The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March

by Thornton Wilder

  ‘People like that,’ he thought to himself, ‘have some secret about living. Why don’t they tell it to us outright, instead of wrapping it up in mystery and ceremonial? They know something that prevents their blundering about, as we do. Yes, what am I doing here,’ he added, pushing out his lower lip, ‘but playing the fool? Blundering, advising in things I know nothing about.’ He looked long at his sleeping son. ‘Pamphilus has some of that secret, too. And that woman from Andros had it, too. Chremes was right, though he meant it ill: there is something of the priest in Pamphilus, something of the priest trying to make its way in him. Let me get up and go away before I say anything more.’

  So he arose and a little guiltily left the field.

  Pamphilus’s mind was all but made up, yet still under the burden of perplexity and self-reproach he decided to seek still more light on his problem and a last reassurance by reviving a custom that had been in frequent use among the Greeks of the great age, but which had fallen off at the time of the events of this story. It consisted merely in abstaining from speech and from food from one sunrise to the next and in either passing the night in the temple enclosure or in arriving there before the dawn that closed the watch. There was not thought to be any particular magic in the practice: it cleared the mind of bodily fumes, it removed it from the commerce of the day and prepared it perhaps for a significant dream. The watcher guarded his fast and his silence, but the Greek mind did not approve of heightening the experience by any further self-denial. One moved about the home as usual, exercised in the palaestra or worked at the loom; one slept. If some uninformed person spoke to the watcher, he drew his finger across his lips and the condition of the vow was understood. Athletes still observed it several days before a race; brides on the eve of their wedding; old ladies who hoped to recover some lost trinket, or to recapture in a dream the features of some all-but-forgotten love; and devout soldiers about to set forth upon an expedition. It was indeed little short of odd that a healthy young man in the even current of life should revive this custom, but the islanders were still sufficiently religious to respect the habits that had expressed the spiritual life of their glorious grandfathers, and made no comment.

  By mid-afternoon hunger had gained upon him and his dejection had increased a hundred-fold. Whichever choice he made would involve the unhappiness of others. Under the weight of the alternatives even the memory of Glycerium lost for a time any tender association. He climbed over the remoter parts of the island, gazing absently out to sea and idly plucking the grasses among the rocks where he sat. He came to the spot where he had first seen Glycerium and stood for a time, quiet as the stones about him, asking himself whether the associations in life are based upon an accidental encounter or upon a profound and inner necessity. When he returned to the farm his mother and sister felt the desolation that invested him and moved about with hushed steps. The very slaves went about their tasks on tiptoe and finally withdrew in silence and in alarmed interrogation. During the evening meal Pamphilus sat by the door with closed eyes. His brother, returning, stepped over his feet with awed circumspection (he too had made the watch only a few months before, but in pomp, with twelve other youths on the occasion of their enrollment in the League) and held himself at a distance, rendered uncomfortable by so much seriousness in a good athlete. Of her own accord Argo brought Pamphilus a bowl of water which he drank, smiling the while intimately into her grave eyes; she returned to her place at the table with great dignity and with secret excitement, as though she had done something conspicuous. When Simo finally told her and her brother to go to bed she slipped up to her father and laid her lips against his ear: ‘What is it, father?’ she whispered. ‘No, tell me, what is the matter?’ He took her hands and played with them a moment; he raised his eyebrows wisely and told her to go to bed and sleep well. From her bed in the darkness she noted the movements of the family: that her mother took a cloak and went out into the garden by the cliff, and that later her father did the same. With wide eyes and cautious lifted ear she followed this unaccustomed nocturnal roaming. She was filled with loving excitement; she kissed her doll many times with violence and wept. She became aware that her younger brother was venturing on hands and knees towards the moonlight in the court: she too ventured out and they stared at one another, but Pamphilus suddenly loomed up from the shadows and waved them back to their beds.

