Sappho (18 page)

If only Khar were here to lead the young men of the chorus, if only Alkaios had written the nuptial songs … Surely some god or daimone had possession of her—this loss of control was not like her. The splendid bridal raiment was girded about her; it fell sheer, the popular wet look in rainbow hues. If it was a daimone, why had not the bath in holy water sent it from her? Niobe was plaiting roses in her hair. It struck her that Niobe had been silent and withdrawn during these preparations.

Am I to worry what my slave thinks of my marriage? Sappho asked herself distractedly. The three bells above the arch of her door began to ring with much rope pulling. “Hymenaeus! The bridegroom draws near!”

Sappho waved her women back and, without glancing at Niobe, went alone to the entry threshold. When Kerkolas dismounted—his hair in a wreath, his white mantle falling to golden sandals—he looked a young god. Her fears fell away and she welcomed him to her house.

He responded with the traditional “Hail to thee, O bride, O Sappho!”

“Hail to thee, Kerkolas, son of noble Archias. Hail, O bridegroom!” And she continued the ode she had composed to honor him:

To what, dear bridegroom,

may I rightly liken thee?

To a slender sapling

do I most rightly liken thee

Her phrases dazzled the company. It was true elegance, yet deceptively simple, even as the bride herself.

The wine-mixers poured according to their mistress's orders, and the drink that makes glad the hearts of men flowed. Sacrifice was made. Kerkolas caught her eye and smiled his approval.

Everything was tasteful beyond criticism. There had been more lavish feasts—his own would be—but none was more correct, or served with more grace. Between the bringing and taking of tables there were ewers of water for rinsing the fingers, and slave girls knelt before the guests, offering their long perfumed hair as towels.

Toward sunset Kerkolas led her from her home. She stepped into his bedecked chariot, whose matched bays with cyclamen-braided manes pranced and danced. The dancing horses of Syracuse were famous. But Kerkolas confided to her, laughing, that they were an embarrassment when ridden into battle. Wedding torches, scented and flaming, formed a path to Kerkolas's villa, where they alighted, passing under a canopy of rare herbs and twisted ivy. A flute sounded, confetti fell on them and strains of the Hymenaean were taken up:

Hammer up the rafters now

At the wedding.

Raise them high, carpenter-men,

At the wedding.

The bridegroom is as tall as Ares,

At the wedding.

Far taller than the tallest men,

At the wedding.

Towering as does the Lesbian poet

At the wedding.

Over the poets of other countries,

At the wedding.

As they approached the traditional household gods, the maidens held hands. It was the signal. Kerkolas seized Sappho in his arms and carried her to the wedding chamber. Although he flung the lock quickly, the pounding commenced at once. Kerkolas set her down and they stood on either side of the door. It sounded as though the merrymakers intended to break it down. But the girls began the song she had coached them in, a tribute to virgin girlhood, the young men answering that it is better far to be a wife and mother.

A bed had been placed in the chamber, heaped like a shrine with softest petals, the silken underdraperies touched with royal perfume. Candlelight flickered from a discreetly placed wall bracket. Outside, the girls began a new song:

And we maidens spend all the night at this door,

singing of the love between you, blessed bridegroom,

and your bride of the violet scented breast. And

when the dawn is come and you arise and depart, may

the great god Hermes direct your feet

whither you shall find no more ill-luck

than we tonight shall find sleep

Kerkolas took a step toward her and removed the coan veil, letting it fall to the floor. The quince had been prepared and in silence they each took a bite. In a golden cage two sparrows hopped, symbols of fertility, birds sacred to Aphrodite.

Kerkolas reached to unfasten her peplos. His hands were very large. She had never noticed how large his hands were. They undid her dress. Her small person was before his glance. There was no hair on her body, and the points of her breasts were rouged. At sight of this, he divested himself of his bridegroom's white, and unruly desire swelled his organ. The phallus carried in procession during the festival of Dionysos, the phallus as ornament, as votive, was one thing, but the flesh raised to pierce her was enormous, a weapon of horn.

