Part 5
As I walked home, I felt that my mind had been invaded by everything around me. I tried to hurry, thinking I’d remember all, the prices of the traders, the baskets of starfish, the white parrot; I’ll remember his voice, his feet in the dust, his smiles.
Exekias babbled dully about food and flagrant cheating, her basket bumping my hip. I wondered how I could wait, through the days ahead, how could I occupy myself, until Phaon and I sailed? It was a question for water clocks and gulls, spindrift and wind, thought unfolding in my room, scudding across the floor to the window, stopping there, leaping out, to other lands, other times, backlashing with the net that contains yesterday...flames in a cruse...Atthis, slipping her perfumed hands over my eyes...
My lips burn, my hands are moist, I feel faint... Is that my voice, the sound of my laughter? Am I walking over these tiles?
Did I have supper last night? Drink? Rehearse a song?
My girls realize I am lost—wandering. I can’t look into their eyes for long. When I see Kleis cross the room a trickle of ice slips down my back.
What if he finds me too old, what if my love doesn’t please him...if he mocks me, or stands in awe, or wants to amuse himself?
Phaon...
I see you against every wall, against the sky, in the dark, in the sun under the trees. My flesh aches, my arms melt. Never has passion fermented so strongly in me.
Yet no messenger comes.
I can’t bear the nights, to lie alone, to feel my breath on my pillow, feel the cool sheet.
In the morning, I ask Exekias questions, just to hear her voice, not listening, for how can she know whether he has forgotten me or is afraid or sick?
He is busy with his boat and port affairs. He has gone to visit his sister, with no thought of returning soon. He has sailed. He talks with his men—coarse talks. He eats, drinks, works, sleeps, snores.
No—he is fixing our boat for our trip.
No, he has many sweethearts, dark, tall, frivolous, lusty, daring—all young.
Why do I punish myself?
I hurt with weariness and desire. I will simply face the bedroom wall and shut out the light. No, I will concentrate on my work. What shall I write about?
Where is the sea that we sailed?
Was it a long trip?
Was our sail grey or brown?
Was the water rough?
The answers mean so little. Born of the sea, where is love more beautiful than on the sea? Like water, light, warm, swaying, the indispensable ingredient, the transformations, the necessities, the luxury, with the whites of the waves whiter than salt, with gulls flashing in the sun, with the bow of the boat swinging.
We swam, dove, played, laughed. There was bread soaked in honey and nuts dipped in wine and fruit, whose peelings we tossed to the birds. There was the creaking of the sail for our silences, the long brown tiller arm reaching to the sun, his hands on my shoulders.
He padded the bottom of the boat and we lay there, the wind heeling us briefly, the water sucking and his mouth sucking mine and the hunger of his body—the hunger I knew no sea could satisfy. Cradled, we talked softly:
“Was your trip good?”
“We had good weather for several days, then storms... It’s like that, you know, most every trip. I try to keep far away from the coast, to avoid shifting winds. I keep farther away than most sailors. It shortens the trip...”
“You’re not afraid?”
“No.”
“When will you be leaving?”
“I have no cargo.”
“Stay...Phaon...”
We had supper and I hated the food that kept us from our love-making.
A sponge lay on the floor and he dipped water over me as the sun washed over us, sinking rapidly. Why couldn’t it stay for us? I saw him as Cretan, as Babylonian, as Persian, inventing his lineage. His atavistic hands moved certainly, oarsman’s hands, netman’s hands, the sea’s...mine.
Nothing’s more rhythmic than love with waves for bed, rocking, sucking, soothing. I lay there in his arms, thinking of the plants below, the glassy window of the water, the fish, coral, ruined cities...the lovers of other days, the mother of us all, love, pulsing in the rigging, in the pull of his legs, the hasp of his fingers. The rollers were kind to us, never too violent yet tingling the blood. The backs of waves looked at us. The spray spilled salt on our skin, gulls screaming.
We made love again, better than before, this time under the moon, our bodies wet from swimming, the summer night blowing over us, bringing us closer to shore where the surf boomed. Moonlight ignited inside the water and phosphorescence added to the brilliance. Flying fish sprang free. His body was so dark, mine so white...la, the rough of him!
Were any other lovers as happy that day?