  Pamphilus wandered about the outer court. Again the moon was at the full, throwing a milky blue mist over the tiers of olive trees that climbed the hill across the road and casting black shadows among the farm buildings. Its serenity contrasted strangely with the mysterious excitement it awakened among the human beings it fell upon. Pamphilus had seen his parents go into the garden, but he saw them now without emotion, without pity. He returned to the house and lay down upon his bed. Never had he been possessed by mood further from illumination. Lying on his face he traced outlines upon the floor with his finger.

  The shells gleamed on the path as Simo walked up and down; from time to time he cast a furtive glance at his wife. She was sitting on a bench of chipped and stained marble that had been his mother’s favourite seat. It had been placed there generations before, under a fig arbor blown down long since on a night of legendary storm. It stood at the very end of the garden where a cliff broke down to the sea, and from it one could hear forever the long spreading whispers of the ebbing and the rising waves below. From that seat his mother had directed the bringing up of five children, had dried their tears and listened with nodding head to the absurd procession of their shifting enthusiasms. ‘Viewed from a distance,’ Simo said to himself, ‘life is harmonious and beautiful. No doubt the years when my mother smiled to us from that bench were as full of crossed wills and exasperations as today, but how beautiful they seem in memory! The dead are wrapped in love; in illusion, perhaps. They go underground and slowly this tender light begins to fall upon them. But the present remains: this succession of small domestic vexations. I have lived such a life for sixty years and I am still upset by its ephemeral decisions. And I am still asking myself which is the real life: the present with its discontent, or the retrospect with its emotion?’ He looked again guardedly at Sostrata, who sat fingering the folds of her cloak and expressing in every line of her position her unfriendliness and her rebellion. ‘The fault is in me,’ he continued. ‘If I were wiser, I could do this thing. As the head of the family I should be firmer. I should say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ clearly and let Pamphilus bring in his little girl. I should weed out all these hesitations. Even now she is waiting for me to make up her mind for her; if I spoke distinctly, even against her will, she would adjust herself without great effort. The house would find a way of accepting the new member and things would run on smoothly enough.’ He was thinking of going toward her with smiling affection, suggesting that at sixty they had earned the right to remain tranquil though the house fell; but he foresaw that her pride would not accommodate itself to any such resignation, and he continued up and down the garden.

  Indeed Sostrata did not wish Simo to speak to her. Her mind was filled with one long obstinate exclamation at the stupidity of men. Only a woman’s mind could foresee all the harm that would result from such a marriage as the one now being weighed. It was the women of the island that had measured all danger that came with the arrival of the Alexandrian woman; and now she, the first matron of Brynos, was being ordered to receive into her home the last offscouring of that dispersed colony. She had anticipated all her life the rich satisfactions of being a mother-in-law and a grandmother, though what she anticipated was a daughter-in-law of straw. A Greek home, she knew, was the only breakwater against the tide of oriental manners, of financial fluctuation, and of political chaos. The highest point toward which any existence could aspire was to be a member of an island family, living and dying on one farm, respected, cautious, and secretly wealthy; of a family stretching into the past as far as the mossy funerary urns could record, and into the future as far as the imagination could rea
ch, that is to one’s grandchildren. Society was similarity. These things she repeated to herself, and under the waves of her indignation and self-pity – though the greater part of the time she stood in awe of her husband and her son – all her gracious traits disappeared, her beautiful eyes became harsh that for three days had been bright with the angry tears of her inner monologue.

  When after a long stretch of time Simo paused in his walk and approached her with deferential hesitation, she arose abruptly and walked past him into the house, breathing hard and trembling with excitement.

