Part 7
When we learned of a terrible earthquake at Chios, we loaded Libus’ boat with food, wine and water and set out, before dawn, across choppy water, Phaon and I at the stern, under blankets, Libus managing the sail. We were part of a small fleet but I couldn’t discern another boat. Spray swished overhead and fog, ahead and astern, seemed ready to pincer us. Under our hull the water flooded ominously; the sky, without its stars, might have been the ocean.
Our hard trip brought us into Chios tired and hungry; we had been unable to look after ourselves but, without eating, we began to distribute food and wine.
Chios—happy town—lay broken. I walked about, remembering, stopping here and there: all the central part, shops and temple, were dismembered, had windy dust blowing across it, greyish dust that seemed mortuary. Yet, I saw no dead, only the injured: Libus helped them, bandaging, talking: I gave wine and water, afraid: he was annoyed by my fear: I could not find Phaon and that worried me. Wine, and water, dribbling them, my hamper shaking, the wind icy and dust in my mouth, I felt sick again. A child raced to me, wailing: crouching down, I mothered her, fed her a little bread: as we crouched, a slab of building fell, tottered forward and disappeared in a wave of dust.
“The quake came and came and then came again,” an injured woman said, accepting dates and cheese.
By now, I saw others from Mytilene and their hearty faces cheered me. But how the gulls screamed. Flocks wheeled and screamed.
On the beach we lit fires and cooked our suppers, wind and dust still bothering us: Phaon and I ate with people from home, our fire put together from the prow of an old boat, the talk about Chios and the injured, their lack of food and care. We slept in beached boats, the surf snarling, stars breaking through fast clouds: I remembered the big dipper and frightened people... Libus woke us early and we did our best to help, using splints, caring for a head wound, bandaging a boy’s chest... Libus scarcely allowed himself time to eat.
The wind had subsided, and I felt less fear and went about with my basket of food and wine. In the afternoon, we welcomed other boats from Lesbos and after a second night on the beach—this one calm, all the stars awake—we sailed for home, three of us leaving at the same time, our boats so many grey corks on a line.
As I stared back at the stricken town, I heard the gulls. “Phaon, it was bad,” I said.
“Yes, very bad, though I’ve seen worse.”
“I hope I never do.”
“These people had help...sometimes there is nobody to help.”
“We’re in the lead,” Libus cried. “We’ll be the first ones home. Now for some sleep.”
Today, I had a letter from Solon: he discussed politics and his immediate intentions and then went on to consider my poetry, praising it for its lyrical quality, refreshing themes, compassion and sense of beauty.
I respect his judgment and his quotations sent me to my books, to reconsider and evaluate. For a while, I sat at my desk, thinking over passages, contemplating the ocean, serenely blue as usual. Life, for the moment, was balanced: it had acquired profundity and calm: here was my reward since I believed his assessments just: for once, I needed no one to share: I needed nothing.
But I picked up Aesop’s clay fox and recognized my need: the bite of yesterday cornered me.
Kleis has fallen in love—this time with a cousin of Pittakos. I am amused, and have done all I dare to make the pair happy, picnicking and boating.
I have seen him at play on the field, built well, long of leg, with a homely, genial face and grin that consistently makes up for mediocrity. Like his cousin, I could add. But that’s unfair. When I see him screw up his mouth in front of Kleis, I sag. The next moment he brightens and seems about to say something intelligent. Then, the cycle resumes. Love, I remind myself, with inward nod, can be curious.
Well, I am playing the game—if it is a game—circumspectly, knowing winds can be fickle. I gather news from my girls who too often babble.
“See, how she conducts herself! She’s grown up!”
“My, they’re serious!”
I am aware of her airs.
Am I to forget her clandestine meetings of a few months ago and expect her golden head to settle down?
She confides in me and I conceal my smiles.
However, doubts from deep inside prompt me to accept and not go in for ridicule: where is another daughter, where is the boy suited to your taste? Is she to fall in love your way? Deeper, I discern the sacredness of life, elements of faith and love.
Thinking these things, I go where the hills plunge to the bay: I listen, under my parasol: there is much more than sound or silence: I am confronted by yesterday, in the gulls: I squint, and there, on milky horizon, I glimpse the spirit of man, blundering, a plant in his hand, a rope dragging behind him, a dog by his side: what is the rope for?
