Hermione was tired. I knew it from the impatient way she pulled at my dress, hanging with her whole weight from its folds, out of sight of the members of the council before us. I pinched her arm hard to force her to keep still. She had to get used to these long, exhausting ceremonies, and the sooner the better. Suddenly she was still, with scarcely a quiver. I hoped for her sake that she was not about to start crying. In any case, the tenth anniversary of the coronation of Menelaus required a solemn liturgy: embassies had come from many kingdoms in Greece and even from Asia Minor. The most important absentee was Agamemnon, who had stayed in Mycenae to keep an eye on his wife’s latest pregnancy. My arrogant sister had still not managed to bring a son into the world. The joke in the suburbs of Mycenae was that the King of Kings couldn’t father boys. I smiled at the thought. Just what they deserved. I remembered the smug way my sister had flaunted her belly the last time I’d seen her, years before! Another girl, to add to the three they already had. A disgrace to the throne of Mycenae. The rapidly dwindling queue of diplomats told me we were near the end. The last ambassadors filed into the throne room between the guard and the council; a dazzle of black skin suggesting that the king of Egypt had sent his usual gift of Nubian slaves. I was sorry; in the cold of Sparta they soon died. It was nearly summer now, but the two chained men were already shivering. Distracted by the black slaves, for a moment my tired eyes missed the slow column in the middle of the hall—last of all came warriors carrying helms decorated with horsehair plumes under their arms. Trojans. Long horse-hair crests that nearly reached to the ground. Taller than Greeks, more massively built. The counselors pretended indifference, but it was easy to see their envy. It had been a long time since good blood last flowed between Troy and Greece.
“King of Sparta, we bring congratulations from Priam, King of Troy and Sovereign Lord of Asia Minor, who has petitioned the gods to make the next ten years of your reign as prosperous as the first ten.”
I started at the barbarian accent of the Trojan envoy, a gray-haired elderly man, though still handsome in his bronze armor. Menelaus on his throne inclined his head with the hieratic gravity the counselors had gradually managed to teach him after eight disastrous years. He sat quite still, full of regal dignity if you didn’t know him, but by now he had no secrets from me: I recognized the hungry gleam in his eye as he looked about for gifts. A man of small account.
As if aware of this, the Trojan envoy went on: “King Priam sends you two Trojan chargers, born wild and tamed by Prince Hector himself. They await you in your stables.”
A nod, but I knew Menelaus was disappointed; he had been hoping for gold. As with Agamemnon, age was making him greedy. He was already thirty-five years old, and the shadow of debauchery under his eyes would never leave him. Old and greedy. And that would be my future with him: watching him sit there unworthily on the throne of my ancestors.
“Helen…” It was Hermione, one murmur among many that had run through the hall at the arrival of the Trojans. By now, after so many years the wound in my heart had healed, and was nothing more than a dull pinprick, not even a pain under my ribs. “Helen,” never “Mother.” Despite myself, I was getting like Leda: “Quiet, Hermione, it’s nearly over.”
“I want to see the horses too.”
“I’ll take you to see them later.” But I knew she’d soon forget all about it. Hermione had the memory of a fish: it never held anything for long. She was eight years old now, and had the mind of a child. Not stupid, just absentminded and changeable. Sometimes I wondered how long she would have remembered me if I’d gone away. I looked back at the throne. The usual exchange of blessings and invocations of the gods. At the banquet that followed the Trojans would be seated to the right of the king. I could already see Menelaus drinking with them through the evening, then dropping a discreet order to the steward: the ambassadors would find the most beautiful female slaves in Sparta waiting for them in their beds. Menelaus was afraid of Troy; when their conversation ended, the Trojan envoy barely inclined his head.
Suddenly a sentry cried out and an unknown man thundered through the crowd on horseback: “Greetings, King of Sparta!”
A silver voice, hair the color of wet sand, bronze skin. Clear, shining eyes. A straight nose and sensual mouth. Powerful, extremely handsome arms emerging from an embroidered purple tunic. The arms of a statue or a god. But it was a man who dismounted before the throne and handed the reins to Menelaus, who was curled up on his stone throne, barely able to refrain from lifting his hands to protect his face. As if the unknown man might draw his sword from its ruby-encrusted sheath and cut his throat where he sat.