As we stretched side by side, he said, with sleepy tongue:
“I remember an evening like this, a night of phosphorescence. I was lying on the deck, almost asleep. A flash tore the sky, silver light...it came streaking nearer and nearer. I woke some of my sailors. My helmsman shouted. We pointed and argued. The light hit the water and sent up boiling steam. We smelled something. Stripping, I swam where the light had hit the water. We were becalmed and I thought I had seen something white but found only dead fish, their bellies shining. The largest one filled my arms and I swam back to the boat and hauled it aboard. It had a brand across one side. We argued, and threw it back.”
“What was it that fell?” I asked.
“Some said it was a star,” he said.
“I was born in Pyrgos,” Phaon tells me, his head on my lap. “I was born in a terrible thunderstorm, in my father’s hut. He was a very clever fisherman but there were times when we got very hungry and on one of those times we waded out to sea, he and I, to throw a net...we were hungry. I wasn’t helping much but I was there, small, perhaps learning something. Ah, that little island was barren and poor. And there I was in the water, the sun coming out of the sea, blinding me. And then my father screamed and I saw him fall. I tried to reach him. I splashed. I ran. I fell. I shouted. We were alone, we two. My father was thrashing about. It seems he had fallen into a pool, a rock pool, you know what they are. Maybe he forgot it was there, or didn’t know. I can’t say. But he had been hit by a shark and was bleeding. So I helped him, as best I could, both of us splashing, falling, the surf rising around us, big. He fell on the beach and I ran for help but before I could find help and come to him he had bled to death, on the sand, his hands on his wound, the wound from the shark.”
We went up the mountain, to the outcrop and the temple, spent all day alone, the sheep tinkling their bells, the heat steady. He knew of a spring unknown to me and a hollow olive where bees had a hive. Only deep in the olive grove was it cooler and we buried ourselves under the trees.
The watery brown of his body was mine. I found his voice deeper than I had thought. I found his mouth. Discoveries went on, nothing repetitive, the wind, no, the olive shade, or the moss and mushrooms. Crushing a mushroom he rubbed it against his thighs. The smell of mushroom in the cool, dark place! His smell and mine; the smell of earth: life was a vortex of fragrances, peace on the fringes, then a shepherd’s bell!
“I’ve wanted to be a shepherd,” I said.
“It would be too lonely for me,” he said. “It’s lonely enough at sea. I look for a sign of land, a strip of floating bark, land bird or turtle. I look...there at the bow I’m always looking...now it will be you, ahead, in the sea. At sea I have my crew...no, I couldn’t be a shepherd. But you?”
“For me, I’d have more time to think, to write, to gather the world of stillness. I could weave it into a pattern we’d recognize as important: succor, inspiration, hope. There is a cliff...you know it... the Leucadian cliff... I’d go there with my flock and dream as they fed about me, the sea below us, the murmur of antiquity around us.
It wasn’t easy to visit Alcaeus and hear him talk, as he reclined at supper, his hands close to a lighted lamp, restless fingers, perturbed in a blunted way: the tensility of the battlefield gone from them: moving, they move in on themselves.
“Sometimes, I want to see a face...your face, Sappho. I want to see many faces, the faces of my men. I’d like to see a helmet and plume, the scarlet horsehair plume...color...what a great thing...
“My house has no window or door. Who wants a house that way?
“What of other blind men and their darkness! What good can that darkness do them?
“When my father was small he was scared of the dark. I never was. But this dark has become fear...words can’t break it. Only sleep breaks it. When I’m lying in bed, on the verge of waking, I think, remembering the old light, I think, the sun’s up. But where’s the sun!”
Someone had dusted his shields and spears on the wall: I noticed the black point of an Egyptian lance, the cold grey pennons on a Persian hide: perhaps they had decorated the sand outside his tent.
This contrast troubled me and yet I longed to share my happiness: the child in me wanted to discountenance reason: the brown shoulders and rolling sea never left me as we talked and I tried to comfort, reminding him of days when it was fun to climb the hills and explore the beaches, fun all day: he admitted there had been time without pain and wondered why we were eventually cheated?
Fog leaned against the house and I described it and he asked me to walk with him. As we followed the shore, he talked of warriors he had know, “strategists,” he called them; he boomed his words, excited by memories and the walk and the fog, which he could feel on his face and hands. His cane cracked against driftwood and I restrained him, to find his hands trembling.