I think of my school and how taxing it is to teach kindness, moderation and beauty: yet, I am confident, teaching is worth while and living worth while: good meals, laughter, music, dancing, love: they are there with him and his dog and the rope, in sound or silence.
Kleis, may you find a good way, all the way.
For my part, my relationship with Phaon affords discovery, Sumerian lassitude, great rivers and forests, prowling sand, the bay and its currents, the hull dipping, the rower heaving his arms, groaning.
Illusion, deceit, whatever it is, this is the happiest period of my life.
As I walked by the columns of my garden, I recognized that never have I accomplished so much. I have unlocked doors. I see my esthetic way: my personal recollections have pulled out of ruts. I have uncovered uniqueness, sensibility... I have seen what it has cost man to survive: dunes against dunes, lack of water, perilous heat: I have weighed his potential, his grace, his beauty. I have sensed that appalling black that existed before the coming of books. I have heard torn sail and smashed rudder. I have felt the foundering.
That darkness must not come again!
We must see to that!
I walked among my statuary and benches, absorbing the difference in roses: home and happiness were secure in me: my writing must be a part of this place: marble benches, a face augustly seaward, lichened with green: another face turned toward the sun, his enigma personal, his serpent’s head prowling through a disc.
I found this in my journal, written more than fifteen years ago:
Yesterday, Cercolas and I spent the day in an olive grove where men were knocking olives off the trees...we walked far.
That is all I wrote and yet that was one of the most joyous days. What kept me from describing our happiness? Was I too close to it? Or was the next day one of those hurried days and I thought I would write about our day later on? Later?
A year later Cercolas was dead at war.
And what made those hours precious? It was our accord, the day itself and everything we saw and did. I realize this now. His arms were around me, or mine curled about his waist. His mouth went to mine, many times. Mine to his. I wish I could remember what we said but I remember his smiles and I remember his coarse brown Andrian robe and I remember how we looked at this and that, making each thing ours.
Cercolas...your name is euphonious...your fingers reach out of death...I glimpse your smile.
But is this all that remains when we are gone?
Is this the answer?
I have often relived the experience of giving birth. Had Cercolas lived, there would have been other children. Kleis was born on a summer’s day, the ocean lapping after a windy night, a dragonfly in my room, clicking its wings over my bed. Mama saw it and murmured:
“There...see it above you. Now, I know you’ll have a girl!”
Shortly afterward, Kleis was born, the dragonfly still there: how blurred, it seemed, and how the ocean faded and reappeared as I fought. I felt I would drown in sweat, drops pouring down my neck. Mama wiped my face and hands, her voice soothing, as she cooled me. I wasn’t afraid: no, a new happiness surged through me, even while my wrists were breaking and my knees afire. Even while the pain tore me, I was aware of this happiness: I was bringing life, defeating death, adding to our world. My heart sang, though sweat drenched me, and the dragonfly, clicking its green wings, seemed a ragged dot or great bird.
I was glad Cercolas wasn’t there: I tried to remember his love-making but all I could remember was pain and mother’s voice and the chatter of Exekias and the sound of the sea. When Kleis had come, I thought: my wrists are broken and my knees burn but I’m glad, glad...and mother kissed me and said: Go to sleep, darling.
When I woke, the top of the ocean had become pink and pink webbed the sky: it seemed I was staring through woven stuff, skeins in rows, with wool dropped and tumbled between: the pink darkened nearest the water and stars were visible—a sunset like many others and yet different because Kleis was here: this was her first sunset.
During exile, when Alcaeus and I had the same room and bed, he tried to make me feel our bad luck couldn’t last. He would roar against it. He might begin the bleakest day with a song.
“Hungry—let’s go beg!
“Thirsty—let’s find a fountain. There’s cool water in the shade of a carob.”
Our feet grew blistered. Days I lay on my mat, too sick to move, he brought me bread or a flower. Kneeling by me, smelling of the streets, he’d rub my hands...
“We’ll find a way.”
When we shared the big bed at Aesop’s, its sides painted with flowers, Alcaeus cheered, reminding me of our luck.
“Remember those candle stubs I found?” he laughed. “Remember the roast lamb I stole—how the guy rushed after me, jabbing the air with a knife. Remember...”
