by Peter Green
“You’re young, of course. And—inexperienced.” There was something about the way he said this that made me feel, almost literally, slimy. “But as a devotee of Aphrodite yourself—”
“I find the spectacle—revealing.” Was my voice cool and distasteful enough? Whatever happened, I must not, would not give this twisted creature the pleasure of seeing me behave like a shocked virgin.
Our eyes met: in his I saw the same dreadful sidelong desire, they were the eyes of a rutting dog. He laughed; his lips curled away from his teeth. I knew, now, why he had brought me here. He said: “Fortunately, I can afford to—visit Corinth.”
I put my hand up to my mouth, stifled a yawn. “How pleasant for you.”
“You will, I am sure, excuse me if I—pay my respects to Aphrodite, h’m? H’m? It won’t take too long—”
“No; I expect not. But please don’t shorten your devotions on my account.”
He hesitated, as though about to say something more; then turned abruptly, and moved towards the temple. I watched his diminutive figure scuttle up those broad white marble steps in the sunlight, a lustful crab: saw Praxinoa’s dark Sicilian features freeze with silent contempt. Yet, unexpectedly, I felt not loathing, but a sudden flood of pity and compassion.
Once, long ago perhaps, in a simpler age—so my thoughts ran—this ritual act had possessed meaning, virtue, power: was a celebration of godhead, a passionate striving towards some ultimate union with the divine. But here I could see nothing except cold lust, mean and solitary concupiscence, defilement under the sun. I thought: Each man who spills his seed so wantonly in that sacred place commits a pollution. Here, if anywhere, is the sick, corrupt heart of Corinth.
Then I recalled a curious story—one of the many—told about Periander: how (among other acts of violence committed on seizing power) he had hunted down all the city’s procuresses, tied them in weighted sacks, and drowned them. Some regarded this as a sign of stern morality: but standing there in the temple precinct I knew better. Like any ruthless businessman, Periander was, quite simply, eliminating competition: he had murdered those wretched women in order to monopolize their trade. Not content with that, he had become bawdmaster to the Goddess herself, making her temple a common whorehouse, and—I had no doubt—diverting the profits into his own coffers.
I have tried, at a distance of some thirty years, to be as objective as I can over this faintly unpleasant little episode. I know, now, that I did behave more like a shocked virgin (which, after all, I was) than I felt disposed to admit at the time. My censoriousness was not, in itself, admirable: it amused Arion (that harmless, pathetic old lecher); and I suspect the Goddess herself—knowing all, foreseeing all—must have laughed at the misplaced rectitude of her twenty-year-old votary. There are many kinds of desire, many roads to adoration and worship: who was I to condemn these men in my ignorance? How could I be so sure that their act was a pollution, or the motives which inspired it displeasing to the Goddess?
Worst of all, may I not have read into their eyes (for whatever reasons of my own, reasons perhaps best left unexplored) emotions which they did not feel, an attitude of which they were wholly innocent? To you, the unknown and unknowable strangers, in this fiftieth year of my life I offer my humble contrition. The divine punishment which I now suffer—so agonizingly appropriate to my offence—should give you ample satisfaction.
But I was right about Periander: time has not changed my judgment on his character, or lessened my contempt for all he did. Alien duly arranged a meeting between us, rather against my will—indeed, he was so insistent about it that I suspect Periander had commanded him to produce me—and I found myself, one evening, being escorted by two armed guards through a labyrinth of corridors, where every sound rang harsh and metallic, clash of iron-studded boots on stone, rasp of keys in innumerable locked doors, clinking armour, clang of shot bolts, till at last I reached a small, plainly furnished chamber, with heavy grilles over its deep stone windows, and lamps everywhere— on tables, in wall-niches, and, as centre-piece, a great, winking bronze chandelier hung from the ceiling.
The man who sat there, an untouched cup of wine in front of him, a peeled grape half-way to his lips, was so different from what I had expected that, forgetting my manners, I stood and stared at him, openly incredulous. He was thin and stooped, balding, clean-shaven, with a muddy, blotched complexion and a red-veined, oddly pendulous nose. His lower jaw was weak, retreating in creases and folds of slack flesh. Despite the heat, he sat huddled in a heavy woollen cloak. He never once, during the interview, looked directly at me: his eyes flickered round the room, as though expecting an assassin in every corner. From time to time he caught himself dribbling and dabbed at his mouth with the sleeve of his cloak.
