But Clytemnestra won’t let herself be tamed, I thought, almost prayed, as I sat at that over-long table; she’ll never let herself be extinguished. She will burst into flame, Clytemnestra will. She will tear other people to pieces. That’s her nature; she can’t help it. I was formulating prophecies about the happy bride facing me. I knew her character, but I didn’t know my own. If I looked into myself, all I saw was pools of water. They reflected the sun, but there was more to them than that. At least, I thought there was. I’ve always had some understanding of myself, and I did even then. Perhaps then more than ever. I got up and left the rowdy banquet. I’m made of stone.
3
I went out into the darkness, among the low branches of the olive grove. I walked right around the palace, where the doors had all been left open and everyone, even the humblest slave, had a chance to enjoy a little relaxation and some good food. The lazy rays of the moon gradually grew longer across the polished stone floors. The throne room, through which the breeze was murmuring soft songs, seemed abandoned. I climbed the steps to the throne and placed my hand on its stone seat. A seat like many others, perhaps less comfortable than most. The empty vessel of a useless power. I hurried back down the steps, suddenly afraid because I was alone. Yet the idea of going back through the garden to my place at that long table sickened me. They had bought my sister for a mass of gold and were taking her away. Just as they would have done if it had been me. No, I refused to smile to please them.
I left the palace and headed for the stables. The horses, left by themselves, were whickering peacefully in the jasmine-scented gloom, their eyes black pearls in the darkness. I lifted my clothes to keep them clear of the dirty straw and held out my hand as I approached the wooden bars of the enclosure that contained an elegant white horse with a long muzzle: Leda’s mare. The mare let me stroke her muzzle, and dilated her nostrils. Her nose was wet, and I could just see the pink skin under her white coat. Her breath warmed my bare flesh. Then, suddenly alarmed, she shook her head. I listened, and heard hooves speeding toward the stables. Theseus, shouted a terrified voice in my head; there was nowhere, absolutely nowhere I could hide. With no thought for my beautiful white dress I knelt in the straw and crept under the bars of the enclosure between the mare’s feet, causing her to neigh in alarm. Better crushed by her hooves than in the power of Theseus, I thought. Much better. I crept into the darkest corner and hid under the heaped-up hay, waiting with my hands over my head, my skin burning hot and the blood crying out in my veins.
The galloping horse stopped in front of the main gate. Someone dismounted with a soft thud. A heavy man. I could hear a jingle of harness. But the tender voice that calmed the animal was not that of Theseus. I cautiously moved on my knees to the wooden bars and peered out. In the white moonlight I could see a horse and rider. When the man tied up his steed by the bridle at the entrance to the stall, I recognized him as the guard who had given me a drink. Unaware of my presence, he took off his sweat-soaked tunic. The horse had already bent his neck to the stone trough, where the man filled a pail with water for himself. He took a long drink, his neck swelling in the moonlight, streams of water running down. The tensed muscles of his shoulders and arms made him look like a god. Afraid he would see me, I moved back out of sight. My mother’s mare took fright and neighed again. I crawled between her feet, held my breath and huddled on the ground.
“Who’s there?” The soldier’s voice. His steps came nearer. “What’s going on?” I was aware of his hand caressing the mare’s muzzle, just as I had done myself. Then silence. I lifted my eyes from the straw and met his.
“Who are you? Come out from there.” In the darkness he hadn’t recognized me. But there was no sense in staying where I was. I got up with difficulty, not even trying to shake off the dirt. He gave me a puzzled look and opened the wooden door of the enclosure. I came out with my head high, summoning up the little dignity available to a young girl wearing clothes filthy with dung.
“I was afraid,” I said quietly.
“I’ll take you back to the palace, princess.” A firm voice, almost as if giving a command. Outside the stable he put on his sweaty tunic again and waited patiently for me in the open space bathed in moonlight, then together we covered the short distance to the back yard of the palace. “Shall I come with you to your rooms?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine.”
He looked me in the eyes. “The Athenian won’t come back.”
“But he won’t go away either,” I answered in a small voice.
He said nothing more. There was nothing more he could have said. You can’t comfort princesses of the blood when you’re just an ordinary soldier. He had been dismissed, and turned and went into the barracks.
4
The winter after Clytemnestra left was the longest and coldest anyone could remember. The water froze in the horse troughs and ducks no longer swam on the Eurotas, transformed by ice into a white mirror. A fierce wind swept Sparta for forty days, and with it came a black fever that brought death into every house. Castor was the first to fall ill, one morning after drinking too much, and he died within three days without ever recovering from his delirium. I remember the eyes of Pollux when they told him the terrible news; I saw real grief on his face for the first time. They had only ever loved each other, my brothers, so the bond that held them together had been total. “A part of me,” murmured Pollux, “a part of me.” Then he left the room where my mother had already started to tear her hair in accordance with convention. Some hours later, they found him hanged in his room. I never saw his body. They had shut me up in my apartments to protect me from contagion. Only Etra came, bringing me food and water, and even she was under strict orders from my father not to come too close. In the dead of night I would slip through the windows into the icy garden where no one walked anymore. I had no fear of the fever. By now I was sleeping free of dreams. Theseus had faded in the boredom of week after week of sameness, faded like my brothers for whom I could not bring myself to weep, and like my parents of whom I heard nothing for some time.