The blue of the Aegean is reflected
in the faces of the 50 rowers of the trireme
as they chant and pull;
the blue is reflected on the ship’s hull
and the banks of oars.
P
haon and I were offshore in his rowboat, the small sail furled, the surf near by, doubling into smooth green, sunset brazing the horizon. We had been gay, drifting, oar dragging, taking chances with the surf. Upright at the stern, Phaon looked about idly: we had been talking about going for a swim. Suddenly, he faced me and shouted:
“Over there...see them...pirate boats!”
“What?”
“Over there, the other way...those three boats...see the red shields at the bow...Turkish pirates...they’re attacking Mytilene. I’ll row for the beach. Hang on.”
His oar splashed and the boat pitched; pulling with all his strength, he drove us toward the shore, the surf rising, the bow high. I thought we would capsize but before I could make out the pirate ships he beached us and we scrambled ashore, drenched and shoeless. Together, we raced for the square, shouting at everyone we met. Together, we dashed for Alcaeus’ house, and threw open his door.
Men in gold, red and blue uniforms stormed our dock and invaded the town. I hung on, behind shutters, unable to tear myself away as the armed gang rushed past the house, forty or more, most of them yelling, one of them, in silver turban, whistling through his fingers, brandishing a scimitar. My mother had described such an attack...I could hear her and see her pained face...a terrible story I had never quite believed.
Phaon yanked shields and spears off the wall and armed Thasos and another man I scarcely knew, a visitor. Women and children hollered and scuttled inside, making for the rear of the house. Something crashed against our street door and men bellowed wildly at us. I saw wood rip the door. Thasos moved in front of me, urging me to hide. Phaon, with shield and sword, his clothes still sopping, threw open the door and beat off a Turkish spear. Catching two men by surprise, he wounded one in the neck and both fled, the uninjured man, a youngster, helping the other one, his shoulder turning red, their short swords rapping their legs as they ran. The injured man lost his turban as they rounded a corner...
“What happened...What’s going on?” bellowed Alcaeus, behind Thasos.
“Turks,” Phaon shouted, checking the damage to the door, swinging it on its hinges, his hairy shield high on his arm.
Long after dusk, men scouted the streets, all the Turkish boats at sea: the town buzzed with shouts and whistles: a drum throbbed: the raiders had killed two and injured several and plundered a winery and mill, removing flour and filling goat skins with fresh water at several fountains. I piloted Alcaeus about for a while, until my girls discovered me and begged me home, dreading a repetition, though by now armed soldiers had set up guards.
Stars shone brilliantly.
The bay, mirror-smooth, seemed utterly innocent of piracy and death. It accused us of our own folly.
Alone in my room, I reviewed the raid, our floundering ashore, our dash to Alcaeus’ house, the brilliant uniforms, wild faces, wild cries, Phaon at the door, Thasos wanting me to hide, children whimpering.
The drummers were signaling each other, the surf sullen, the wind rising.
In a room near me, someone was sobbing. Peace would not return to my house or Mytilene for a while: how long, I wondered? Peace, how frail it is, how carefully it must be protected.
I realized I should comfort my girls and not sit and watch the ocean. It was hard to go to them, harder still to listen to their fears and accusations. When they questioned me I felt that what I described had never happened or happened to someone else. Atthis, holding a puppy in her arms, said she wanted someone to protect her and burst into tears, realizing how unprotected she had been.
Why hadn’t I come with Phaon? What if the Turks had climbed the hill?
“You forgot all about us, you just left us here! Oh, Sappho!”
Next day, with my house quieted, I had time to write:
Accomplishments require sacrifice of mind and body; for some, accomplishment will be slow as the sea eating sand. I prefer the swift attainment—it is most inspiring. Death, because it is an incessant threat, retards progress, inhibiting our will to succeed, seeping under us at unexpected moments.
Surely, if we are to conspire against death, if we are to get the most of life, we must be clever, relying on intuition and knowledge, to reach any goal. Surely, the most important element in life is the humane, the kindly, the uncorrupted, tying together little things into something worth while, that will have significance now and later.
