Sappho (47 page)

She no longer felt the cart beneath her. The jolting caused the many pictures of Phaon to break apart and become jumbled. New images were juxtaposed against a moving network of branches flying overhead and a countryside that flowed as with a strong current.

They told him I was old, his drinking companions in the tavern. They laughed at the fool who was beguiled by an old woman. Against laughter, magic crumbles.

Would the foam-born goddess close Phaon's eyes to her years? For she had not worked all her guile on him, nor told all her stories, nor sung all her songs. She had so much more to pour out to him. Would he forgive her stripping every last trinket of gold from her body and throwing them at him? Would he forgive her arrogance?

He must. For it was no longer she who had done this thing, but the scapegoat. Had she not gone to the town of her birth and bestowed her name—a great and famous name, none more so—on that loathsome creature who sold the hole in her body for a loaf of bread, a crust even?

Sappho laughed wildly. What would the woman do with all her wealth, the flashing gems, the ancient coins of fine workmanship, the many ornaments of precious metals heavily embossed? She would set herself up as chiefest of the prostitutes, a second Doricha. She, too, someday would purchase virtue with iron spits! Her laughter was uncontrollable, like rumbling thunder unloosed.

She wanted to fly to Phaon, go at once to his ship. But how carefully he would scrutinize her now! She must be able to endure his closest inspection. She needed Niobe and her women. She needed a warm bath, oils from many lands, and royal essences, also the whites of eggs and mastic and white lead. She needed all of that to hide behind. And the goddess, Kyprus-born, before whom she made herself as nothing—she needed her intervention most of all.

Aphrodite would make Phaon the sleeping child he had been, loving her, listening to her tales, filled with her enchantments.

When the jolting at last ended and she was at her own door, her eunuch did not recognize the disheveled person as his mistress. He stepped forward to bar her entrance.

She laughed in his face, the wild laugh recently born in her.

Niobe, when she saw her, began murmuring prayers. She led Sappho to her bath.

“O Niobe, good friend … do you not know … I made a bargain with a goddess.”

“Hush,” Niobe breathed as though to a young child.

Sappho fell asleep in her marble pool. But on taking a deep breath, she inhaled the good and rare scent with which they were rubbing her palms and the bottom of her feet. Her hair, too, was washed and perfumed. A sponge was plunged into a jar of Athenian oil and passed over her body. A smile appeared on her face, though her eyes were not open. She had never been so weary. They rubbed and massaged her limbs, and she knew no more.

Was this rosy-ankled and golden Dawn, the Dawn that followed the night of her return? She sprang up as one reborn. No sin, no stain was on her. She looked into her heart and found it was the heart of a child. She could forgive Khar anything, even the blow, even the White Rose.

Breakfast was brought, and she called Niobe. “I am feeling well after my good night's sleep; the world is smiling.”

But Niobe did not smile, nor did she tell her mistress it had not been an ordinary sleep, but one of two days, during which she lay like one drugged.

Sappho did not notice her silence. “Prepare me, Niobe. I would myself look like a goddess. I am willing to spend the entire day to accomplish this.”

Niobe stood unmoving before her.

“There is something you want to say, Niobe? Tell me, but do not let the telling interrupt your hands. I am in a hurry to begin our preparation.”

“There is no need to hurry, Mistress. He is gone.”

Her heart began to beat crazily against her sides, an uneven pounding. “Who?”

She knew, but she listened while Niobe told her that her brother had entered Phaon's ship. “He did not stay long. Of what he spoke, you know. For after Lord Kharaxos departed, Phaon laid in supplies for a long trip, they say to Ithaca. And two days ago he raised the square sail and was gone from Lesbos.”

The world slid away.

“Lady? Lady?”

She fought her way up from the nether world of Tartarus, past the River Styx. “Niobe, ready me. I will see this brother of mine, this traitor, a final time. Does he forget we are of one house?”

Niobe's hands flew about her; slaves knelt holding precious ointments and jewels from which to choose.

“Good Niobe, you followed me into two exiles. And when I wanted to give you freedom, you would not take it. Niobe, make a last journey with me. Ready the chests for Sea. Take from here all goods that may be carried, and those retainers who are loyal. Provision my fleetest ship. This day we sail after Phaon!”

