I’d finished serving the first round of drinks, Automedon beckoned me across to him and said, “Achilles wants you tonight.”
My legs turned to sand. I didn’t know if I should continue serving drinks or put the jug down and go at once. Automedon gave me no guidance; he’d already turned away. Not knowing what else to do, I just went on pouring wine till the meal was over and then slipped out of the hall. I combed my hair, bit my lips, pinched my cheeks and went to sit in the cupboard where I’d been put on my first night in the camp. I remembered how I’d stroked the woollen coverlet on the bed, tracing the pattern with my fingertips, as if by escaping into its loops and whorls I might never have to think or feel again. Then Patroclus had come in and given me a cup of wine. And the next night, and most of the other nights after that, Iphis had been there.
No such comfort now. Shivering, I sat on the bed until I heard voices in the passage outside: Automedon and Alcimus on their way to share a last cup of wine with Achilles. I peered through a crack in the door and saw Patroclus’s empty chair. No dogs, and that surprised me, I was so used to seeing them stretched out by the fire, but then I remembered Achilles had sacrificed them on Patroclus’s funeral pyre. Oh, I could see it happening. He’d have called them to him, slapping his thighs, saying, “Here, boy! Here!” And they’d have crawled to him on their bellies, tails wagging, nervously licking their lips, knowing something bad was going to happen, but compelled to go to him anyway. Perhaps, after all, Iphis had been lucky, awarded as first prize in a chariot race. He’d cut the dogs’ throats.
Finally the conversation in the other room ended; Automedon and Alcimus were taking their leave. After they’d gone, there was a long silence, or it seemed long to me. Then, heavy footsteps approached the door. Slowly, Achilles pushed it open, the slit of light widening to cover the floor. He looked at me and jerked his head towards the other room.
I followed him in, taking a seat as far away from him as I could get. Patroclus’s empty chair dominated the room. Compared with that compelling absence, even Achilles seemed insubstantial. The lyre in its cocoon of oiled cloth lay on the table by his chair, but he didn’t pick it up. I hadn’t heard him play once since I’d returned to his compound.
The silence was choking the breath out of me. When I could bear it no longer, I said, “Why don’t you play?”
“Can’t. Won’t work.”
In bed, in the dark, I was the lyre. He fumbled about, sucking my breasts hard as if trying to remember what it was that had once excited him. This went on for a few minutes, then he climbed on top and tried to stuff his limp cock inside me. I put my hand down, squeezing and stroking, meaning to help, and not helping, making everything worse. I was afraid of what failure would mean—not for him, for me. When it became clear nothing was going to happen, he groaned and rolled over onto his back. I slid down the bed and took his cock in my mouth, shlurping away as if I’d just discovered a particularly juicy pear; but however hard I tried it stayed as soft as a baby’s.
After a while I gave up and lay on my back beside him. I knew anything I said would be dangerous, so I said nothing. He was so quiet he might have been asleep, but I could tell from his breathing he wasn’t. I said: “Would you like me to go?”
In reply, he turned on his side away from me. I slipped out of bed and groped about for my clothes. The fire was almost dead, the lamps had all burned low. I found my tunic and pulled it on quickly—back to front, as I discovered later—and felt my way to the door. I couldn’t remember where I’d put my sandals and I was too frightened to stay and look for them. On the veranda, I stood for a moment, taking long, deep breaths. Returning to the women’s huts, as early as this, would let everybody know I’d fallen from favour—if they didn’t know already. Nobody would be nasty, but everybody would take note. I could think of at least two girls who’d be fancying their chances of taking my place.
I didn’t care if another girl became the favourite. Only I thought the slave market had just moved a step closer—and I cared a great deal about that. I told myself it wasn’t too bad. He hadn’t hit me, hadn’t lashed out in frustration—in fact, he hadn’t done any of the things he might well have done. So I wrapped my arms round myself for comfort and rocked from side to side. Then, when I was more or less calm again, I set off across the hard sand to the women’s huts, barefoot, in the dark.
39
He can’t sleep. Can’t eat, can’t sleep, can’t play the lyre—and now, apparently, can’t fuck…Useless. He turns first one way, then the other, pulls the bedclothes up to his chin, pushes them down again, throws his arms and legs across the full width of the bed, curls up into a ball—and all the time thinking about Patroclus. Not thinking, craving. The shape of his head, that little dent just below the bridge of his nose, the lopsided grin, broad shoulders, narrow waist, the biscuity-brown smell of his skin. The way they were together.
He hadn’t known grief was like this, so much like physical pain. He can’t keep still. Surely he ought to be better than this by now? He’s done everything he promised, killed Hector, cut the throats of twelve Trojan youths and used their bodies as kindling for Patroclus’s funeral pyre. He’s raked about among the hot ashes and collected his friend’s charred bones, right down to the knuckle bones and the small bones of the feet, and buried them in a golden urn—big enough to hold his bones too, when the time comes—which, please god, will not be long.
Now, he can see what he’s been trying to do: to bargain with grief. Behind all this frenetic activity there’s been the hope that if he keeps his promises there’ll be no more pain. But he’s beginning to understand that grief doesn’t strike bargains. There’s no way of avoiding the agony—or even of getting through it faster. It’s got him in its claws and it won’t let go till he’s learnt every lesson it has to teach.
