Sappho's Leap (4 page)

“Of course you do. Your belly is full of fire. I know because you're just like me. But don't think to fall in love with me. The truth is—I prefer boys.”

“You flatter yourself if you think I am in love with you. I love only Aphrodite—my goddess.”

“Then you are in for a difficult life. Devotees of Aphrodite die young.”

“According to whom?”

“According to Aphrodite herself!”

“I am not afraid of Aphrodite, or of you, or of anyone!”

“Listen to you! What a funny little thing you are!”

“Is this your way of wooing?”

“Certainly not!” Alcaeus said.

“I think I pique your curiosity because I am so like you.”

“Now you flatter yourself!”

“I think you wanted to shock the company and make them whisper about you.”

“I think
you
wanted to!”

It was just then that my mother appeared, her face a mask of rage.

“You have disgraced me, yourself, and your entire family. Go home this instant—and take your little slut with you!”

Until that instant, I had not thought of Praxinoa. She would bear the brunt of this. I felt so terrible!

“Please, Mother, forgive me! And know that Praxinoa had no part in this!”

“Go home this instant! I'll deal with both of you later.”

Banished back to Eresus for my presumption, having to witness dearest Praxinoa beaten, branded, and shorn for her part in the adventure, I was returned to my grandparents' house as a humiliated prisoner. I had hurt my only friend with my thoughtlessness. Carried away by my lust for Alcaeus, I had gotten my darling Prax into terrible trouble. Not only was she branded—a fate she had escaped till now—but she was sent to work in the kitchen as a punishment, and forced like all kitchen slaves to wear a horrid wooden hoop called a gulp-preventer around her neck to keep her from tasting the food. I hated myself for that. What sort of friend was I? I had promised to protect her!

My mother came and went between Eresus and Mytilene with her retinue of slaves. She was so angry with me, she did not speak to me for weeks. The slaves whispered that she was taking comfort with Pittacus, who had sent my father to his certain slaughter. My mother knew that her safety depended on the kindness of power and she would use her beauty to soften it as she always had. Since I did not have her beauty, I could only make myself beautiful with my songs. And now I was condemned to silence.

But my grandparents were inclined to be lenient with me, as grandparents so often are. After a few days, I was able to walk down to the sea by myself. There I had my slaves build me a little tent where I could sing and dream:

Wreathe your locks

With sprigs of anise,

Binding the stems

With your soft hands.

For the happy graces

Gaze on what is garlanded

And look away

From the bare heads

Of even the loveliest maidens….

I was dozing in my tent one moonlit night when suddenly I was awakened by a rough whisper: “We sail for Pyrrha tonight—are you with us, Sappho?”

I woke, rubbed my eyes, looked up at the sunny beard of Alcaeus, and thought I saw a vision of Apollo.

“We sail now or never!”

I had been dreaming of him, and here he was!

“Now,” I said and bounded out of bed.

Did I stop to ask why he wanted me if he liked boys so much? Did I think of my mother, of my grandparents, of Praxinoa? Of course not! I was sixteen!

I followed Alcaeus and his men to the harbor, where, after neglecting the proper sacrifices to the gods for fear of attracting attention, we boarded a square-rigged merchant ship to take us from Eresus to Pyrrha. The black ship had two fierce blue eyes emblazoned on its prow as if it could see into the future. I leapt aboard without a backward glance.

If this was dreaded exile, I welcomed it. My real education as a singer had begun.

Raise high the roof beams!

The groom comes like Ares.

—S
APPHO

W
E LIVED IN EXILE
in the woods above Pyrrha on the other side of the island. Alcaeus and his men were plotting to rid Lesbos of Pittacus. They hated him for his shrewdness and cleverness. Or perhaps they hated themselves for their own lack of it. The truth was that Pittacus had outwitted them. They cursed his bloody ways while they themselves plotted bloodily.

Alcaeus had once been allied with Pittacus against the previous tyrant Myrsilus, but Alcaeus and Pittacus had fallen out—the gods alone knew how. Pittacus was the sort of leader who switched allegiance according to his own convenience. He had no aristocratic scruples to hold him back. That was the crux of the problem.

