The Laughter of Aphrodite

by Peter Green

  Pittacus’ dispatches caused a certain amount of head-shaking in Council. They were brief, factual, and very much to the point. A general who tells no more—and no less—than the bare truth, especially when it reflects against himself, can be a little disconcerting. After the disastrous battle in which Alcaeus (together with many other young men) dropped his shield and fled, Pittacus reported as follows: “Today we suffered an ignominious defeat outside Sigeum. Our comparatively light losses can be ascribed to the fact that our troops—being less encumbered—ran much faster than the enemy. The defeat was due, in about equal proportions, to incompetent generalship and indifferent discipline. Courage alone cannot win battles. Efficient training is more desirable than fine speeches. Meanwhile we—my men and I—learn, expensively, in action. Please dispatch two hundred new shields and fifty bushels of wheat by the next supplyboat.”

  As though to annoy my mother—how shrewdly, I wonder, had he sized up her relationship with Aunt Helen, and what had Draco told him?—Pittacus never once wrote to her, all that summer. What was more, he rubbed in the omission by sending me a note—to my great surprise—with every dispatch-boat. My mother insisted on reading the first of them, and snorted when she saw the signature. “Chiron!” she said. “Chiron, indeed!” She rubbed her nose with her finger, and made a vaguely disgusted noise. “Sentimental nonsense.” She thrust across the room, skirts hissing, her whole big body vibrant with suppressed energy. The sunlight glinted on her lustrous black hair as she stared through the open window. I saw her clenched fist resting on the sill, each knuckle as white and hard and polished as ivory. She had, quite obviously, forgotten the little episode in our courtyard at Eresus—if, indeed, she ever noticed it.

  Then she turned round, with an abrupt, constrained gesture, and it was as though I had never seen her before. Her whole face was different, contorted with loathing; an uncontrollable muscular spasm seemed to take her features and twist them down, like soft clay, into a terrible grinning rictus. She began incoherently to talk about the act of love; a stream of words burst from her lips, a sick torrent of dammed-up hatred. I tried not to listen, to stop my senses against that red, hard, wounding physical imagery.

  What had been natural was smeared in filth, the innocent leered like a satyr. Pain, suffering, humiliation, disgust, the cock strutting on its dunghill, the triumph of the barbarous, rutting male. There was no gentleness, no tenderness, no disinterested friendship or simple warmth any more. Only the ravisher, the alien invading Thing, terror, pain, blood, destruction: an obscene, thrusting, wounding act that led, in time, to gross physical ugliness, pain past all bearing, sickness, the risk of death.

  At last she stopped. “You’ll learn,” she said, in a calmer voice. “You’ll learn. I’ll see that you learn.” And went, with that fierce, awkward, aggressive gait of hers, which conceded nothing, yielded to no one, never compromised.

  I looked at the brief note that still lay on the window sill. “Troy is a pleasant place to picnic, I should think. In armour it is very hot. When Achilles chased Hector three times round the walls he must have done it in winter. Or perhaps heroes were immune to heat. Do you think a hero ever sweated? There is a ladybird crawling up my arm, and I’ve just noticed for the first time—after having him around for four months—that my orderly has a cast in one eye. Chiron.” I puzzled over this, still shaking flow the impact of my mother’s tirade, trying to work out what possible connection there could be between the two. It was no good. Nothing made sense any more. The bright sky seemed suddenly overcast, as though a thin grey veil had been drawn across it.

  The letters continued to arrive at irregular intervals. It never occurred to me that I should answer them, and I don’t suppose Pittacus expected me to, either. “I have been trying to train my men in field-manoeuvres,” one began. am rapidly coming to the conclusion that the only sensible man in the Iliad was Thersites.” And again: 137-ards are the most practical of creatures. When pursued or caught, they throw off their tail and grow a new one. I should like to see human beings acquire this faculty. It might prove amusing.”

