I’m of no interest to anyone, I told myself, smiling at my increasingly healthy reflection in the mirror. I had a familiar ghost walking beside me and needed nothing more. Tyndareus, waiting impatiently for my unknown future husband, stared at me in silence, gloomy reproof in his eyes. I returned his gaze and shrugged my shoulders. The madwoman, they called me in all the courts of Greece, the madwoman. My never-ending mourning had created a scandal. Whispers connected my name with the most atrocious word of all: incest. She wears mourning for her brothers as one would for lovers …
The thaw came, and after the third winter since the pyre, colors began to bloom again among the stones of Sparta. Emerald-tinted insects danced, and gold flickered in the mild air. But still no messenger, no suitor at the city gates. I began to think this was how we would live forever, in that palace that was full of folk but always seemed empty. With that sad king, his extinguished flame leaving just ashes. We were enclosed in mourning: Tyndareus, Leda and I.
I learned much later that it was now that Agamemnon sent his first messengers. He made his offer sound like a threat. My brother Menelaus is looking for a wife and a kingdom. If no suitor comes, Sparta will be mine.
Tyndareus controlled his temper. He said nothing to me, just forced himself to wait. Then, one evening in high summer, a troop of horsemen crossed the border into Sparta.
The garden was my refuge at night. The slaves who should have been my attendants and companions were afraid of the dark. When the shadows lengthened they would rush with shrill screams into the house, back to their spindles and looms and their pointless gossip. To their clothes and copper finery. But I would stay out of doors, in the fading violet-tinged light. Slipping barefoot along pathways cut in the dry grass. Rocking myself slowly on swings hanging from the low olive branches. By now all my black clothes had been burned.
That evening the setting sun made the blue of my tunic a dirty gray. With my back to the palace, I sat down on the splintery seat of my favorite swing. I could imagine, beyond the gnarled tree trunks before me, the mud and stone banks of the Eurotas. The cries of soldiers changing guard reached me on the light wind. Apart from this and the almost inaudible sound of running water, the world was silent. Gripping the thick ropes of the swing, I looked out at the emptiness. Letting the light of that unforgotten moonlit night flow into me once more. That evening the light had been like dense rivulets of water running down his lovely body, now petrified forever by death. My eyes had stolen that beauty, snatching it from the rule of time and sickness. I shall keep him to myself. The illusion of an eternity more durable than fire or stone. He could have lived forever in that light. Confused, I asked myself whether in the emptiness beyond death, spirits could still remember. And if they did remember, could they come back to walk invisible on the earth. I closed my eyes. The wind flecked the leaves like an answer. The springy branches of the olive tree stroked my shoulders. Like his rough palm between my shoulder blades. That touch banished for all time by a cruel Fate. I opened my eyes. The sun had disappeared behind the mountains, only an indistinct crown of fire still lay on the horizon. The stars were searching out their ancient eternal pattern in the sky. The hand of my ghost was still caressing my shoulders in a way not even renewed contact with reality could dispel. But when I turned, I saw a man who was not a ghost studying me without smiling, sitting on the grass.
He had black eyes, or at least they seemed black to me in the deepening night. His furrowed brow was half hidden by unruly dark locks. He had the olive skin of a Greek from the coast. Fine fleshy lips, a strong nose. He had leaned forward so he could look me in the eyes. The arms resting carelessly on his thighs were robust and muscular, with large hands. A long white scar stretched in an irregular line over his dark skin from wrist to elbow. Without getting up, I sank my eyes into his like weapons. He held my gaze. Who are you? I wanted to ask. How did you dare to touch me? But such questions would have been pointless in that still evening air. I had long given up caring what others thought, so I bit my tongue and kept silent. I accepted the strange immobility of the slowly descending night with a kind of indifference. Then, unexpectedly, the man stood up and held out his hand. It was only then I noticed how young he was, perhaps only four or five years older than I was. He was wearing a sober sandy tunic. Wrapped around his right wrist was a white ribbon which, when he placed it on his dark curls, revealed itself as a diadem. Greek kings didn’t need crowns. I went on looking at him, my head still turned. After a moment of what must have been hesitation even if his features did not betray it, he walked around the olive tree with long measured steps and came face to face with me. I had been following his movements with my head; so the brief moment when he vanished from sight provoked in me a shudder of dismay. Now, facing me, he stood motionless for a moment, then knelt down with a natural movement; close, very close to where I was still sitting on the swing’s splintery seat. I lifted my heels from the ground and pulled myself further back, arching my feet, and for a moment they nearly brushed his knees. He continued to watch me with his penetrating gaze, showing no deference whatever, but also no greed or desire. Only a quiet curiosity; perhaps even less than that, a vague serene uncertainty; a wish to understand the strange animal in front of him.
