Sappho's Leap (7 page)

One god? Why have
one
god when only a plethora of gods can fill the multifarious needs of human beings? The gods are so disinterested in human affairs that they wander off among the rosy clouds of Olympus, ignoring us and pursuing their own pleasures. We must tempt them with the sweet smoke of sacrifice, sing songs to them, weave golden garments for them—and still they care little if we live or die. Our petty fears strike them as absurd. And who can blame them? They are immortal. We are not. We pass before their all-seeing eyes like mayflies. We are little more than a distraction to them.

Jezebel's island people traded with the Carthaginians and also had close ties with the Phoenicians. They were said to be savage and wild. I could hardly wait to meet them! All I had to hear was the rumor of ancient rites and my curiosity blazed.

Accompanied by Praxinoa, several manservants, and a captain, I set sail for Motya when I was almost six months pregnant. The boat rocked; seasickness claimed me, but the prospect of bizarre religious festivals was always tantalizing. The weather was not good, and, beating against the wind, it took us more than a week to make a passage that normally took two days.

We arrived at sunset on the seventh day and found Motya strange and beautiful. It had enormous windmills whose sails glowed orange and red in the flames of the setting sun. We dropped anchor and made our way by cart across the stony causeway that connected Motya to the mainland. We saw the huge salt flats that gave the island its riches, and we smelled the rotting murex shells from which purple dye had been extracted. These two industries had made the Motyans rich. The whole known world yearned for purple dye to make royal garments and depended on salt to preserve fish. The Motyans fervently believed that only sacrificing to their god Baal had made all this plenty possible.

We were taken to Jezebel's house to refresh ourselves and prepare for the fire ritual the following morning.

“I promise you will be inspired to sing when you see how we honor Baal,” Jezebel raved.

That night we purified ourselves with ritual baths. We drank only water. Our stomachs grumbled, but our hearts were pure.

Early the next morning, Jezebel and her attendants led us to the home of a family who had earned the supreme honor of sacrificing their firstborn.

“Do you always sacrifice the firstborn?” I asked in horror, “or only at times of trouble?”

“We do it to
prevent
trouble. Our god is good to us because we feed him only the freshest flesh.”

Outside the house of the chosen family, a procession was forming. People had been gathering since daybreak, carrying musical instruments—mostly drums and bells—and wearing gorgeous rainbow-colored robes. As the sun rose over the sea, they beat their drums and rang their bells to summon the parents out of their palace by the sea.

“How do they choose the family?” I whispered to Jezebel.

“They must be noble, newly married, about to have a child.”

Eventually the mother appeared, carrying an infant of not more than a month old. It kicked and cried as if it knew its fate. The mother comforted the child by putting it to her breast. She nursed the babe continually as the procession snaked toward the tophet at the edge of the city. The crowd was wild and disorderly, playing loud instruments.

“To drown out the screams of the child,” Jezebel said.

As the procession swelled with participants, the drums sounded louder and louder.

“How do the mother and father bear it?” I asked.

“With utter calm or the god will not be pleased.”

When the procession arrived at the sacrificial area, the celebrants all began to kneel down before a brazen image of the deity. It was a human form with a bull's head and outstretched human arms. In the belly of the god, priests were stoking a blazing charcoal fire.

Jezebel then went forward and invoked Baal with these words:

We bring a babe to purify in fire—

Fire which is life and death and change.

Grant him immortality as you grant

Immortality to our storied city.

She then presented each parent with a clay mask wearing a hideous grin. Both mother and father wore one. I imagined myself and Alcaeus standing there, about to sacrifice our firstborn child, and I nearly swooned. A tiny mask was also proffered for the baby, who tried to push it away with his little hands. There were endless prayers and supplications during which the baby screamed and screamed. I couldn't bear to watch or hear. I covered my eyes and ears. When I peeked through my latticed fingers, the babe had gone shrieking into the arms of the red-hot god. My empty stomach lurched.