“You madden me.” He pressed her against him, and she began to struggle. Cyclops and Enceladus of the Hundred Arms had hold of her. Sky collided with Earth and brought her down. Sappho beat with small ineffectual fists. Sky smashed upon her in a battle that caused hot blood to run down her legs.

It was rape. He forced his organ into the center of her body. She battled frenziedly, pushing at what she conceived to be a he-ass, the most lustful of all creatures. The agony of her penetrated hymen coincided with the sobbing notes of a nightingale. Or was it herself sobbing in fury? Her hips attempting to swivel away excited him further; he thrust deeper. She could not believe this terrible invasion of her person, this ramming, this humiliation, legs spread, blood everywhere. Her dignity was gone. He had mastered her.

Outside the door she could hear the young voices:

Come dear girls,

let us cease our singing,

for day is nigh at hand

Even as she was violated, she swore to keep her mind and her thought virgin, never to allow them to be trespassed against, never to share them. He thought he had found and ploughed and made the very core of her his own preserve. He had not. Sappho bloodied was virgin still.

Her husband fell back beside her, breathing hard, well pleased. His proud organ shriveled. It was laughable. He had spent himself on her, and she was not spent at all, only wounded. Women, in this moment, were stronger than men.

“Wipe yourself with your chiton, Sappho, that I may toss it out the door.”

“Have we not in the chamber an infusion of red berries for that?”

“You think I want to be a laughingstock? You think men cannot tell the difference between juice and a girl's maiden blood?”

Sappho got up as though to obey him, but instead poured a ewer of water over her extremities.

“What have you done?” Kerkolas cried out in protest.

“I have washed.”

“Oh, very well.” He ripped a bit of linen that had been under her and, opening the door a crack, waved it. There was a resounding cheer from the males. The rite was accomplished. The penis, the life-giver, had subdued the poet Sappho.

She did not close her eyes that night. She was on fire against this bull, this he-goat that slumbered in a state of unconsciousness beside her. She looked directly into the gleaming eye of Selene, the moon goddess. Sappho spoke to her, mind-to-mind, saying: “I see now that I am not as other women, or the race should have ended before this. I cannot endure such profanation. I cannot, I who value all that is delicate and dainty since my childhood, cannot tolerate the violence of this weapon upon my flesh. It must be that I am other than woman.

“I see the gods made only one of me as an experiment—poet I am, who finds my own gentler sex more fair, more graceful, and more desirable. Yet I do not wish to play the part that a man does. But I confess, I have tonight a longing for my Leto, to caress her with tender fingers, to kiss with my lips the swelling of the apex, to bring her joy and fulfillment, while receiving her pink tongue into my mouth and bestowing touches that bring not a bloody night, but a moist warm one.… Only by now Leto is a wife who wallows in the thighs of the wheat-haired peasant and does his bidding and is whacked on her backside in passing. A child pulls on the roseate teats and drags them down, no round, soft swelling now, but bags. And when her man has made her old and ugly, he picks up with a pretty boy.

“Passion was given me, the gods know; it goes hand in hand with Erato, violet-wreathed Muse of Poetry. But coarseness and crudity and the invasion of my body seem the grossest kind of love. I dream in another manner—of an insinuating hand, a light stroking, lips pressed … everywhere!

“This is why it is called the Night of Secrets. For not until you have experienced your wedding night do you know what kind of love it is you long for. And then it is too late. For what can I do now? I am trapped as surely as any small creature caught in a cruel snare. Sing woe! Sing woe!”

*   *   *

Gradually Sappho gave up her fantasies. She knew now, having gained entrance into the Syracusan society she so longed for, that she would never be at home in it. She became acquainted with the unmarried girls, whom she taught wedding songs. But they were a tightly bound group, having known each other since childhood, and it was hard to find a place among them. The matrons, on the other hand, were busy with young families. They chattered of cutting teeth, how to reduce swelling in infant gums, of colic and first steps.