Then with a sudden though unhurried movement he reached for my feet which had been trying to avoid him. Rough palms with thick, hardened skin grasped my ankles, and with a shiver my skin remembered knowing that touch before.
Without warning I got up slowly. I had no thought in my head when I placed my hands on his shoulders. His skin was warm and dry to my touch. I let my fingers run over his throat and neck and through his hair. He continued to look at me. He had slanting eyes and hollow cheeks, and eyebrows that nearly met over his nose. My fingers passed through his dark hair and over his temples and molded themselves to his sharp cheekbone. Then he lowered his eyes for the first time, resting his head gently against my hand like a tired traveler finding rest. He half closed his lips, then tensed them, while silence spread its petals between us. Imperceptibly my body yielded and fell against his; I huddled against his thighs and chest. My hand never left his cheek, but his arms closed around me and his head bent over mine. His breath on my neck was a tiny breeze.
“Helen,” he murmured, a low voice calling me from deep in his throat.
My name. His voice. Darkness surrounded us like a protective cloak.
The voices of slaves and courtiers filtered through the olives from the palace; they were preparing dinner, certainly a banquet. Chords were struck from lyres as musicians warmed up; hurrying guards tramped to the main entrances. Etra was perhaps already searching the corridors for me. I slowly unwound my arms and legs from his. After his warmth the grass was cold to my feet. Not wanting to let go of me, his hands followed my movements, and when I got up he did the same.
I lightly touched the firm outline of his jaw, a face my hand already knew by heart. He took my hand and squeezed it. “Diomedes …” I heard his voice murmur.
“Diomedes, Diomedes,” I repeated unsurprised, as if recognizing something I had already known for a long time.
Finally my feet decided to move toward the palace. His hand closed around my wrist and I turned toward him. His eyes were like sparks in the black night and his lips half open. I smiled. My wrist slipped from his compliant hand, and the resignation of the breath escaping from his lips colored the darkness. I caressed his palm, again laced my fingers with his and squeezed them. I could not see him anymore, but could feel him. Together we walked back up the path, toward the pool of golden light from the open windows of the palace.
7
That evening’s banquet only lives in my memory as the soft reflections of torches in the eyes of Diomedes. I ate little, not from despair but from pure, simple distraction; my eyes wandering in search of his, constantly finding him over the various dishes and cups, and the vague chatter of the guests. He was of course sitting on my father’s right, and Tyndareus every so often looked slowly from
him to me, calculating. But the evening meant nothing to me; what transported me was the marvel of hot blood exploding in rapid waves through my veins, the roar of the sea in my ears, the laughter forever frozen in my throat. Because when I found his eyes, my voice died. Eyes that instantly made me forget those other eyes cremated on the pyres. But I felt no shame, because I had neither past nor future, no black hole from which I must laboriously drag myself with nails and teeth, no unlit abyss that might swallow up my days in silence. The man was before me, and that was all. Everyone else was drinking deeply at this banquet given by the king for the first suitor to arrive; Diomedes alone touched no wine. I watched his fingers fiddling idly on the table with the short thick stem of his cup, caressing its contours like the body of a lover, as if studying what was familiar in the moment before he discovered it anew. But then I saw his fingers hesitate on the chiseled rim, never finally closing around the cold goblet of Phoenician glass, never lifting it to his lips. His fingers; I preferred looking at them to studying his face which was marked by heavy, menacing shadows in the candlelight. But to me he was beautiful, beautiful with a ferocious beauty I prayed time would never be able to mar.
