Sappho's Leap (21 page)

Praxinoa awoke me in the middle of the night.

“Sappho, I must talk to you. Wake up! Wake up! Remember how you said I could choose my freedom when I would?”

I struggled awake. Why do people always ask the most important questions when you are half asleep?

“Yes.”

“I want to stay here and become an amazon. I am even willing to sacrifice a breast so that I can be a better archer!”

I was stunned. I knew that Praxinoa wanted her freedom, but did she have to seek it in such an extreme way? How could she be so sure she was ready to make that sacrifice? I wanted her to think, but I had to be careful about my response. Though I was horrified by the thought of her losing even one of her sweet breasts, which I had kissed so often, I didn't want her to be afraid that I would go back on my promise to liberate her.

“Your breasts are so beautiful,” I mumbled. “I'm sure you can be a fine archer without losing your lovely right breast.”

“All the more reason why my sacrifice is important. If my breasts were misshapen, it would be a meaningless gesture to abandon a breast!”

“Think about it, Prax, don't make this decision in a hurry.” Now I was truly awake. “Tell me all the reasons why you want to do this.”

“I was meant to be an amazon! If I had been found as an abandoned baby, I would be one already. I love this land! I love the women here and I feel at home here as I have never felt at home anywhere before. I wish you would become an amazon too and stay with me. I think our destiny is here. Please say you'll think about it!”

“Prax—I think you have to consider your motives. This is a very hasty decision. We've been here only so briefly—how can you be sure? Wait until you know the amazons better. Then, if you want to become one, I'll give you all my blessings.”

“I feel in my heart that I already
am
an amazon!” Praxinoa said. “But if you want me to wait and think, I will. But how long must I wait?”

“Until you are sure,” I said.

“But I am sure
already
,” Praxinoa said. “I know I belong here. I think you do too.”

When I had finally brushed all drowsiness away, I believed that I had dreamed this whole conversation, but it was not so. Praxinoa had already begun her training as an amazon while I slept in my cave. And now she wanted me to join her. She didn't even want to hear my doubts.

“I see no reason to return to the world of Rhodopis, the world of pharaohs and slavery, of Babylonians and conquest. I might have been an amazon had I been found as an infant and I'm sure I was
meant
to be one. The amazon priestess agrees. She has read my runes, even read the entrails of a great seagoing gull, and told me I am already an amazon at heart. Let her read yours too!”

“Not yet, not yet, Praxinoa, all in good time. I have to write
The Amazoniad
first. I cannot take a minute away from the task the queen has given me. I am to write the epic of the amazons—not an easy assignment.”

“Have you started?”

“Well, yes,” I lied. “I have begun at the beginning, with the most ancient legends of the amazons and their rise.”

“They are hardly legends, but the only truth there is.”

I looked at Praxinoa in disbelief. Was she already convinced of the absolute truth of everything the amazons had told her? I always cringe at the phrase “the only truth.” I know I am in the presence of zealotry.

“It must be wonderful to have such an exalted subject given you—not like the frivolous themes of the symposia at which you used to perform in Trinacria and Naucratis. Now you can use your talent for something noble,” Prax said.

“I was not aware I lacked noble themes before.”

Prax looked at me ironically. “Aphrodite was all very well before we met the amazons—but now it is so clear that their goddess is greater.”

“Is she?”

“Of course she is!”

“Then you are totally convinced.”

“Totally.”

“Is there nothing I can say?”

“Nothing. This is my destiny.”

“And where is Aesop? Has he also discovered his destiny?”

“Locked in a cave, impregnating virgins. He seems to be having a good time, though he complains of the long hours. Ten virgins a day is tougher duty than slavery,” he says. “They weep, they rage, they vie with each other for his favors.”

“Then the amazons have not succeeded in abolishing jealousy and bickering among women?”

“It's because a
man
is there. Men bring discord. They just can't help it. They come from chaos and wish to return the world to chaos.”

“Are you speaking of Aesop, the most rational man on earth?”

