The Double Tongue (11 page)

Perhaps he put it in my mind, I don’t know, but for the first time I thought of the dried leaves in the hollow flanges of the bowl. I took a pinch, noting as I did so that the flange had been refilled with a neat mound of the dusty stuff. I held it over the red moon of charcoal and let it sift and drift down from my fingers so that tiny sparks winked back at me and here and there a larger grain spurted with flame and smoke. It was pleasant enough, like throwing stones in water or playing at cup and ball. I did it again and seemed to do it again and again and again.

And again and again. But my hands were folded at my waist and on the coverlet of my bed.

‘Apollo?’

There was no reply. I heard someone stir and thought it might be Dionysus. But Ionides answered.

‘It is I. Good girl. Go back to sleep.’

But later that day I was, as Ionides had said ‘on again’. I began to understand that he was passionately fond of dramatic representations, an art which has its own language, not just that spoken on the stage before an audience but spoken by actors when they are by themselves or accompanied by the technicians of presentation. I began to be concerned that in our dealing with the god or gods we were using a form of speech more appropriate to the modern kind of drama which, I am told, lacked dignity and religious feeling and had interest only in the mundane affairs of men. I began to understand by way of the language which Ionides used how the surroundings of the oracle had altered. I saw by the cramped nature of the building and the lack of provision for spectators that in times long past Delphi had been a far simpler place, perhaps no more than a village oracle. But Apollo had chosen it out of all the others, had slain the monster which guarded it and set up – however long ago – the circumstances which enabled the god’s truth to be spoken here. Little by little its fame had spread and the authenticity of its words more and more credited as one after the other the words were seen always to enshrine truth. And we? We moderns? We had made a play of it, with scenery and a cast, with triviality, so that it became much as its new surrounds were. All that glitters was gold, except the words. I had spoken words and not known I had spoken them. They were the god’s words.

Except those spoken by Ionides. It was with a sudden pang that I remembered. He had answered the two Romans out of his own head – and mine. The god had nothing to do with it. He should keep to his pigeons. He came back to fetch me.

‘Ionides. We have blasphemed.’

‘Yes.’

‘You take it too calmly.’

‘Almost anything we do concerned with gods is blasphemy if you must use that word. One god’s truth is another god’s blasphemy.’

‘Don’t be clever.’

‘Good heavens, why not?’

‘I was wanting to be reassured, that’s all. I see you can’t give it or won’t.’

‘But I’ve reassured you! Didn’t you listen? I tell you what, First Lady, have a look at the take.’

‘The what?’

‘The take. The – remuneration. Those two Romans – oh my goodness! You should see the purse they left the Foundation and a necklace for you. Athens, dear, boring, traditional Athens, city of my heart for all her squads of professors, doctors, researchers, left a tripod, elegant enough and, I think, rather handed on as it were. Of course there was money for me but a bare minimum. We are none of us what we were. By the way they sent you another necklace. But don’t worry about having too many. The First Lady – first slug – had an understanding with Leontes the goldsmith. He’ll change anything into cash. Of course you can’t go round selling things yourself.’

‘The take.’

‘Just so. By the way I haven’t congratulated you – I do so now – on your performance yesterday. You were superb, my dear.’

‘Yesterday? I didn’t do anything!’

‘Not anything? Not answering all those dim little people?’

‘I went to sleep.’

‘You seemed wide enough awake to me – just sufficient touch of the, the “numinous” in your voice to carry complete conviction.’

‘Numinous?’

‘A word the Romans use. Means – spooky. Trust them, they’re the most superstitious people in the world. God knows how they’ve got where they have. But when you answered the woman who wanted to know about her dead daughter the whole group of them started weeping. I very nearly did myself. How did you know that the child was called Lelia?’

‘What child?’

‘In any case, my dear, we have some completely satisfied customers. I’m not sure really that your “forte” doesn’t lie in dealing with the simple rather than the complex! That woman took off her own earrings and added them to the drachmas. Not that they’re much good – silver allegedly. Leontes will know.’

