Electra

by Henry Treece

  I could hardly breathe, in my excitement. My heart was beating so hard that I thought it would sound like a great drum to the snakes and lizards, and drive them away before I had finished. In my head I said: Don’t go! Please don’t go! Give me a chance to show you I mean well, my friends. Please bear with me; I mean well!

  I had almost completed the third row and I wanted to weep with joy that my friends were still there, watching me and trusting me. Oh, I was on the edge of the old secret, I knew. Deep down as far as my body went, I knew. My fingers would scarcely obey me now, and I almost dropped the bull-seal I was placing in the centre of the pattern.

  It was the hour when the sun fell from the sky, so my side of the quarry was in shadow, though the other half was still golden with light. Heat was coming off the rocks and out of the ground, pleasing the crickets like a baker’s oven, setting the clear air shimmering so that straight sticks looked bent, and the bushes of wild thyme seemed to be dancing, though there was no breeze in that hushed evening.

  I sat breathless in the purple shadow under the dark lip of the steep quarry-side. Above my head and behind me, the sky was such a deep blue! And before me there was a cloud so richly-red, so bronze, so like my mother’s hair, but all edged with pearl, that I wanted to shout out with joy and sadness mixed.

  I knew then that this was the magic-time. My hand hovered like a hawk over the altar-stone, for I must get it right, and then the secret would be with me for ever. The bull-seal was slippery with sweat in my fingers. Oh, the agony of choosing!

  Then, at the instant when I was within an inch of talking to the snakes and lizards, of becoming one with them, and the earth, the Mother, a sudden sound came down to me that almost made me faint away with shock.

  It was a man’s deep cough. I heard the lizards scutter dryly away.

  I looked up through my hair in fury, but what I saw turned that fury to fear immediately, and I forgot about my shells and agate stones.

  Seven men stood dark and terrible against the bronze cloud above me, looking like giants, like awful gods. They did not see me for I was under them, in the shadow, and they were staring away up the hill, like blind men.

  God, my inside turned over and I almost screamed: they were so enormous, so terrible. Their high horse-hair plumes nodded in the breeze; their long hair and beards flared out from below the bronze check-flaps of their helmets; and their bunched cloaks made them look like Titans. On each man’s left arm, a great hide shield studded with bronze or dull gold. And the tall spears standing high above them, bristling towards the sky like the ruff of a savage boar when he begins to charge.

  Yes, they were savage, savage, savage! Their scent came down into my oven-hot bower and struck at my nostrils like a slap on the face. It was the harsh, savage smell of man. I had never really scented it before, but now, as all my skin prickled and the sweat ran down my face, I knew that it was a fearsome thing. I knew now why all the birds and beasts ran away from man in terror. I knew that I was a woman and weak, as powerless as the wolf and the lion against man.

  You are smiling, doctor, but if you had been there you would have wanted to relieve yourself as I did. You think you are a man, but I tell you that these men were of a different, terrible breed. To them, you are no more than an ass is to a screaming war-stallion.

  And they stood so long, so still, so huge, together, like one heart with seven bodies, like lovers, like savage lovers, with the dying sun coming off their bronze corselets and the golden hairs on their legs catching the light. They were beautiful and terrible, like gods. One part of me wanted to strike them to stone, to rid myself of the fear that was making me want to vomit; another part of me, that I had never known before, wanted them to eat me, to crush me like wild lavender under their feet, to bruise and ravish me.

  My great father stood in their midst and even the tallest of the others were small beside him. He was no less fearsome because he was my father, because the seed from which I had grown was out of his body. No, this made him the more terrible: for this gave him the right to consume me again, to make me nothing again, to destroy me.

  God, god, I thought, these monstrous men are the lords of earth, They will eat up Troy as though it had never been.

  Then, for an instant, I even pitied the poor Trojan horse-tamers, who could teach a stallion his manage but would run helpless and weeping before these godlike Achaeans.