I didn’t fall ill. The guard continued to change regularly outside my barred door. I would lean my head against it, trying to distinguish any noise or voice that might help me to understand who was there. For me, only one face had not faded in those days of wind and cold, the only one I wanted to see again. I would come in secretly from the garden by unusual routes. Slipping silently through the shadows, down corridors left deserted by other women, each shut in her own room, I spied on the comings and goings of the sentries. Till finally one night at the changing of the guard a step I remembered well came marching from the far end of the corridor. With my heart drumming in my chest, I waited for the relieved sentry to go after exchanging a few unimportant words with his comrade. Then I emerged nervously from the shadows and approached him.
“Soldier,” I murmured, hoping not to frighten him. He grabbed his spear, as I expected, but recognized me in the dim torchlight.
“Princess! You …”
“Shh! I couldn’t stay shut up any longer! I …”
He watched me from under his helm. Waiting for orders, perhaps. My courage failed. My heart was beating so loudly in my chest that he must have been able to hear it. But outwardly I was just a capricious child, defying the fever and my father’s orders to stay in my room. Yet I could not bring myself to command him to open the door for me and not tell anyone of my disobedience. I took a step forward. “I’m scared,” I admitted and it was true, in that corridor full of great long shadows and silence steeped in other people’s panic from behind barred doors. He took off his helm and placed it on the floor beside his spear. Then he knelt down so he could look me in the eyes. He was so much taller than me.
“Princess …”
Without thinking, I knelt down too and before my nerve could fail me, took his face in my hands. What did the first humans to create an organized society do? How could they ever have believed they would be able to control their own blood
? I examined his face in the flickering torchlight, stroking his hollowed cheeks and fair hair. And looking into those dark green eyes that I would nevermore forget.
“Princess …” he said again, very quietly.
“Not princess,” I said as softly as I could, “Helen …” One day I would hate my own name. But on this night it carried within it everything that was me.
“Helen …” he almost whispered, his hands at my back to help me to my feet. “Helen …” Without looking at me, he lifted the bar and opened the door. And without looking at him, I crossed the threshold into my room. For a moment his big hand met mine again in the muffled darkness beyond the door. When I turned he was no more than a black silhouette against the red torchlight. Only his eyes were still shining when he disappeared beyond the barrier.
The epidemic lasted another fifteen days. On the sixteenth, Etra came to set me free and held me in a long embrace. “My child, my child,” she murmured.
“Are many dead?” I asked, pushing her away.
She shook her head. “Your brothers …”
“Are many dead?” I repeated more loudly.
She stroked my face. “Don’t think about it. All cremated and buried already.” I brushed her hand away. She struggled to her feet with a sigh. “You loved your brothers so much, it’s understandable. Their funeral is today. Naturally, because of their rank, they had to come last.” As she talked she picked up a comb, to get me ready.
But I was no longer listening. I was staring in the bronze mirror at a face I did not recognize.
They cremated my brothers together on a single pyre that afternoon. Everyone still left of the Spartan court was there. Both my parents had survived the sickness. My mother, in mourning, had not cut her hair, and hid her lack of tears behind a thick purple veil. The entire corps of the royal guard rattled their spears and shields in salute to the princes as they disappeared in the smoke. Ignored and swaddled like a black dog in my mourning clothes, I looked through the ranks for him. He wasn’t there. When the pyre had burned down and my father asked Etra where I was, she didn’t know. She found me much later, wrapped in my cloak in the lowest fork of an olive tree. It took her a long time to persuade me to hand over the scissors I had clenched in my hand. And it took her longer still to collect the long locks of hair I had cut off close to my scalp, and which the wind had entangled with the olive twigs. It was four days before I ate again. All I remember of that period is a void in which no sound reached me. I never knew the soldier’s name, and never would know it.
5
In the time that followed I lived in a void, in a state of deprivation. A void that those eyes now lost and burned had cut into my own. I was myself arid and burned. Nothing but dull ashes under the skin. But when others looked at me all they saw was a silly child.
