Nestor came quickly to his rescue, addressing the depressed soldiery.
‘All right lads, so we don’t possess the required attacking ratio – anybody can see that and I’m not going to try to hide it from you. An attacking force in this situation should outnumber the enemy if possible and clearly they outnumber us. But equally their weaknesses are clear. They’re archers and horsemen, none better, but they’re not spearmen, not like us, that much was obvious on the beachhead, and our infantry is second to none. You all know that without my telling you. They won’t stand up to the phalanx.
‘So far so good. Plus, we’re just as well disciplined and cohesive, highly cohesive. And we’re a lot more mobile. Our flexibility is our strength. Yes, the landing was hell and we took a bad first hit, but what did you expect? Now we’re in, and we’ll hit back, in other parts of the country, in the deserted homelands, whose fighting men are all here, remember. We’ll continue to make raids, as Odysseus has advised, just as soon as we’re properly dug in. These people, they’ve never been attacked by a Greek fleet of any size, coming at them through the surf, right on their doorstep. We’re the steeds of the sea. Our ships more than match their horses. And they can’t bring their chariots to the beaches. We’ll soon have the allies crumbling when they see the big-beaked birds coming at them, the terrible red stems, eh? It’s what your fathers did before you, for centuries; it’s in your blood, it’s what you’re for, bringing terror to the enemy straight out of the sea. Meanwhile, the main force stays here and starts to squeeze. Don’t worry – they’ll soon be begging us for an embassy.’
Nestor had the advantage of looking the exact opposite of Agamemnon. The sculpted cheekbone, eye of eagle and nose of hawk gave him a profile of piercing intelligence. It was actually an illusion, but it had the look of truth. And apart from his age, there was his figure: there wasn’t a spare scrap of flesh on him. With his tanned old hide topped by a flowing white mane, he was composed of two colours, sand and surf. He seemed to have grown up out of the sea-bleached sandy strip of Pylos over which he ruled, and he also looked as if he’d be going back there after the war, the look of a veteran on whose watch you’d be safe. You could count on him. He exuded endurance, durability, victory, success. The applause wasn’t ecstatic, but it was enough. Agamemnon was off the hook again. He cheered up.
THIRTEEN
She is Aphrodite incarnate. And she sits in Aphrodite’s lap, between the divine breasts. She holds her own breasts in her curious hands, examining them, apples of love. The goddess touches Helen’s cheek, lightly, turning her face to look at something . . .
Eros is entering the room at one of the doors. He is stark-naked, his huge penis glistening, erect. He is leading a lamb to the slaughter. You can see he is a shepherd by his staff. The lamb is Paris. Coming in at the other door is Desire, full-breasted, her nipples hard and enlarged. One hand is hidden between her legs. Aphrodite beckons to Paris and signals, indicating that the girl in her lap is all his. Eros and Desire will see to it. And the Graces. One by one, they too enter the room, followed by Ares and Hermes, Aphrodite’s lovers, the god of war and the guide of the dead. The web is becoming crowded . . .
But there’s room for more. Half hidden in one corner, stashed among shadows, Death stands and gloats, his grin hideous, his cloak embroidered with bones and skulls. And in the other corner the sea-nymph, Nemesis, looms.
Beauty and revenge, love and war, desire and death, they will all haunt Helen. And Paris. And all will marry in an instant. The intertwining is inescapable, unshunnable. Helen rises from the divine lap and stands naked before Paris, as she did when she rose from Menelaus’s desecrated bed and her skin burned his eyes. All Troy will burn for her. She is primal fire, Prometheus stuff, born to set cities and men ablaze.
Menelaus lifts his eyes from the freshly dug latrines, each one pristine. He glares up at the citadel, glittering in the sun.
‘I’ll bring her down,’ he hisses to himself, ‘as low as excrement! I’ll bring her down off that hill!’
