Sappho's Leap (10 page)

I knew I would try to see Isis again as soon as I could leave the baby and evade my mother and Prax. The priestess had my heart to twist and throw away. Or was it some other organ?

The next day, like one possessed, I went to court the priestess. I wish I'd known that Praxinoa was trailing me and reporting to my mother!

Isis was not an easy prey. I waited in the antechamber again, amid the cats. This time my heart pounded and my chiton was drenched in sweat. I waited an hour or more. Eventually, the priestess saw me.

“You are agitated,” she said, “despite my prophecy.”

“You are the most beautiful creature I have ever seen.”

The priestess laughed. “You think that if you hold me in your arms and stroke me like a cat, your soul will purr. It is Aphrodite you love, not I.”

“How can you say that? I ache for you. I would give everything I have for one taste of your mouth.”

“Even your child?” Isis asked.

“Everything but that,” I said, my heart pounding.

“At least you are honest with me,” said Isis. With that she kissed me, her tongue reaching into the moistness of my soul, her slender fingers entwined in the damp tendrils of hair behind my neck. I shook with desire like an oak tree in the wind. Oh, Praxinoa and I had played with each other and pleasured each other as small girls. This was the first time I had been kissed by a grown woman. A kiss can be more intimate than any other form of touch.

“Now go,” she said abruptly.

“Go? How can I go when I adore you?”

“Go home to your babe and your mother,” the priestess said. “This is no time for play. Come back when you can bring an offering from your deepest well.”

“And what would that be?”

“That is the riddle you must solve before you may love me,” Isis said.

Was I mad to have fallen in love so precipitously? Was I getting even with Alcaeus for his beautiful boys? Was I terrified of the responsibilities of motherhood and looking for an escape? Or was I in love with my daughter, my own reflection, and seeking another woman as a double? All these questions raced around and around in my head like Isis' cats.

I thought of “an offering from your deepest well.” What did it mean? Did she desire my firstborn child, like a priestess of Motya? What else could I give that had great worth? My lyre? Surely she did not desire anything as worthless as gold. And why did she say that I loved Aphrodite and not her? I loved her as passionately as I loved Aphrodite. I thought of her all day and dreamed of her all night. Her tawny flanks, her shaved eyebrows, her eyes the color of cats' eyes, her long thin fingers whose soft pads I longed to feel on my skin—all these visions and imagined sensations haunted me. I began to study everything I could about the Egyptians and their lore to understand her. I was determined to make her mine.

The Egyptians believed that Isis was the oldest of the old, the giver of life, the mother-goddess from whom all creation arose. They addressed her as “
mistress of the gods, thou bearer of wings, thou lady of the red garments, queen of the crowns of South and North, mother in the horizon of the sky, mistress and lady of the tomb, giver of enchantments, giver of milk and blood and all things which flow…
.”

Isis was first among the gods. She gave birth to Horus, the sun. Without her light-giving womb, the earth would be dark and nothing would grow. She had swallowed Osiris the savior and brought him back to life. He was reborn as Horus, whereupon he grew to manhood and mated with his mother so that life could continue. The annual flooding of the Nile was caused by Isis weeping over her dead son. Her overflowing eye was also a delta. Her symbol was a circle surmounted by a horn.

I prayed to know how to please the priestess. Suddenly it came to me. She had lost her beloved cat, Sesostris. If I could replace that animal, surely she would love me. I went to her house and found one of her handmaidens.

“Tell me what Sesostris looked like,” I asked her.

“He was like no other cat in the world—his coat was red-gold. One eye was pure blue, the other agate, and his claws were the longest of any cat I have ever seen. He understood Greek and Egyptian and Phoenician. He cried like a human baby. And when you stroked his fur, lightning was made in the sky and clouds parted, bringing rain. We thought him no ordinary cat but a messenger come to earth to tell us the will of the gods. My mistress loved him better than any being on earth.”