  By the same boat as his notorious dispatch to the Council came this: “An enforced holiday is very pleasant: we lie in the sun and feel happy to be alive. Which, after all, is the sum of existence.” A little later I got the following cryptic communication: “I have been watching the fishermen here. While we manoeuvre or fight, they are still busy with their nets. Who, I ask myself, shows the greater sense? Yet no one wrote an epic about a fisherman. Man steers his life by the fixed stars: he knows his task, the prescribed words and actions that are required of him, and of others. But why should I not exchange the sword for the net? My will is free. I am the wise Chiron. You said so yourself.”

  A couple of weeks later extraordinary news reached us from the Troad: Pittacus had challenged the Athenian general, Phrynon, to single combat, and killed him. The whole town buzzed with rumours. When the dispatch-boat docked, there was an excited crowd to welcome it. Fortunately for us, the courier—a pleasant young man named Archaeanax, who had distinguished himself in the early stages of the campaign—also happened to be a second cousin of Aunt Helen’s. After he had discharged his official duties he came up to see us: a shy, fair-haired boy, still limping on a stick from a wound in the muscles of one thigh.

  Aunt Helen fussed over him, making him lie back on a comfortable couch, propping him up with cushions. He seemed to enjoy this. When he had had some wine, my mother (whose impatience must have been almost tearing her in two by now) snapped: “Well? What happened?”

  Archaeanax smiled. “It was a joke, really,” he said. “Just the sort of thing the old boy would think up.”

  Aunt Helen said: “Is it true that the old boy, as you call him, killed the Athenian commander in fair fight? Single-handed?”

  Archaeanax said thoughtfully: “Well, he certainly killed him, yes. And single-handed.” One hand rubbed half-consciously at the muscles of his wounded leg. “You know we had this defeat? Afterwards Pittacus got the veterans training us in battle-manoeuvres. But his heart didn’t seem in it, somehow. He used to go for long walks by himself along the beach; he liked watching the fishermen at their nets. One day he brought a net back into camp. I met him, and asked him what on earth he wanted it for. He grinned and winked, in that way he’s got, and said: “Just a little Thracian trick, my boy: it may save everyone a lot of trouble.” He was always making jokes about his father being a Thracian, you know—”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Helen gently, “I know.” My mother flashed a quick, furious glance at her.

  “Anyway, the next thing we heard was that he’d issued this challenge to the Athenian commander—single combat, both armies watching, the traditional generals’ duel. If Pittacus won, we were to get back Sigeum. If he lost, we were to give up our own present possessions in the Troad—Achilles’ tomb and all.”

  My mother said, sharply: “Did he have authority from the Council to make such a proposition?”

  “I presume so.” Despite his youth, Archaeanax could look very bland on occasion. “But then you must remember, Lady Cleïs, I’m only a courier: I deliver dispatches, I don’t read them.”

  All this time I had been in the corner of the room, near the hearth, bent over a piece of embroidery, and keeping very still and quiet in the hope that no one would notice me. But it was all I could do to stop myself giggling out loud at that last remark: not for a very long time had I heard anyone put my mother in her place so neatly, and with such apparent ease. From Aunt Helen’s fine aquiline profile (which normally gave very little away) I could tell that she was pleased with her cousin’s performance too.

  Her own question was rather different. “The Athenian general must have felt very sure of himself to accept such a challenge,” she said thoughtfully.

  “Oh, he was tough, all right. In fact he won the Olympic Crown as a free-style boxer at the age of eighteen—very un-Athenian, I’d have thought, but there it was.” Archaeanax applied himself to th
e wine-jug. “He wasn’t one of those dreary ex-athletes who run to seed, either. One field punishment he used to serve out in the Troad was to make defaulters box with him before breakfast On the whole they preferred the lash. He was a first-class swordsman too—”

  “Which Pittacus certainly is not.” My mother’s tone was tart in the extreme.

  “He’s not bad,” said Archaeanax loyally, “but he’s no athlete, that’s true enough. I don’t mind saying, we all thought Phrynon would eat him, even giving away ten years and more. But what could we do? He was the general. Besides”—he grinned—“I think we all knew the old boy had something up his sleeve. He simply isn’t the sort to chuck his life away in a display of useless heroics.”

  My mother frowned but said nothing.