  All at once, a most awful thing happened. My father began to nod his high plume like a mad war-horse, and this nodding spread along the dark line of them. Then all his body began to shudder and nod and twitch, and his lion-coloured legs to quiver and his feet to stamp. The whole company of them moved in harmony with him. Dust began to rise about them in the dying sunlight. Spittle began to spray the air and some of it to fall on me.

  They were like black bulls tossing their horns, working themselves into the fury of their death dance.

  Sounds came from them, but not words I knew. They were deep rumbling sounds, groans and sighs, mutterings and harsh cries. Suddenly my poor shells and agates and beads seemed so powerless against these sounds.

  I had never really been afraid of men before. I had always thought that I was one of them, though a little different in certain small ways. But now I knew that we were not the same creature at all; that it was only by the will of the god we lived together and spoke the same tongue.

  This truth came into my heart like a message from Mother Via, keen like a needle into my heart, and I wondered why I had never known it before—it was so clear and simple. Now I knew why the Mother called for a man-offering in the places where she still governed. She was asking revenge on men, fighting their savageness, holding sway over the wild beast in them.

  This knowledge ran through me like a poison draught, burning my inside so fiercely, so pitilessly, that I could stand it no longer.

  I think I gave a cry, then, blindly, I got up out of the dust, turned, and began to run away from them, among the rocks and the thyme bushes and the prickly acanthus. I did not know what I was doing. I only wanted to be away from these men—away, away!

  Yet I knew that they would see me, once I had left the purple shadow and had run into the clear amber sunlight at the other side of the quarry. I knew it, but could not help myself. I was like a poor hunted hare that breaks cover when it need not, and runs haphazard into the open, where now the dogs might take it easily.

  When I reached the sunlight, sobbing with terror, a high shout went up behind me, as though the hounds had sighted me. My heart almost stopped at that sound, and all the strength flowed out of me. There was a droning in the air behind me, and a great ash-shafted spear clattered on the rock I had just clambered over. Another suddenly stuck upright in the dust before me, casting a long thin shadow across the ground before it tilted and fell into the brush.

  Then, as I stumbled on, swaying here and there, they came again and again, whirring and thudding about me. One struck sideways and caught me flat across the back, almost having me down. Another clanged at my heels then shot between my legs, like a vicious snake racing me up the far slope. Even as it went, I recognised that it was my father’s javelin, by the gold studs set just below the bronze socket.

  Now their voices were like the distant baying of hounds and as the sun. dropped below the lip of the quarry a great chill came over all the air and the bright sky darkened.

  I fell to the ground breathless and gasping. ‘Mother, Mother, you have saved me!’ I said, my dry mouth to the dust.

  Then, from a little crack in the rock beside me, a hissing voice seemed to say, ‘Not yet! Not yet! They will be coming down to gather their spears again. This time, they will have swords in their hands. So, you must rise and go now, if you wish to live.’

  And I did wish to live, most savagely I wished to live, if only to find out what man’s weakness was, so that I could give payment for the lesson I had just learned.

  Though I was sick with fright, and my legs were like water, I went at the far slo
pe and scrabbled at the grey rocks. And all at once it was as though a hard warm hand placed itself in the middle of my back and pushed me upwards, until I reached the smooth grass of the hillside.

  I heard their feet shuffling about in the quarry, but I did not dare look back. I ran all the way home to the palace, dry-eyed but weeping in my heart.

  My father never spoke of this, nor did I. I do not even think he remembered it. I certainly do not think he ever knew that it was his own flesh he had almost pierced with that ecstatic javelin.

  6

  Outside the lowest wall of High Town, there was a grey field of boulders, where the King’s Justice was done. Nothing grew there, except a sort of sedge, and sometimes an aconite or two. People said that the earth was poisonous here, because of the blood that had been spilled, and so nothing grew. Indeed, when I was quite small I saw a prince’s brains dashed out on one of the rocks. He was of a distant tribe, of course, but what made it worse was that he was only very small, hardly able to walk by himself. But he was still a prince, and the thing had to be done because, as my father pointed out to me while we sat watching under the striped awning, one day this child would grow and be as big as any other man.

