Sappho (12 page)

Tears made a veil before her sight. “O Hephaestus, you god beside the forge, give Sappho courage. Like me, you were born dark and ugly and, besides that, lame. It may be you can understand my heart where I cannot.”

Smerdis saw her and, resting a moment, called, “Greetings, Sappho, poet of Mitylene.”

“And to you, Smerdis, son of Lycurgus.”

“Do you return to the house of Leto?”

“I do.”

“Will you give the blue-eyed daughter of Didymus tender greetings from Smerdis?”

“I will,” she called and, turning, tripped, because she could not see the path. All her flowers were scattered.

*   *   *

Sappho kept to herself. Any visitors she told curtly that poems were not born out of the air but must be worked over as a potter spins his vase or a master in marble hews his sculpture. The first wedding carions were from the heart:

O bridegroom, never was there another girl like this!

And:

Bride, full of rosy love, desirous bride, the most

beautiful ornament of Aphrodite of Paphos, go to your

marriage bed, go to the marriage couch whereon you

shall play so gently and sweetly with your …

She stopped and added, reluctantly, “bridegroom.”

Hera, goddess of wedlock, how at this moment she hated her! From her unhappiness came an extraordinarily lovely little melody:

O beautiful, O lovely! Yours it is with rosy-ankled

Graces and with Aphrodite to play!

Leto was not happy, even though the songs were in her praise and did her much honor since Sappho of Lesbos composed them. She would rather have back their rambles, their talks, their confidences. If Sappho took her lyre to the porch, Leto found tasks to busy herself there, weaving or carding. Then Sappho would enter the house. Leto soon found an excuse that brought her inside.

Sappho turned on her like an Erinye. “What thymos keeps you continually at my side? If you think it is easy to compose a molpe, make your own!” And out she flew, angry that she spoke angrily.

—Hecate, who combines the attributes of the fifty daughters of Nereus, and intercedes for humankind, help me! Monstrous and unruly violence has me by the throat. My thymos chokes me, the deepest desire for evil seizes me. I see myself dead at the foot of the wedding couch. Or I see
him
there, the bridegroom, doubled up with subtle poisons. How can I find my way? Help me calm my mind as the ruffled sea is calmed, that I may once more sing Aeolian rhymes.

But unruly thoughts kept pace with her. Though she had forbidden Leto to come with her, she
was
with her, her image consuming and ravishing her. Had Leto's soul passed into hers?

Sappho had wandered far from the house. She did not know where she was, but knew she was other-directed.

Climbing a knoll, she stood with the wind blowing fresh off the sea. The hum of insects was in the air. Women in a terraced field below weeded pulse. Their regular movements might be dactyls based on the balanced moment between long, short, quick, slow. She sang out:

Raise the rafters! Hoist

them higher! Here comes

a bridegroom taller

than Ares!

He towers

above tall men as

poets of Lesbos

over all others

With this poem came new knowledge. The poems she made—made her Sappho. They were not only central to her life, they were her life. The songs were more important than the wedding, more important than herself or Leto. Her in-dwelling Muses had shown her this. Now she dedicated herself to the Nine. In return, she was to be among the undying. Her songs would live, and she herself through them. In thanks her feet trod out the patterns the poem dictated.

In a few days Sappho had assembled the young virgins, while Alkaios took the bachelors of the village in hand. Sappho rehearsed her chorus well, finding comfort in the familiar, almost forgetting what it led to. One would not think these girls were spinners, dyers, beekeepers, threshers—they were holy nymphs performing ancient rites.

The event being upon them, she, with Khar and Alkaios, draped both the bride's and the bridegroom's houses with branches of evergreen. Her fingers, though they had gone numb, wove wreaths of flowers, and arranged armfuls of foliage in the bedchamber of the groom's house. Somehow she managed to laugh with the others even as the sleeping couch was brought. She found she was able to perform all the tasks. She soaked the bed with her own exotic perfumes, even those of Persia. Tapers in their brackets spread incense of their own, and Sappho felt weak in all her limbs, as though she were about to crumple on the floor.

