Sappho's Leap (34 page)

I bounced back and forth between Eresus and Mytilene, dreaming of winning my daughter's approval. When I was away from her I ached, and when I was with her I ached even more.

We were so different. She was a beauty and she knew how to manipulate men to do her bidding. She could toss her blond curls and smile to get what she wanted. I had always won love with my songs, with my fierce energy and soft sensuality. And now my songs were suspect, and so was my sensuality. They were both aspects of each other, both aspects of Aphrodite—and now they were banned!

My students tried to comfort me. I would take to my bed in despair and they would try to lure me to get up:

“Sappho—if you will not get up and let us look at you, I shall never love you again!”

So said Atthis (I used her phrase in a song). She urged me to walk with her and Anactoria in Mytilene “like a mother surrounded by her daughters.” Sometimes we did and people would stop and stare. They would rush up to me to tell me about my songs and how the songs had affected them, about the lovers they had seduced with my words and the way they had sung my song to Cleis to their own daughters.

“See, Sappho,” Anactoria would say, “you are loved still. People have your words by heart. That is the true test of your genius—not the tyrant's criticism. You write for the people, Sappho, not for your daughter or Pittacus.” But her words only half comforted me.

Atthis had grown from a graceless monkey-faced child with wild hair to a beautiful young woman in the time she had been with us. She had learned to make songs and sing them. She had learned to please her listeners. And I was proud of her. She had begun to comfort me for the loss of Timas. But just when she was beginning to mend my heart and make me mourn less for Cleis' coldness, she left me for a rival teacher called Andromeda and renounced everything I had taught her.

Andromeda in her vulgar finery

Has put a torch to your heart!

Andromeda had given up writing of love in order to write political songs that pleased Pittacus. When Atthis went over to Andromeda's side, she too began to spread ugly rumors about me. At first I thought it was because she could not stand to share me with the other maidens; she was jealous like my real daughter. But little by little I began to understand that she had gone over to Andromeda's side out of naked ambition. She saw that my songs were out of favor with the tyrant and she wanted to trim her sails to a more favorable wind. Andromeda was asked to sing at all the patriotic festivals and I was not. Andromeda's songs were in fashion and mine were not. Andromeda was given honors and prizes and I was not. What did anyone care that Andromeda had no talent? She reflected the vulgar spirit of the vulgar age. Oh, the people loved me, but the powers had decreed me irrelevant. The people sang my songs, but they could not do so publicly. Atthis saw this unfold and she fled to Andromeda.

Men could break your bones, but girls could break your heart. That was what I was discovering. The fierceness of women was not found only among the amazons.

Timas had loved me truly, but Timas was dead. Anactoria was engaged to be married and would be leaving soon. When I had seen her talking and laughing and flirting with her intended, my heart cracked in my bosom.

The man who sits opposite you

Seems fortunate as the gods

Listening to your sweet voice,

Your lovely laughter

Which sets my heart trembling

In my breast.

When I so much as glance at you—

My tongue goes numb.

I cannot speak.

A subtle fire

Steals beneath my flesh.

My eyes are blind.

My ears hum.

Sweat pours from me.

Trembling seizes me all over.

I am greener than grass,

And I seem to be

A little short of dying.

But I endure it all

For love of you.

Atthis had defected to my rival and Rhodopis made sure everyone in Mytilene knew it. New girls would come and go. They would suck me dry and leave the husk. No sooner would a girl blossom in song than she would be snatched away by some unworthy man who appreciated nothing I had taught her.

When I thought of this, I wanted to die, to see
the lotus-covered banks / Of Acheron
as I sang in one of my most melancholy songs. Death beckoned to me. I felt I had lived long enough. I had lost everyone I truly cared for—my mother, my daughter, Alcaeus, Isis, Praxinoa, Aesop. My life seemed soaked in sadness.