‘I didn’t know anything. I was asleep! Can’t you believe me?’

‘If you say so, of course. But if just sprinkling the stuff and then sniffing the smoke takes you that way I wonder how you’d have managed in the old days? The early Pythias used to chew the leaves, the fresh ones. If you’ll notice, no animal eats laurel leaves, not even insects. They know. How I wish we did. But I think it’s time you got ready.’

Ionides said he wished he knew but I don’t think he did so wish. I was beginning to understand him. Most of his mind was a kind of shell of opinions and brittle quips. Inside the shell was a mind made up and closed to change because it was really a prime tenet of his that
he
knew.
In the shell itself were contrary opinions which he produced together with their opposites so that he was secure from having to believe in any of them. I began to see how the oracle, like Ionides, was surrounded by contradictions. Whatever lay at the centre of the oracle, that mysterious heart of it which spoke so often with riddling words so that only a suppliant who was both wise and humble could choose the right interpretation, I believed, no, I felt
I
knew
there was something connected with the hidden centre of existence that lay there and sometimes spoke.

That day was the third day of oracular utterance, and Ionides said he would have cancelled it had he known that there would be only two suppliants and very bad weather. It seemed foolish to go through all the outside ceremonial – the wrapped Pythia, the festival vehicle which I had never seen and the solemn ritual of the Descent. I recognized, wrapped and blind though I was, that the vehicle was a different one and since I heard no onlookers in the street I dared a look. I found I was riding in an ordinary, rather dirty cart. There was one driver and one horse, hairy and slow. That’s right, I thought. That’s how it must have been, back in the old days just after the god had killed the monster. I had a kind of joke with myself that one day this cart would be all there was to take me to the cave and that the priest of Apollo would have to drive it himself. But now the rain was falling, beating on the great cloak they had thought to fold round my wrappings and I desired nothing so much as to get into the grotto out of the rain. At one point the horse stopped and staled there in the empty street and I came near to shouting at the driver. When we reached the portico it was Ionides himself who helped me down, murmuring as he did so, ‘I can’t lift you. You’ll have to help yourself.’

So once inside I let the cloak fall, and could see the steps going down before me. I was wet, for all the cloak, and in a temper. I spoke sharply to Ionides, calling him Ion and asking him why he hadn’t the wit to keep a Pythia dry and he answered that a Pythia with a god’s help ought to be able to get out of a shower of rain. It was not edifying there on the steps going down to the oracle of the god. I became aware of this as I descended the wet and slippery steps and the god made me fall, which I deserved though he did nothing to Ionides who was as blameable as I. I thought of my father’s words so long ago, ‘In these cases my dear, it is almost always the girl’s fault.’ I had hurt my elbow, and stood in front of the tripod, rubbing the ache out of the bone. I suppose it was that hurt and the delay – let them wait! – that made me examine the curtain at the back of the grotto, though I went no nearer to it. I saw now that it was a representation of the fight between Apollo and the monster in what even I could see was intended to be the archaic manner. But what I had not noticed before was that there were two curtains side by side, drawn together by drawstrings. It only needed a pull on one of the strings to draw the curtains apart and reveal what they covered. I had a mind to go forward and solve a part of Apollo’s mysteries. But as I debated that in my mind I heard Ionides’ voice.

‘Crates of Corinth – of
wealthy
Corinth – begs the god to tell him –’

I forget precisely what Crates wanted. What he got was an oracle given from Ionides’ suddenly obsequious mouth which was mentioning large sums of money. The only other suppliant was a farmer whose farm was what he called ‘sick’ and what should he do about it? I began to feel we were very wicked. Ionides went up the steps, looked round in the street and then came back.

‘All over. I’ll call the cart back.’

It was in my mind to tell him not to bother and that I would walk. He and I might stroll out together, he with his sacred insignias over his arm, I with my scarf casually lying round my neck under a bare face, much as the performers of a marionette show will come out from the booth when the play is done and mingle with their own audience. It was, I said to myself, very nearly what the oracle had come to.