“Gifts from my father, Menelaus. It seemed a shame not to let you see them at once.”
I found it difficult to tear my eyes from the figure of the Trojan prince, and my ears from his barbarian accent. A real man’s voice, I thought. And I let myself be beguiled.
Then, like a teacher calling to order an unruly pupil, came the voice of the Trojan ambassador, his mouth twisted into a grimace of annoyance. Ignoring him, the prince bowed politely to my husband and introduced himself: “Paris, son of Priam.”
Menelaus opened his mouth, then shut it again uncertainly; I silently prayed that he wouldn’t start babbling. Menippus took a quick step forward and saved the day: “On behalf of the Council, prince, welcome.”
Paris barely inclined his head; what a delicate long neck, what a fine contrast with the muscular shoulders just visible under his light linen tunic! Unlike the others, he was not wearing a cuirass, just that valuable sword, a clearer sign of his rank than any armor. I could not imagine blood on those beautiful hands. A man bringing peace, perhaps, after so much cold warfare? Was this Priam’s designated heir? The guards came to take the horses that, docile, allowed themselves to be led off; Paris first letting his hand linger tenderly on the neck of the one he had been riding, as if in farewell. Then he turned his fine head and his starry gaze took in the sad hall of Sparta which had never before seemed to me so bare, so empty. So wretched. But those shining eyes ignored that severe Spartan poverty, running past the lines of counselors and guards and ladies and wives. And over the blond head of Hermione. They finally stopped on me.
20
My arid womb flowed again with the forgotten warmth of desire; my skin seemed on fire and my flesh was throbbing. Imprisoned by his eyes, I could already imagine his hands and his body on top of me and inside me, and I longed to feel the warmth of his tongue in my mouth and the soft contact of his lips.
But our fantasy union was interrupted all too soon; my slave Callira had to drag me away by the wrist, because taking my eyes off that sun was as painful as saying farewell to the sky. As soon as the door to my apartment closed behind me, I ran panting to the mirror. Its uneven surface mocked me with the face of a prostitute. The fashion that year was for heavy make-up and showy jewelry, and since I no longer cared what I looked like, when I had to appear in public I let my slaves do whatever they liked with me. My hair was built up high in a complicated style constructed around a hairpiece from the north and decorated with pearls; my wrists were overloaded with bracelets, and I was horrified to see a glitter of gold around my throat. They had collared me at last. Furious, I tore everything off and cried out because there was no water in my basin. I had to wash off that mask that was nothing to do with me, tear off that hair that was not mine, and find again the beautiful Helen Achilles and Diomedes had loved. No, whispered the voice of Achilles in my memory, what I loved was your fiery spirit, but his voice was lost in the new blaze already consuming everything.
“Callira!” I called, ripping my dress in my haste to tear off the brooches, and by the time Callira had appeared calmly at the door to look at me, I had broken two bracelets and ruined my dress. The slave smiled.
“Come, my lady. What you need is a bath.” My first impulse was to hit her, but her light smile put things in perspective and I could only laugh. She laughed with me, and offered her hand to help me up; she already had a tub of hot wa
ter ready for me in the next room.
“The best of slaves,” I sighed, relaxing to the water’s caress as she cleaned my face. “And the best of friends too,” I added while the water washed away carmine and white lead.
She gave me a grateful look and offered me a towel. I stretched out on the bed while she gently dried my back and hair.
When she left the room to fetch the oil, my thoughts returned to Paris. The thighs below his tunic, his knees and his wrists … his image engulfed me like a wave, overwhelming me with an intensity unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
I should have searched for and found the enchantress beneath those layers of boredom, so that I could have shown him the real Helen that evening, restored to the glory that had once been hers, with the last ten years of my life burned away like an oil lamp; but now stop, enough. I had not noticed Callira’s return, but she was running her hands lightly over my body with caresses that went deeper than my skin, reaching muscles and veins, relaxing knots and easing my mind. It seemed quite natural when she ran her fingers along my thighs and touched the damp softness between my legs. I shivered. She pressed her lips against my shoulder, submerging us both in the dense cloud of my desire.