“The amazons believe there are no rational men.”

“And what do
you
believe?”

“I believe what the amazons believe, of course.”

“And you believe you have been liberated from slavery?”

“You promised me, didn't you? You're not going to take that back.”

It is never profitable to argue with a new convert. I held my tongue while Praxinoa babbled on.

But whatever her beliefs were, they had certainly strengthened her. She no longer had any doubts about the future. She was sure she had discovered the only path to righteousness.

The very next night the amazons massed in a circle under the full moon. They performed the ritual in an apple grove with gnarled old apple trees whose fruit was pocked and wormy. A circle of mares pawed the ground under the trees. As the amazons sang and invoked their goddess, Melanippe, the mares joined in a chorus of neighs. Revelers rang finger bells and danced on drums with their bare feet. Infusions of herbs were brought in golden goblets and blessings were given before the strong-smelling liquids were drunk. The dancing and singing went on and on—amazons whirling as if in a trance.

Praxinoa astonished me by enduring the cutting and cautery of her right breast at the festival that night without a murmur or indeed a whisper of pain. The job was done by the forgetful Artemisia and I feared for Praxinoa's life. What if she confused her breast with her heart!

Attendants to Artemisia stanched Praxinoa's bleeding with herbs I did not recognize and bound her raw chest with linen. She lay at the center of the circle with a beatific expression on her face, immune to the pain. That impressed me more than anything. I did not know then that the amazons had given her powerful drugs all day long. They were great believers in alleviating women's pain and even had drugs for childbirth long before any other civilizations. Perhaps the excision of Praxinoa's breast should be a pivotal scene in my epic—but I wondered whether the queen would approve. That was the problem. The more I thought of the queen's reactions, the less I could write at all.

We had lost track of how much time we had been with the amazons. Was it only a few days? Or was it weeks? I would have given anything to speak with Aesop, but he and I were deliberately separated and Praxinoa was going through her own transformations. She was constantly busy learning the lore of the amazons at their school. I hardly even saw her after the initiation ritual.

Strange that the crew of our ship (which we had left docked in the harbor) had not found us yet. What had happened to them? Would they ever come and save me from having to write the history of the amazons?

I was supposed to stay in my cave and compose my stirring amazon epic full of only good and beautiful people, but since I was stuck, I requested permission to wander. This was not so easy to come by. The powers that be think you can squeeze a singer and songs will burst forth like pus from a lanced boil, but the muse is not always so cooperative. Sometimes it is necessary to move the feet in order to move the mind.

The island was full of long beaches and rocky hills. The ruins of great King Minos' palace were somewhere on the island and I was determined to find them.

Every morning I walked and walked until I was exhausted and then I returned to my cave and tried to write. Useless! But one morning, I pushed myself to walk on, even as the sun grew hot at noon. Eventually I came to a place where piles of rocks on the ground looked as if they had been set in a pattern, which I traced with my weary feet. I walked around and around concentric circles of stones, one leading into the other. At first I walked idly, thinking of nothing in particular, but when I came to the center, the wind began to whip and howl about my head, the sky grew overcast and black, and I seemed to be standing on a precipice, although the ground was flat. I walked out of the circle and the wind died down, the sky cleared, the sun was hot again. And then I walked back in and once again it seemed I had come to the center of the earth where Hades' realm plunged and the Elysian Fields beckoned.

The labyrinth! Had I found the ruins of the labyrinth that Daedalus built? It had that power—as if thousands of young men and maidens had perished in this place between the hungry jaws of the minotaur. I kept walking the pattern of stones to test what happened when I reached the center and it happened again and again. The ground seemed to open beneath me. The Land of the Dead seemed to yawn and I ran to the outer edges of the circle as quickly as I could.

And then I heard laughter and little shrieks of joy.

Where were they coming from? There was a thicket of shrubs nearby and the voices seemed to come from there. Then they seemed to come from behind me. Then I was not sure. I was standing very still at the edges of the labyrinth. I waited. Only birds and insects stirring in the hot sun. A lizard crawled over a rock at my feet.