I remember my gratitude to Alcaeus and Aesop must not end. Without their help I would have died.
I dreamed the other night that Alcaeus and I were exiled again, that Alcaeus came to me, as I lay between heaps of dung: he crawled toward me, clothes in rags, exhausted, blind. I opened my cloak and offered my breast—wanting to suckle him.
Waking, I realized how late it was.
Four of us, with Libus as guest, had supper at a table on the porch, a reception to honor Anaktoria’s return...bourekakia and stuffed grape leaves, Anaktoria serving, maturer with that overnight bloom, that overnight assurance.
“Do you like bourekakia?” she asked Libus, too obviously thinking of him, offering him stuffed leaves instead of bourekakia, offering herself, at least for the night, something in that spirit, making fun of Telesippa, her newcomer rival, who was also interested in Libus, diverted, momentarily by someone’s comment about my harp, a point to bandy for effect: how charming they were, bathed and perfumed, Telesippa in her city clothes, Anaktoria in her Cretan style, Gyrinno’s jewels amusing us, the topaz swallowing her throat.
“You see Sappho’s harp has twenty strings and is for Mixolydian songs.”
The topaz tinkled and a smile went round, coaxing us to feel better.
I told them about the harp I had invented, admiring them as I talked, hair, shoulders, arms...enjoying each girl. I realized they were especially mine. No one else would have such an opportunity to influence them.
We listened while Anaktoria described her visit, her baby sister, the sailor who died on the wharf, the arrival of an Ethiopian girl, slave for a merchant. She talked as I had taught her, gestures well timed, head poised. She has lost her island mannerisms, such as gulping impulsively and biting off chunks of food.
Brushing aside her shoulder-length hair, blue eyes a little wild, Telesippa gossiped about her dressmaker, “the best in Athens,” whose “tattling is incessant.”
Libus steered the conversation to something sound and Atthis carried on: yes, no doubt, teaching helps.
Later, we sat on our terrace and passed around sweets and nuts and Libus joked, sultry jokes of the last generation, wanting to impress the girls.
Old tiles underfoot...youth around me...the thick walls of my house above the sea... I relaxed until someone mentioned Phaon and I saw him working on his boat, hands stained with oakum, knees rough from the planking.
“Phaon—I say good night to my girls. You’ll be with me, soon. Soon, I’ll be buried under your mouth.”
Tomorrow, we meet after the games on the field.
I’ll see him there, legs flashing, discus flying, his spear digging its hole. I’ll see him rock with laughter and splash himself clean.
Alone, I rubbed my hands over my body, thighs, breasts, ankles, wrists and shoulders: my flesh is firm: I know, as I sense my own integrity, that before long I must lie in death.
No waking touch on my belly and knees, no chance to comb and dress my hair at leisure, no mirror for dawdling, no winging of gulls.
Poseidon
Of the poems I have written recently, I like these most:
Love, bittersweet, irrepressible,
Loosens my legs and I tremble.
.
I could not hope
To touch the sky
With my two arms...
.
The sun sprays the earth
With straight-falling flames...
.
O, Gongyla, my darling rose,
Put on your milkwhite gown...
.
When seastorms scream across the water,
The sailor, fearing these wild blasts,
Spills his cargo overboard...
.
The night closed their eyes,
And then night poured down
Black sleep upon their lids.
Alcaeus prefers the last two.
In a vase, on my table, a white rose opens and I see the face of Anaktoria. The rose is the most perfect flower, some say. Of the two kinds, the garden and the rambler, I prefer the rambler, climbing through the night, bringing its fragrance into my room, white in the starlight, ivory in the moonlight.
The sea and its waves are something we never forget yet never remember: how the surf leaps and splits into foam, how the foam cascades into white and divides into blue. From shore to sky there is blue, in patches like marble, areas like grey and porous granite, ribbons of blue that submerge in whorls.
How quiet the blue, how serene where afternoon sun polishes a path aimed for the shore, Cretan, Ethiopian, Etruscan, where men and ships have sailed—their hieroglyphs ruddered by chance. The ocean is always chance, yet it is subdued, finally modulated by place and time. Wherever we travel, there is the element of chance, rain, storm, heat, cold, before us, deceptive, feminine, wrapping us in fog, cities, deserts, islands, birds, starry decks and windless watches.
