Memoirs of a Bitch

by Francesca Petrizzo

  Menelaus returned that night, and the sequence of unchanging days and evenings began again. I try to remember those first years of my marriage, my husband’s face on the pillow and the exact quality of his voice. But I can’t. For me, Menelaus only inhabited the edge of days lived on my own. Perhaps it is only now that I realize he was afraid of me. Ashamed of himself, and with a pathetic, empty pride in the throne he had only been able to occupy as my husband. Brother of the king of kings, but born to be second. And I, as the bards loved to sing, was the most beautiful and also the craziest queen in Greece. There certainly were things to be afraid of.

  When the coming of winter brought the wolves down from the mountains and turned the courtyard white with snow, my evenings became empty vigils by the brazier. I could hear again the words of Achilles: Don’t burn. A man had come from far away and told us at table that Diomedes had married Aegileia, Princess of Argos. Diomedes lost. The childhood I never had finally came to an end there, in those flat words. As if I had ever believed Diomedes would come back. As if it had ever made sense to hope for it. I could feel the memory of him I still held inside me, depressing my spirit as it took its farewell and left me, as I watched him disappear. I locked his voice and face behind iron gates deep down in my soul. To prevent them from returning to wound me. From the corner of my eye I could see my unclear reflection in the mirror. Hair pulled together under a gold circlet. Dress of heavy blue wool. I was beautiful that day but Achilles was far away and could not see me, the wrong side of mile after mile of rough impassable sea. He could not know that I had obeyed his word, and that even in those gray nights I was searching inside myself for springs to nourish what had brought him back to me. But he had also gone again leaving no trace, and in spite of my fiery spirit I had not been able to follow him. Or had not wanted to. I looked through the window at the countryside sunk in gray and black. At the veiled night sky, its stars blotted out by snow. I placed my hand on my stomach. And there, under my open palm, I could feel a tiny tremor. It was too soon, I must have imagined it, but I knew then that Achilles had not left me. I wanted to smile, but the air was too full of sadness. A sort of melancholy suspense. Grow little Achilles, I whispered to my belly, grow and come to rule Sparta. It’s my kingdom, and I shall leave it to you. I can do that. I’m not like all these men, some easy-going and some severe but all weak. No. I’m like your father. Strong. I’m made of stone. And of fire.

  16

  From the moment he heard about the child, Menelaus left me alone. Happy, stupidly satisfied by what he saw as a job well done, he would come to my room in the evening and sit watching me weave or spin. Or, with his hands clasped together, just gaze out of the window at the Peloponnese blanketed in snow. When he began to feel sleepy, he would stretch his arms, then interlace his fingers on his stomach. I did my best to ignore him, because I knew what was likely to follow. In my irritation I would work feverishly at spindle or shuttle, twisting the thread into impossible shapes. My whole body would stiffen on my chair. But it was useless. He would sigh, every evening the same sigh, the deep exhalation from tranquil lungs of life successfully achieved. Then he would get up and move stiffly toward me on creaky legs.

  “Helen,” pathetically, as if afraid of frightening a small domestic animal, “Helen,” he would say again, coming closer, his voice even softer. Then his neck would stiffen in a desperate effort to control himself, his eyes fixed on my work as if seeing it through a thick blanket of fog. Then his hand would land on my shoulder and roughly caress the back of my neck. I would close my eyes, put down my work and shrink away from him toward the window. I could not bear the moment when he would bend over and lay his grateful head against my ripening belly. Other men, most men, ignore their wives when their children are gradually maturing toward the light of day. I should have been happy with this kind man who never raised hand or voice against me, but just liked to listen to what he imagined to be his son swimming slowly in his natal waters and who never humiliated me by going with slave girls; but I loathed him. I loathed him, because I could see in his smile the imprint of the weakness that had scarred his life, the total influence of the shadow and weight of his brother; the expression he wore when he sat on the throne of Sparta, the satisfaction of a man who thinks he has won himself a rise in status. I remembered the pride of Diomedes and the majesty of Achilles. I could have destroyed this man with a single blow of the scissors lying beside me on the window ledge. He never realized how much I hated him, Menelaus, it was something he could not imagine. He had always given me everything I wanted unasked; I only had to say the word and the treasury would have been emptied to buy purple and gold.

