Sappho (32 page)

It was an honorable cremation. Many sheep and oxen were flayed. From the two-handled jars, honey was scooped out and unguents sprinkled before the fire that burned with the fat of the sacrifices. The young corpses were carried by slaves atop the twin pyres. In moments the gay-colored material of their dresses caught, making a brighter blaze.

The bodies shriveled to ash, the bones were collected in ossuaries of gold, covered with embroidered cloth, and the last embers put out with wine as each girl spilled a cup to her dead friends.

Sappho tried to soothe the grief of the hetaerae. “Noble Homer tells us Death is ‘the divine for which all men long.' Our pain is much, but we should believe him. At Dawn's coming, my black ships shall leave for Phokaea and for Rhodes.”

“Sing woe! Sing woe!” wailed her companions as they followed up from the sand shore. Each was bathed before her bed was brought.

*   *   *

The night of the cremation, Erinna of the deep breasts and slender ankles appeared. “I come to you, O Sappho, from the mists of far shores. There I stand like a beggar at the gate.”

“Why do you not go through the gate, O Erinna?” Sappho asked from sleep.

“Because you have not put Gongyla from you as you swore to me you would. Until the deathbed promise is fulfilled, I must stand outside. Do not betray me a second time, O Sappho.”

Sappho started and woke to an empty room. “I would I were dead … because of my pain.”

The next day, before the boats sailed, Damophyla clasped and kissed Sappho's knees before the hetaerae. “I return to my home, O Sappho. On the coast of Asia Minor I will sing your songs, even in Pamphylic where I was born. I will gather my own hetaerae around me and tell happy tales of our life here with glorious Sappho.”

“You earned your dower. Will you not marry?”

“After this life, I am desirous of living in art and love—I will follow your light. I will love you always, O Sappho.”

And so they parted. And the proud galleons, one for Rhodes and one for Phokaea, left with three of her hetaerae, and only one living.

When she was alone, Sappho took out her mirror. A woman looked back at her, more handsome than the girl she had been. She sighed. She was no longer young. She felt, but did not look, old. They are falling away from me, my hetaerae.

For another day, and then hour by hour, she put off sending for Gongyla. When finally the girl was before her, Sappho took a step toward her but restrained herself.

Gongyla looked at her expectantly and smiled.

“It may no longer be,” Sappho said quickly.

The girl paled, but could not understand. “Sappho, what is it?”

Sappho shook her head and spoke as from a great distance:

O, what intense desire your beauty evokes

No one could but tremble at its seduction!

And I rejoice

for it is she herself,

the Kyprian goddess, who has made you so.

She whom I blame, I invoke in prayer

Her voice broke.

“Sappho,” Gongyla cried in alarm, “what is your meaning? Speak!”

“I can no longer … we can no longer … it is Erinna, she cannot enter in at the entering gate until we part. Her shade can have no peace. I know. She talked to me and told me.”

Gongyla sank to the floor, tears on her face, a suppliant. But Sappho would not hear her and sent her away.

The instant she was gone, Sappho cried:

Come you back, my

Gongyla,

in your milk-white tunic

Then distractedly, “It is you, O Kyprian, it is you I blame. You have done your worst to me. I now fear no god.”

The words were heard.

At least they must have been, for with the words came fresh desolation. Niobe told her, none else dared. “Lady. Kleis is gone.”

“Gone?” Her emotions were used up. She spoke flatly, trying to recall anger and indignation, which once she knew well.

“She was not at the cremation,” Niobe said.

“How would she be? She was afraid to face me.”

“She was already gone, although none knew it until now.”

“I do not wonder. She could not look at what her curse brought. Where is she, at my brothers'? With Larichos? Eurygyos?”

“Lady, she is gone to that witch, Andromeda, purveyor of evil. She is gone to Gorgo. Now you know, Lady.” And Niobe bowed her head.

“I do not grieve, Niobe. As you see, I am past it. Do not fear, I will bring her back. The honor of my house demands it. But my heart has lost the ability to feel. If it were left solely to me, I would stay here and never rise. For what? For whom? But I know my duty. We will go together, Niobe, to this Andromeda who tangles with Sappho, and I will bring back the child of woe, born of a dead father. What could come of it? And yet she was a fair child.”