We never remember the sea because it alters momentarily, making rainbows, spreading colonies of butterflies, floating celery stalks, turtles, heaving shells and driftwood—beaching itself with footprints that fill with seepage or disappear underneath the wave.
Cercolas and I had such fun, when we were newly married and rode our white mares, across the island and along the shore, sometimes swimming them. When the oldest became sick, I put a pillow under her head and tended her until she died, on the beach, beneath the thatch of her stable.
Cercolas took the other mare, to die with him at war, I suppose it was. How can I know?
Our horses have gone, six or seven at a time, until there are only colts and old ones—I see them on deck and in holds, their white faces peering, yellow manes shining: white, in memory of our mares, white as gulls. I wish I could hear their whinnying across the fields, as they race toward me.
Warriors brag about their fearless horses but I prefer mares that nip my hands and tug my clothes.
Music is a tree, a cave with sea water sloshing, a shell to the ear, a baby’s laughter, the lover’s “yes.” I suppose it came from the flint, the arrow. Cercolas was music. Mother was music. The loom and harp are music. I have heard music in my dreams. I dream many kinds of music when I play the harp.
I like music best at night, under the stars; I like it when I lie down in the afternoon, aware, yet not truly aware; I like it when I am up the mountain, the wind harsh; I like it when I am on the shore, the beach fire low, sparks rising, the sea almost at rest.
I like music when I eat, when I am at the theatre, or alone. Lonely music is marrow-wise, aware of secrets, revelatory in surprising ways, prying, blurring—altogether deceitful. I like the harp better than the horns. Drums frighten. The voice is best: its story is man’s, the sea’s, the mountain’s, and the sky’s.
How I used to laugh at rimes Alcaeus wrote against Pittakos:
Old Pitt, we found your cloak
Among the fish and fisherfolk;
We saw your mouth gape and perk
Whenever a blouse made something jerk.
I suppose Pittakos paid many a visit to the fisherfolk—he was young enough then. And Alcaeus was clever enough to wring every drop of satire out of P’s doings. His foolery endangered many of us. What a disgrace Pittakos remains in office. How fine it would be if Libus were empowered.
Libus says:
“There aren’t enough of us to overthrow this man...he’s entrenched till he dies. It’s better to wait. Look at Alcaeus, what has his fight gotten him? Part of his tragedy comes from his inability to overthrow this man.”
Yesterday, when I visited Alcaeus, I shivered and pulled back. Alcaeus stepped forward and grabbed my hand.
“Come, darling, we’re having a drink. Join us.”
Libus signaled me to sit down: their dining room was full of phantoms; shields glared; pennons dragged at me. With an apish grin, Alcaeus reeled across the room to bump against a table and chirp a drunken song.
It was rainy and dark and the melancholy afternoon and room closed in. You must pretend, I said to myself. Pretend he can see. Pretend there’s nothing wrong...imagine...
As the three of us drank together, a scrawny, red-fleshed boy served us, downcast, looking as if recently beaten.
As we drank, the melancholy of Alcaeus’ soul spread, seeping through taut throat muscles: intelligent things said with difficulty, good things said badly, reminiscences slightly distorted. What is more dismal than a damaged life, damaged beyond alteration, no matter how much we care? What more futile than communication at such a time?
I could not look at him but looked at Libus instead, his ephemeral face growing more ephemeral as he continued drinking, wrestling with his dogged silence.
Drink could not help... I fled home.
Mytilene
641
Three soldiers have been washed up on a raft, scarcely alive: all of them were taken to Alcaeus’ house to recover, if that is possible. Libus wanted them there, to care for them. They are islanders and had been imprisoned over a year. For days they had been adrift, paddling, foodless except for fish and birds. I hear from Thasos that one of them, not much older than Phaon, throws himself against walls and stalks about babbling to himself, begging for water.
Alcaeus is in his element, determined to help these derelicts: he’s captain again, in command: he’s kinder and more resolute with this trio, which he believes he understands: oh, I sympathize with these sun-blackened wanderers, these lovers of freedom who defied jailers. I, too, know what it is to defy, and what it costs.