I ransacked chests to find the clothes I had worn nine years before, simple and elegant tunics now completely out of fashion, but rediscovering them was like finding a second skin. I put fine kohl under my eyes and pearls of amber in my hair, but Helen’s lips had no need of carmine. In the mirror a remembered shadow become flesh again and smiled at me. Yes, this really was Helen; beautiful, agitated and nervous before the banquet. Callira smiled and allowed one single ornament for my arm, a silver bracelet shaped like a serpent. Callira, Callira; a princess among her own people, and if I had been able to bear losing her I would have sent her back to them. But I was selfish, and she was always smiling; not faithful in the normal manner of slaves, but close to me with a closeness I could not explain except by saying I responded to it. We had come together by strange oblique routes, but we belonged with one another. Which was why I let her push me through the door into the garden, offering me the chance of a little peace before facing the megaron hall full of overexcited men who had eaten and drunk too much, and from whom I would need to distance myself once the dancing girls chosen from the best brothels in the city had made their triumphal entry. Yes, Sparta had brothels: the best in Greece, it was whispered. Closed behind simple wooden doors were luxury and pleasures private citizens would never otherwise have allowed themselves. And this secret licentiousness became politics when served up at the king’s table. Now I found myself out of doors, a shawl over my shoulders, the sunset fading to a familiar violet. I realized, not without a certain creeping of my skin, that the sky was like that evening when, so long ago, Diomedes had come to look for me. He too had galloped on horseback into the hall without a thought for anyone, and had chased away ghosts which had now come back to me. But where was my special ghost as that evening silently turned to night? Was he perhaps that shadow descending through the trees and moving away toward the Eurotas? Till that morning I too had dwelled among the misty regions of death, barely lit by occasional lightning flashes. But then I had seen Paris, and life had recovered its value. The living cannot spend long periods with death. In the end, we have to choose.
I had not expected to hear anyone behind me, but was not surprised. A steady step and a calm voice, “Helen.”
I turned. I had no mask to hide behind now, only the dress I myself had chosen. Paris from Troy was smiling. He was not wearing a sword, only a short cloak that he took off in a single elegant sweep and laid on the ground. I would not be at the banquet that evening.
21
How strange were my flesh and skin, how strange the blood in my veins. How strange my muscles melting like snow at the slightest touch from Paris, how strange that my nerves were at rest when I was with him, how strange that my mind was either totally absent or drowsing in suspended time that he controlled. The time of Paris. The most vivid time of my life. A few days that carried my dreams and hopes to their highest point. Before a gradual decline.
Together. Every night and every day. Paris put off his departure, fascinating and entertaining the king, radiating charm like a fan or wrapping it around everyone like a veil. At the banquets he was a god in my eyes. Even then he was already using the slave girls after supper, but I ignored that, because it was only to fool Menelaus, to stop him suspecting anything. When Paris came to find me in the garden or in my rooms, I was the only one who mattered. I worked through all my clothes and asked for more. Four months he stayed in the palace at Sparta, and every day had a new dress to tear off me with his teeth, every day a new jewel to knock on to the marble floor during our violent love-making. Love was a word Achilles had never used, but Paris spread it about liberally like the petals of ceremonial flowers, making it blossom when he murmured it in my ear, yelling it at the empty countryside when we galloped across the river.
Menelaus saw nothing, or pretended obstinately to see nothing, paralyzed in his ineptitude, stifled by his fear of Troy, perhaps even hoping that now at last I might conceive the son his sterile loins had failed to father. The time of Paris was nearly over; I could read that in the rapidly changing weather as it hastened toward the end of the navigation season, and in the impatient step of Amphitryon, the Trojan ambassador, as he diffidently passed down the corridors with his crested helm under his arm, determined always to do the right thing. I knew he had persuaded Paris that they must leave; Paris, my poor child of a lover that I thought perfect, my poor sweetheart of counterfeit gold. But I paid no attention, snatching the hours from the gods’ hands with the desperate hunger of a nine years’ fast, and emptying the chests to cover myself with purple and pearls so Paris could have a new Helen every day and never tire of me. A Helen silently cutting herself off from her ghosts in the silvery whirlpool of his laugh, in the flame of his foreign touch, further and further from where her true image lay forgotten in the depths of the mirror. Helen, Helen, where are you going? What did you not know, what did you not understand? Like Hermione, I now had the memory of a fish. I could no longer remember what I had had or what I should do. What final reckoning would destiny expect me to pay?