We exchanged polite commonplaces for a little: he clearly knew all about me, had read some of my poems, seemed anxious that I should be comfortable. Had Arion arranged suitable accommodation for me? Did I need anything? I must not be shy: Corinth—he wiped away a glistening thread of spittle—was an enlightened city, he had made it a centre of art and learning, wise men came from all over the Greek world to enjoy his patronage. A young poetess should be treated with respect. I was not, he had gathered, making a lengthy stay. Just passing through. A pity, a great pity. Next time. I need only write to him. Personally. The rheumy, suspicious tortoise-eyes came up in a dreadful attempt at gallantry: he gave a high, cracking laugh. The guards at the door stirred uneasily. Periander’s thin voice rambled on: after a little it became obvious that he could not hear me, or had forgotten I was there. I sat, frozen, as the dreadful words spilled out
“Never trust them, never. All trust is betrayed. Mildness destroys itself. Cut them down. Walking in the corn-field. But the blood is expiated, the Furies no longer walk, they are sleeping. Yes, sleeping. Gold repays. I have brought this city to greatness. Build on sand, she said. Melissa, ah, Melissa, do you remember that first day? You were bringing wine for your father’s labourers, Melissa, in a light white dress with a red border. Harvest-time. Cicadas in the plane-trees. Dust and sweat. So beautiful, Melissa. So beautiful—”
He sat hunched at the table, fists clenched, staring at nothing. There was a faint tremor in his right cheek.
“A whore, I believed a whore, Melissa, a jealous whore. Can you. forgive me? I did what I could to make amends. The oracle of the dead, the whispering old women, the wood-doves.” His voice suddenly rose in an agonized shout. ‘They said you were cold, Melissa— cold, naked, shivering. Your clothes were not burnt in the funeral pyre, you said. Naked, a naked ghost, naked and unforgiving. So cold, Melissa. Why were you cold? My own words back to me from beyond the grave. The oven is cold when I bake my bread in it. I gave you dresses, Melissa, a goddess’ ransom. All Corinth’s finery burnt to warm you. Cold, Melissa, still cold. Why do you still turn your face away, Melissa? You and your son both? He will never come back. I have nothing. Nothing. Why do you torture me? Why?”
His face changed, crumpled. He stared past me, horror in his eyes. “No. No, you are sleeping, I know it. I cannot see you. Ah, accursed still! Unclean. Defiled. I cannot. There is no peace from you. No cleansing. Melissa too. Polluted, unforgiving. Black wings, blood. In dreams the terror, the memory. But the guilt was yours, yours—” and then, in a high, terrible scream: “Mother, forgive me!” His head fell forward: his teeth were clenched, froth showed at the corners of his mouth.
As though a spell had been broken, one guard ran forward, propped him up in his (hair like some broken-backed dummy, while the other tugged at a heavy bell-rope. Footsteps, lights, a physician in his long blue robe, a glass of some blackish cordial. Jaws forced apart, choking, swallowing. Then, an age later it seemed, the eyes blinked open. He coughed, sat up, instantly in possession of his faculties, like a wild forest animal that sleeps on a hair-edge of alertness, ready for any danger that may approach. He took in the scene at a glance: it must have been tolerably familiar to him, since he showed no surprise, only grim recognition.
“I owe you an apology, young lady,” he said, and his voice was now surprisingly strong: for the first time I appreciated the quality in this man that could, still, command absolute obedience. “Please forgive me if I alarmed you.” He shot me a sharp glance: I smiled, shook my head. “I am, I fear, subject—without warning—to these unfortunate attacks.” The physician, a tall, impassive, bearded man—a Coan, by the look of him—nodded professional agreement. “And please, if you will”—steel crept into his voice: this was a command, not a request—“forget any—nonsense I may have talked. One symptom of this disease, this fit, is a temporary delirium.”
“I quite understand, my lord.”
“Yes: I thought you would.” He smiled, briefly, and held out his thin, blotched, old man’s hand.
“Good-bye, my dear. I hope to meet you again.”
“Thank you, my lord. I am honoured.”
“Don’t let Arion bully you: the man’s a fool.”