When, eventually, he sleeps, he slides at once into the same dream, the one he dreams every night. He’s in a dark tunnel. As he gropes his way along it, he stumbles repeatedly over bulky shapes barely visible in the gloom. As he treads on one, its distended belly squelches under his feet. Since he can’t see them, he has no way of telling whether the faces he steps on are Trojan or Greek, and in this place, this funereal place, bereft of light and colour, it scarcely seems to matter. He’d like to believe he’s in the cellars of a palace—Priam’s palace, perhaps. Which means they’ve taken Troy and, in spite of all his mother’s dire warnings, he’s lived to see it, to be part of it—and now he’s down here in the cellars searching for frightened women who’ve hidden themselves away. He knows they’re here, now and then he thinks he hears the rustle of a skirt; and he can smell their fear.
He desperately wants to believe this, though at the same time every stiffening hair on his head is telling him that this is Hades and the shapes that surround him are the dead.
So he concentrates hard on the life inside his own body, tensing his arms, flexing his muscles, taking deep, painfully deep, breaths. Gradually, as he inches forwa
rd, the murk begins to clear. Soon there’s light enough to make the desolation visible. The dead lie like bundles of old rags, bloated inside their battle shirts. Trojan or Greek? He still can’t tell. He looks more closely, drawing back folds of cloaks and blankets—even begins shaking shoulders and arms, trying to make them wake up, because it’s lonely down here, it’s lonely being the last man left alive. No response. Blackened faces look up at him, eyes as dull as dead fish in their lidless sockets. Oh, they need the fire, these men, the cleansing fire, and he’d give it to them if he could. Trojan or Greek—nobody should be left to rot like this, unburied and unmourned. Then, as he probes them, one springs up and stares with piteous recognition in fixed eyes…
Friend, it says.
And immediately he knows who it is. Lycaon, Priam’s son. The one he hasn’t been able to forget.
I don’t know you, he tries to say, and the effort of moving his lips wakes him.
He sits up and gazes wildly around him, terrified he might have brought that undead, unclean thing back with him. Only when he’s sure there’s nothing lurking in the shadows does he let himself flop back against the pillows. He can smell his own fear-sweat; his groin’s a swamp. For one horrible moment, he thinks he might have wet the bed, as he sometimes used to do, that first dreadful winter after his mother left, but no—feeling the sheet underneath him—no, it’s all right, it’s only sweat. Throwing off the covers, he lets the air get to his skin.
Why Lycaon? He’s killed dozens of men since Patroclus died, hundreds since the beginning of the war—so why, out of all that welter of blood and slaughter, should this one man emerge? It’s that word “friend.” It incensed him at the time and it’s haunted him ever since. Certainly, there was nothing memorable about Lycaon himself, who looked like a drowned rat when Achilles first saw him, crawling out of the river, his armour pulled off in the struggle to stay afloat. The river was in full spate, greedily snatching every corpse Achilles threw into it and chuckling as it carried them away.
For Achilles, those few minutes were a brief respite from the battle, barely long enough to draw breath. But long or short, the break was over now, because there he was, or there it was, this worm, this maggot, this drowned rat of a man with no helmet, no shield, no spear because he’d thrown them all away in his desperation to live. He—it—was crawling up the muddy bank on its hands and knees. Achilles said nothing, merely waited with a predator’s cruel poise for the sodden wretch to recognize him and be afraid.
To be fair, Lycaon didn’t try to run, but then he had nowhere to run to, the river behind him and Achilles in front. Instead, he—it—ran forward, clasped his knees and began pleading for its life. Achilles looked and listened, felt nothing, no glimmer of awareness that he and this thing were men breathing the same air. And god, how it talked, betraying everything in its desperation to escape death. It wasn’t Hector’s brother, he said, not really, oh, well, yes, admittedly, yes, the same father, but not the same mother, and as for Hector—well, he hardly knew him! And he’d had nothing to do with the death of Patroclus. Have mercy, Achilles. Think what your friend would do—your good, kind, brave, gentle friend.
That word.
So die, friend, he’d said. Why make such a fuss about it? Patroclus is dead and he was a far better man than you.
Raising his sword, he stabbed the firm young throat just beside the collarbone, driving the blade in as far as it would go. Lycaon fell forward, his red blood gushing and puddling on the muddy ground. Even before he finished twitching, Achilles picked him up by the ankle and hurled him into the river, where he floated for several minutes, his war shirt ballooning out around him, before the current caught him and carried him away. Achilles stood on the bank and watched until the body vanished from sight. The fishes would have glutted themselves on his glistening kidney fat long before he reached the sea. No funeral rites for him, no cleansing fire. No mercy at all for Trojans now.
And now he dreams about the bastard every night! Why, why, in god’s name, since he’s apparently condemned to spend his nights with the dead, does he never dream of Patroclus? Thrusting the covers aside, he levers himself to his full height and pads across to the mirror, where he stares long and hard at his reflection, while, in the room behind him, the spirit of Patroclus begins to gather. He feels its presence, but he doesn’t bother to turn round, because he knows from repeated disappointments there’ll be nothing there. Nothing to see, anyway—and certainly no warm, living body to hold.