I rewarded the girl, bade her keep silent about my inquiries, and went home to ponder my predicament. Alcaeus was in my mind, and my baby, and Isis. I dreamed mad dreams in which I was in bed with all three of them. I sweated in a fever all night and suffered the chills all day. I was wild. I longed for more messages from Alcaeus, and yet I feared that if they came, they would distract me from my pursuit of the priestess!

In the days that followed, I sent my slaves all over the city and the countryside to find a cat who resembled Sesostris. Only Praxinoa refused to go. The other slaves found cats with golden manes and cats with agate eyes, cats with blue eyes and long sharp claws but none with precisely the right combination of features. My house swarmed with cats, yet I was in despair. I had convinced myself that unless I could fulfill the priestess' desire, she would never love me.

The cats that had taken over our house appalled my mother and Praxinoa.

“And what will you do if one of these wild creatures scratches out the baby's eyes?” Praxinoa asked. “Sappho, you are mad. Banish these cats to the garden or your babe will not be safe and I myself will not stay in this house.” She sulked like a wounded lover. Whenever I entered a room I heard her whispering with my mother.

I gave in and made a compound for cats in our garden. My slaves brought fresh fish every day and laid it out for the cats. Before long all the cats of Syracuse had visited our courtyard. But another Sesostris was nowhere to be found. It was true that he must have been a most unusual cat. I could not find a cat that understood Greek, let alone Egyptian or Phoenician!

In despair and defeat, I went back to the priestess.

“I have tried to find another Sesostris to replace the one you lost,” I admitted, “but he is nowhere to be found. There are cats with golden manes and agate eyes, cats with blue eyes and long claws, but none that understands Greek, let alone Egyptian and Phoenician. What you have lost is irreplaceable. I cannot restore it to you. Yet I love you with my whole heart. May I sing what I have composed for you?”

The priestess nodded her head.

Love shook my heart

Like a fierce wind

Troubling the oaks on a high mountain.

The priestess listened deeply. Then she rose. “Come,” she said, “let me show you something.”

She led me through the courtyard and into the house where her women were weaving. She led me through the baths and the banqueting rooms. She led me down a damp and narrow stair. There, under the house, she had stored a huge, carved stone sarcophagus in which she planned to be buried. Against the wall there was a life-sized likeness of her face that would eventually form the mask of her mummy. Painted by the most skillful artist, it would preserve her youth forever as the minerals of the embalmers would preserve her flesh. The sarcophagus was uncovered. She climbed inside. I stood there puzzled. What was I supposed to do? She peeked out mischievously and beckoned for me to follow.

The coffin was larger than it seemed. There was just room enough for two. We lay down in it together so our bodies were touching at every point.

“We will be dead a long time,” Isis said, as she touched my face with silken fingers. Her body smelled of lotus flowers, jasmine, and myrrh. She drew my tongue into her mouth and stroked my body with her cool hands. She touched the tips of my nipples, which rose to meet her fingers. She sucked them with her sweet mouth.

Then she lowered her head to my navel, ran her tongue around and around in it until it was brimming. She stroked my thighs until I pounded with desire. I had never felt so cavernously empty inside, so ready to be filled up.

“There are many things you may bring me besides another Sesostris,” Isis said, as she brought her mouth to my hot center. She ran her tongue around and around the flesh nib that hardened for her. Then she insinuated a slim finger into my liquid core, rocking and rubbing until I came like the Nile in flood. A warm toasty smell suffused the sarcophagus and my legs felt as if they were floating in space.

“We have landed on the moon,” said the priestess of Isis. “Let us see if we can return to the sun.”

Then she began to show me how she liked to be touched. She loved the lightest touch, a teasing caress that made the golden hair of her arms stand on end. She had an amazing tongue, which she used on me as I used mine on her. I imitated her touch. My tongue became her tongue. Head to foot in the sarcophagus, we pleasured each other as if we had all eternity to do it.

“When I am embalmed and lying in my coffin, I will remember this warmth. We may not be eternal like the gods, but when we make love we experience a foretaste of immortality. Take what you want, Sappho, for what you desire you truly are.”