“Lady!” Niobe's despair shook her voice.

“Do you fear the anger of Lord Kharaxos? Stay then, and learn who is stronger.”

“I fear only for you, Lady.”

“For me? Surely not for me. I am sister to the Muses. I am Sappho.”

“Strange portents scourge the air, Lady. Your brother's wife hates you…”

“His wife?”

“They were married, with all your family gathered. It was a lavish wedding, but it lacked greatly, for it lacked the songs of Sappho.”

“All my family present? Eurygyos and Larichos can forgive Khar his born slave, his prostitute … and they cannot forgive me?”

“That is not the worst, Lady. There are ominous signs. Word comes from Eresos that a woman of the streets, vile past description in her reputation, is telling everyone that she is Sappho of Lesbos. And this creature, who was wretched before, now has riches past counting.”

Sappho nodded her head. “What do you make of it, Niobe?”

“I do not know, Lady.”

“Know this, then, that we go to Ithaca, to Sicily, to Poseidon's kingdom, to the gates of Hades' domain if necessary. My swifter Syracusan craft will overtake Phaon.”

“And then, Lady?”

Sappho struck Niobe full in the face. “Are you saying you cannot make me young again? You cannot make me beautiful? Well, you shall! You hear me, you shall!”

Niobe wept, but not for the blow.

“Do not pity me!” Sappho screamed at her. “I am blest of the Muses. They walk at my side. So, too, does the Kyprus-born. Forces and powers have I more than my brothers. And there is no mortal who can separate me from Phaon. He did not sail away from me, Niobe, but went in fear of the Prince Kharaxos. And he was right to go—he is only a diver after sponges. He cannot stand against the might of my house.

“But I will see this brother I was ready to forgive, who makes a slave a wife and censoriously denounces me and sends off the man I hold dearer than the world. Yes, I shall see this brother. Let him look at me, whom he has so wronged.”

“Lady, perhaps if you spoke with Lord Alkaios, he might help or at least prevent…”

“Lord Alkaios is drunk in some public house. It is not Alkaios but my brother I will see. And you, meanwhile, make ready for the journey, and never think to see this house, or these fields and orchards again, for you will not. Nor your children either. Now, have you finished? Am I beautiful? Good. Then bring the driver.”

The fellow did not come willingly, but was beaten to his post. On Sappho's order they drove off.

Like one of the Erinyes she appeared at her brother's estate, putting his servants into a quandary. “One does not announce a sister,” she told them and walked into the main hall, where Doricha and Khar lounged together with a zither player, who sang songs other than hers. They had been laughing, drinking wine, pelting each other with flowers. At sight of her they stopped.

Sappho called on her brother by name. “You shall suffer for what you did to me!”

“Phaon? He was lucky I didn't dispatch him on the spot and leave him to rot on his own mast, run up like a bloodied sail.”

“What evil daimone possesses you, that you want to destroy not only yourself, but me? I have only loved you, Khar. Countless are the sacrifices and prayers I sent after you. Costly purple I spread at your feet on your return. What did I ever do to you except warn you against this Medea? Do you know what you have done? Call the Persian mourners, the Cissian wailers, for you have sent your sister out on the wild Sea.”

Khar leapt to his feet as though he would seize hold of her and stop her. “Sappho, are you mad to think of chasing after that boy?”

“They are my ships, and you cannot prevent it.”

“In what a twisted way you persist in seeing things, Sappho. I am not your enemy. I spared his life, and by sending him on his way, I spared your dignity. If now you will forget him and return to your house, the scandal will be forgotten. But if you go after him, where once you were revered, you shall be laughed at.”

Sappho smiled at him the smile he had been afraid of since he was an infant. “I've taken care of my posterity. I promise you when I die, I shall not be forgotten. Six books I leave to Alkaios on which will depend the fame of our age. For this was Sappho's time upon Earth, and I took it all tender and green to my breast. It was my child. I have no other. And if at any moment you are still my brother, bring offerings in my name to the priestesses of Dionysos. I would not want Kleis to go hungry—although I've thought recently that she is dead.… You did me much harm, Khar. I never did you any.”