He leans in closer to his reflection, so close his breath mists the mirror.
So die, friend. Why make such a fuss about it? Patroclus is dead and he was a far better man than you.
Nothing and nobody replies. Defeated, he shambles back to the bed. Oh, yes. Swift-footed Achilles, who once seemed made of air and fire, shambles now. Plods. Lumbers. Trudges. His body, leaden with the death inside him, weighs heavily on the earth.
It must be near dawn. Giving up any idea of sleep, he pulls on his tunic and leaves the hut, going straight to the stables where Hector lies face down in the dirt. Nobody dares cover him up or show any other mark of respect. That one small act of rebellion—throwing a sheet across his body—has never been repeated. Heavy-footed, Achilles walks across the yard, his toes slipping inside his sandals. Despite the pre-dawn cold, his body’s still slick with sweat. He scarcely seems human, even to himself, so it’s no surprise when the horses shift uneasily from side to side.
He takes long, deep, experimental breaths. Why do his lungs hurt when he breathes? Perhaps they’ve decided to close down a week or two before the rest of him? Or is he starting to develop gills? That’s one of the things the men say about him behind his back. Gills, webbed feet…Well, with a sea goddess for a mother, what do you expect? In fact, his toes are webbed, as indeed his mother’s are; though on her the extra skin’s translucent. On him, it’s thick and yellow; he’s ashamed of it. Another thing Patroclus knew about him that nobody else knows: that he’s ashamed of his feet. A lot of him went on to the fire with Patroclus, because what isn’t shared ceases to seem quite real, perhaps even ceases to be real.
The grooms look up as he approaches, clear their throats, nod respectfully, though with no hint of servility. The Myrmidons are like that. Renowned throughout the world for their courage, dedication to duty and unquestioning obedience. Well, the courage and dedication are real enough…Unquestioning obedience? Forget it. They’re not impressed by royal blood—or even divine blood—their respect has to be earned. He knows he’s earned it a thousand times over in the last nine years and yet, just recently, he’s noticed…Not withdrawal, exactly, but a degree of wariness. It’s not his anger that bothers them—under a generally taciturn exterior these men are often angry—no, it’s his ability to hold a grudge. All right, they probably wanted to say, he took your girl, your prize of honour, he’s insulted you—so bloody well fuck off home, then! They’ve never understood why he kept them here, on this shithole of a beach, sitting around like a load of old grannies while, less than a mile away, men who’d once been their comrades fought and died.
But that’s the past, they should have forgotten it by now. Perhaps they have. Perhaps it’s what he does now, every morning, that sticks in their throats.
He lays his hand on the chariot rail where, for so many years, Patroclus stood, the reins strapped round his waist. Every morning, the same memory; every morning, the same stab of pain, sharp enough to make him catch his breath. But it’s second nature to him to conceal any sign of weakness. And so he walks round the chariot, scanning every inch, bending down now and then to inspect the underside of the carriage. By the end of a hard day’s fighting, there’s so much blood and filth it clogs his chariot wheels. And the grooms are lazy—if they think they can get away with a shortcut they will. Oh, they don’t neglect the horses—they’ll feed the horses before they feed themselves—but they’re perfectly capable of nipping down the beac
h to fill their buckets with seawater, though they must know that, over the years, salt will corrode even the finest metal. He keeps telling them: water from the well. Not seawater. Kneeling down, he licks his finger, runs it along one of the spokes and tests it on his tongue. No, it’s all right.
Standing up, he feels exhausted. Every bit of energy seems to have drained out of him. Perhaps not this morning? Perhaps just this once he can give it a miss, go back to bed and sleep? But no, his anger whips him on, the unappeasable rage he has to go on trying to appease, like a beggar covered in sores who scratches till his nails draw blood and still can’t find the itch.
The men won’t look at him. All the time he’s here they keep busy, carrying buckets of water, polishing, rubbing, breathing on the metal, checking the gloss, rubbing again. Nervous, because he’s watching them; making mistakes, because he’s watching them. And so he forces himself to turn away. Nobody looks him in the face now, it’s as if his grief frightens them. What are they afraid of? That one day they’ll have to endure pain like this? Or that they never will, that they’re incapable of it, because grief’s only ever as deep as the love it’s replaced.
The work goes a lot quicker once his back’s turned. So he leaves the yard altogether, letting them get on with it, and when he returns, ten minutes later, it’s all done. The bronze guard rails glitter, the horses’ coats shine. The men are tense till he inspects the work. They’re expecting, at best, a terse nod, a grunt of approval, but he surprises them, flashing a smile, making eye contact, thanking them, individually, before he takes the reins. They nod and mumble and back away. People always back out of his presence, they’ve been doing it since he was seventeen. Perhaps it’s a tribute to his prowess on the battlefield, or fear of his anger, or for some other darker reason he doesn’t want to have to think about. Instead, he rests his forehead against a horse’s muzzle, feeling its breath warm on his skin, and this contact with a non-human creature makes him feel almost human again.