  At last Pamphilus arose and throwing his fleece-lined cloak over his shoulder slowly and musingly walked through the little garden in the court and passed through the outer gates of the farm. He was strangely light-headed from hunger and dejection. He paused for a moment to gaze at the rising hillside before him and its silvered olive trees. To his eyes they seemed to be pulsating in even waves of intensity, as though the whole earth and sky were on fire and burning with a pale slow silver flame, the whole earth and sky, unconsumed yet incessantly feeding the countless tongues of flame. He was gazing at this serene conflagration when he became aware of two dim figures in a pool of profound shadow at his right, leaning against the pillar of the gate. Glycerium was pressing her cheek against the stone and breathing her prayer toward the house within and beside her Mysis, distraught and helpless, stood urging her mistress to return home and to leave the ominous vapors of the night and the jealous chill of the moon.

  When Glycerium saw that Pamphilus was standing in the road and that he had recognised her, she drew back into Mysis’s arms overcome with shame; but slowly collecting herself she stretched forward a hand to him and fixed her great eyes imploringly on his face.

  Mysis whispered to her: ‘We must go home, my bird, my treasure.’

  ‘Pamphilus,’ said Glycerium, ‘help me!’

  His heart contracted within him as he realised the extremity of suffering that had led her thus far. He laid his finger gravely across his lips. He did not smile, but approaching her he looked down into her face with earnest reassurance and beckoned her to accompany Mysis toward the town.

  Glycerium pushed back the scarf from her forehead and fell upon one knee before him, babbling incoherently: ‘I love you. I love you, Pamphilus. You promised me that you loved me. What am I to do? What is to become of me?’

  Pamphilus looked at Mysis and again drew his finger across his mouth.

  ‘Hush, my darling,’ she said. ‘You see he has taken the vow and cannot speak to us. And we must not speak to him. Look, he wants you to start home with me.’ She put her arm about the girl’s waist and they began to move slowly toward the road.

  ‘He promised me that he loved me,’ muttered Glycerium, unable to see for her tears, but permitting herself to be led forward. After a few steps, however, she turned and, pushing Mysis aside, said: ‘No, no! I wish to see him again.’ She pressed her scarf against her mouth for a moment and gazed at him, her whole soul in her eyes: ‘Pamphilus, do not marry me, if it is not right. But do not leave me alone. Do not leave me so long alone. Remember Chrysis. Remember the day you found me being stoned by the boys. No, no, do not marry me, if your father and your mother do not wish it, but let me know that . . . that I am still loved by you.’

  At last he nodded and smiled and waved to her slowly.

  ‘He is nodding his head, Mysis!’ cried Glycerium.

  ‘Yes, my treasure.’

  ‘Look, Mysis, he is smiling at me. Can you see? Look very hard, Mysis.’

  ‘See, now he is waving to you. Wave to him again.’

  Glycerium waved eagerly, like a child, until Pamphilus was out of sight. It was a long walk home over uneven stones. Glycerium talked excitedly of the smile, trying to estimate the exact shade of intention and affection that lay in his waving to her and in the nod of his head. They discussed the significance of his taking the vow and they talked in general of the custom of taking the vow and recalled all the occasions they could remember of this usage and the results of each occasion. ‘All will be well, Mysis,’ she repeated feverishly. ‘You will see, believe me, all will be well.’ But finally they fell silent, and in the silence their fears returned and an overwhelming weariness. As they reached the door of their house, Glycerium paused with tight-drawn lower lip and with fear in her eyes: ‘There is nothing to hope for,’ she said. ‘The gods are angry because I thought for a time that I was happy and that the world was easy to live in. At that time I did not understand anything about life and I said cruel things to Chrysis, because I thought the world was easy to live in. And the gods are right. Oh, if I could speak to her for only one moment and could tell her that now I understand her goodness, her goodness. But Chrysis is dead!’ She turned to Mysis, but at these words Mysis had withdrawn from her and, beating upon her forehead with the knuckles of her two hands, had fallen upon the threshold of the house.