“I have saved your reputation, that is what I have done.”

“You have driven me from Lesbos. We will not see each other again in life.”

As she left, Khar called after her, using her childhood name, “Little Pebble!”

She did not turn.

Niobe and her people were already aboard the ship, and being stowed were what remained of Sappho's worldly possessions. A wool mantle was placed around her shoulders by Niobe's eldest daughter, and for the last time she was rowed from the twin harbors.

In open sea the route to Ithaca was by way of Corinth. They sailed past Chios and Andros, and the desolate island of Leucas, where they had put in on her journey to Syracuse.

At Corinth she inquired everywhere along the harbor for word of Phaon's slower vessel. No one, however, could be sure if he had even passed that way. His small and undistinguished craft was not remembered. Sappho gave the order to reprovision the vessel and make straight for Ithaca. She was prepared to sail until they came to Sea's rim and plunged over it.

The second day a fog descended and all landmarks were obscured. The captain prayed aloud to Poseidon of the blue hair and to Hecate, who gives aid to men who sail dark and treacherous waters.

Sappho did not pray to anyone. She spoke directly to the gods as men used to do. “If wanting to embrace his hands, his calves, feel his firm round arms about me, if this makes me dissolute … then the world has changed since Zeus himself loved. My heart is eager. You, Hera, oversaw it. You, Aphrodite, ordained it.”

She did not seek the shelter of the tent, but stood alone in a shrouded, unknowable world. It occurred to her that perhaps at moments like this one saw it best, not suborned by its pretty broidery in which the gods dressed it to beguile human senses. This blankness was as true a picture as sunny fields. Was one more true than the other? The world held all indifferently in spite of libations poured and prayers sent up in perfumed smoke.

For this blasphemy, they were driven back upon the route they had traversed. They were pitched northward almost upon the inhospitable bluffs of Leucas. The white fog seemed to harden before her eyes. But it was not fog, it was the rock of desperation, that monstrous white wall of stone rising between Earth and Heaven. For the second time a ship under her steered for the small hidden cove and beached there.

Anything repeated had, for Sappho, great mystery. Why did the lapping waves wash her up here again, all these years later? It was no accident, for calm and storm were under Poseidon's control.

She remembered the shrine to Apollo that she had climbed at the start of her exile to Syracuse. Was it really twenty-five years ago? Had Apollo, who never lied, a message for her? Perhaps Phaon had been blown by a like wind to this very shore. It might be he had left some word at that lonely place of worship, which surmounted the great cliff. She knew this was impossible, and yet it would explain the strange sense of destiny that had taken hold of her.

“I will visit the shrine,” she said to Niobe.

“Day will be toward its finish when you reach the god Apollo, Lady,” Niobe cautioned.

“I will go.”

“Then take a taper for the descent.”

“My eyes are cat's eyes; they see well in the dark.”

“I do not like this place, Lady. The sailors say that criminals were once thrown from the top to be dashed upon the rocks.”

“Yes,” Sappho replied, recalling the tale, “with birds tied to their shoulders so that if by some chance innocent … they should not die, but be borne gently down.”

“You have no birds, Lady.”

Sappho smiled. “Nor need of any.”

She climbed, remembering the springing steps that once carried her like a young goat up the trail. The way seemed to her now much longer. Her breath was short and seemed to desert her. She took in air by mouth and this made her light-headed. Sweat was crawling on her brow like a fly. She brushed it away. She thought she detected the edge of Gongyla's milk-white dress as she slipped around a bend. But she saw now, it was little Timas, precious giver—and she laughed at the purple kerchief tied about her statue's head.

She stopped to pick flowers, and Atthis bent to pick them with her, as the two of them had done so often. A heavy braid fell over Atthis's shoulder. “Atthis? O Atthis, there is a corner of my heart for you—”

Farther on, she discovered a wild and thorny rose, which she plucked with care and added to the bunch that Apollo might have a token from her. Her heart was pounding. How long it had taken her to understand that love with sorrow is mated. “It's all right,” she told Kleis. Kleis had come to take care of her. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Kleis had come. “Thank you, darling.”