Then Phaon appeared, with his agate eyes and his voice like molten honey. The first time I clapped eyes on him, something in me said:
Beware.
I listened to that voice and pretended that his black ringlets and shoulders like an Adonis did not move me. I played the game of indifference so well that he increasingly humbled himself before me.

Phaon was a rough youth, who plied a ferry between Mytilene and the mainland, but he was beautiful and he knew it. He put himself entirely at my disposal and would ferry me and my students around the island from Eresus to Mytilene and back again. He refused all pay.

“It is an honor to be your boatman,” he insisted. “Your songs are payment enough.” And he would sing to us as he rowed. He always sang my love songs, and he sang them so well it made me blush.

He slept in his boat pulled up on the Eresus beach near my family's house. He did little favors for us—cutting firewood, carrying heavy things—but he refused to come inside. Sometimes we would offer him food and he would take a crust of bread and go and eat it in his boat. He was crafty. He was biding his time.

One night, when the moon was full and was spilling blue moonlight all over the beach in Eresus, I walked down to his boat, which he had tented with a ragged sail. By the light of an oil lamp, I saw him scratching on an Egyptian papyrus with a reed. When I looked closer, I saw he was copying my songs.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Making you immortal,” he said. Then he realized at once how conceited that sounded and he corrected himself: “The gods made your songs immortal—I am only copying them. The more I copy them, the more I see their genius.”

“I fear you are nattering me,” I said, enjoying it even as I complained of it. The boy looked up at me with a tear in his eye. “These songs will last forever.”

I gave a deep sigh and strode away. Oh, I wanted to believe this was more than flattery, but I knew better.

There is nothing like a pretty boy who adores you to mend your heart when you have been undone by the treachery of women.

I have loved men and I have loved women and I can say that men are more transparent to love. Men are ruled only by their pricks, which are simple and blunt—but the moon rules women. And the moon is a body that gives back borrowed light. Bodily lovemaking with women is tender and sweet, but the minds of women are tricky as moonlight. Men do not scheme in love as women do. What am I saying? Phaon was both tender as a woman and twisted in his scheming. He sweated moon-dew. The drop of moonlight that swelled on the head of his phallus when he became aroused must have been made of magic potion. When later I licked it off, I grew weak as Circe's sleepy beasts. He schemed so patiently it didn't seem like scheming. I resisted and resisted and resisted until I could resist no more.

APHRODITE:
The gifts I have given Phaon will test her to the limit and—

ZEUS:
She will Jail!

APHRODITE:
Not this Sappho! My follower is strong—stronger than all the mortal women you have raped.

ZEUS:
I'll win this bet. I always win.

APHRODITE:
Not this time, Father.

I had gone back to see Cleis and my grandchild again. Little Hector would throw his arms around my neck and cling until I could hardly breathe. I understood the desire to kidnap a grandchild then. But I would never do it. Grandsons and grandmothers have such a strong and simple bond, while the link between daughters and mothers is often so convoluted. I felt rage toward my mother for leaving us with such a legacy. She had no right to do that! She had taken the prerogatives of the gods upon herself.

I thought of a woman I had once met in Syracuse who had allowed her husband to take her newborn daughter out on a hill to be exposed to the elements.

“How could you have permitted such a thing?” I asked her.

“Because I knew that without her father's love, she would never thrive and blossom into a good life.”

“But he would have
come
to love her—how could he
not
? She would have won his heart. Daughters always win their fathers' hearts in time.”

And the woman began to weep disconsolately. I had broken her with my blunt words. She had found a way to live with her sadness and I had snatched it from her with my unwelcome truth. Lies are sweeter.

Then I thought of Isis and how she had saved Cleis' young life. I thought of Alcaeus, who had never really known his daughter. And I cried and cried, clutching my grandson to me, wondering if I would ever have a granddaughter with whom I could remake this sad legacy—and the world!

My beautiful daughter Cleis strode in.