  Pamphilus continued in the opposite direction. He wandered about the upland pastures as he had done all day, and climbed to the highest point on the island to gaze upon the moon and the sea. He tried to lift his mind out of the narrow situation of his problem by thinking of things not before him. He thought of the ships that under that magical flowing light were making their way from port to port, each one casting aside at its prow two glistening murmurous waves. It was the hour when the helmsman in the security of the course falls into a revery, remembers his childhood or reckons up his savings. Pamphilus thought of the thousands of homes over all Greece where sleeping or waking souls were forever turning over the dim assignment of life. ‘Lift every roof,’ as Chrysis used to say, ‘and you will find seven puzzled hearts.’ He thought of Chrysis and her urn, and remembered her strange command to him that he praise all life, even the dark. And as he thought of her his depression, like a cloud, drifted away from him and he was filled with a tremulous happiness. He too praised the whole texture of life, for he saw how strangely life’s richest gift flowered from frustration and cruelty and separation. Chrysis living and Chrysis dying in pain; the thoughtful glance that his father so often let rest upon him and the weary expression on his father’s face when he thought himself unobserved; the shy mystery of Glycerium. It seemed to him that the whole world did not consist of rocks and trees and water nor were human beings garments and flesh, but all burned, like the hillside of olive trees, with the perpetual flames of love, – a sad love that was half hope, often rebuked and waiting to be reassured of its truth. But why then a love so defeated, as though it were waiting for a voice to come from the skies, declaring that therein lay the secret of the world. The moonlight is intermittent and veiled, and it was under such a light that they lived; but his heart suddenly declared to him that a sun would rise and before that sun the timidity and the hesitation would disappear. And as he strode forward this truth became clearer and clearer to him and he laughed because he had been so long blind to what was so obvious. He strode forward, his arms raised to the sky in joyous gratitude, and as he went he cried: ‘I praise all living, the bright and the dark.’

  The exhilaration gave place finally to a tranquil fatigue. As he entered the shadowy temple he saw the priest sleeping before the altar he tended. The priest opened his eyes a moment and above the curve of his arm he watched the young man spread his cloak upon the marble pavement and lie down upon it and fall asleep.

  Simo was awakened a little before dawn by the sounds of shrill voices and of unaccustomed movement in the outer courtyard. On approaching he discovered that a clamorous old woman had entered the gates and that a number of his slaves were trying in vain to quiet her and to drive her back into the road. He recognised Mysis. With a gesture he commanded the men to release her. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.

  ‘I must see Pamphilus.’

  ‘He is not here.’

  ‘I cannot go away until I have seen him,’ she replied, her voice rising in feverish insistence. ‘A life depends upon it. I do not care what happens to me, but Pamphilus must know what the
y have done to us.’

  Simo said quietly: ‘I shall have you whipped; I shall have you shut up in a room for three days, if you continue to make this noise. Pamphilus will be able to listen to you later in the morning.’

  Mysis was silent a moment, then she raised her eyes and said sombrely: ‘Later in the morning will be too late, and all will be lost. I beg of you to let me see him now. He would wish it. He would not forgive you for turning me away now.’

  ‘Come, tell me what is the matter and I will help you.’

  ‘No, it is you who have done this harm and now he alone can save us.’

  Simo sent the slaves back to their quarters. Then he turned to her again: ‘In what way have I harmed you?’

  ‘You do not wish to help us,’ she said. ‘The Leno’s boat has arrived at the island and my mistress Glycerium and all the household of Chrysis have been sold to him as slaves. We were awakened in the middle of the night by the herald of the village and told to gather our clothes together and to go down to the harbour. Glycerium is not well now; she must not be driven so. I myself escaped through the rows of a vineyard and have come to find Pamphilus. It was you who have done this, for it was the Fathers of the Island who ordered that we should be sold as slaves to pay our debts.’

  This was true. He remembered having listened without interest to a discussion of the matter, assuming that it would be carried out with sufficient warning and delay to admit of Glycerium’s being separated from the rest of the destitute company. The Leno’s boat visited Brynos so seldom that it seemed to the Fathers of the Island that it they might yet be under the necessity of providing for the household through many months while awaiting the arrival of this purchaser.