The heirs to the throne were dead and Tyndareus was growing old. I took care always to dress, obstinately, in black. Keeping my hair short so it would never grow long again. Fasting to hollow my face and sharpen my cheekbones, rejecting a beauty I could not see, but which refused to disappear in the eyes of others. I was just Helen, nothing more. Nails grown into talons, skin stretched over the bones protruding from my pelvis. Secretly I hoped I would look in the mirror one day and see nothing at all. Leda wasn’t interested. I too had learned to close my eyes to the coming and going of officers to her room. It meant nothing to me. I sank daily deeper into a darkness and emptiness that tasted like glue. Down, down, down. To the bottom. I burned my musical instruments. And my light-colored clothes. There was no beginning or ending to my mourning. Etra watched the burning, and no longer knew what to say. My father wore mourning for two winters; we saw one another from afar in empty corridors; two winters during which I never spoke and never asked anyone for anything. I had become the terror of the palace. Silly maids whispered that I never slept. That I was wandering about the palace looking for the spirits of my dead brothers. They understood nothing. I went back to my rooms where in winter I extinguished the braziers. I plunged into dreams in which he appeared as a distant silhouette against a bright light. Offering me his hand as he did that day in the courtyard; I would go forward to him with arms outstretched but I could never see his face. Sometimes I dreamed of the stuff of his cloak the time he brought me home; the smell and taste of the rough fiber sharp and clear to my nose and tongue. I could see the blond down on his hands and could feel him smiling above me. But I could never capture his green eyes. Those were my worst dreams. I would wake with an unsatisfied need for more sleep. Like a drug. It was then that I began burning laurel leaves. The oracles were said to use them when making prophecies. They were said to open a door to new worlds. I breathed in the thick suffocating smoke, my eyes wide open to the night. But the laurel smoke brought Theseus into my room. There was no longer any guard outside my door. When the smoke at last overcame me, I would collapse in a sleep as dreamless as death. One day Etra found me prostrate beside the brazier. She shook me again and again and called me, but I would not open my eyes. Her voice reached me from far away, as if I were under water. The laurel stood between us, between me and the world. She dragged me into the garden and poured cold water on my head. I woke blinking in a dazzling light, mumbling disconnected words without knowing where I was. Etra beside me was just an indistinct shape.
“Poison. Poison! Never again, child, never again.” Strong arms lifted me. Too slender to have been his. It could have been a promise. Or a threat. Never again, Etra. Never again.
“You must stop cutting your hair. You must start eating again. You could be so beautiful. They’ll have to pay a huge sum of gold for you.” Tyndareus was speaking in the neutral tones of a merchant advertising goods in the market. He was sitting by my bed but not looking at me. There was a sad gray light from the window and the sound of the Eurotas softly singing.
“At first you’ll suffer and crave the laurel, but that will pass. You can be sure I won’t let them give you poppy milk, so there won’t be any point in asking for it. You’ll have to pull through on your own.” He hesitated, as if thinking.
I rested my head on the pillow and looked at him. His eyes shifted away from mine: “I shall be gone, Helen. Soon I shall be gone. Sparta will need a king. And you will need a husband.”
I didn’t answer. I had been out of reach of his demands for a long time already.
“They were my sons too,” he said, talking to himself, his voice breaking into a thousand tiny pieces. But he would not weep, I knew that. Like me, he was made of stone. He looked at me, his eyes searching mine, but they found nothing. I would have liked to shout at him that my eyes were sealed, and that for me everything had been dark since the day of the pyre. But there would have been no point. It would have been useless. He would not have understood. The memory would have to rot down and die inside me, because inside that memory I was strong. No one could reach me. Even if they forced me to marry, I would not resist. I was already safe.
*
It took many months for me to learn to live without the laurel and the visions it had brought me. They uprooted all the hedges in the garden. I developed deep hollows under my eyes, and was afflicted for many days by trembling as if I had been raped. I shouted for a brazier and my leaves. My gateway to a world of nightmares even stronger than my own. Tyndareus ignored me and Leda kept away until I was better. After a month of force-feeding (Etra and two powerful maids crushed my food to pap to stop me from choking and prevent me from vomiting it back up), I recovered an appearance of sanity, at least so the slave women said. They cut my nails, and my hair started growing again like a thick thatch of flax.
Then Leda came to my rooms wrapped in purple, her neck heavy with gold chains set with pearls, her fair hair beginning to be streaked with gray. She sat down by me as if she had only left me that morning, smiled for a long time and raised a hand to stroke my face. I didn’t resist but kept quite still.
The rumor went that she had aborted a courtier’s child. I studied her stomach which stil
l looked flat under the folds of her dress. Leda, Leda, what have you done to us?
“I’ve brought you a few things. To make you beautiful again.” She smiled the smile of an accomplice. At a wave of her hand, slave girls brought in caskets and chests full of jewels and precious cloth. Half the treasure of Sparta. A kingdom where most people wore the one tunic all the year round. My eyes lingered a long time on the glittering gold and precious stones and the fine cloth. Leda watched with satisfaction, as if those treasures my soldier would never have been able to see or touch could ever dispel my pain. It was then I realized it could not help me to stay shut up there. That the pain which was my strength could never protect me from such things. That my salvation existed only in my own sick dreams. I looked at Leda.
“When I’m married will you two go into exile?”
I reached for the nearest casket. Gold and pearls.
Leda had stopped smiling.
6
The summer was half over when Diomedes came. Tyndareus had sent heralds far and wide to announce that he was offering his daughter in marriage, and with her the kingdom of Sparta. But for many months no suitor presented himself and the sumptuous guestrooms stayed empty. “No one wants our kingdom,” said Leda angrily. She had realized what exile was going to mean for her. A rock in the middle of the Ionian sea. Stones and goats, and no more officers of the guard.
Memoirs of a Bitch Page 2