“Immortality is what I want.”

“Then take it with your songs. They will bring you immortality.”

You came when I lay aching for your touch

And you cooled my burning heart.

“Make a song of that—and bring it to me. That is the gift I will receive.”

“I wanted to bring you back your favorite cat as a gift of love. I despaired when I could not.”

“You brought me something more precious,” the priestess said, “your honesty. You have the gift to transcribe the heart. Use it! Every day you neglect it, you deny the gods.”

In the days that followed, I wrote a song for the priestess every morning and brought it to her every afternoon. Sometimes we made love in her sarcophagus, sometimes in the boat she kept ready at the harbor. Her slaves would row us into the open sea, hoist a sail if there was wind, and as we rode the seas in the will of the wind, drinking honeyed wine and eating figs and dates, I would play my lyre and sing my songs to her. She would lie back on pillows as the songs entered her and she would try to memorize their words and music. Then we would pleasure each other under the sun or stars.

“We are fortunate to be living in this age,” Isis told me. “In times to come, people will fear Eros and hate all pleasure. There will be a dark age in which all the sweets of life will turn bitter. It will last a very long time.”

“How do you know this?”

“I have read the entrails of the future. I am glad I will not live to see them. Music will die because there is no music without Eros. People will live for gold and conquest and only dimly remember that humans did not always live that way. Even your songs will be misunderstood. All songs to pleasure will be seen as evil. Music itself will be suspect. Everything will be measured by how much gold it brings.”

“Only fools measure everything by how much gold it brings! Not civilized people.”

“Darling Sappho, sweet Sappho—it's better not to know what the future holds. Soothsayers are sad because they know the future but do not know how to change it.”

“Songs can change the future,” I said. At the time I believed it.

“Songs can do everything but that,” the priestess sighed.

Wealth without virtue

Is not a harmless neighbor.

—S
APPHO

I
WENT HOME TO
see the baby, Praxinoa, and my mother. The coming barbarians retreated to the back of my brain. They will all be like Cercylas, I fleetingly thought, interested in only the grosser sensations of life—and in gold. I shuddered to think of a world filled with men like Cercylas. Then, as often happens when you are thinking about a distant person, news of him arrived.

A messenger from Naucratis came to my house bringing a papyrus scroll written in Egyptian hieroglyphics.

“Your brother sends you news of your husband, Cercylas, late of Naucratis,” the messenger said.

“Late?” I asked. My mother ran to my side, carrying baby Cleis.

“Is he dead?” my mother asked hopefully.

“Read for yourself,” the messenger said, handing me the sheaf of hieroglyphics. I could read some, but I was not sure of the whole contents of the missive.

“Let me see,” my mother demanded. But she too was hardly fluent in Egyptian. For many centuries, we Greeks had no alphabet, until we borrowed the Phoenician, adding vowels. Some scrolls were written left to right, some right to left, some alternating directions on alternate lines. And Egyptian hieroglyphics were not so widely understood as they had once been. In Egypt itself, hieroglyphics were best understood by priests and priestesses.

“I will bring it to Isis,” I said. “She will tell me everything.”

Praxinoa gave me a filthy look. “You certainly trust your new friend—perhaps more than you trust me,” Prax said.

“I don't know what you mean, Prax,” I said.

“I think you do,” said Prax. “I hardly think you are going back to her to decipher hieroglyphs—whatever you may say.”

“Then come with me, Prax, to assuage your envy.”

“I think I will!” said Prax.

So Praxinoa followed me to Isis' house through the crowded streets of Syracuse.

It was almost midday and the sun was hot. We ran along the quay past the fishmongers touting the remains of their catch, the wine vendors with their sealed amphorae, the oil vendors with their pretty little decorated jugs—
lekythoi
, we called them—for serving fine oil. The herb sellers' stands were redolent of dill. The fruit and vegetable sellers shined their multicolored gleaming wares. All the aromatic beauty of everyday life seduced us.