“You must forgive her, Lady. She is of your flesh.”

“There is no forgiveness in me, Niobe. I am empty.”

*   *   *

As Sappho left the house, Gongyla stepped from shadows. “Gentle Sappho, one thing I ask.”

They had not spoken since that cold, sere morning, and Sappho steeled herself for fresh calamity. “Say it then.”

“Do not send me away. Let me be where I can see you. I will not speak to you or touch even your hand. Only let me continue as a hetaera. I will ask nothing more of you.”

Sappho nodded. “It is well, too many have left … one way or another. Stay, Gongyla, I love you well, and we will try to be as friends.”

She hurried on, Niobe following, and in a few moments sighted on the horizon those ships carrying the ossuary jars. They had hoisted anchor and were distantly silhouetted against Sky. A final farewell rose in her for Timas. But to Erinna she murmured, “You have made my world as dark as yours.” She turned abruptly, making for the house of Andromeda. A lizard drowsed against the stone of the walls, the heavy blinking eyes followed them.

Once Sappho spoke. “There are such sorrows in my house, where formerly all was laughter, song and love.” And again she cried out: “Why does my daughter go where she will humiliate me?” Her cloak caught on a thistle, she pulled it off in disgust. “I, who have loved daintiness and dainty things, must rescue my child from a coarse woman who deals with a leather-maker.” She wrapped her mantle more securely around her. “I feel as though I am about to enter the House of Hades.”

“She is only a countrified woman who has no power at all,” Niobe assured her mistress.

“She had power to pull Gorgo to her and now Kleis. O, Niobe! Those harm me worst by whom I have done well.”

Niobe nodded agreement. “It is ever so.”

The way was steep, the day turning hot, Niobe opened a parasol and held it over her lady's head. It was rude farmland and the base of olive roots obtruded, running along the ground in gnarled shapes.

The wall they came to was of heaped stones and, where they had tumbled down, there they were left. They were within sight of the main house now, which was also in disrepair.

Sappho felt many eyes upon her, though no one was to be seen. She hailed the house. A figure she knew well came out—it was Gorgo. Gorgo of exalted lineage who had turned Dika from her. With exaggerated courtesy Sappho addressed her: “Many greetings to the daughter of many kings.”

Gorgo flushed. There was a smell about the place of the ass, the bull, and the goat, all lustful, rutting creatures, thralls of their own low natures.

Sappho stood apart with her nine Muses. “I have heard a certain Andromeda is mistress here. I would have a word with her.”

“I will see if she has time to see you,” Gorgo answered insolently.

Sappho's eyes smoldered. “Tell the woman Sappho is here.”

Gorgo entered the house, returning with a person who looked “like a worn-out dishcloth hanging wet,” as Sappho afterward described her. To wear a peplos at the knees was extravagant, but above the knee was indecent.

Sappho was so struck by this ungainly form and figure that she stood mute.

Gorgo spoke, and her words were full of venom: “The notorious Sappho seeks audience with you, O skilled Andromeda.”

This audacious speech brought Sappho's wits back. “Sappho does not seek audience with any such as this. I come for my daughter, Kleis, child of the prince Kerkolas of Andros.”

Andromeda surveyed her critically as though she had not heard. “She is smaller than I thought,” she said to Gorgo, “and of a more swarthy complexion.”

“Small I am,” cried Sappho, “but a name which fills all the world is mine.” She approached the pair. “She-dog! Bring my daughter.”

“And if your daughter does not wish to go with you?”

“She will come. Fetch her, Gorgo.”

“I am no longer one of your hetaerae to do your bidding.”

“It is not by my wish that I am standing here in a place that stinks of the barnyard. I have come for my daughter, and you shall give her up, for I did not come alone, but in company of those I pray to, even the holy Nine. If you wish curses, then will my sisters put them on my lips and all your life be withered.”

Gorgo could not withstand Sappho's fury. “Of such things talk not. Kleis is here.”

But Andromeda stayed her and spoke directly in a bold voice to Sappho. “You wear a chain of amber and gold. Some things can be traded.”