At the bottom of the hatred between Alcaeus and Pittacus was a contest between an old way of life and a new. Noble families like Alcaeus' and mine used to rule these islands and command these waters. Since the war with the Athenians, a rougher breed of men was coming to replace us. Our families were aristocrats who were raised to leisure and the lyre. Warfare was an art to men like my father. Men like Pittacus, on the other hand, were raised to commerce and manipulation. Pittacus would never drop his shield in a display of aristocratic pique like Alcaeus. Pittacus was the consummate politician. He knew how to tell people one thing and do another. He knew how to lie with straight face. He was a passionate orator who believed only in the sound of his own voice. Unencumbered by antique ideas of honor, he was invincible.

Alcaeus had done the unspeakable: mocked Pittacus in witty verses, which were now gleefully repeated all over the island. Ridicule enrages tyrants even if they pretend to be above it.

Pittacus now wanted nothing more than to destroy Alcaeus so he could suppress rebellion and cement his own rule. But he did not dare to kill him for fear the older nobles would mutiny. Exile, therefore, became his solution.

I myself resented Pittacus for taking my mother and reducing her to what I considered whoredom, even if she had sought it herself. The greatest aristocrats of Greece had loved her. Minstrels had sung of her. Artists had painted her. Philosophers had based their theories of love upon her. Noble warriors—my father chief among them—had died for her, and now she was the mistress of a commoner. Even if she was not ashamed of her fall, I was. I was furious on behalf of my poor dead father. Or was I jealous of my mother's effortless success with men? She could both infuriate and reduce me to tears simultaneously. All my feelings about her warred with each other. I loved her so much that I also had to hate her!

“There is only one person who could lead us to Pittacus when he is not surrounded by guards—and that person is your mother.”

“You ask too much, Alcaeus, if you ask me to betray my mother.”

“I said nothing about betrayal.”

“You didn't say betrayal, but you meant it.”

“Nonsense. Forget I asked. But remember it is Pittacus who has made you fatherless. He would sacrifice you in a flash. Your mother too. He has no loyalty. He considers loyalty a toy. All he has is a potbelly and a ravenous appetite.”

“From what I've seen, all men consider loyalty a toy. My father comes home as ashes in a jar, but I am supposed to be happy that he died gloriously—whatever that means. I hate all these glorious deaths. I hate death. It was my father who decreed I should be raised, not set on a hilltop to die like other girl babies. I loved him. And he adored me. I owe him and my mother loyalty—even if loyalty is no longer the fashion in Lesbos.” So I said, but somewhere in my rebellious heart I must have
burnt
to betray my heartbreakingly beautiful mother!

Alcaeus cajoled. He beguiled and nagged. He stroked my cheek, my arm, my thigh. He made up songs for me. At last I agreed to accompany his treacherous expedition. I told myself that I would only watch, not become part of the bloodshed. Even after his reckless behavior at the symposium, I thought I could control Alcaeus. I thought I could control
myself
.

Together in the woods we talked and talked, and the more we talked, the more I fell in love with Alcaeus. I loved his looks, his poetry, his wild talk. Men with eloquent tongues have always swayed me.

“Before the gods, all was shapelessness, chaos, and darkness,” he said, “a black-winged being whose unblinking eyes saw everything. Then the wind came, made love to the night, who hatched a silver egg, giving birth to Eros—without Eros there would be no creatures on the face of the earth….”

“But Eros was born of Aphrodite, who himself was born of the sea foam that bubbled when the testicles of Uranus were tossed into the sea by his son, Cronus,” I said like a dutiful mother's daughter.

“Believe whichever version you wish, but know that Eros is the root of all….Eros blows through our lives, leaving chaos in its wake…and Aphrodite laughs.”

“I will not believe any philosophy that dishonors Aphrodite,” I said solemnly.

“Aphrodite dishonors herself,” Alcaeus laughed. “And so do her devotees.”

“Blasphemy!” I protested.