The plains of Troy lie empty before him, yet already they are strewn with bones, and dogs are chewing them, and in the eye of Penelope the canines are all bitches, all bearing tits, all swollen-bellied, all feeding their lusts on fallen soldiers. Helen presides over this holocaust, this field of human losses. At one end of the field she is a big-bellied pregnant bitch with the face of the Spartan queen, the queen of carnage. At the other end she is herself, but with the face of a mad dog. Each of the faces, dog and diva, drips and salivates at the sight of the dead men, gnawed and lacerated by crunching canine teeth. She is far from indifferent to the mass extermination she has caused. On the contrary, she laps it up.
Menelaus laps up his revenge. ‘I’ll kill the bitch! I’ll rip her to pieces!’
Anchises on Ida took Aphrodite on his bed, strewn with the skins of wild beasts, took her and didn’t know who he was taking, the golden child of the bloody foam. She’d done herself up as a demure but nubile girl, virgo intacta, ripe for cock. Decked with gold, she’d made her way through the woods to his lowly lodging, where she heard the lyre thrill to his fingers. She wanted to feel those fingers rippling her nipples, thrumming her vertebrae, playing wantonly on her spine, his singing lips plucking out her tongue.
She walked in. He looked up. The fingers faltered on the strings, and stopped. The dress she had invented for the occasion was so flimsy she was scarcely wearing it at all. But when she dropped it he stopped breathing . . .
Afterwards, she revealed herself for who she was and Anchises was terrified. He knew that the terrible beauty of goddesses can kill. She was love and death and undecaying life. She was the rage of madness and she’d taken him in. He’d been inside her, the black goddess, laughter-loving, shy-eyed, penis-loving, sly-eyed Aphrodite, out of whose impregnated womb came Aeneas, out of whose desires came death, Helen, Paris, Troy. And from flaming Troy, Aeneas carried old Anchises on his back to a better life. A life free from the curse of Helen.
Running from the doomed city, running naked from her bed, clothed only with her breath, Helen leaned panting against Ilus’s tomb, slid slowly down into the labour position, opened her legs wide, and gave birth. But not before Penelope opened up her belly for the web, exposing everything that was within, what was germinating there, waiting to be born. The Trojan women crowded round to assist at the birth. They looked, and their hands flew to their faces. The bitch was pregnant with all their beloved dead. Her belly held the bones of the city’s fallen. She screamed and delivered them – not stillborn but past life, dead on arrival. The bones strewed the plains of Troy, pouring out through her vagina.
If they brushed shoulders with Helen by accident, they shrank away, passed her by with that shudder. It happened rarely. She avoided the lower town, dreading the ugly alleys, even with Paris’s guards protecting her steps wherever she went. She stayed up on the hill, a prisoner of the citadel, bemoaning her lonely lot, her unbelonging, regretting lovely Lacedaemon . . . and sometimes even the husband who, if he couldn’t match Paris in looks and graces, or in bed, was at least no coward, and he’d brought all of Greece to her doorstep. He looked up at the citadel every day. And the anger never left his eyes.
‘I’ll bring her down!’ he raged. ‘I can take her off her hill! I will. I’ll take her down. And when I do, I’ll fucking kill her!’
Nobody believed him.
And after a while nobody believed either that the Trojans were going to request a second embassy. They were ready to meet us beard to beard, the bastards, and beat us backwards to the sea.
But still Nestor wanted to talk. ‘What will you tell all the widows and the old folks when we come back without their husbands and sons and they learn that we never even negotiated for them, never gave peace a chance?’
Agamemnon groaned. ‘Same old fucking tune! Play another one. We gave it a chance – and fucking Hector waved his dick at us, didn’t he? He didn’t give a toss about peace.’
‘Then you must sh
ow yourself to be the better leader. Men won’t follow a leader who doesn’t act like one. Of course there must be another embassy!’
‘Embassy my arse!’
Agamemnon saw his dreams of riches draining down the old latrine.
‘It’s climbing down!’ he wailed. ‘It’ll show loss of nerve. It’ll make us look wet and weak.’
‘The very thing they themselves won’t wish to appear,’ said Nestor, ‘which will make them grateful to us that we took the first step. Then the negotiations can begin.’
‘They won’t fucking budge, I’m telling you.’