  “So the morning came, and the two armies settled down a hundred paces from each other, and the heralds fussed about with trumpets and proclamations—you know—and then Phrynon came striding out in his armour, a really impressive sight, too, over six feet tall and big with it. He had on one of those Corinthian helmets with cheek-pieces and a nose-guard, and he stood there dancing from foot to foot, and swiping at the air with his sword. Pittacus glanced at him, grinned, and went on polishing his shield. He really was getting a splendid shine out of it. Then he stood up, very leisurely, and put on his helmet, and loosened his sword in its scabbard, and made quite sure his shield was settled comfortably on his left arm. He seemed more concerned about his shield than anything else.

  “The heralds were getting a little edgy by now, but eventually Pittacus stumped out to them, and we all cheered him as he went There were a few pretty ribald jokes too. Then the two contestants, after a bit of parleying, were squared up, and we saw that Phrynon had the sun behind his shoulder, shining, straight at his opponent. Remember, it was pretty early in the morning. Pittacus had lowered his shield-arm, and just stood there, waiting, like a patient bear.

  “Then the heralds stepped back, and the trumpet sounded, and several things happened very quickly. Phrynon drew his sword and lunged forward: Pittacus sidestepped, flashed up that bright-polished shield into Phrynon’s face, flicked out a fisherman’s net from behind it, and had the poor booby trussed up like a boar in the toils before he could get the sun out of his eyes. The more Phrynon struggled and bellowed, the worse he got entangled; and then he called Pittacus the bastard son of a whore, which was silly of him, because it may very well be true, as you know, and Pittacus drew his sword and ran him through so hard that the hilt cracked his breast-bone. And that was that.”

  There was silence in the room for a moment.

  At last my mother said: “Of course, the Athenians refused to accept such a victory.” Her voice made it quite clear that she would have refused to accept it herself.

  Archaeanax laughed. “Of course they did; they’d been made to look complete fools.”

  “That was not quite what I meant.”

  “I’m sorry; I don’t understand.”

  “There are commonly accepted standards of conduct on such occasions—”

  “Are there?” said Archaeanax. “I didn’t know. It seems to me the main object in fighting someone is to disable your opponent, and stop him damaging you. If he happens to be more stupid and hidebound than you are, he has no one but himself to blame.”

  Archaeanax was a little flushed; the wine had clearly begun to take effect on him.

  My mother said: “I fancy I know where you got those ideas from, young man, and they are not what I would expect to hear any person of good family profess in public. We have certain values, and we cannot afford to abandon them. It would be a betrayal of all we stand for.”

  When my mother became really angry, she also tended to be pompous, as though her mind was under such pressure that she could only express herself in platitudes.

  “If I have offended you, Lady Cleïs,” Archaeanax said, getting up, “I offer you my most humble apologies.”

  “You can’t go yet, cousin,” Aunt Helen said lightly, “we haven’t heard the end of the story, and you haven’t eaten.”

  “Oh, the story has a very dull conclusion, I’m afraid. After a day or two of bickering, both sides agreed to an armistice, pending arbitration.”

  “So the war is over,” said Aunt Helen.

  “It looks like it,” said Archaeanax, sounding very cheerful. “We’ll all be home in time for the vintaging, if we’re lucky.”

  “And who,” said my mother, “is to arbitrate?”

  “King Periander of Corinth has been approached, and is agreeable.”

  “That man is no more entitled to be called a king than my sweeper. He’s a common tyrant.”

  “He succeeded his father,” Aunt Helen said. “It raises a nice problem, doesn’t it? How many generations are necessary to legitimize a dynasty? Just what is the formula for producing royal blood?”

  Archaeanax coughed, teetered, and said: “If you will all excuse me, I’m late for another engagement.”

  Aunt Helen extended her hand for Archaeanax to kiss. “It was so pleasant seeing you, cousin. When do you sail?”

  “Tomorrow, I’m afraid.”

  “Ah. Be sure to give my regards to—your commander.” Her lips twitched briefly. “And my congratulations.”