She realized reluctantly there was to be no close attachment with her own sex. As before, she attended parties given by her husband. Too often, cocks and quails were set at each other, fighting until they were torn into remnants of still-living flesh. It is true that her husband's Persian cupbearer offered the goblet charmingly with three fingers, but during the same evening a stammerer, as a forfeit, was made to sing, and a bald man mimed combing his hair. Sappho found this adolescent humor so boring that, when they brought out the wicker baskets of dice, she would wander into the room that held the carved chest. Very often she removed the iron-bound book, touching its petal-thin pages.

Kerkolas's ships returned laden after a voyage to Kyprus, and he gave a feast to which the Archon was invited. This was the first occasion since their marriage two months past that Sappho was invited to hear her own songs. Kerkolas did not feel it proper for her to perform them. “That puts you in the position of an entertainer.”

“An oboe player?” she suggested.

“It is more seemly,” he replied, “to let others sing.”

For the most part her verse was adequately presented by a professional bard. But this evening the cadence was delivered faultily. Although her lips did not move, Sappho had been repeating the poem along with the singer. At the failure in accuracy, she broke off.

Despair filled her. Everywhere in the civilized world her work was sung, but how could she be assured it was done correctly? She was obsessed by this thought, tormented at dependence on any wandering minstrel.

Then it occurred to her … Kerkolas kept accounts in writing, carefully recording the talents of gold and the worth of items from each voyage. And physicians frequently wrote out remedies, nostrums, and treatments. Why not use writing to set down her songs as she sang them? Alkaios had done so from high Pyrrha. Even Pittakos had written out his laws, impressing them on wood for all to read. Would not poetry be a better use of writing? Why not a book of poetry? The thought was surely from her nine sisters, and she rose from bed to spill wine to them.

She had insisted on a night chamber separate from her husband's. How glad she was of that now. There had been times in her loneliness when she wished that the desire to visit her would come more often to Kerkolas. But he was occupied with his pretty cupbearer. She wanted not Kerkolas, but any distraction. And now suddenly there was a secret purpose to which to dedicate herself. And for it she needed lonely and unsleeping nights.

She went to the room that held the chest and, setting aside a tray containing her husband's accounts, carefully removed the stylus. She had last used it in preparing the wedding message for her mother, and had an understanding of the technique. It would be a simple matter to transfer a poem onto rolls of papyrus.

She set everything up as though she were a marketplace scribe and pressed out her latest verse:

Love, the wild heart

Hours later, when she crept into bed, sleep leapt on her.

*   *   *

Now that she had found herself again, it was time to broach her long-cherished plan to Kerkolas. She made a treaty with her husband. “Kerkolas, I want to say something to you.”

“Speak then, Sappho.”

“It is these endless parties. You waste your time at them. You are a distinguished man in Syracuse. We could make our home a center of culture, a waystation where poets and sculptors, philosophers, persons of far-flung fame come as guest-friends. I dream of holding converse with the great minds of our time. Would this not be a better use of your leisure, husband?”

“I suppose so. Yes, of course. But I cannot give up old friendships.”

“I see that, and it is reasonable, indeed loyal, of you. But let there be less cockfighting and gaming, so there can be more poetry and song.”

The bargain was struck. It gratified Kerkolas to think the famous and celebrated would flock to his door. It pleased him, too, that his wife was a magnet to attract world luminaries.

The invitations left on the next vessel and, as the wait would be long, Sappho set about to regain the friendship of her husband. She rhymed for him a song of his untold riches, writing of the things beyond price that came from his vessels:

I love delicate living,

and for me

richness and beauty

belong to the desire of the sunlight

She grew impatient. How long was it possible to wander cultivated gardens and sit by splashing fountains? She sang softly to herself.