  But Helen was no Leda, I was not like my mother, and despite the fact that I was queen of Sparta, and every day faced in the mirror a woman I did not know when I combed my hair and dressed it in ribbons interlaced with silver, yet I had myself woven the woolen clothes I wore, and never let my silent slave girls waste their time in idleness. So I wove and spun and listened to the growing son of Achilles that Menelaus would always believe to be his. But it got harder to keep the fires of memory burning as the curve under my clothes swelled, and I found myself beginning to ask whether the weight below my ribs might not after all be his, whether all that conscientious panting had not in the end brought him victory. The mere thought took my eyes to my scissors and sent fresh poison streaming through my veins, and this at least kept apathy at bay. I waited. The dark winter lengthened into a year with no spring or summer, in which the few jewels on the trees were destroyed by cold on branches swollen with useless pollen. While in the yards priests cut the throats of lambs to find out why the earth was so angry, I stroked the closed corolla of my womb and waited for it to begin opening. When I heard the lambs bleat I shuddered, and pressing my hands over my ears I could clearly hear the voice of Achilles at my side: the useless oracles of the gods of the sky; animals, animals is all they are and all they will ever be, because they refuse to take responsibility for this useless blood. He was right, Achilles, the gods were nothing more than dumb idols in whose names these lambs were suffering, so I gave orders that no more should be sacrificed. Madwoman, blasphemer, they probably called me, but I didn’t care, strong in the conviction that my heavy body belonged to Achilles. Meanwhile nature held her breath in a year that refused to behave as men expected it to, though there was no premonition of disaster in that immobility, only a slow patient waiting for a gentle goddess to finish her work. Nature was there in every blade of grass, in every cloud, and knew where she was going. I had not grown heavy in vain. My sealed corolla would open to the light of a new summer.

  It was a day of solemn ceremony and empty halls. Menelaus was performing the sacrifices he had agreed to reinstate after months of complaints from the council, and the whole court was with him in the temple. I was alone with my slave girls when I felt a gush of warm water flood my thighs. I nearly cried for help, but changed my mind. No, I didn’t want them burning oils and holding my hands. No, Helen of Sparta would give birth alone on the stairs like a stray cat, gripping the balusters so as not to cry out. Helen, stupid and obstinate, would be alone, only her own tranquil ghost with her in the only battle she would be allowed as a woman to fight on her own, with that body born to be bought and sold. Be alone, Helen, but don’t cry out, break your nails on the stone stairs; breathe, Helen, but don’t think about the one who should be here but is far away beyond the sea. Only you yourself matter now, you and your own strength, Helen made of stone and fire. Rip yourself apart like new linen to release this kicking and breathing weight, this weight that is your own on these empty stairs.

  The tension in my legs gave way with a great contraction to one final push, and the only cry that escaped my otherwise sealed lips and mingled with the shrill cries of the mortal creature just born, screaming like a calf to open its lungs. Beginning to die from the moment when, eyes closed against the light, it opened its nostrils to breathe for the first time. A small screaming creature at the top of th
e stairs. Like a wild bitch I bit through the cord that joined us and dragged myself toward her with my hands. For it was her; a female on the stairs, between legs draped with placenta the cleft of her sex that would one day make her, like her mother before her, merchandise for barter. But not now; today I could touch her with my hands and she was mine. My baby girl on those stairs, eyelids still obstinately shut, on her head a thin tuft of hair stained with blood and fluid. I pressed my baby against my painfully swollen breasts, among the stained folds of my dress. I murmured to soothe her. Sleep, baby girl, sleep with me. I rocked us backward and forward together. Ignoring a thin rivulet of blood running from my ankles on to the floor. A trivial sign of my victory in this war without witnesses. Sleep, baby girl, sleep. She did not sleep, but stopped screaming and opened her eyes. Blind eyes barely capable of distinguishing vague shadows in the dazzling light. But no matter. It was my shadow those glaucous orbs were seeing. And I already knew what color they would be when they cleared. Halfway between green and blue. Unbearable.

  17

  What Achilles had not foreseen was the boredom. A boredom that consumes without burning, without hurting, enclosing us in cages without bars or walls, eating away at the substance of our days and taking over so that we cannot be aware of it before it is too late. This is what happened to me. They took Hermione away to be suckled by a wet nurse, leaving me alone with my swollen breasts in empty rooms that smelled of sadness.

  Menelaus kept his distance, disappointed at his failure to produce an heir. He no longer came to my rooms, and began solacing himself at night with beautiful young slave girls with bodies as yet unstretched by childbearing. His old kindness gave way to a general indifference toward his lawful wife, and I no longer felt any pressure to conceal my hatred for him. His absence from my life was just an inconvenient emptiness, an easy excuse for annoyance. I ate and slept alone, and only my women slaves came near me. There was no point in doing my hair or caring how I dressed, and I very soon degenerated again into the tired slattern Achilles had found.

  I tried to work off my rage in long runs over the arid fields and exhausting swims in the cold waters of the Eurotas, though it didn’t help. I had one slave girl who knew how to ride a horse, and in her company I was able to while away whole afternoons of otherwise unbearable tedium.

  Menelaus knew nothing of these expeditions, nor would he have cared, since I was now nothing more than the woman he still visited regularly twice a month with the sole purpose of conceiving a son. And so I would go riding, bribing the grooms with gold and jewelry, and calling at poverty-stricken hovels in the foothills of the Peloponnese, where I mingled with shepherds and peasants and women worn down by constant childbearing and hard work. They would offer me water and ask for nothing back. The gods they prayed to had no relation to the gods venerated in the temples. If I had been born like them, I would have died after an anonymous life of exhausting labor and been buried close to the door of my home. They had never expected anything else. It was the only destiny open to them. They had read it in their mothers’ wrinkles and sucked it in with their milk, accepting their destiny just as they accepted their own blood. But for me it had been otherwise. I had had the chance to live a different life, but it had been snatched out of my hands. Of course I was only flesh, bones and skin just like them, but I was also full of regret for what had so nearly happened for me. No, the only way I could have found peace would have been to burn myself out, reconciling myself to the death in life of so many other women like myself, wives of courtiers or captains, invisible women who at thirty years of age were already weaving their own shrouds behind closed doors. But that was not for me. So I forced myself to run till I was breathless, to swim furiously till I was at the point of collapse, and to try to forget in sleep the emptiness of my life. Weaving and burning the earth under my feet.