Inside me, I felt Cleis kick for the first time. The sky seemed to tip into the sea and my knees grew weak. Though my stomach was empty, I retched. Until that moment, the child within me was no more than a notion, no more than a dream. Now it was a real baby and I was its mother. I imagined giving birth, only to relinquish the baby to the flames.

I leaned on Praxinoa, my head spinning. “Why did you let me come?” I asked her.

“How could I stop you?” she said. “Whenever you have a chance to get away from Cercylas, you can't resist!”

“Next time, I will resist,” I said.

“You say that now,” said Praxinoa, “but I know you.”

The image of a baby devoured by flames repeated itself over and over in my head. My head itself felt as if it were on fire. Now the baby in my belly seemed to be kicking my heart.

“Feel!” I said to Praxinoa, bringing her hand to my belly.

Praxinoa felt my belly, felt the tiny foot kicking. A tear came to her eye.

“Oh, Sappho!” she said.

“I will tell you a secret,” Jezebel said, “if it will make you feel better. The parents have substituted a slave-child captured in a raid on the mainland. All things are made of fire and return to fire. The flames will only purify this child. It is an honor to be fed to Baal.”

“Slaves can work for you,” Praxinoa said, “but they shouldn't have to die for you.” She looked at Jezebel with considerable ferocity.

“The universe is made of fire and returns to fire,” Jezebel said, “so it is better not to grow too attached to living things.”

“Is that true for everyone—or only slaves?” Praxinoa asked defiantly.

“Does she always express herself with so much audacity?” Jezebel asked. “I would not accept it if I were you.”

“Praxinoa is free to express whatever she feels,” I told Jezebel.

“Then beware,” said Jezebel, “that you are not nurturing an asp in your own bosom.”

I decided to let that warning pass without comment.

“I am afraid your god does not inspire me,” I said later.

“I would say that more quietly if I were you,” Jezebel said. “He hears everything and he speaks in flame.”

“I cannot love a god who demands the incineration of infants.”

“Do you expect to make no sacrifice for your god?”

“I honor Aphrodite with song, with sweet-smelling incense and chaplets of herbs, but she never demands blood.”

“You say that now,” said Jezebel. “Perhaps you have not seen her in all her aspects. In my experience gods are capricious and need appeasing. For centuries we sacrificed our own babies. Then we began to substitute slave-babies and our island continued to prosper, but perhaps my kinsmen are fooling themselves. Baal knows everything. Perhaps we are risking our lives by playing games with the all-seeing gods.”

I was to think of this conversation often in the next few months as I grew bigger and bigger with child. Would I substitute a slave-child to save my own kin? Was I as hypocritical as the Motyans? I didn't know. Fortunately, Aphrodite no longer demanded human sacrifice—or so I naively thought at the time.

Praxinoa and I returned to Syracuse across a glittering sea. The winds were fair and we made better time than we had on the outward sail. Being aboard ship made me think constantly of Alcaeus. I had been writing to him in my head ever since his letter arrived, but I had not yet sent him my reply. Everything I thought to write seemed foolish. Whenever I reached for reed and papyrus, I grew frightened. How could I let him know of his impending fatherhood? It was too large a thing to put in a letter. It should be whispered across a pillow. I remembered our lovemaking and I ached for him. Praxinoa rubbed my back while I thought of Alcaeus. I didn't tell her who I was thinking of, but I think she knew.

My love,

I have just witnessed a wretched ritual in which a child was sacrificed to appease a savage god. I thought I knew human nature, but until now I did not understand the war between creation and destruction that is waged in every human heart. The ceremony was all the more painful to watch because of the child I carry which belongs to both of us.

I wrote this letter in my head as we returned to Syracuse by sea. I promised myself that in time I would send it—as soon as I got the wording right.

Hesperus, bringing all that the shining Dawn scattered,

You bring the sheep, you bring the goat,

You bring the child back to its mother.