Poseidon
641 B.C.
Then, what is love? Isn’t it sharing a personality never encountered before? I think it is this kind of interchange and it is exploring someone’s thinking, with and without words. With Phaon, it is sharing the sea, the oarsman’s hands, the swimmer’s legs, yarns on the beach in the firelight. With Alcaeus, it has been our friends, our families, our town, our writing, our exile—years of knowing each other. The differences between Phaon and Alcaeus are so many it would be foolish to try to list them. Comparison gets me nowhere.
I suspect that love is too subtle for any analysis: love is so subtle it escapes while we look. Being in love is rather like being someone else, laughing someone’s laughter, tasting someone’s wine, dreaming someone’s dreams. I feel that close to Phaon. Together, we share the fire, the fire that wakes us in the night, that flies into our eyes, the fire that makes my mouth tremble, that makes me laugh in my mirror, that makes me test my perfume bottles and sends my girls for new powder.
I steal to him—with dignity. I crush him to me, dignity gone. I lose, I gain. I cringe, I lunge. Phaon, you are my body, in me, wanting you, wanting... We are the wanters, haters of nights that keep us apart, haters of time.
Its roaring deafens me: I, I didn’t hear you. I, I was wrapped in thought. I was making love...I was reliving the sea, I was in the boat. I was planning our next meeting...I was singing... Darling, I was saying.
Riding donkeys, Phaon and I set out across the island, to visit his sister, riding all day in slow stages, to reach her hut and sleep there. I thought we would never find it, but that was my thinking. Phaon led us through a jumble of hillside rocks, through little valleys, right to her door, a hut of rocks and straw, her shepherd’s crook beside the door.
Kleis is so unlike my Kleis.
She seems able to speak without words, perhaps because words are not very useful to her since she lives alone. She nods and smiles, her smile serene. Small, dark, light-boned, she appears out of the past, no sister of Phaon, unrelated to our island. I had not expected her to be so unlike us. Using her particular mystery, she made us comfortable, made us feel at home, a gesture now and then, a word, some roasted seeds, another word, as we talked. Her delight in having us was obvious, coming from deep inside. She has wonderful wind-swept sight, from the rapture of lonely skies, her communions. She is priestess of self-contained youth. She shared her food and we shared things we had brought. Phaon talked of his sea trip, the Mytilene raid, his voice in accord with her quality.
As our relationship deepens, I am more and more aware of his quality. It is best seen in his slow, slow gesture. Or in a spontaneous grin ending in a chuckle. It is in his carriage—his calculating look. His qualities are older than mine, seasoned by the primordial: his speech is older, in vocabulary, accent, intonation.
Kleis and I sang after supper, the supper fire burning.
Her sheep were near us, muffled, shuffling contentedly.
Venus hung over us.
How unlike my Kleis, in her singing and her songs: her songs are songs mother knew: they made me tremble and I wanted to clasp her to me: Phaon had forgotten most of them but joined us sometimes. We sang of lovers and wanderers.
She, the daily wanderer, was less a wanderer than any of us: her natural resources were always at her spiritual command.
Kissing me good night, she said:
“I love you for coming.”
Going back home, we poked along, talking and resting at likely places. We stopped in an orange grove to eat, water rippling by us in an irrigation ditch. Cross-legged we ate cheese and dates and drank wine Kleis had given us, the summer smells around us, flowers, so many kinds of flowers in this place. Lying beside me, Phaon told me more about his life:
“...We met a storm off the Egyptian coast, the wind rushing us, tearing our sail. I was at the rudder when the sail split. I ordered my men to huddle in the lee and mend the sail. How we shipped water. The bow crashed. All of us thought we’d go down but they kept on with the mending, folding the fabric, squeezing out the water, wiping rain and spray from their faces. I’ve never heard a fiercer wind, raging off starboard...
“When we had the sail mended I had someone take the rudder and helped hoist. A wave bowled us over. It was nearly dark and the rain slanted toward me. Out of the side of my eyes, I thought I saw something on the sea, a man, a tall man. I said nothing but worked hard: I couldn’t talk or yell in that sea. Part way up the mast, I looked down. Nothing. In spite of wind and rain, we hung our sail and swung out of the troughs. Back at the rudder, I saw him, saw him moving, white, tall, through the whipped tops of the rollers.”
Villa Poseidon
641 B.C.
My girls still carry on about the pirate raid.
