Sappho (20 page)

She refused to submit. It was an imposition, an invasion. She was Sappho, poet of Lesbos. And her concerns would be as they had been, to recount the sturdy quality of a wildflower, to praise the daintiness of a young girl, slender of ankle, delicate in her movements.

She emerged from her quarters seeming to be as she had been before. Kerkolas knew better than to condole with her, or so much as mention Kleis. Instead he took her to a discus-throwing contest in which only the few sat in chairs to watch. She was among these.

It was a lovely sight as the gleaming bodies bent and poised for the throw. The custom here also was to pull the foreskin over the member and tie it off.

She watched the umpire run out to mark the distances. Kerkolas wagered entire ships on a single contest. It was at these games, amid garlands of laurel, many-colored ribbons, and much gold and iron, that she heard talk of Solon of Athens. He had broken the debt tablets and decreed that no freeborn Athenian could sell himself into slavery. Furthermore, he decreed that those who had done so were once more free men. “Ah,” said Sappho, “Solon will have to flee Athens and tend his farm after passing such a law.”

Kerkolas laughed. “He already has.”

She did not think overly well of Solon, because he gave a low place to women. He felt a husband had the right to take his wife's life if adultery were proved. A woman's rights were confined to being kept with child. Toward this end Solon ruled the husband's duty was to sleep with her once weekly. That was how justice between the sexes was rendered in Athens. And that was why she had not journeyed there.

She did not tell Kerkolas of the child she carried because she had become convinced it was a girl-child. When it was born, a bunch of woolen ribbons would be tied to the door, and crowds would gather in the streets, for though a girl, it was hers, Sappho's.

The sickness of the first months passed and a feeling of well-being gave her confidence. So when her husband spoke of a merchantman lying off Crete, a prize waiting to be taken, she was excited. Many of the treasures in her home had been won at spearpoint, and she knew Kerkolas would send a ship against this richly laden trader. She did not know that he intended to command it himself. He kept this from her until the last.

Sappho did not protest. If Kerkolas wanted his old freewheeling adventurous life, why scold like a wife? Better to abet him, be his companion in the planning of his route and the provisioning of his ship. His long, slender finger traced out the littoral sea, showing the way he would travel. And when he met the Cretan, lying lower in the water than his own light craft, he would dance around her and circle in.

They laughed together, and Sappho permitted him her body. Her mind, as always, she sealed off. He was a little drunk. He was always a little drunk when he came to her. He did not know what a small part of her was present, and yet he did.

“You are like a statue, Sappho. If only you would melt to my love, which is hot for you, I would not go to the street of women, or to oboe players, or bother with cupbearers, but it's as if … as if…” He stopped. He did not know how to express what he felt, because he did not know in what manner she was not with him. He tried again. “Your eyes are dark with passion. Your mouth as sensual as I've ever seen. Your songs speak of desire. Why do you not love me?”

“Be content, Kerkolas. Your seed within me bears.”

“It is true?” And he began to kiss her body. In ecstasy he nibbled at the mound of Aphrodite and suddenly she wanted the frenzy but not the long, hard rod he inserted. His genitals were large and she was small; there was always pain and a slight disgust at the procedure. The fact that he was dominant over her was part of her distress. She was sorry she had told him her body's secret, and received him with the stillness of death.

That he had impregnated Sappho of Lesbos excited Kerkolas, and he didn't care that he took his pleasure alone. In fact it pleased him.

Later in the night when he lay passively beside her, his arms behind his head, he instructed her to drink the sap of thistle. “This will ensure a boy. We will call him after my father.”

*   *   *

Sea put on its sparkling look the day Kerkolas sailed. Sappho and her household went to the harbor. The sprightly vessel danced against its chains, and when the sacrifice to Poseidon had been made the rowers took their place.

“The brother of great Zeus guide you on the pathless way,” Sappho said.

“I will return with gold and iron and wonderfully wrought things,” Kerkolas vowed.