I heard the laughter again.

I tried to follow it. It was farther away than I had thought. Suddenly it seemed closer. Sometimes it seemed to recede and then to get louder. The trees rustled in the wind. The lizard suddenly darted into the ruins of the labyrinth.

These are the ghosts of the girls and boys sacrificed to the minotaur, I thought. Then the first two lines of a lyric came into my head:
Ghosts of girls fed to the minotaur / Seek out the ghosts of boys who
—

Another burst of laughter. I saw a naked amazon run from behind a bush, pursued by an Egyptian sailor. Then another couple emerged—a Nubian slave and an amazon. And another couple. And still another.

These were no ghosts! The sailors from my ship were courting a bevy of beautiful young amazons, who seemed more than happy to be courted. I sensed danger in their delight. Were young amazons allowed to play without permission from their Demeters, whose word was law? I doubted it. But their laughter and playfulness had stirred my soul at last. The sounds of love moisten the soul like love itself. I ran back to my cave, hoping that now I could write.

I was not used to composing on papyrus or wax-covered wooden tablets—much less dictating to helpers. I was used to composing orally, with my lyre in my hand and with a warm and waiting audience inspiring my song. If my poems were later learned by others, later written down by other hands, that was not my business. As Aesop said, the more people repeat, even imitate you, the more likely you are to be immortal.

At first I ground out the lines like sausage, not much liking them, wishing I were writing about maidens and the minotaur. I had a curious sense of foreboding. Images of Praxinoa's raw and bleeding chest kept coming back to me. I doubted I would ever get to Delphi. I missed Alcaeus. I longed for Cleis. I worried that I'd be trapped forever with the amazons, writing only what their queen decreed.

Would I ever get away? How? The sailors were otherwise engaged. Aesop was shut away in a cave doing his duty with the virgins. I was condemned to labor on, writing an epic when I was no epic poet—trying only to please Queen Antiope so she would not kill or enslave me.

I wrote for hours, until my hand was weary—for I had refused the help of the priestesses who wanted to write for me while I dictated. It was hard enough to write alone, but with the priestesses in my cave, it was impossible.

Just as I was thinking of them, Artemisia, Hippolyta, and Leucippe appeared.

“We are sent by the queen,” Leucippe said, tossing her curls. “She longs to see your verses.”

I looked up, annoyed. “Not finished yet. Only a fool shows half-finished work.”

“But look at all these papyri,” Hippolyta said, peering over my shoulder and the piles of scratched-out texts. I was not satisfied with anything I had written, certainly not
Wild women astride their horses' wings / Ride on the moon's pale rings.

“Fits and starts,” I said, “nothing to show yet.”

“The queen will not be pleased,” Artemisia said. “She is waiting impatiently.”

“Then let her wait!”

“Oooooo,” shrieked Leucippe, snatching a scrap of papyrus. “But this is good!” She had focused on that dumb line about amazons flapping around the moon on winged horses. “Let me at least show her this!”

“Not on your life!” I shouted, but before I could stop her, she bounced out of the cave with my papyrus scraps. The other priestesses followed at a gallop.

The queen will hate it, I thought. She will want to behead me or imprison me or something. I will never see my daughter again, or Alcaeus, or my damned mother. I will never sing again. What's the use? For the first time I discovered the pain of having unfinished work snatched out of my hand. I felt it was no longer mine and could not grow or blossom. It seemed a bird's embryo snatched from its shell: it would never fly. I wanted to cry.

Soon there was a stirring outside the cave. This time Penthesilea led the priestesses.

“The queen is ravished by your words,” Penthesilea said. “She thinks they are immortal. She begs me to ask for more. She believes you have been sent to rescue the amazons and you will not fail her. She wants you to finish the epic as speedily as you can and then to pen an anthem to amazon victory that we can use in battle. We may have to go to war against the Egyptian sailors who are ravishing our maidens!”