Gyrinno found a short sword and brought it to me.
“Look, I showed it to Archidemus and he says it’s from the Turks. Those are rubies on the hilt, he says. Feel them. See...see...”
Her fingers tremble with excitement.
Her breath catches:
“What if they’d broken into our house? It would have been awful. Aren’t you proud of Phaon?”
The whole misadventure leaves me cold. I think of the burial of our dead. I see the blood rushing down the neck of the wounded man. There was blood on Phaon’s sword. He and Alcaeus had bellowed over their victory. Victory?
I pushed away the pirate’s sword, and said: “It would be better if there were no pirates.”
Gyrinno is disgusted.
What is wrong with man? Is man’s piratical weakness an instinct? Women don’t go in for piracy. We know the value of living and appreciate life’s perilousness. We give birth to kindness...each baby is kindness itself.
I have forbidden Gyrinno to keep the sword: she must get rid of it, give it away, throw it away, I don’t care.
Rain, rain, rain.
The girls appreciate my happiness since a sense of grace envelops me.
We weave and the rain falls, so gently, our looms fronting the windows and sea. I am weaving a white scarf, quite blemishless.
Weaving has always been the most delightful pastime: I sit and weave and the wool goes in and out: I can see nothing in front of me or I can see my whole past, or tomorrow, or Phaon, the ocean, my house, the faces of my girls...
I work silently sometimes, planning, composing. The art of weaving thoughts must have begun with the loom. The rain falls, and weaves its sounds. Atthis and Anaktoria sit on either side of me, Anaktoria singing to herself. She is dressed in white and Atthis wears blue.
Across the sea a wedge of rain scuds, slowly approaching our island. Shepherds are in their huts. Seamen are ashore. It is a time for all to rest.
At the bridge in town where I had watched the migratory flight of herons, I met Alcaeus. He was perched on the rail, cane crossed over his legs, waiting for Thasos. Glad to see me, he pulled his beard, fragrant and carefully oiled. I found him cheerful. He talked about a Carthaginian ship, in harbor because of broken oars, after sideswiping another boat in a thick fog. As I listened his face altered: it was as if he were in pain or remembered something tragic. Interrupting my comment, he asked:
“What’s he like? Is he tall, this Phaon?”
I described him, touching his arm to lessen his resentment.
“So...he’s not the soldier type!”
“Must he be?”
“No...a sailor, then!”
“Alcaeus!”
“I know...I know...the changes that have overcome me. I know them better than you.”
“And I know my changes.”
“Must our friendship end?”
“Alcaeus, let’s not go on like this. We understand each other.”
“Yes...yes...of course. I apologize... I should have scorned the war. Why was I bellicose?
“I could have kept to my books. I understand it takes infinite time to probe, time to evaluate, time to mature. I have always wanted skill— like yours, working, as you work, through intuition and knowledge of the past. By probing I could have come closer to freedom.”
“You have found your freedom,” I said.
“Where?”
“Attacking Pittakos, and his sort.”
“That’s another kind.”
“I realize that.”
As we strolled home, Thasos with us, he kept thinking, elaborating. Something hurt in me. Wasn’t I deluding him? Was there freedom? When he stumbled, I stumbled.
He had been my Phaon. I thought of his encouragement, years ago, when each of us was desperate. That encouragement, that will to help, buoyed me and, talking swiftly, I promised him help, promised closer friendship.
Standing at his door, leaning on his cane, eyelids closed, he recited something heroic and it was my turn to change: my expression must have altered as quickly as his: his sincerity was an answer to mine: I knew he could not see and yet hid my face in my arm. Walking on, I felt he was still in his doorway, trying to see me, trying to understand.
A boy, with a yo-yo, asked me to stop and watch him perform tricks:
“Sappho...I can make it do things,” he cried, dangling his yo-yo over my sandal, climbing it up my robe.
Sparkling eyes laughed and I bent and kissed him.
Yesterday, Anaktoria and I walked to a vineyard above the bay, a yard of crumbling walls, twisted, neglected vines, where bees hummed and swallows flicked apricot bellies. It was unduly warm and we threw off our clothes and lay on old leaves, in the shadow of a wall, the waves grumbling behind the stones, coming up, as it were, through masonry and ground.