But then – there had always been the suspect and doubtful about the oracle even in the earliest recorded days. Those ancient hexameters – if the truth was to be told – were not really very good. As prophecy they were double-tongued, there was no doubt about that. Either the god would have his rollicking laughter, ‘the fall of a house’, or so subtle an interpretation that it might catch anyone. All that was agreed. No one expected the oracle to be anything else but riddling, and if you consulted it you took your chance that you could understand the real meaning of what the god said. But there was something else. The hexameters weren’t very good yet Apollo was the god of the arts – of poetry! Why was his verse inferior to Homer’s? Why was it that there were half a dozen poets who could create better verse than Apollo? Was there an answer to that? I thought back to my first awful meeting with the oracle, with the god, and how he had bloodied my mouth. Perhaps part of an utterance was always stained by the blood of the Pythia, unavoidably corrupted by her mortality so that the immortal god could only use her in her measure as a flute can only be used in its compass. It might, I thought, be that.

Ionides was waiting.

‘I’ve called the cart. That Corinthian. Big business. We slipped up there –’

‘And down there.’

‘Yes. Were you hurt? We should have made more enquiries. I detected a certain sourness in him. He was annoyed at being in the third batch, as well he might. These big businessmen don’t like waiting and he said so. I’ve had to ask him to supper at the palace of the Pythias.’

‘Oh no!’

‘You’ll have to do it. This is Delphi, not some country town with nothing but hobbledehoys. A touch of mystery, my dear. Do you think you could manage that?’

‘I think we are downright wicked! I want to –’

Go. But where? Ionides was clever enough to understand exactly what I had not said.

‘It’s the sort of thing to mull over, dear First Lady. These occasions when things seem to tail off and become sordid are very trying. We live by the Great Occasions. You’ll see. After all there’s one every month. Isn’t that enough for you? As for me – well, I suppose I am an old fraud – or you could say a really honest man who understands what he is doing and’ – here he suddenly injected passion into the contrary argument and opinion – ‘and realizes that the only thing that matters is the oracle, the oracle, the oracle! Preserve that and all is preserved.’

Delphi was strange. It had become a small town, almost deserted and dead in the three winter months – Dionysus was welcome to them – but bursting out of itself every month for the rest of the year. The numbers had declined steadily. About a third of the houses were empty except at the festivals, being reserved for visitors. Landowners from the surrounding country – but not my father, who preferred to cross the ferry to Corinth – had appropriated houses too big for smaller people and, in at least one case, an abandoned temple. It was these people and the family of the priests of those gods who were, dare I say, still alive, who were our society. We women were bare-faced. It was part of the civilization we shared with Athens from the old days. Some quite presentable people were, I believe, glad they did not have to keep their women’s faces covered in that it saved the cost of an expensive head-scarf. Our people, like all Hellas except a few favoured cities, knew poverty. I sometimes asked myself where it would all end and thought of asking Apollo on my own account, but by now knew too much about the oracle to believe the question worth asking him. I asked Ionides instead. It was at the dinner I gave for the big businessman. He had brought a woman with him, bare-faced and quite marvellously beautiful. I do not think she was his wife – or, at least, not his principal wife. There were also present Aristomachus and his wife Demareta. They were two of the local landowners I spoke of, though not the ones who had taken over a temple as a town house. Demareta was loquacious, something I was not yet used to in a woman. They truly
needed
a town house. Every year the countryside became more dangerous. Her husband told her she should not talk about such things but then, I noticed, said exactly the same thing himself and went on to explain it.

‘The Macedonians, you see. They have to protect their borders and that should mean agreeing with Epirus. But all the mountains are full of brigands. I don’t know, First Lady. Some are Illyrian, others from – well – even from Aetolia itself, and a whole rag-bag of creatures from anywhere and for whatever reasons! Every time the Macedonians carry out a sweep along their southern border we feel the effect of it from the increase in crime. Now what I don’t like is the way they’ve stopped fighting each other and are operating more or less wherever they like.’