Then a ship with black sails came and brought me hope. Messengers rode in through the courtyard gate crying out their grief to the unresponsive Peloponnese. A king had died.
Menelaus had to go. What else could he have done? Forget our long friendship with Crete, ignore all that mourning? And the splendid presents the Cretan king had sent him only a few months before …
My lips devoured the body of Menelaus with a passion they had never felt. While he groaned and writhed I made my hands caress him and my body slither over him, my mouth whispering sensible words in his ear. “Menelaus …”
I caressed him with his odious name and opened my knees to him with husky false sighs. “Menelaus …” Thinking of other things, I arched my body and sank my nails in his back, crying out in triumph because I knew I had won when with his protruding belly crushed against my stomach I murmured in a voice exhausted by simulated pleasure, “Will you go?”
And he answered: “I will.”
A voluptuous sigh escaped my throat; my fingers gripped him like talons, and all suspicion was banished from his mind as the perfumed sea of my flesh again began moving under him.
22
The king departed. Paris apologized for not being able to leave with him, but unfortunately his ship was not ready, though they certainly would have to set sail in a couple of days; it was the last chance, the sailing season was nearly over, they couldn’t allow themselves to miss the last wind for Troy, but of course the hospitality of Sparta had in all respects been …
Lengthy farewells followed at the bottom of the steps, with the long procession that would accompany Menelaus to the Cretan ship. The Trojans came too to speed him on his way, Amphitryon frowning despite his prince’s promise that they too would be on their way
very shortly. In the light breeze of late summer I bent to kiss Menelaus with feigned reserve, my head and neck wrapped in a shawl—“I’m not well, my love, a bit of a cough, I’m sure it’ll pass”—then a step backward to allow him to climb into his carriage—a carriage rather than a horse for the lazy king of Sparta. The whole court presented arms in salute, Menippus severe, helm under his arm, the perfect mirror-image of Amphitryon who, no coincidence, was at his side. Menelaus had entrusted the court to Menippus, who had his eye on Paris like a guard dog watching a wolf wandering outside the courtyard gate, pretending indifference but already fully aware of what he’s after. Feeling the suspicious gaze of Menippus on my back, I bowed my head in a feigned attack of coughing, the better to be able to hide my face in the folds of my shawl. Menelaus saved his last farewell for me, the proud radiant look of a king convinced he was leaving behind a devoted queen, whose only thought was to long for his return home to her bed. I’m sure he mistook my lowered eyes for modesty at the thought of the unbridled pleasures of the previous night, and he signed to the coachman to start with the expression of a satisfied conqueror. From the folds of my shawl I watched him disappear down the road, feeling the poison of success beginning to boil in my veins. The fool had gone and victory was near. When the members of the council who had gathered to honor the king’s departure disbanded, chattering, I gave a sigh and ran up the stairs.
“I don’t feel well, Menippus,” I told the captain of the guard. “Tell the steward to look after our guests; I must rest in my rooms.” Menippus curtly inclined his head and took leave of the Trojans with the faintest indication of a bow, but without even deigning to glance at them. But Paris’s smile never faltered; we had already reached an agreement. When I reached my rooms I called for my slave women. Only Etra and Callira were to come with me; the rest had to stay behind for the sake of Hermione. They nodded in brief acknowledgment; I had always treated them well; now they owed me one last favor. I had left them enough jewels to sell discreetly so that, once the waters had grown a little calmer, they would be able to buy their liberty. They were to say that before I left I had sent them to look after Hermione, who was indeed in bed with a bad cough. I said goodbye to each, embracing them one by one as they filed past for me to place in their grateful hands the packages containing the jewels. Then they departed and I was left alone with my two trustiest slaves.
Memoirs of a Bitch Page 7