I sent them food but I could not go to them.
Later, I changed my mind; I wanted to see them, to see what their failure had done to them, what their fight had cost. I decided I might be able to encourage them, so I brought Atthis and we asked Libus to let us in and we talked to two of them, giving them food and helping them eat and drink, and everything went well till the mad fellow heard us and hurled himself against the bedroom door and burst in, to collapse in a heap, jabbering, writhing, eyes rolled back.
Atthis jumped from her chair and cried:
“Uh...how terrible...like a worm!”
Libus knelt by the young man and his hands quieted him. Not a word was said: then he turned to Atthis:
“He’s been through a lot. Exposure...heat...no food... We can help him. He’ll be all right, in time.”
With a few reassuring words, he got the fellow up and led him away.
Later, I learned that one of the older men is a cousin of Phaon’s. Phaon has heard the details of their days on the raft, and I am pleased by his kindness, the hours he gives to stay with the pair.
He and Libus are restoring them: food and encouragement are cancelling horror. Even the mad fellow is mending, eating and drinking normally, talking rationally much of the time. Phaon’s cousin claims he fought with Alcaeus, but Alcaeus can’t identify his bearded soldier: is it lapse of memory?
Or was it, as the cousin says, the period when Alcaeus lay injured, the spear wound in his skull healing, those weeks of pain that brought about his blindness?
Sappho and Phaon, in a small boat,
drift seaward, oars dragging:
shimmering light seems to tow the boat seaward.
Stripping, bronze, Phaon dives
expertly and brings Sappho a handsome conch:
listening to the shell they lie in the boat
and begin to make love,
a bronze gull sculptured on the sky,
the sound of waves.
P
haon’s crew is loading his ship with pottery for Byzantium, a cargo that has to be delivered soon. This realization sharpens our love, though he thinks too little of distant voyages and I trouble him too much with warnings.
Summer is upon us and I accept the lethargy of eating, sleeping, dreaming. He likes summer heat, our damp bodies, my sticky perfume and sticky fingers... cool drinks. He enjoys fruit mixed with coconut and has had my girl prepare mixed salads...
“Fruit. In hot weather, nothing’s so good. And there’s never any fruit at sea.”
“Not for long.”
“You know...when I come back, Kleis may be married. Your family will be bigger, you know.” He talked languidly, with his cheek against mine, as we sat on the beach.
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
The thought troubled me—fixing time around me: Kleis could not be this old!
Baskets and dishes cluttered the sand around us, wind puffing, light ebbing to lavender, fog on the water, floating above the surface, a boat creeping, its mast slicing misty layers, moving between floors.
What shall I give him for luck—a charm? A coin?
Why not my mother’s drachma? She was lucky: there was no war in her time: she had lovers and then a husband to whom she was faithful. She did not have to endure an island without young men and know what it was to live among women for ten years.
Yes, the old initialed drachma of hers...
The loading of the amphorae was delayed and we sailed in his smaller boat, with a crew of three, to the bay where the wreck lies, our sailing so smooth the hem of my skirt hardly swayed. Phaon equipped us for diving and since the ocean lay incredibly calm, we located the wreck easily by tacking in circles. Kelp had snared the masts—giant legs of brown. Her masts struck fists against us, as greenish fish crossed and recrossed her deck. Splinters of light sank straws, fidg- eting straws that reached the dragon’s gold and red.
I worried, afraid of kelp and fish.
Phaon disappeared beyond our bow: his brown arms yanked at the kelp; he bobbed and swam toward me, treading water, puffing.
“Let me help you.”
“No. It’s too deep,” I refused.
He and his crewmen dove by holding rocks meshed in pieces of net; they coaxed me until I had to try, sliding down rapidly, too fast for me: I knew I could let go of the rock or jerk the line attached to it and be towed upward; I wanted to be brave and gulped and oozed out bubbles, peering up. I wanted to put my feet on the wreck but I never reached her. Lungs bursting, I swam upward, soared, unable to see clearly. My lungs hurt a long time afterward, as I lay on deck, amazed at the crew’s folly and strength: there was no end to their enthusiasm, their plunges from deck and rigging: by sunset, they had hacked through the wreck, entering the dead cabin: when we raised anchor and swung for shore I was glad, and hungry.