When he was aboard she took a scarlet sash from her waist and waved it. The rowers saluted with uplifted oars. At her husband's command the boat nosed past other shipping and, once free of the port, the sail was raised. Sappho continued to let her red sash fly, remembering as she did how her youngest brother, Larichos, had run along the quay when she left Lesbos more than a year ago. She realized Syracuse was no longer exile. She still proudly used the title “of Lesbos,” but since her mother's death Lesbos seemed far away, and of her brothers she had been close only to Khar. The land of Egypt was distant, and he had promised to send his ring as a token that he lived. If it had been received in Mitylene, it had not been forwarded.

Of Alkaios's fate she was more confident. He had never been one to put himself in danger, and every now and then a poem of his was sung, telling her that somewhere he lived and prospered. She smiled in memory of their little band. Pittakos, she had heard, was rearing a son to succeed him. Not even at her mother's death had he relented, nor sent word that she was free to visit her homeland.

Kerkolas's ship was now a dancing toy; she turned away and gave her mind to a verse she would make on the subject of leave-taking.

For a week or more she was pleased to be alone, then a restlessness seized her. She plucked the Egyptian harp. The song didn't come well. A wind had sprung up, a strange wind blowing not from the water but toward it, which made evenings hotter than before. She felt the west wind and the south wind clash.

Blood fell from Sky. She woke; it was rain.

*   *   *

Kerkolas died within sight of the island where he was born. The messenger knelt before her. “A reef, it was. We ran aground.”

Sappho looked intently at him. “Unsay what you have said.”

“Lady … that I could.”

“I call on Zeus, I call also Earth, Sun, the Erinyes who dwell below, and Eurynome, daughter of the ever-encircling waters of Ocean, that I will have out your tongue if you swear falsely.”

“The great Lord Kerkolas is dead.”

“You saw him die?”

“The mast crashed down on him.”

Her eyes wandered from the face of the messenger. There was only her child and herself now, and she did not want the child of a dead man.

She jumped to her feet and began to pace as an animal paces a too-small cage. “Such a host of ills some god has sent. Must I tie my hair again into a death wreath?” she asked Niobe. But her expression was so fierce that Niobe feared to answer. Kerkolas, strong, confident, young, had yet been sent into the night of endless length.

“There is no harbor for my misery,” she cried, and her maidens began to moan.

Young Adonis is

dying! O Kytherea,

what shall we do now?

Batter your breasts

with your fists, girls
—

tatter your dresses

Words had not come readily at her mother's death. She had lain as at the bottom of endless Tartarus in dreadful numbness. But when she thought of her husband's death, it was with words. She picked up her lyre: “Wrap me in sand, gather my bones in silt!”

Then, throwing the instrument from her, she ran outdoors and with both hands scooped up dust and let it settle on her. She tore and rived her hair, cried to her maidens to make loud lament, did everything in fact that was proper. Yet she didn't think of him as dead. She thought of the dining club he had joined that made a point of meeting only on unlucky days. She remembered their summer under gay awnings stretched before caves by the sea, the wine during hot afternoons, how they had danced the Cordox, gradually in time to a tambourine, removing their clothes. He called her “goddess of my body.”

Why, oh why had she disliked his touch? His favorite dishes came to her mind—pig stuffed with lark, ramplios, a purple fish born in sea foam—what did all that matter now? “There is no escape once you are born. Clotho spins, Lachesis lays out the pattern, and cruel Atropos cuts the thread.” No mortal yet had broken the loom, destroyed the distaff and thrown away the shears! Had she been playing her songs or bathing in the marble pool while Hermes guided her husband past the river of fire, Styx of unbreakable oath, and across Lethe, river of forgetfulness?

Had Kerkolas, being struck down, come to himself in the water, to struggle? For he was a strong swimmer and loved life. She hoped he had not wakened until he reached Erebus, the anteroom of Tartarus. She prayed to the elder gods, to Hades, Lord of Death, and his wife, Persephone, and even to dread Thanatos himself, that they deal kindly with this young man who in his strength and beauty came to them. But what did the immortal gods care for man? Ichor, not blood, flowed in their veins! She remembered the account of the Shade given by Homer:

The sinews no more bind together the flesh and

bones, and so soon as life hath left the white bones,

the spirit of the man flies forth and hovers near

Was Kerkolas near? Walking past her wailing women, she went to the sand shore. She remembered the night the west wind and the south wind clashed. Was it then?