  Another time, two youths who had been drinking wine and saying that they would face Zeus himself if he came to earth, were punished in this place by being blindfolded and ordered to fight with stone axes. They missed as often as they struck each other, and that was quite laughable; but what stuck in my mind and made me feel unclean for years afterwards was the way they called out pitifully for pardon when their blows did strike. What with those calls and the horrible thudding of their axes, I wonder I ever slept again.

  I mention this place of rocks and dead grey earth because it was here that something very strange happened to me, one evening before my father sailed away to fight the Phrygians. I was walking alone in the moonlight by our wall, weeping to myself, and thinking how lonely I would be when Aunt Helen and father had gone from Mycenae, when someone called my name from among the rocks. ‘Electra! Electra, come here; I have something to show you!’ It was a rule in our house that the girls should not go down into the lower town at night unless a baron went with them. Only slaves and bad women strolled in the dark in those days. When I heard this voice calling, I knew that I should risk being whipped before all the servants If I went; and I did not like the thought of going into that awful place in any case, where the baby prince had died terrified, and no pretty flowers grew. But the voice was so strange and piercing, not like any other voice I knew, and it kept on crying, ‘Electra, I have something to show you.’

  I think that I was perhaps curious, in the way young girls are, and wanted to know what the thing was. Perhaps it was a present for me—a cup from Samothrace, a necklace from Crete…. And the voice was so thin and sharp and reedy, it went on sounding in my bead even when it was not speaking. I even began to wonder if it was some god or other; and I knew that if it was, and I did not go when it called, I should be sorry later.

  I did not want to go blind, or lame, or have sores all over me, so I looked round to make sure that no one was about, and then I gathered my skirts up round my waist and ran out of the tall Lion Gate and over the rocky field. It was a stupid thing to do, I kept telling myself as I ran, but the words seemed to draw me, like the voices in the dreams that Zeus sends.

  But when I got away from our high stone wall, deep into the bright moonlight, I could see no one there; only the shadows cast by the boulders, or by dry thyme bushes, that had been dead for years. And I was about to turn round and run back into the palace, when a man stood up from behind a rock and nearly frightened the life out of me.

  His face was round and white and hairless, and his eyes were as black as marble. He wore a goatskin hood and cape. At first, I thought it was Pan, and I almost fainted where I stood.

  But this man laughed and then hobbled over to me and took my hands. I think he was frightened, too, because his fingers were clammy with sweat. The goat smell that came from his clothes made me want to heave, and I drew as far from him as he would let me. He was surprisingly strong, though, once he had got hold of me, I could not free myself at all.

  ‘You have never seen me before,’ he said. ‘But soon you will see me every day of your life.’

  I remember saying, ‘I find small comfort in that, whoever you are.’

  He answered, ‘I am glad to find that you are of a humorous disposition, Electra.’ Then he began to laugh in a high bleating manner, and suddenly took hold of my hair, down at the roots, and started to tug at it. Then I was really afraid, and thought this man meant to kill me. It did no good to threaten him with my father’s guards, or to say that my mother would have him hunted down. At everything I said, he only pulled the harder, until at last I sank to the ground and wept helplessly. This seemed to affect him more than anything else, because he stopped tugging my hair then and flung the goatskin over me.

  ‘Come, then,’ he said, ‘now we know who is the master.’

  He had his fingers twined in my girdle and was dragging me along at a fast pace. I said, ‘Where are you taking me? I shall be beaten for going so far from the palace gates.’

  He laughed and said, ‘Yes, you may be thrashed, but you must still come with me and see what I have to show you, Electra.’

  Beyond the rocky field the wooden houses of the town began. There was one street that led down to the place of tombs, the tholoi. It was a narrow straight street, with hardly any windows in it on either side. The white houses looked blind in the moonlight. It was like going down, a gully, or between high cliffs. There was no one to call out to. It resembled the entrance to a great tomb.

  I said to the man, ‘I beg you, let me go back again. I have never been here at night and I am afraid.’