“No, my lord.”
“And have a good trip to Sicily.”
He sat back, sweat glistening on his high forehead, and dabbed at his mouth with the sleeve of his gown. I curtseyed, as I had curtseyed to Myrsilus, and walked out into the high, echoing corridor. Behind me I heard a key grate in its wards, the slam of heavy bolts. Every lock in this fortress seemed to be rusty. Perhaps, I thought, he forbids the guards to oil them: perhaps those dreadful metallic sounds, like the dead ring of gold, offer him the only comfort he can understand.
Two days later we took ship again, from sand-blown Lechaeum on the Gulf, aboard a smaller, faster vessel, bound for Syracuse with a cargo of decorated roof-tiles. Anon became his old, relaxed, caustic self the moment we left harbour: I think he must have been as relieved to see Corinth drop away over the horizon as I was. He showed neither embarrassment nor (what would have been worse) suggestive over-familiarity: indeed, he behaved towards me just as though nothing in the least untoward had happened, which I found a great relief. For an hour each morning I practised on the lyre with him, as we had done throughout our previous voyage together. He told me, unexpectedly, that I “showed signs of improvement.” This, from him, was high praise.
One change in his disposition, though, I could not help but notice, almost as soon as he came aboard. He was now very flush with money and enjoyed letting the fact be known. Presumably he had persuaded Periander to advance him travelling-expenses to Sicily— and a substantial retainer, by the look of it—as Corinth’s official representative at the festival. I found myself wondering, in a spirit of youthful cynicism, just how much he would be expected to refund if he came back without the first prize. But this was hardly the sort of question one could put to an international figure, so instead I asked him where the festival was to be held.
“Himera,” he said briskly. “Odd place: up on the north coast, right away from all the other Greek settlements, h’m? Plenty of Sicels around there still—”
“Sicels?”
“The old people. There from the beginning—before the Gods, they say. Well. Small, dark, secretive folk, live up in the mountains now, mostly. What’s left of them. Like wild goats. Wild tempers, too. Fire in their bellies. Gods themselves once, h’m?”
I stared down over the bulwark at the cobalt water creaming past and said without thinking: “Hephaestus under Etna. It sounds— appropriate.”
He nodded. “They’re great metal-workers: I’ve seen work done in Sicily you’d never get a Greek smith to match. But they guard their trade secrets. All they have left, h’m? And a reputation as magicians, of course. More witches in that island than, anywhere except Thessaly.”
An involuntary shiver ran through me: somehow Arion’s matter-of-fact tone made it sound much worse.
“I’ve seen them at night on the hills, grubbing roots, h’m? Twenty years ago. Things may have changed—”
My mind went back, suddenly, to poor Uncle Eurygyus, and the dreadful old women who came clustering round our courtyard, obscene bundles of black rags, bats in daylight. They did not seem at all amusing now.
I said with sudden determination: “Do you believe in it? Magic, I mean?”
His black eyes blinked at this direct frontal assault. “I don’t know. Perhaps there’s no simple answer to that question. We’ve all seen so much superstitious rubbish, h’m? Love-potions, spells for a fever, that sort of stuff. But there’s something about Sicily”—he spread his hands—“I can’t explain. You’ll see. The women—they have a dark, sidelong way of looking at you. Like a snake. You feel the power. You say to yourself, perhaps they can bewitch you. Or call down the moon. Or change themselves into screech-owls after dark” He frowned. “I’ve never been so conscious of screech-owls as I was in Sicily. Swooping and shrieking at night: they keep you awake. Once one got into my bedroom, I thought I was dreaming still, that hellish screeching and flapping, h’m? No light, the lamp had gone out—” He scratched his bald pate, blinked. “Snakes too,” he said. “Everywhere. Black. Golden brown. Those dark holes into the hot earth. Burning. There’s a violence, you’ll see: something held down, secret, dangerous. Like the molten fires under Etna. Or Hephaestus, h’m? Sometimes the giant lies still, and you can forget him. Then, one spring day, when you’re walking among the poppies, he heaves and groans in his sleep, and the hot mid-day fear grips you—”
I managed a laugh. “You make it sound the most enchanting place.” My heart was a small, hard, cold, thudding lump, a separate entity over which I had no control.