I could not have said how long the banquet lasted or how it ended, though I know for certain that my father as usual raised a glass to the gods, rendering grateful thanks as was his duty. Yet I paid no attention to him, conscious only of the dark arm of Diomedes pouring on the floor the last drops of wine from his cup as a final offering to the gods. Then they called me away; Leda using her vague, melodious voice to rip apart the veil of my self-satisfaction. I smiled, with the lost smile of a laurel addict. I saw my mother frown; pulling her carefully drawn brows together and wrinkling her perfect forehead like parchment. Her manicured hand closed brutally on my arm, demanding an explanation, but over her shoulder I could see Diomedes watching me from the door. When she saw his eyes fixed on us, she completely relaxed her harpy’s scowl and the grip on my arm, quickly letting her hand slip down with maternal complicity to grasp my palm. And then, apparently smiling at no one at all but actually at Diomedes, she took me away.
When we reached my room Leda set her favorite woman slave on guard at the door. She took my hand and made me sit down on the bed, chattering confusedly in her excitement, unable to keep still: “The first one … mad about you …”
Mad about you. I could see myself in the mirror behind her shoulder, and allowed myself a spontaneous smile. Diomedes mad about me! For the first time I was sorry I hadn’t let my hair grow back. Its present bristles were an odd frame for my face. I was nothing like the girl Theseus had carried off, or even the girl who had inhaled the powerful laurel smoke. Who was I, then? No doubt I would find out, but the bronze mirror was reflecting unformed clay, with no definite shape yet. My mother was watching me with knowing eyes, concentrating hard as she looked from me to the mirror. It was as if she could read my thoughts.
“Let me prepare you. You’ll be remarkably beautiful.”
“Prepare me …?”
“Yes. Diomedes will come to find you, you can be sure of that.”
I said nothing more, savoring her words like the wine I hadn’t drunk and the food I hadn’t eaten. I let her comb my hair to hide the uneven cut, and fetch me a new tunic from her rooms. Then she started on me again, fastening the tunic with gold buckles, and painting my lips carmine and my brows blue and black.
“There! A queen!” As she studied me she bit her lip, only too aware that she was preparing another woman to take her place. But at that moment her future exile didn’t matter. What she was seeing in the mirror was another Leda. I asked myself in anguish if Diomedes might have been attracted to her. Naturally, my mother’s brilliant smile told me as she got ready to go, who on earth could fail to fall for Leda? What man could ever say no to her? Not Diomedes, for sure. Not a king.
She kissed my cheek before she went. Assuming I would know what we were talking about. But her soft lips tasted dark on my skin. She departed with her usual sparkle, leaving me still searching for her reflection in the mirror. Not searching for myself, but for her. But the cheekbones I saw were too pronounced and the mouth too wicked for Leda. I wanted to wipe off the make-up at once with the back of my hand. But remembering my king dressed in yellow ochre I decided not to.
I lay down on the bed to wait. Somehow, I don’t know how, I was convinced Diomedes would respect no rules. On the other hand, my mother had made clear to me that I could expect him to come find me. And the thought of this acceptable transgression filled my blood with disgust. I waited. The oil gradually burned down in the lamp. I watched the flame tremble and go out, drowned in a sea of black. Sleep weighed heavy on my eyelids, smoothing down my lashes with gentle fingers. I shook my head with annoyance, but eventually gave in. Then sleep took me in his arms and began playing his strange tricks. As always, I dreamed I was following my lost love through spirals of smoke. But now he was coming toward me and taking my face in his hands with barely controlled violence. Looking straight into my eyes. His own were sharp green silica splinters. He was accusing me. I woke and managed not to cry out; my throat was clamped in iron. He was my love, I had silently sworn that I loved him. And forgotten already. I got off the bed, but my legs were feeble, bloodless and without strength. A gold buckle came loose and fell to the floor with a dull thud. I timidly approached the mirror. And hated what I saw. A whore. Sleep had smudged the makeup around my eyes, turning my face into a grotesque mask. My mouth was a bloody and discontented grimace. Old. It was my mother’s face after a night with one of her soldiers. No. I was angry and ripped cloth violently from brooches. The clasps hit the floor with a dull sound, a lament of metal on stone. My fingers ruined Leda’s patient construction that she had based on the ancient art of seduction. And Diomedes had not come.