When we had been together for a time—long enough for me to see Alcaeus ravish beardless sailor boys—I asked innocently, “When did you last make love to a woman?”

“Women are too complex,” he said, “too unknowable. Sometimes I long to make love to a woman, and then I think how much
work
it will be to satisfy her. I get
tired
just thinking about it.”

Did he say this to shock me or to deny his own attraction to me? Anyway, it did the trick. I left him alone. Sometimes I wished I had the courage to seduce him. I didn't really believe he was as unmoved by me as he claimed.

Maybe I wasn't conventionally pretty, but I knew I had a kind of power. When I had played the lyre at the symposium, people had stared at me as if I were a great beauty. I would catch Alcaeus staring at me from time to time. Then he'd remember that he was supposed to be indifferent to me and he'd turn away. He seemed to be torn between fascination and derision. He was always trying to impress me with how worldly he was and how many exotic lovers he had conquered.

“I have been to Naucratis in Egypt, the city of the Greek traders in the Nile Delta where Lesbian wine is traded,” he began. “I have been with Egyptian prostitutes who are skilled at beguiling the Greeks with their mouths and hands. In Babylon, I have seen the Temple of Ishtar, where women copulate with strangers for the glory of the goddess, where they set up little tents or huts in the precincts of the temple and remain for weeks at a time to earn their dowries.
There is healing in a woman's delta,
the Babylonians believe.”

“Are you saying this to shock me?” I asked. “Because if you are, I can match you obscenity for obscenity.
Delta, daleth, kusthos, sacred space, zone of Aphrodite, the triangle of our beginnings, the source of all our blessings, the three-cornered passage to our end.
There! You are not the only learned sensualist on this island!”

Alcaeus ignored me and went on with his exotic descriptions of foreign travel. “Not for nothing do the Egyptians smear blood on doorways to symbolize birth and death. They worship the divine delta, that all-seeing eye. The Babylonians do the same.”

“You seem quite fascinated yourself,” I said. “Strange that you sought all these exotic women out if you really prefer boys,” I said teasingly. This encouraged him to try to shock me even more.

“All manner of sickly men would come to try their luck with these temple virgins. I watched all this and took the most beautiful women as my partners, but I always returned to my pretty boys with a great sense of relief.”

“I wish
I
were a boy,” I said, “so I could experience these things.”

And I meant it. I
did
want to devour the world and all its pleasures as Alcaeus immediately had known. But maybe I was also thinking that if I were a boy, he'd make love to me.

I tried out this theory on the night before we set sail on our murderous expedition. We found ourselves alone in an olive grove in beautiful Pyrrha. The hills embraced us with their calming green. The olive leaves fluttered their small silver flags. I had made my obeisance to Aphrodite, had burnt incense heavenward, had sung hymns of my own making to my tutelary goddess. Then I dressed myself as a shepherd boy just for the fun of it.

Alcaeus watched all this with a smirk upon his face. He openly laughed at both my devotions and my disguise. Then he challenged me.

“You know, little whirlwind, there is only one way to honor Aphrodite truly.”

“How?”

“I cannot tell, I must
show
you.”

I looked at him in childish perplexity. Then he pulled me under the silvery trees.

“Here in Aphrodite's grove, we must do Aphrodite's bidding,” he said.

I jumped back.

“Are you
afraid
of your own goddess? You'll never become a singer that way,” he teased.

I felt my heart race. My knees began to knock. My delta grew wet.

“Are you challenging me to grant you the gift of my virginity?” I was always too direct, too incapable of artifice.

“What a quaint way to say it!” Alcaeus said with a laugh, making me blush furiously.

“I am ready,” I said bravely, closing my eyes and opening my arms, “but I thought you liked boys!”

“Aren't
you
a boy? You
look
like a boy! After all, boys are less trouble in the act—and afterward. They are less apt to whine and cling, less apt to try to trap you forever. Poor darling, you're shaking,” Alcaeus said, wrapping his arms around me.

“I'm ready,” I trembled.

“Let's lie under these tender green branches and drink a little wine and water. We don't have to do anything but hold each other,” he said. (They always say that.)