  He chuckled as though I had made a joke, then suddenly drew me into a side-turning, away from the dark street. The change was bewildering. We came out into a little secret place, where vine-leaves straggled and clustered over trellises, and where men and women sat or stood about glowing braziers, whispering to each other and drinking wine from brightly glazed cups.

  By the far wall, a young man strummed at a tortoise-shell lyre, and. a young woman danced with her body, never moving her feet. The moonlight glowed through the net she had wrapped about her, showing up the tints of her flesh.

  White doves strutted about on the ground, or purred from above in the rafters. A great grey she-cat lay in the straw and fed her kittens.

  At a brazier, a young Libyan was roasting pieces of goat flesh on a stick of hard olive-wood. The scent that came from it was tempting, and at the same time faintly sickening. It was as though the flesh was alive still, warm and smelling of life, twitching with life, even writhing with life.

  I said to the man, pointing, Look, it is alive!’

  He shook his head, ‘No, it is only the fire shrivelling the sinews, drying them up, making them twist.’ He smiled at me a while then suddenly put out his damp hand and touched me, drawing his lingers up slowly, letting them rest on me. It was like a spider crawling over me and I pulled away. He shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘There is little of the old Mother in you, I see. You are disgusted to see the meat cooking on the fire, and you draw away from my bands. You are altogether too nice, Electra. In the old days it was different. Then the girls were more fierce, more passionate, than the men. When my father’s house was great in Hellas, it was because the women drove the men on and on, to do things. But now the men hide behind Zeus and Poseidon. Yes, they clash their spears and grow big beards—but that is nothing. They are still only children. They still scurry past the dark corners, in case She is waiting for them.’

  I wanted to be away from him, he was getting so excited. Trying to calm him, I said, ‘You are making too much of it. People are as they always were, surely. In my family, my father holds to Zeus and my mother is allowed to make offerings to Via on the special days.’

  ‘Allowed!’ he said, and spat into the f
ire. ‘Does one allow the rain and the sea-storms? No, they happen by divine will, which is beyond man’s small saying.’

  He was pulling at his rags and twisting his face so terribly that I began to wonder how I could best get away, when suddenly from the shadows a dark-faced young man wearing a yellow hat of straw came up to us and touched him on the shoulder, almost like flicking him in derision.

  ‘Well, well, Aegisthus,’ he said, showing his white teeth. ‘Everything is ready. We thought you weren’t coming. She’s quite a big girl, isn’t she. I thought she’d be smaller than this.’

  The man in the skins shook his head, coming out of his dream and said, ‘Is the other one here, the boy?’

  The young man nodded and grinned. ‘He’s beside himself with fright, poor thing. The men have been telling him lies about how it’s done. I think he’s got a terror of knives, or something, He’s lost the use of his tongue. Come on, or he’ll go mad—then he’ll be no use to anyone.’

  Aegisthus gritted his yellow teeth and grasped me by the arm, harshly. Then we followed the young man into a dark stable, where there was hay on the floor, and a resinous torch burning in a bronze socket by the wall.

  Three men were bending over a boy, laughing at him as he tried to burrow into the hay away from them. One of the men who laughed the most, a red-faced fat fellow, held a knife in his hand. I was furious, all at once, and ran towards him.

  ‘What are you doing, you cowards?’ I said. ‘Would you dare face Agamemnon like this, laughing?’

  The man turned to me, his smile stiff on his face, and said softly,’ I would face him, the High King, with only a stick in my hand, girl. Or even a stone, picked up from the river bed. And if he let me choose the meeting-place, at a spot where his barons were not lurking behind rocks to have me, I would even face him with these two bare hands. That is what I think of Agamemnon!’

  All my life I had thought there could be no one bigger and braver than my father. This man’s words angered me beyond bearing. I reached up in my fury and struck out at his face; but he caught my clenched fist easily and held it, bending down to look into my eyes. A heavy smell of garlic came from his mouth as he spoke. He said, ’Princess, oh, princess, I mean you no harm—but do not tempt me. I am a lawless man from over the far hills, and I would as soon taste a bit of suckling-pig as anything else. Do not put me in the way of it.’