Alkaios glanced at her curiously. “You're taking a lot of trouble for the wedding of a couple of farmers' children.”

Sappho tried to straighten her disoriented world. “They have been my hosts. This must be as fine a wedding as Mitylene ever saw. Promise me, Alkaios.”

“Oh, I have done my part.”

“He has.” Khar laughed. “Wait until you hear his verses.”

She nodded, shaking the vertigo from her head. “Alkaios, see that the bridegroom is bathed in holy water and dressed in white garments. Khar, make sure his beard is curled and scented. Pick flowers for his hair and garlands for his chest. And by the Cloud-Compeller, please look to his fingernails!”

“You'd think it was your own marriage,” Khar said. “So much fuss.”

“What else is there to do on this cursed rock?” Alkaios asked. “We'll show these bumpkins how to put on a wedding!”

Sappho willed strength into herself. It was time to prepare the bride. As she hurried to Leto's house she ran her tongue over her lips and tasted blood. She had bitten them through. Feverishly she sought among the linens in her chest and brought out the lightest of cambrics cut after the newest fashion.

Leto's mother protested. “It is too much for you to do.”

Sappho smiled. She knew it was the sheerness of the material Chloris objected to.

Leto, entranced, threw her arms around Sappho and kissed her. Sappho went rigid and the breath seemed stopped in her. Seeing her friend so white, Leto grabbed her hands and began chafing them.

“Sappho, how cold you are. You seem to have no more blood in you than a shade.”

“I stayed too long in the heat picking flowers.” She withdrew her hands from Leto's and began to plait roses in her hair.

Niobe painted the bride's face from her mistress's paint box. Chloris gasped to see her daughter's glowing countenance become the white mask of a high-born lady. Ocher and fard were applied, and many scents, each sniffed first by Leto. “I wonder,” she said, giggling, “if my Smerdis will be overcome. He may smell me and pass out. Then what will I do?”

“That Adonis you are marrying will not pass out,” Sappho assured her, and hung on her ears the priceless earrings that were her final gift.

Leto was ecstatic. “I can't believe this is me,” she exclaimed gazing enraptured into Sappho's copper mirror. Niobe was putting the finish of red polish to her buffed nails. Sappho put a finish to much more.

The first feast took place at the home of the bride, to which the bridegroom came at sunset. He was driven in a chariot drawn by two rose-bedecked horses and accompanied by his friends and best man, a noisy crew. When they had passed under the bower of greenery, they were met by a circle of girls holding hands and singing the welcome Sappho had prepared.

Smerdis could not take his eyes from Leto.

“He's not sure it's me,” Leto whispered. “He thinks he is marrying not a girl but a goddess.”

Pyrrha was noted for its shellfish and wild duck. These were the main courses, served on the porch with sardines wrapped and fried in fig leaves. Then came delicate and dainty breads, which Niobe had instructed the women in baking. The wine of Lesbos was strong and the toasts to the pair many.

The best man quoted: “Get yourself first of all a house, a woman and a working ox.”

“You misquote Hesiod,” Alkaios laughed. “He said, ‘Don't buy the woman, marry her. Then she will follow the plough.'”

Sappho monitored the merriment, the ribaldry, the jokes; it was all according to plan, in all respects a Lesbian wedding.

Once it had been her delight. Now she watched as one looks at distant mountains over which a gauze of mist descends.

The guests washed their hands and received their torches. Leto was driven to her bridegroom's house sitting between him and his best man. Sappho joined the others following on foot with a taper, singing:

Your figure of loveliness,

your eyes of tender look,

O bride, and love spread over

your beautiful face

Aphrodite has indeed done you honor …

When the procession halted, the bride and groom were pelted with grain and confetti. The wheel of the cart was burned so the bride would have no way to leave her husband's home. The groom's mother took Leto by the hand and led her to the altar of household gods. Sappho sang the hymn, at the end of which she called out in a loud voice: “Hail to the bride! Hail to the bridegroom!”