“Mother, whenever you come to see Hector, he clings and will not let you go. And when you leave, I can do nothing with him for days and days.”

“Are you telling me not to come?”

“Not at all, Mother, but I wish you would be less emotional with him, more disciplined. I wish you would not encourage all this emotion. It makes my life difficult. It makes the nurses complain. You stir him up and then you go away.”

“I will try not to stir him up.”

“You can't help it. It's your nature. You aren't happy unless people are weeping and raging around you. You have no moderation in you. Your mother always warned me about that. She said that I should learn calmness, as you never did. Your mind is like a tempest stirring up the whitecaps on the sea. Even Pittacus said that about you.”

“I will try to do better, Cleis,” I said, “but I come from a different world.”

“Then join this world,” Cleis said.

“Perhaps I cannot—what then?”

Phaon was waiting in his boat, so I left Mytilene and I started back to Eresus without thinking very much about it.

It was dark. We sailed by moonlight. The sea was full of little white-caps, but I didn't care. I almost wished to drown and be at the end of my troubles.

“You seem sad, my lady,” Phaon said.

“All my dreams have come to naught,” I said.

“But look what you have given the world.”

“It's not worth it to live with so much pain.”

“Your songs make everyone happy but you,” Phaon said.

I bowed my head.

“Andromeda is a fraud,” Phaon said.

At this I perked up.

“She goes around Mytilene in that hideous purple chiton emblazoned with gold embroidery and sings those idiotic songs about the greatness of Pittacus and the wonders of war. People laugh at her privately, but they are afraid to do so in public when the tyrant has so honored her.”

“They know nothing of song. All they know is about honors and prizes,” I said.

“Not true, my lady. The people of Lesbos have always loved song. It is in their natures. We are all the heirs of Orpheus.”

I thought of Orpheus in the Land of the Dead, holding his head in his hands and speaking of the fate of singers. “Torn to bits—but all the bits still sing!” Prophecy!

“I think you are too trusting in the wisdom of the people, Phaon. They don't know good from bad, beautiful from ugly. All they know is what is anointed by power. If Pittacus says Andromeda is a great singer, then she's a great singer. If he says she has true genius, it doesn't matter what she sings. The people bow down to power, even in song.”

“But in their homes, they sing
your
songs. In their heads, they sing your songs. In their hearts, they sing your songs.”

With that he reached out and touched me on the back with such tenderness it set me aflame.

His touch was lightning. You always know a future lover by touch even if he or she only touches you in the most innocent of places. Phaon looked at me as if I were Aphrodite.

“You are so beautiful,” he said.

“Beautiful I am not,” I said.

“Your beauty is within, but it still sends a subtle flame under my flesh.”

“I seem to recall having written that somewhere. Phaon, be wise, do not romance a woman old enough to be your mother.”

“It seems you are younger than
I
!” he said. Oh, what a smooth talker this one was!

“Take me back to Eresus,” I said. “This is no time for love between a gray woman and a green boy.”

“Then when?”

“Probably never,” I said. “Cast off.”

On the moonlight sail around the island I refused to speak to Phaon. I looked at the beauty of the sea, the beauty of my island, and thought of all my travels, all my loves. The last thing I needed was a pretty boy who thought to ensnare me with flattery. So what if he was my enemy's enemy? Maybe he was honest when he spoke slightingly of Andromeda. Maybe he was trying to win my favor. Who cared? He was not Alcaeus.

When we arrived at Eresus, he helped me out of the bark.

“I fear I have offended you, my lady,” he muttered, eyes downcast so I could admire his shiny black lashes on his tawny cheeks.

“Not at all,” I said.

“I would die rather than offend you,” he said.

“Don't offer to die so readily. It comes soon enough.”

Phaon fell to his knees and kissed the hem of my chiton.

“Please, get up,” I said.

“I cannot. I want to be your slave,” he said. “Brand me, chain me, command me, all I want is to serve you. My life is meaningless unless I serve you.”