‘Then at least you’ll have given them one last chance. And ourselves too, by the way.’
The embassy went ahead.
I went with Menelaus, who insisted on coming, against all advice. He needed to get close to the scene. But Priam was sensitive enough to have us conducted to Antenor’s house instead of to the palace, where Menelaus would have had to stand and ask for his wife back in the same building where she was being shagged by one of the king’s sons. Too much of a humiliation.
An Assembly in Antenor’s house, on the other hand, was no disgrace. I partly knew the man, a decent sort. His wife, Theano, was a priestess and Antenor himself was an elder statesman who happened to be well disposed to Greeks. As soon as we said we’d come to ask for the release of Helen without further bloodshed, Antenor stood up in the Assembly and supported us, not only in our request for Helen but in our demand that she be returned with all the treasures she and Paris had looted from the Spartan palace when they left.
‘So fucking abruptly!’
That was Menelaus’s subtle contribution to the diplomatic efforts. Antenor nodded sagely, as if Menelaus had just said something wise.
‘The minute my fucking back was turned!’
Antenor nodded again and put up a pacifying hand, adding that in his opinion we should even be compensated for the insult and for the enormous cost of the expedition. This went down well with some of the greybeards, who’d no desire to see the skies of Troy go black and greasy with the smoke from their sons’ funeral pyres.
It didn’t go down well with Antimachus. The bastard stood up and glared at us and at the Assembly.
‘So that’s your idea of a solution, is it? These two swan in here and ask for this cunt’s wife – who came here not in chains but of her own free will, let me remind you all. And we’re supposed to say yes, certainly, have her back, and all the gold she brought as a dowry. And while we’re at it, let’s load them up with gold of our own to repay them for their trouble. Nobody asked the fuckers to come here, did they? We didn’t invite them. And how do you think we’re going to look to the world after that, eh? Like tossers, that’s how!’
Antenor tried to interrupt, but Antimachus held the floor.
‘I’ll tell you exactly what will happen next. Every tin-pot king from here to everywhere will come and hump us. Troy, they’ll say, yes, let’s all head for Troy, the city which not only opens its gates to invaders and lets them through to take whatever they fancy, but tops them up with more, just for the inconvenience of getting here, and all the trouble they’ve gone to, having to come and fucking ask! It won’t be horses and chariots and archery we’ll be famous for in future – Trojans will be proverbial for poltroons! We’ll be poorer than piss! And all those allies out there will melt away like snow in fucking summer. We’ll be left defenceless. It’ll be the end of us. Is that what you want? Are you all stark raving mad?’
Antimachus’s speech caused an uproar. He’d swung the meeting quite the other way. Antenor tried to shout above the noise.
He was drowned out. Antimachus seized the moment. ‘Listen, friends, to what I propose. Not only do we politely refuse to return the wife of this poor fucking cuckold here, I suggest we put an end to this impending war by putting an end to the cuckold himself. Let’s kill the bastard right here and now!’
Sudden silence. I saw Menelaus reach for his sword. I laid my hand on his wrist.
‘That’s what he wants,’ I whispered. ‘Don’t rise to it. Stay cool.’
We stood our ground, composed. The abrupt hush continued as the enormity of Antimachus’s suggestion sank in. Antenor stood up and took the floor.
‘This man has been bought by Paris, can’t you see? It’s perfectly plain he’s been bribed to rig the Assembly. That’s one thing. But to propose that we butcher an ambassador? It would be unbelievable were it not for the fact that it’s Paris talking – that much is obvious.
‘Doesn’t matter who’s fucking talking!’
Antimachus scented blood.
‘It makes perfect sense. If she’s got no husband to give her back to, there’s no point in fighting for her, is there? The whole fucking logic of the war would be lost, don’t you see? And we can even go one better while we’re about it, by chopping down this cunt Odysseus too! They start off two leaders down, one of them the plaintiff, the cuckold himself, and the other a known troublemaker. They might as well show us their big white arses and go home. There’d be fuck all left for them to do!’