  Archaeanax picked up his stick and limped after the slave. Both women watched him go. It must have been a singularly uncomfortable exit.

  When he had gone, my mother, still fuming, said: “Periander, indeed.”

  “We could do worse.”

  “The man’s unspeakable, a tradesman—”

  “In case you’d forgotten, this is very largely a trading dispute—despite the tomb of Achilles.”

  “Money isn’t everything,” said my mother.

  “Indeed not, when you have it.”

  The two women looked at each other.

  “Besides,” my mother said, rallying, “you can’t possibly expect justice from a person without any morals or principles—”

  “Oh?” said Aunt Helen.

  “You know perfectly well what I mean,” my mother said, and her voice had that unpleasant hissing violence about it again. “He and his mother—”

  “You were in the bed with them?” said Aunt Helen contemptuously. “Why is it that people are so willing to believe any tittle-tattle as long as it has to do with sex?”

  “Perhaps they have good reason.”

  “Perhaps. I don’t care for Periander much myself; but my main objection to him, if we’re on the subject of morals, is his ungovernable temper. A man who can kick his wife into a miscarriage—one from which she subsequently dies—and all because of some idiotic story told him by a concubine, can hardly be called a stable character. I notice that isn’t your first objection, though.”

  I gave a tiny gasp at this: Aunt Helen turned and saw me. It was extraordinary how fast her moods could change. She smiled with real warmth and said: “Oh my dear, what a bore all this nonsense must have been for you. Could you go down to the kitchen and tell them we’re ready for dinner now?”

  I nodded, unable to speak, thankful to get away. My mother said nothing. She never referred to the episode again in any way, and she made no objection to Aunt Helen giving me orders (something which would normally have provoked a first-class row). I began to wonder if I knew anything about her—whether I had been living all my life with a dangerous, inscrutable stranger, ready to strike at me when I was most vulnerable, nourishing my trust only to betray it.

  The last letter Pittacus sent me before his return home from the Troad was somewhat longer than the others. “We have had the chance of observing a tyrant at close quarters,” he wrote. “This is instructive, but a little unnerving when he happens to be sitting in judgment on you. However, our particular specimen had a painful boil on his nose, which suggested that he wasn’t immune to the ills of lesser mortals. He was also a great bore, I’m afraid, like most businessmen who think they ought to talk about art to show how broadminded they are.

&nb
sp; “You will probably have heard stories about what an ogre Periander is, but on this score he disappointed us all. He ate no children before breakfast (in fact he has rather a weak digestion for a tyrant) and was obviously most anxious not to offend either party in the dispute. As his commercial counsellors spent most of their time negotiating profitable trade agreements with us and the Athenians, quite impartially, I can see his motives. Between ourselves, I rather admire them. So next year we shall see a good many more Corinthian merchant-men docking in Mytilene. This will do us much more good than playing at soldiers, which is an expensive game, and not nearly so enjoyable as people try to make out.

  “At all events, Periander’s verdict, when it came, was something of a joke—though few people apart from Periander himself much appreciated it. Both armies were assembled, like packs of naughty schoolboys before their master, to hear him pronounce sentence—which he did from a rather vulgar little pavilion brought along specially for the purpose, and set up midway between us and the Athenians. He spun out the proceedings as long as he could, with much introductory preamble and flourishing of trumpets: no wonder, because his decision, when he finally got to it, was that both parties should keep what they then held. Having unburdened himself of this Rhadamanthine platitude, he and his retinue took themselves off—a wise precaution, I thought—leaving us to work out the details.

  “Neither side has done exactly well, though it would be hard to argue that Periander was prejudiced in his judgment. Athens is landed with an expensive outpost from which, in its divided state, she can expect little advantage. We, on the other hand, will have to establish a permanent garrison here to make sure the Athenians stay behind the new frontier line. The main beneficiary, of course, is Periander himself: he’s secured some nice trade agreements, and left two troublesome rivals watching each other instead of competing with him for markets in Ionia. Arbitration is obviously a profitable business. I think I shall take it up myself one day. Chiron.” Then came a characteristic scribbled postscript: