The Walled Orchard (15 page)

‘I’m sorry,’ I mumbled. My lip hurt where she had banged it against my lower teeth, and when she kissed me, I winced. ‘That does it,’ she said, and she folded her arms across her breast.

‘Don’t be like that,’ I said; but for some reason I felt rather relieved, just as I used to feel when the schoolmaster said, ‘You obviously don’t know it, do you? Sit down and let’s hear from someone who does.’ There was something not exactly inviting about Phaedra, just then.

‘I’ve met some cack-handed people in my time,’ she went on, ‘but you’re just about the worst, do you know that? This is supposed to be the happiest day of my life, you realise. That’s a joke.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re pathetic.’ She blew her breath out through her teeth. ‘And for God’s sake shut your mouth. You look like a dead tuna.’

‘Oh.’

She closed her eyes. ‘And what did you think you were playing at, dragging me through the door like that? Anyone with any sense would have realised I was bound to catch my feet on the threshold, especially in those ridiculous sandals they made me wear. And now I’ll have everybody saying I’m unlucky, and the maids blaming me if the milk goes sour.’

‘I don’t believe in all that stuff,’ I said soothingly.

‘I do,’ she replied sharply. ‘I suppose you don’t believe in the Gods, either.’

‘Yes I do.’

‘That’s not what I heard,’ she muttered. ‘I heard that you go around with that Euripides, who thinks that the Gods are all states of mind or something, and Helen of Troy was spirited away to Egypt before the Trojan War. Absolute rubbish.’

I felt I had missed something somewhere. ‘What’s Helen of Troy got to do with anything?’ I asked.

‘Do you believe in the Gods or don’t you?’

‘Of course I believe in the Gods. Phaedra, this is our wedding-night.’

‘You’ve realised that, have you? Oh
good.’

I put my hand on her shoulder. She removed it with her finger and thumb, as if it was a spider. ‘And what sort of man,’ she went on, ‘gets called up for military service on his wedding-day? When they told me I couldn’t believe it. I thought they were being funny, honestly I did.’

‘That’s not my fault, is it?’ I said. I felt as if I was arguing with five different people at once, all about different things.

‘Well let’s just get one thing straight, shall we?’ she said. ‘There’ll be none of that nonsense till you get back, and that’s final.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. If you think you’re going to get me pregnant and then wander off and get yourself killed fooling about in Samos, and leave me to bring up your horrible little child on my own—’

‘Phaedra—’

‘I am a free-born Athenian woman, not a breeding heifer. Have you made a will?’

‘What did you say?’

‘Deaf as well as feckless,’ she confided to the pillow. ‘I said, have you made a will?’

‘No.’

‘Well, don’t you think you should?’

I blinked. ‘What, now?’

‘For God’s sake,’ she snapped, ‘you’re going off to war in the morning. Have you no sense of responsibility?’

I took a deep breath, closed my mouth firmly, and tried to draw her towards me. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not till you—’

I think that must have been the last straw for the housemaid’s children, for there was a shriek of childish laughter, and Phaedra’s face went bright red. She hopped out of bed, grabbed the chamber-pot, opened the door and let fly. Unfortunately there was nothing in it.

‘Go away!’ she shouted — I hadn’t realised how loud her voice was — and slammed the door. ‘You buffoon,’ she said.

‘What have I done?’

‘How could I marry someone so unlucky?’ She flopped back into bed and pulled the coverlet over herself, right up to her chin. ‘You realise this’ll be all over Athens in the morning?’

I shook my head feebly. ‘Phaedra—’

‘What makes it worse,’ she said, ‘is those stupid plays of yours.’

‘What?’

‘You’ll never live it down,’ she sighed, ‘once Aristophanes and those other idiots hear about it. And people will point to me in the street, and say—’

‘Shut up, will you?’ My head was just about to split. I could feel it pulling apart, like a log full of wedges.

‘Don’t you talk to me like that,’ she yapped, ‘or you can sleep on the floor.’

‘I might just do that anyway,’ I replied.

‘Good.’ She made a snuffling noise which was presumably meant to be weeping, but I suddenly realised I couldn’t be bothered. I leaned over her, pinched out the lamp, and banged my head down hard on the pillow.

‘Now what are you doing?’ she said.

‘Going to sleep,’ I said through the pillow. ‘You can do what you like.’

She said quite a lot after that, and I found it strangely soothing, for I actually fell into a sort of a doze. When I came round from it, my headache had gone completely and she was fast asleep, with her nose pressed against the back of my neck. Very gingerly, so as not to wake her, I turned and looked down at her.

One of my father’s neighbours used to tell the story of the creation of woman; how the Good Gods moulded woman’s body out of clay, making it more lovely than anything else in the world, and left it to dry in the sun, and how while they were away, the Bad Gods came and put woman’s soul into it, so that mortal men should never know quiet and happiness. I will never forget how beautiful Phaedra looked just then. A strand of hair had fallen over one of her eyes, and I stroked it back over her forehead; then I tried to kiss her, but her lips were half-buried in the pillow, and I only managed to make contact with the corner of her mouth. I slid a finger down under her chin to lift her face, but she woke up, said, ‘Get off,’ and rolled over on to her other side.

‘No,’ I said. ‘Come back here.’

‘Go to hell,’ she yawned. ‘You snore, too. I hope the Samians get you.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘It means that, right now, given a choice between you and no husband at all…’

‘Look…’

She wriggled away on to the edge of the bed. ‘Given a choice …’ she repeated; then she was suddenly quiet. My soul was whispering something to me, and then everything seemed to fall into place, like a wheel fitting on to an axle before the pin is driven home.

‘So that’s what’s wrong with you,’ I said.

‘Look who’s talking.’

I sat up and rubbed my eyes. ‘Seriously, though,’ I said.

‘What is it now?’

‘Whenever I asked people about you,’ I said, ‘I always got the impression that there was something I ought to know, but I could never find out what it was.’

She made a despairing face, as if I were a troublesome child who could not be bribed, not even with a slice of honeycomb. ‘Go to sleep,’ she said wearily.

‘But I never thought…’ At that moment, I hated the sound of my own voice, high and infantile in the dark and nothing to do with me, ‘I honestly never thought it could be as simple as…’

‘As what?’

‘As a really filthy temper,’ I said, driving the words through the gate of my teeth like unwilling sheep. ‘That’s what it is, isn’t it? Do you throw things as well, or do you just shout?’

‘I have not got a filthy temper,’ she shouted. Just for a moment, I sensed that I had the advantage, and I was glad.

‘And that’s what everybody else knew, and I didn’t,’ I continued, raising my voice and not caring what it sounded like. ‘That’s what your father managed to keep from me. That’s what Aristophanes meant when he said…’

‘That’s absolutely typical, isn’t it,’ she hissed. ‘It’s all right for men to yell and throw things about, oh yes. They’re allowed to be as loud-mouthed and disgusting as they like, especially when they’re going about in packs like dogs. I suppose when you come home in the middle of the night with vomit all down your cloak and some pretty boy you’ve picked up in the Shoemakers’ Quarter—’

‘I might have known,’ I went on, leading my picked troops out against the enemy cavalry. ‘It’s like the fishmonger’s, just like that—’

‘And you start howling the place down and upsetting the all jars, and wanting fried whitebait and cream sauce double quick, and why hasn’t this floor been swept—’

‘Anybody’s got any rotten fish to sell, it’s all right, lads, here comes Eupolis, we can sell it to him. Eupolis will buy anything, everyone knows that—’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You know perfectly well,’ I said furiously. ‘And you knew all along, didn’t you?’

She snorted, just like a horse. ‘For God’s sake, Eupolis,’ she said, ‘exactly what is it you want out of life? You didn’t expect me to sidle up to you and say, “You’d better not marry me, I throw plates”, did you? And even you couldn’t have been so utterly stupid as to think we agreed to the match because we
liked
you.’ She shook her head vigorously. ‘I mean, look at you. I’ve seen better-looking men in the silver mines.’

I stared at her open-mouthed. Just then, I could have strangled her.

‘That’s it,’ I said. ‘First thing in the morning, you go back to your father.’

She stared at me with such hatred that I was sure I could feel the skin on my face starting to peel. ‘You wouldn’t dare,’ she said.

‘And if you think you’re getting back a lead obol of your dowry,’ I went on, ‘you’re more stupid than you look, because I know the law and—’

Then she jumped at me. I put my arm up to cover my eyes, but that wasn’t what she had in mind. She went for my mouth with her tongue like a thrush with a snail, and by the time I realised what she was doing it was far too late to do anything about it, although I tried my best. My mouth was full of blood from where she had bitten into my upper lip, and I felt sick.

‘Right,’ she said, pulling herself off me, ‘now try and divorce me.’ She pulled the coverlet towards her with a jerk. ‘And if you do, I’ll make sure that every Comic poet in Athens hears the full story. In fact, I might just do that anyway, because you make me want to throw up. And another thing; that’s the first and last time, so far as I’m concerned. You’re pathetic, do you understand?’

Just then, I was in no mood to argue. I was thinking, this must be how Agamemnon felt, when his wife split his head with an axe as he lay back in his bath, and the water turned royal purple all round him. I felt bad luck buzzing round me like flies in summer; you can’t catch them and they climb all over you, into your ears and down under your tunic. I crawled out to the extreme edge of the bed and sucked the blood from my cut lip.

But then again, said my soul inside me, think how lucky you are, Eupolis of the deme of Pallene, to have dog-headed Comedy as your most intimate companion. There will be laughter in this before your nails next need cutting not for you perhaps, but for others certainly. When they have tired of Heracles and the pot of soup, when the capture of the Cercopes is met with stony silence, and even Cleon and the thirty talents cannot move them, someone will say, ‘Come on Eupolis, let’s have the story of your wedding-night, and don’t forget the bit about…’ Remember, whatever happens to you, they can only hurt your body; but your mind is the mind of a Comic poet, and everything ridiculous, grotesque or absurd is more valuable to you than coined silver. Pull yourself together, my soul shouted inside me, it’s time to pull off Agamemnon’s mask and put on the Messenger’s.

‘Well, say something,’ said Phaedra. ‘Or are you dumb too?’

I smiled; lay back on the pillow and closed my eyes.

‘Alas, dear wife,’ I said, more to myself than to her, ‘I fear that all is not well within the house. And the hell with you, too.’

CHAPTER EIGHT

For most of the first day out of Piraeus, I slept peacefully; but after that I felt horribly sick. Not all Athenians are more at home on ships than on dry land, whatever we try and make you believe in the Comedies, and the thought that I was on my way to a distinctly unfriendly part of the Athenian empire did little to settle my stomach.

To get from Athens to Samos on a troop-ship, you have to cross a lot of open water; first, Euboea to Andros and Tenos, then straight across to Icaria (where they threw stones at us when we went to get water) and eventually to Samos, which is unquestionably the most miserable place I have ever been in my life.

True, parts of it are quite remarkably rich and fertile —much more so than anything we have in Attica — and a large proportion of the rest of it is perfectly good for vines. But the generosity of Zeus has done nothing to sweeten the people, who have a generally bad attitude towards the rest of the world, and Athens in particular. The key to understanding Samos is their hatred of their neighbours the Milesians, which has lasted ever since time began. You may think you hate your neighbour (that is, after all, the natural condition of mankind) but you occasionally think of something else; whether the vines will get blight again this year, and is the King of Persia going to invade Bactria? Not so the Samians and the Milesians. It was fear of the Milesians, not the Persians, that made the Samians join the Athenian alliance in the first place, and when we sided with the Milesians over some local squabble at the beginning of the war, they broke away from the empire and sent for ambassadors from Sparta. As a result, Pericles had to go over and sort them out, which he managed only after a long and bloody siege. Since then, they have not liked us at all; but fortunately, they have the Milesians to keep them busy. I am told that a Samian’s idea of a good time is to invite his friends and neighbours round, open a jar or two of wine (Samian wine tastes like tanning-fluid, incidentally) and stick knives in a woollen cloak, since wool is the principal export of Miletus.

Our job in Samos was to get in the taxes, and nobody knew whether this was going to be easy or not. According to our taxiarch, it would be like picking apples off a low tree; all Samians are fat, on account of their eating too much ewes-milk cheese, and since the democrats and the oligarchs are perpetually at each other’s throats about the latest plan for a surprise attack on Miletus, one side is bound to betray the other, open the gates of the city, and cut the General’s throat as he sleeps. On the other hand, a couple of men who had been to Samos with Pericles told a very different story. According to them, incessant war with Miletus has made the entire citizen body as hard as shield-leather, and once they get inside their city walls, nothing short of actual starvation will get them out again. Also, they are very good at defending fortified towns and cities (the Milesians again), and have an unpleasant habit of pouring boiling lead on the heads of anyone who comes close enough to make it worth their while. The Samians have plenty of lead, the veterans added, which they get from the Carians in exchange for olive-curd and decorated pottery.

In fact, we didn’t see a single Samian during the whole of our first week on the island. Instead, we built a wall. Nobody knew what it was for, where it was supposed to come from or go to, how high it should be, or which side of it we were eventually to defend. It started in the middle of a vineyard, and finally petered out on the gentle slopes of a hill, either for sound strategic reasons or because we ran out of stones. Speculation as to its purpose and exactly why both ends had been left open kept us reasonably well entertained for the first two days, and after that it rained; by all accounts, for the first time in that particular month since the days of the dictator Polycrates. I had done a little gentle wall-building once or twice before, but there seemed to be a general feeling among our taxiarchs that this wall, although inexplicable, was going to be needed very soon: and when a large section of it fell down during our third night in Samos, redoubled efforts were called for, and my attitude towards soldiering took a turn for the worse.

Eventually, however, the job was finished, and no sooner was the last stone triumphantly in position than our unit got orders to fill our water-skins and march up into the mountains, which in Samos are very high and crawling with political dissidents (which is Samian for bandits) to collect the taxes from the outlying villages. We waved goodbye to our wall, which we never saw again, and set off to die for our country, should the need to do so arise.

When we did meet some Samians, they didn’t try and kill us; they were only about twelve years old, and small for their age. Instead they tried to sell us local pottery and the company of their sisters, who were (they assured us) very nice girls. We marched on until we came to a large village, I think it was called Astypylaea, where we were due to collect the first payment of taxes.

Astypylaea was just like any other substantial hill village, with a sprawl of houses, a small thatched temple and a market square marked off with weather-beaten boundary stones; it could have been anywhere up the mountain from Pallene, or out towards the back of Phyle. There were rather more sheep and rather fewer goats than we’re used to in Attica, and some of the people had a rather unGreek look to them, which my companions attributed to interbreeding with the Persians when Samos was part of the Persian satrapy of Ionia. But if they weren’t exactly friendly they didn’t throw stones, and there was no shield-wall in the main street as some of us had been expecting. Instead, there was an old man who we took to be the village spokesman, and a couple of bored-looking boys of about fifteen holding some very thin sheep on short reins. These, it appeared, were a gift to their beloved Athenian guests, hand-chosen by Polychresus himself to grace our tables when we dined together. Our taxiarch indicated dignified thanks and made tactful enquiries about the tax money.

At this the old man looked truly sad, as if we had reminded him of something he had been trying to forget about.

‘To our lasting shame, Athenian brothers,’ he said, ‘we no longer have the tribute-money. I say “no longer”; had you been here this time yesterday, there would have been no problem. But,’ he bowed his head, ‘honoured friends, these mountains are wild and lawless. Up there,’ and he waved his stick vaguely at the encircling rocks, ‘live a band of fierce and wicked men, oligarchs who were made outlaws when they tried to seize the temple of Hera by night two years ago. This morning, my house was broken into and the tribute — ten minas of fine silver, just as you commanded — was stolen. My boy Cleagenes here,’ he said, and shoved one of the boys, who was staring at his sandal-straps, ‘tried to resist them, and look what they did to him!’ The old man pointed vigorously at a minute cut just above the boy’s left eye. ‘We are poor men,’ he went on. ‘All our silver went to make up that ten minas.

We have nothing more to give you. So if you want the tribute, you must go and get it from those thieves and bandits.’ He shook his fist at a different sector of the horizon, and leaned heavily on his staff.

Several of my companions made rude noises, but our taxiarch, who was new to this sort of work, ordered us to be quiet and assured the old man that we would have the silver back by nightfall if he would provide us with a guide.

‘The best in Astypylaea,’ said the old man, ‘my boy Demetrius here’ — he gave the other boy a shove — ‘he knows the hills like a mountain goat, and is entirely without fear. You may follow him to the ends of the earth.’

Somehow we soldiers had the feeling that the ends of the earth would probably be a reasonable guess in the circumstances, but we had been ordered to keep quiet, so we said nothing. The taxiarch called out, ‘Be ready to march in five minutes,’ and went into one of the houses to be briefed on the bandits. I sent Little Zeus off to get fresh water and some bread, if there was any to be had, and sat down on a mounting-block to rest my feet. My head was sodden wet under my helmet, and I wanted to be left alone.

‘This is going to be interesting,’ said a voice beside me. I looked round and saw Artemidorus, one of the men who had been in Samos before. He was a demesman of mine and we had met at festivals, although I could remember very little about him.

‘So how do you like soldiering, young Eupolis?’ he said cheerfully. ‘A bit different from prancing round the Market with Cleon and Alcibiades, isn’t it?’

I made some feeble joke or other and he laughed loudly. ‘That’s good,’ he said when he had managed to regain control of himself. ‘Man with a sense of humour’s always welcome in the wars. You’ll find that out before you’re much older, I reckon.’

‘Why’s that?’ I asked. Artemidorus chuckled.

‘You could put it in one of your plays,’ he said, and a thought struck him. ‘Are we all going to be in your next play, then? That’d be good, wouldn’t it?’

‘Marvellous,’ I said. ‘Do you know what’s going on?’

He grinned. ‘Like I told you, I’ve been here before, I know these sheep-shaggers like Homer. What’s happening is, they’ve got these bandits up in the hills they want shifting, and they’re too chicken to do it themselves. Also they don’t want to pay any taxes, which is fair enough if you ask me. I’m a democrat, I don’t hold with taxes, except for the empire of course, because when it comes down to it they’re foreigners, they’re used to it. Anyway, they put up this load of old cock about bandits, we go up into the hills and either we get lost and die of exposure, or the bandits get us, which saves them paying any taxes, or else we get the bandits, which suits the villagers, and they still don’t pay any taxes, because they say the bandits have got it stashed somewhere and they don’t know where. So we give up and go away, and everyone is happy.’

I stared at him. ‘For God’s sake, man,’ I said, ‘why don’t you tell the taxiarch? We could get killed up there.’

Artemidorus shook his head. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘you’ll learn this about the army. You don’t go telling things to the officers because one, they don’t believe you; two, it gets you noticed; three, if it isn’t here it’s somewhere else.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I asked.

‘It means that we’re here, and there’s nothing we can do about it, so we might as well get on with it. When you’re in the army you don’t try and change things; you wait till you get home and you vote to have the General executed. That’s democracy. Don’t knock it.’

‘But this is stupid,’ I burst out. ‘Are you sure about this? I mean, it’s not just some rumour, like the women in Andros having three breasts, because Epinices saw one washing in the river, and …’

Artemidorus smiled, displaying his remaining teeth. ‘It’s true all right,’ he said, ‘solid silver all the way through, you could cut it with a chisel. For God’s sake, my brother Callides told me. Are you calling him a liar, or what?’

‘No, no,’ I reassured him. ‘Look, can’t we jut
suggest
it to the taxiarch?’

‘Forget it,’ Artemidorus said, and just then Little Zeus came back with the water-bottles and a huge black loaf, which he said had cost him a quarter-stater. We smashed the loaf up with a stone (it was hard and brittle, like pumice), soaked it in water, and ate it. By the time we had finished, the taxiarch was back and yelling orders.

It was a long way up the mountain, even with Little Zeus carrying my shield and pack for me, and the sun was unbearably hot. Even our guide seemed to be feeling the strain, for he kept stopping and looking round for no apparent reason. By midday we were high above the cultivable zones, and there were only a few emaciated sheep to be seen, scattered about like little white thorn trees. The taxiarch had set off at a parade-ground pace, singing some military chorus to set the tempo; but that had soon given way to a festival hymn, which was replaced in turn by a sort of dirge, all about the death of Theseus. Nobody knew the words, and his voice eventually dwindled away into a sort of semi-private hum.

Then the rocks started coming down on us. The first one bounced just in front of our guide, who decided that it was probably time he went home. The taxiarch tried to grab him, but a couple of small rocks hit him on the back-plate and he fell over. Someone yelled something, but none of us could understand him — we had our helmets on, and of course you can’t hear a thing inside a helmet, something that your average taxiarch (or general, for that matter) finds hard to remember. But I saw Artemidorus kneel down and put his shield over his head, and so I snatched my shield from Little Zeus and did the same. Something banged on the shield, like a gatecrasher at a party, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh God, I bet it’s hit that new bronze patch’; then I felt a sharp blow on my head, and my helmet-plume, which Callicrates and I had spent so long wrestling into place, was lying on the ground beside me. I let go of my spear to pick it up, and of course the spear rolled away down the side of the mountain. I stayed where I was; but Little Zeus, who had been trying to fit his enormous body under a small ledge of rock, jumped up and dashed after it, like a three-year-old dog chasing a hare. I almost expected him to bring it back in his mouth.