Facing the bay was the Arethusa spring. It was icy cold because a chilly-hearted nymph chose to be changed into these waters rather than submit to the advances of the river god, Alpheus. As Sappho approached, her steps dragged and she repeated sadly:

To what, dear bridegroom,

may I liken thee?

To a slender sapling

do I most rightly liken thee

In what other times were those words sung!

Sappho slipped off her chiton and plunged beneath the icy spring, exposing herself to its cleansing. From all her body she washed off death. Niobe, who had followed her, brought from under her robe a vial of costly myrrh. When Sappho stepped out, her servant anointed her and dressed her in a fresh garment of quince color dyed with the juice of boxwood.

“It is over,” Sappho said. She meant she was free of him. Niobe nodded; she understood.

There were countless things that must be seen to, and a feast to be got together. “We'll want roasted almonds and wine. Heap our finest plates with figs, apples, mulberries, and have cakes of wheat and cakes of poppy. Eel and other exotic things we will serve from Sea, since Sea took him from us.”

She felt she had been spared, for when a corpse was available the wife inserted a feeding tube into the moldering jaws and poured liquids down. No one could remember that any had been revived by this means, but it was the custom here.

She could not wrap her dead in herbs and honey and burn his remains to fine ash, so she ordered a miniature terra-cotta sarcophagus with Kerkolas's likeness sculptured on the cover. Her way of meeting death was to hang perfume flasks from pegs inside the coffin, place beside it a lock of her own black hair, jewels that he liked to handle, a favorite ring, a goblet of gold, and she herself would fill the casket with flowers and the bridegroom poem.

It was three weeks since the night of the great wind. It was fitting that all be expedited and a mound erected on the grounds where the casket could be burned and interred.

At the appointed time mourners appeared shrieking and wailing. Friends came and sobbed on her breast. Sappho herself acted more hostess than widow. There were no tears. Her face was without expression. And this was remarked by the relatives of Kerkolas, especially his mother, who was supported by servants.

Sappho waved her guests to pillows. Libation was made and prayers offered before the small, replicated coffin on its raised dais. The guests exclaimed at the workmanship and swore it was the perfect likeness of a perfect lord, the faultless Kerkolas, merchant prince, true comrade and leader of men.

Tables were brought and food, both steaming and cold, while the wine was of a vintage that makes men travel to a land that never was. The dirges grew louder as the miniature casket was carried ceremoniously to its designated spot in the garden. Resin was flung, and in seconds a blaze leapt skyward. The family of Kerkolas threw locks of hair upon the fire. Others dashed wine or tossed dainties. The keening was redoubled until it seemed the flame was carried by the sound.

They returned to fresh tables ladened with poppy cakes. Bitter and sweet relishes were passed. Kerkolas's aunt leaned toward her.

“How bravely you bear your loss,” she said with an arch smile.

“One bears it as one must,” Sappho replied, not knowing if it was said in spite or as comfort.

Naked acrobats appeared, both boys and girls, performing dangerous tricks with swords and spitting fire from their mouths. After this entertainment the guests went a final time to the garden to throw flowers and sprinkle perfumes on the smoldering pyre. The professional mourners in the background cried to Sky, tore their hair, rent their clothes, and scratched their faces until blood ran. More wine was thrown to douse the fire, after which the company repaired once more to the dining hall. In their absence floor tiles had been removed, revealing a deep pool. The guests seated themselves around it. What was this new diversion peerless Sappho had devised?

A naked Adonis appeared among them and dived into the water, followed by an exquisite maiden. The guests understood they were to witness a struggle between the Life Force and all-powerful Death. During an underwater dance-inspired undulation, the male was to penetrate the female. The danger was that, in accomplishing this feat, one or both would drown. Acrobatic swimmers that they were, entangled in each other's bodies they could not rise to the surface for air during climax. When the male succeeded in parting the plucked arrow of the mermaid, not only his body but his face contorted. Bubbles streamed from his mouth, his eyes bulged.