Outside my windows dawn was painting the world in shades of rose. I threw on my blue tunic again. And went out through the window as I had not done since the days of the plague, climbing over the sill and dropping to the ground. I ran barefoot down the slippery compacted earth and felt sun-dried grass sting my ankles. But I also felt a strange, almost mad, urge to laugh and cry out that I was happy. Ask me that now. Whether I’m happy. Running, at least this time. I was like Clytemnestra before she gave up her white tunics. And beside me my ghost, silent still, but placated. His, mine. I had forgotten the previous evening like a drunken binge that had never happened. I heard the Eurotas before I saw it, I heard its sharp, cutting song. A tinkling not of silver but of iron behind the drawn curtains of the trees. Sparta’s river could only be a ferocious river. I crossed its pebbled bank and threw myself into its icy waters without even taking off my clothes, the natural continuation of my headlong race from the trees on to the bank, with my arms spread wide so as not to slip. Then I was in the river. All of me, without regret or hesitation. Hands, head, neck, body, legs, feet. The whole of me in that steely embrace. Like plunging a red-hot blade into water to temper it. A brutal embrace grabbed me above and below and all around. Opening my eyes I saw whirlpools of sand and mud and gently undulating weeds like the hair of a drowned man anchored to the bottom just below the surface. A fish flashed silver among the greenery, a red stripe down its back. I reached out to touch it, but it vanished. I came up again, my newly growing hair thrown back like a whiplash and my mouth open, panting for air. Farewell to dreams, farewell to ghosts in that clean bracing early morning air.
It was then that Diomedes came up behind me, so that I did not hear him. He grasped me firmly, pressing my shoulders against his body and pulling me under. The world filled with bursting bubbles as he dragged me down till I touched the river bed. He was strong, stronger than I was. I struggled but I had never been an athlete. I gave in with my nails gripping his arm, waiting for him to pull me up again. When he released me and I could feel fresh air in my lungs, I turned to look at him, my veins streaming with fury. He was smiling. I hit his face, hard. He went on smiling, his legs and arms still moving incessantly against t
he river. He pushed me out of the current, toward the bank. I wanted to vomit insults, I prayed for my ghost to return as flesh and blood. But Diomedes did not let me speak. With fiercely concentrating eyes and gentle hands he dried my face, removing the last traces of my make-up. His fingers pushed back my hair. “There.” Shaking him off I got to my feet and sat down on a flat stone lightly lapped by the water. I could feel my tunic glued to my skin, and combed my hair with my fingers. He dragged himself up to me with lazy movements of his arms against the shallow bed of the river, his eyes smoldering like embers in a brazier long after the fire has gone out.
My feet were dangling in the water. Like on the first evening, he took them in his hands. And looked at me. No longer smiling. His mouth curled with doubt and the seed of a distant fear of refusal. I studied the trees. With the green light filtering through their foliage, I could believe in spirits. Was my burned love watching me there, tall and dark under a white poplar? I should have got up and gone to him. But they say the living cannot walk with the dead. Diomedes squeezed my ankle, forcing me to look down. He rose in the water, his lips tracing a path from my foot to my knee, but stopping firmly there. A shudder not caused by cold water ran from my neck to my legs, stretching skin and nerves, even touching my bones. I looked at the trees again, but lost sight of the green light when the hands of Diomedes closed around my waist. Accepting no refusal, he pulled me into the water and against his body. I sank as he forced me to stretch out on the sloping bed of the river. Stones and mud parted under my back, but I couldn’t resist him, letting myself go with my eyes open and my hands locked behind his neck beneath the surface of the water. He let me pull him with me. His eyes were open like mine, too close to me. Then his mouth was on mine, his eyelashes meeting mine in the water. He wound his legs around mine, searching for support. My first kiss. We re-emerged breathless. I backed off without getting up, imperceptibly surrendering, supporting myself on feet and hands. Till I could feel the pebbles under my fingers. Diomedes pursued me, his eyes on mine, advancing as I retreated. Until all I could do was untie the now useless knot of my sodden tunic which his hands were pushing up my thighs as he crushed me under his weight. Over his head was a green and golden light, like glass. As I let myself go I could hear my ghosts turn and go away.
Memoirs of a Bitch Page 3