“And some cannot. My patience is done. Give me Kleis.”

Her daughter walked out, with clothes dirtied and hair uncombed. Her hands at her sides were clenched as though she did battle with herself. But her expression was disdainful; she might be wearing coan and exquisite trinkets instead of a smudge across her face.

The mother's heart in Sappho foundered at sight of her child, and she rushed to her. “Kleis, have any here mistreated you?”

Gorgo whispered, “Do not answer.”

But Kleis had the clear intention of bringing pain upon her mother. “I am no longer virgin, if that is your meaning. I was bloodied, but by no man.”

Andromeda laughed and poked between the girl's thighs, where caked streaks of dried blood still adhered. Niobe threw her own cloak around Kleis and led her away.

Sappho stared steadily at Andromeda. “May you burn in the Lemian volcano, from which Prometheus stole fire, and may wild dogs dig out your bones.”

None dared longer dispute with her, for her anger was greater than she, and it was clear a god had hold of her.

Sappho turned and motioned her daughter to follow.

“Walk five paces behind,” Niobe told Kleis. “None may touch you until you have been given a ritual bath.”

Kleis began to cry. “They were all laughing at me.”

“I do not wish to hear,” Sappho said.

“They told me if I did not bring them joy, they would rub me with bitch's blood, tie me in the courtyard, and let loose the hounds.”

Sappho did not answer her daughter, but from the rise stood a moment and called Andromeda in that same terrible voice. “You shall suffer for what you did to me.” For at that moment she made no distinction between herself and Kleis. It had been done to her.

*   *   *

Within the walls of the House of the Servants of the Muses Niobe tended Kleis. When she had been cleansed in each crevice and fold of her body, when her skin glistened with sweet Athenian oils and her hair shone and was bright with flowers, a tunic of white was put over her body and she was led to her mother.

Sappho regarded her sadly. “You are no longer a child, and I can no longer protect you. Neither can I clasp you as a daughter. We have done each other too much hurt. But my home is your home. And when you marry I will dower you handsomely. When we meet we will speak to each other with comfortable words. It is seemly.”

“I understand,” Kleis said calmly.

But I do not, Sappho thought when she was once more alone. No matter which way I turn, it is toward pain. What happens to love, the overflowing love for the infant at one's breast? How can the grapes of one's own vineyard poison one? “Hide me,” she begged the All-Father, “in a thick mist that I cannot be found!”

She wandered halls from which joy had departed, desolate without Gongyla, grieving for her daughter. “Man's fate,” she cried, “is decided on his knees.”

She rededicated herself to the Muses and kept to her room. In these melancholy, hopeless days, she sang some of her sweetest verse:

O, evening star, you bring

all that the blithe dawn has

scattered wide;

You bring the sheep;

you bring the goats;

you bring home the

child to its mother

But it could not be. Kleis was lost to her, though she saw her every day.

A
TTHIS

News was brought that her brother Kharaxos sailed with his fleet for the Lesbian port, being returned from the Egyptian city of Naukratis, where the Nile ran in a hundred tributaries. It had been an expedition of five years, during which she had not seen his face.

His vessels with their stiff sails and many rowers had been sighted, and were no rumor, but a rumor accompanied them. It was said that with him was no other than Alkaios the poet—the same she had consigned to death rather than give up her child to Gello, that shade whose famished kisses drew the living breath from the very young.

The possibility that Alkaios was alive and sailed with her brother was more than she could absorb. For years she lived in the belief that she had caused his death. Now she was afraid to let herself hope. Her old companion, dear, irreverent Alkaios!

She rushed up and down the stairs of her home, giving orders that everything be put in readiness to receive guests. They would be showered with flowers and walk on cloth of purple to the steps of her home. She devised tempting and exotic menus of caviar, oysters, lobster, crab, and cuttlefish. Snails and anchovies fried in condiments were laid out, highly spiced cheeses, sausage and onions, all strongly salted to arouse the wish for wine. Slaves would cool the foreheads of her guests with pomade, tightrope performers balance above them, oiled and naked. Jars were handed up from the well so that wine bars and seafood bars might be set up. Giant candelabra and fish bladders overhung them filled with tallow, waiting to be lit.