—S
APPHO

B
UT I NEVER DID.
Back in Syracuse, I thought of Alcaeus with every sunrise and sunset. I wrote him many letters in my mind. But still I could not bring myself to send him anything I scrawled on papyrus. Why, I did not know. I wanted to contact him, yet could not. Was it because I feared my letter would fall into unfriendly hands? The household was full of potential spies. Was it because I feared my letter would never reach him? Was it because my pregnancy was too great a thing to be communicated except mouth to ear? What if Cercylas discovered that the child I carried was not his? I was full of trepidation. It seemed I walked above a great abyss. Away from home, far from all the certainties I knew, I became addicted to soothsayers like all the other Syracusans, who were a most superstitious lot.

But I cannot blame my love of prophecy only on the ways of Syracuse. We all consult soothsayers at the times in our lives that are most precarious. Pregnancy is surely such a time. Will you live or die? Will the babe live or die? Will your life change utterly? (Of course it will, but you hardly want to credit that!) Soothsayers beckon to us because we get so few answers from the wandering gods who delight in withholding their gifts. Magic attracts us when our humanity seems most frail.

There was no lack of magic in Syracuse. The city teemed with diviners and oracles. Some were obvious charlatans. Others put on amazing demonstrations using birds and herbs and incense, red binding cords, lead manikins, cauldrons of green and purple fire.

One day I found myself in the humble hovel of one Cretaea, sitting on a packed mud floor around a fire filled with lead manikins with huge phalli. These priapic manikins represented the beloveds of her clients.

Cretaea had three wobbling wens on her sagging chin, eyes and hair the color of pitch, and long fingernails stained red with henna. She chanted:

Where are my magic spells? Where are my charms? Wreathe the golden bowl with crimson wool, that I may bind a spell upon my love! Let me learn fire spells to summon him! Let me make a lead manikin complete with his beautiful phallus so that it may be stiff only with me! Let it wilt with disuse whenever he approaches a boy or another woman! Hail, grim Hecate, attend me always! Make my love drugs as potent as Circe's or Medea's! Let him smell the juice of my delta even in that far land where he dwells!

This was the love incantation devised by Cretaea to assuage the fears of her clients. Elusive Hecate was her goddess—creature of mists and magic, who delighted in the sacrifice of puppies. As she chanted, Cretaea's fingers raked the air like claws. She was unimaginably old and ugly and demanded to be paid in golden
oboloi
. She sold me a lead manikin with an enormous erect phallus on which she had inscribed the name
Alcaeus
.

I wrapped the manikin carefully in clean linen and secreted it in my chiton. Having learned her incantation by heart, I went home and repeated the spell over and over myself. I bound red cord around a golden bowl. I burned a fire in it and sprinkled in minerals to make it burn green and purple. I put the lead manikin in the fire so that Alcaeus' phallus would burn hot only for me. And then I waited.

Within the week I had another letter from Alcaeus! It began with this poem:

Scheming Cyprian goddess—

Bring me the one with the violet hair.

Her I love better than all the boys of Lydia.

But my legs are tangled in ropes of fear

And I ride out the storm of Eros

Without the one I love!

Sappho, my love,

When I think of beautiful green Lesbos, it merges in my mind with a vision of violet-haired Sappho—or Psappho, as you call yourself in our beautiful Aeolic dialect. My thoughts go back to that other exile in Pyrrha when you were with me, hanging on my every word, adoring me, adored by me. I miss you—or do I miss your adoration? I feel responsible for you. I remember the beauty contests of Lesbos—the
kallisteia
—where the young girls swayed like mobile caryatids in their columns of white linen.

Lesbian maidens in trailing robes

Walk up and down, being judged for their beauty.

Around them, women choir to Aphrodite….

O Lesbos, you sprout beautiful women

Even as you grow the vine and the olive tree.

Soft syllables shake the silvery olive leaves

As the wind whispers

Sappho, Sappho, Sappho….

You have something more beautiful than beauty. You are wholly alive. I think of your smile, your quick retorts, your ability to match me line for line. And I think of our lovemaking, of your sex, which becomes a living thing, when I enter it, of your pulsing wetness, of the song between your thighs.