This was the moment. Smerdis seized Leto in his arms and dashed with her into the wedding chamber. The cry that Sappho swallowed spread through her like a poison. It was with difficulty that she remained on her feet. The festivities were in full swing and no one noticed. The best man fended off the girls who made a pretense of rescuing their friend. But the door was firmly bolted from inside. So the girls contented themselves with taunting the young men. “Why,” they asked in chorus, “have you failed to win some dainty maiden for yourselves?”

The boys, coached by Alkaios, answered song with countersong. “We have heard a bad wife roasts her husband without using a fire.”

“Oh, so it is lack of courage that keeps you single! Imagine! By the looks of it, you are bigger, taller, stronger … but looks must be deceiving since we frighten you so.”

Much laughter on each side. “Trust a woman! Trust a thief!” “You're safe enough with that bright red hair! How far down is it red?” “In
Works and Days
it is said, ‘Don't let a woman make you lose your head over her bedizened rump!'”

“Bedizened!” The girls laughed. “Where would anyone get such a word? It must come from Mitylene.”

“Come, girls,” Alkaios insinuated, “why don't we imitate what's going on behind the door?”

“We don't give ourselves to the first who comes along. Ask those boys who were our playmates.” And they stamped their feet and clapped their hands as Sappho had shown them, upbraiding Hespereus, the evening star, for bringing a night on which Leto must give up her virginity.

Sappho's eyes saw through the door. Smerdis had unveiled his bride and together they tasted the quince she had placed by the bed in token of future sweetness. Now he stripped the chiton of rainbow hues from her and Leto stood naked before him, as Sappho herself had seen her many times entering her bath, frolicking in a mountain freshet, splashing, chasing over pebbles until the water rippled around knees and thighs. The limbs of Aphrodite could not be more rounded or more perfect than Leto's. She remembered drawing the perfume under her breasts, high half-moons, soft and white, their centers like the stamens of twin flowers.

At that moment the door was flung open and a bloody rag waved at the revelers. Smerdis's triumph was complete. He had desecrated the shrine at which she once worshiped. Must love take such violent form? She continued to drink with Alkaios and Khar but felt worse for it, not better.

All night through her dreams Smerdis ploughed his field, and when he came to the mound of Aphrodite the ground ran red, the cries and strangled groans could not be heard for the lewd jests and laughter.

The next morning Niobe drew Sappho a face that did not match her own. They gathered again at the groom's house and the wedded pair appeared briefly to listen to the aubade, which asked Aphrodite to ensure a productive union. Afterward they received gifts. Leto looked like Leto—but it was delusion. All was different, changed, ended.

The second night, the banquet was prepared by the bride, but, according to tradition, she herself did not attend. Libation was made, the guests helped themselves from the many dishes and partook of wines that gladden the heart.

Sappho, asking the Muses to breathe into her their divine spirit, sang the final song. She chose the old epic form such as Homer used in telling the tales of Ilium. She began her tale:

It seems that once long ago in the house of Didymus,

flaxen-haired Leto dwelt …

*   *   *

The season of harvest passed and Sappho still lived with the parents of Leto in the wattle house. When summer came again, there were ill tidings from Mitylene. Three black eagles had been observed swooping and diving over the city. A shepherd tracked them to an entrance in the cleft of a certain cave. Now it is well known that Cholera, Smallpox, and Plague are three daimones who live in just such a cave. One of the evil sisters awoke and breathed her foul breath over the town. It caused bowels to loosen and food could not be kept on the stomach. The fever god consorted with the hag of death, unsparing, striking with the suddenness of the lightning bolt which the Cyclops gave Father Zeus.

Those who sickened first—infants, children, old people, and lepers—were shut out of houses. They died in the streets and were torched. Hekatombs were offered, with every house giving the best from among its flocks. Libations were poured, priestesses consulted. But the evil ran rampant; there was no assuaging it. Now the hale and hardy were struck down, the young and beautiful. Fear bred unrest, and anger filled the hearts of the people. They blamed themselves, they blamed their neighbors. And they blamed their rulers.