‘And,’ I said, speaking very quietly, ‘the name of Troy would become a byword not only for cowardice and treachery but for total lack of respect for civilised behaviour between nations. Is that what you want – to be despised by the civilised world? Clearly Antenor is correct. This man has been bought over. Would an honest man make a suggestion so outrageous it flies in the face of all decency, let alone diplomacy?’
Much muttering in grey beards, much to Antenor’s relief. He took the floor again.
‘Of course it would be an outrage, as Odysseus has said. And one that Priam would never condone. In the circumstances, I propose we move the meeting to the palace right away and settle this matter in the open and at the top.’
So we were taken to the palace, where we were well wined and dined while Priam got ready to receive us.
I knew exactly what it would be: another bend-over-here-it-comes- again episode, one more pointless colloquy before the inevitable. Priam was polite and to the point, however, and I rather liked the old man.
We’d come for Helen, he said. But Helen hadn’t asked us to come. In fact she particularly wanted to stay. She had no particular female or political need pressing her at this precise moment, no need to return to Sparta with her husband. Had she felt such a need, then naturally the situation would have been different. But she didn’t. And so if we had no other pressing needs ourselves, we could take our leave from the palace. And from Troy.
‘Is there nothing you can offer?’ I asked. ‘A face-saver of some sort? Anything at all?’
Priam smiled sadly and tried to look cheerful.
‘Well now, how about a substitute for Helen? There’s Polyxena, for example. Or Cassandra – though she’s a bit wild. You can have the pick of my unmarried daughters. Together with a suitable dowry, of course. How would that suit you, Menelaus?’
‘I only want my wife.’
Priam sighed and spread his arms.
‘Yes, I thought so. I understand. But you see my problem. I’m an old man, old-fashioned in my ways. You won’t blame me for that, I’m sure. When a little bird has flown to me for protection, I feel duty-bound to keep it under my wing. It’s the least I can do. It’s also a matter of honour. Do you understand?’
Menelaus stayed tight-lipped, looking at the ground. Priam turned to me.
‘Understood, Odysseus?’
I bowed slightly. ‘Absolutely understood. And I’m sure you equally understand our problem. Helen is still married to Menelaus. They didn’t divorce. She belongs to Sparta, not to Troy. She’s property. We simply can’t leave without her, I’m sorry. If we can’t take her by agreement then we must take her by force. And we will.’
‘You are of course welcome to try.’
‘So we’re understood, then? It’s war.’
‘Regrettably.’
‘Regrettably, yes. It is regrettable. But thank you for listening.’
‘Of cou
rse. And I’m sorry, by the way, about Antimachus’s little outburst. He’ll be reprimanded, of course.’
‘Thank you, my lord. I hope to be reprimanding him myself – in due course.’
A nice smile from the old king. And another sigh.
‘Oh, and thank you for the splendid meal. I’d like to reciprocate sometime, on Ithaca, if we’re still talking to one another. A humble island, Ithaca, but my own.’
‘Every man values his own, though I don’t think I’ll be making it quite that far.’
A sadder smile. And a heavier sigh.
I returned the smile. ‘No, I don’t expect you will, but I hope you enjoy the rest of your old age.’
We left the city without the treasures and without Helen, but with our lives. Agamemnon was thrilled.
‘That was a predictable waste of fucking time,’ said Menelaus.
‘Not entirely,’ I said. ‘Now I know one man in Troy I’ll particularly enjoy wiping out.’
And so we got on our battle-rattle and went to war.
FOURTEEN
A woman, an apple, and a rape. Enough there to bring down a whole civilisation? Enough there to bring down gods from the skies, if that’s the way you care to see it.
Or you can forget the woman and the apple and take a look instead at two proud powers and the conflict between them, the rivalry between a successful trading Troy and an insolent aspiring Greece that raped the sea with ships.
Fact or fable, there’s one common factor: rape. You can have the rape and the rivalry without the apple, or you can have the rape and the gods without the rivalry. You can even have the rivalry, the gods, the woman, and the apple thrown in. But the one thing you can’t avoid is rape.
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