  Hermione got bigger and came to think of her wet nurse as her mother. It was too late for me to do much about this, and in any case I had never wanted to have children. My body, if a little softer than before, regained its slender perfection. But Menelaus’s love for me never returned. He continued to pay me visits, more and more often drunk, his breath smelling of wine and his clothes saturated with the cheap perfumes of other women. I had never loved him, but we had respected one another, and now he was insulting me. When he rolled over on his back snoring with satisfaction, I felt myself little more than a tavern tart, the sort who cost little and are quickly worn out. And no one seemed to remember any longer that I was the queen. All Menelaus wanted was a male heir, and when he had that, even these visits would end. My two rooms, my garden and the desolate countryside beyond the river were my world. Though I still had my ghost walking at my side and lingering silently in dark corners. A presence too real for me ever to feel really alone. Of course I had more than many women had. But never enough to satisfy my fiery spirit.

  Menelaus was on top of me, an indistinct bristly shape, grunting like an exhausted wild boar until, with a final spasm, he soiled my thighs. Then as always he went on lying on the bed while I pulled the sheet around myself and turned to the wall. Waiting for him to go away. It had been a bad day, rain surprising me while I was swimming, violent whirlpools grabbing me so that I strained my muscles struggling to reach the bank.

  I had been resting my aching legs on the soft mattress when Menelaus came reeling up to the bed. I had heard the familiar slamming of the door against the wall. There was little I could do but shut my eyes and make room for him; the quicker I gave in to him the sooner he would be finished; he was always in a hurry.

  When he’d finished having his pleasure, he grunted to clear his voice and began his usual grumble: “Still no boy children.”

  “No, not yet.” My voice was expressionless.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with you, woman. You produced a daughter easily enough.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  “With me, you mean? Is that what you’re saying? That I can’t—”

  “Possibly. How can we know? The gods decide these things.”

  My voice was flat, colorless. His drunken rages were usually harmless. That was why I had my back to him, so I didn’t see him raise his arm and hit me across the neck. Then he pushed me to the floor. I fell painfully, tangled in the sheet. He was on me before I could get up. I had nothing to defend myself with, nowhere to hide. All I could do was submit to his blows until he had finished. Then he went away without looking back, leaving a battered bundle by the wall. Something the slave girls could tidy away.

  18

  A split lip, swollen eyes and purple bruises on my cheeks. With delicate hands Etra stitched my right eyebrow and cut the thread. No broken ribs, she said. She had bound my left wrist to a splint; promising it would heal quickly. I very tentatively swept back my hair and looked in the mirror. The woman I saw was someone else. My scornful smile hurt my lips and produced a dark laugh on the unrecognizable mask in the mirror. Poor Helen. Poor Helen indeed. The pathetic timidity of an unloved husband had suddenly turned to violence.

  Someone knocked hesitantly on the door. Etra, embroidering at the window, met my look. She too knew the timid knock of the man who in another life had been Menelaus. I nodded to her to open the door, carefully tidying a few loose hairs away behind my ears before turning. “Well?”

  He drew back, terrified. Now he could see for himself the marks of his violence on my body, he was repelled. A weak man. He sat down, or rather collapsed on to the bed. Giving way completely. Holding his head in his hands, feebly tossing back his lifeless hair.

  “Forgive me, Helen.”

  So he was taking forgiveness for granted. Admitting he’d been drunk would not have helped. He would have done it again. He was asking me to excuse him, he wanted my forgiveness. I had no feeling for him in his misery. He had used up all my pity. I took a deep breath, then spoke in measured tones, without raising my voice; my wounded mouth still hurting. “Hit me again if you like, Menelaus. But no, I can
not forgive you.”

  Slowly he raised his head to meet my eyes and my composed, expressionless face. I’m made of stone. His eyes filled with tears that he made no effort to hold back. I realized what he was about to do a moment before he did it.

  “Don’t kneel down before me, Menelaus. It won’t help.”

  He ran away like a child, like the coward and fool he was. He ran away. Etra came back from the next room and took up her embroidery, which she had left on her stool. As she passed, she imperceptibly touched my arm. Less than a caress, but more than a consolation. She understood. I turned to the mirror again, and recognized in its depths the eyes of a devastated but extremely beautiful woman. On her wounded features she had painted a cruel smile.

  I dreamed of my soldier that night. As usual, I couldn’t see his face, but I could feel him in the way one feels the sun, as a physical sensation on the skin. He held me close as he had never done in life, softly murmuring my name. That was all he said. But when I woke the marks of the blows I had suffered seemed to have disappeared. Menelaus would never touch me again.

  19