“Dear me,” Anon said, apologetically, “how I do run on: you should have stopped me if you were—bored.” The shaggy eyebrows twitched upwards in amusement. “It is an enchanting place—so rich, so fertile you’ll not credit your senses. Great forests alive with every sort of bird and beast, rich grazing-land, corn-fields that stretch beyond the horizon, vast estates, fine houses. Fine painting and music, too; art takes root and sprouts there like every other living thing. Rich, rich—why, you can almost see the gold glint in that black soil.”
The ship drove steadily westward, sail bellying, towards the still-hidden mouth of the Gulf. We were, as before, sitting on the afterdeck. The steersman stood close behind us, leaning on his great rudder- oar: so brown and lined was his face, so impassive, it might have been a carved figurehead. Only his eyes were watchful: and sometimes—was it my imagination?—they seemed to settle on Arion with a kind of derisive, anticipatory relish.
X
But, darling,” said Chloe, spinning round, eardrops aglint, in a swirl of lime-green skirts, “isn’t she the most exquisite creature you ever saw? Like an ivory figurine—” She caught my hand in hers, almost dancing with delight and excitement. “Helen must be mad— why on earth didn’t she tell us? Lycurgus, she’s your sister, can you explain?”
Lycurgus, who was obviously used to his wife’s enthusiasms, smiled and said: “Perhaps she wanted to give you a pleasant surprise, Chloe. You know how you adore surprises.” Then, turning to me, tolerant, amused (as though, I thought, Chloe were a high-spirited puppy): “You mustn’t let my wife overwhelm you, Sappho. Especially after a long journey.”
I said, with unpremeditated candour: “I think she’s wonderful.” And meant it. If Chloe had been surprised, so, beyond my wildest dreams, was I. Whatever I had been expecting (someone staid and middle-aged, certainly: faintly disapproving if not downright contemptuous) this exotic Sicilian beauty was not it. I gazed at her with open and rapturous fascination: that unbelievable skin, like thick, smooth-poured cream, the chignon of gleaming black hair, the barbaric gold bracelets, the matching emerald ear-drops and pendant necklace that so unobtrusively picked up and intensified the pure green of her eyes. She’s like a cat, I thought, a beautiful, pampered cat: exquisitely alive in all her senses. I had a sudden urge to stroke her, to make her purr.
“But those eyes, darling, that wonderful secret smile—” Her clasp on my hand tightened: I felt the sharp pressure of her long, almond-shaped nails. So the cat had claws too.
�
�Stop it, Chloe: you’ll embarrass the poor child.” But I felt that if anyone was embarrassed, it was Lycurgus himself.
To tell the truth, I could have danced over the moon. For the first time in my life someone had told me I was beautiful and meant it: the passionate appreciation in Chloe’s eyes was as exhilarating and incontrovertible as sunlight after a storm.
My whole body glowed with sensuous awareness: I could feel each separate part of me catch fire. The secret, scarce-acknowledged shame and disgust I had nursed against my physical imperfections (as my mother had taught me to regard them) suddenly melted, flowed, vanished: it was as though Chloe, by that simple contact of fingers, had drawn my misery into herself, a beautiful enchantress whose magic worked to generous, life-enhancing ends. Then, over her shoulder, I caught sight of Anon, watching every move, each least change of expression, with those black, snakelike eyes, and remembered his words: More witches in that island than anywhere except Thessaly. Our hands drew apart: I got the uncanny feeling that she, too, knew just where Anon was, could have described his every gesture.
Lycurgus said to Anon: “We’re most grateful to you for escorting my niece on so long a journey, sir. I hope”—this with a slow, consciously charming smile—“she was no trouble to your
“Indeed not, my lord. It was a privilege to have so attractive and, I may say, talented a fellow-traveller.”
For an enlightened artist who dismissed the aristocracy as an obsolescent anachronism, I thought, Anon wasn’t doing badly. His whole voice and bearing had changed: if not exactly unctuous, he was something more than deferential. I wondered if he adopted the same approach while extracting money from Periander.
“The privilege is all ours,” Lycurgus said. “We are honoured to have so famous an artist under our roof.” His intonation had that oversweet, over-solicitous quality about it which well-bred people often tend to assume when dealing with their inferiors on terms of social equality. But Arion, I was amused to see, took the words at their face value.
