Sappho's Leap (17 page)

Alcaeus was still in my heart. I thought of him. I dreamed of him. I longed for the day when we might be reunited. In the meantime, there was work to do, and Aesop could help me do it. My family's vineyards must be saved. My brothers must be taught a lesson and then freed from slavery. I had to put one foot in front of the other and suppress my longing for Alcaeus and my dreams of my daughter.

The nobles of the pharaoh's court attended our first symposium and fell in love with my singing. Afterward, they came back, bringing friends and courtiers. The rumor began to spread that the slave Aesop and the singer Sappho had the most exclusive symposia, and the elite of Naucratis—even the wealthiest Egyptians—were curious to come. We refused them. We invited only the highest nobility. We let the others only dream of our invitations.

After a while, the pharaoh sent for us. Necho asked if I could tutor him in song accompanied by the
kithara
. He wanted to be able to improvise when the myrtle wand was passed to him. He longed to organize authentic symposia at court.

“I will try, Sire,” I told the pharaoh, “but the gift of song comes from the gods alone. I can teach you to play the lyre. I can teach you to pluck the strings. I can teach you songs of other singers. But you must be touched with divine fire to create your own songs. It is not something I can give. The gods alone give it.”

Nobody had ever refused the pharaoh before. He was intrigued by my honesty. It made him desire my instruction more.

“Egypt was once the fount of all civilization, but the world is changing now. You Greeks
own
poetry and fable. The Lydians have invented coinage and commerce. Soon, I fear, the Persians will move against us all. I know I can only protect my people if I learn the newest arts of music, literature, and war. I
command
you to teach me, Sappho.”

“I have but one request, Pharaoh. A bewitching courtesan of this town has enslaved my brothers and I fear they might die in her harsh service. Do not liberate them yet, but have your minions prevail upon their jailers to grant them lighter duties, so they may at least survive.”

“I will happily cause that to be done,” the pharaoh said.

“Then I will teach you with all my heart,” I said.

So I became teacher to the great pharaoh. It is not so simple to be a teacher to one who has the power to put you to death. He had many wives and concubines, but nevertheless he believed that the practice of song also required the practice of making love. I held him off for a time, quoting the wise Aesop's words: “It is better to earn your fortune with your brain than with your body.” But one night, when we had been composing impromptu verses to each other for hours and playing in harmony in his private chambers, the pharaoh commanded me to strip naked and lie upon his lion-footed golden couch.

This frightened me. I was not at my best naked. Even with Alcaeus and Isis I had resisted total nakedness. My twisted spine was not a sight to inspire ecstasy—or so I thought. Nevertheless, I did as I was told on pain of death. The threat of execution greatly concentrates the mind.

The great pharaoh approached me, took off his golden girdle and tunic, his golden chest plate, his linen kilt and loincloth. He roared like a lion. He pounded on his own bare chest. But when he came and lay between my legs, his great rearing serpent—circumcised, of course, in the Egyptian fashion—suddenly went limp.

He looked down at himself. Then he looked at me. “Sappho—you have bewitched me! You will die the most slow and lingering death a woman has ever known!”

I knew he meant it. I knew the pharaoh had had concubines boiled in oil for the very offense I had just committed. When a pharaoh wilts, it is certainly not the pharaoh's fault. The fault is always the woman's. That's what it means to be pharaoh, after all.

Aphrodite
—
if you ever loved me
—
save me now,
I prayed. But nothing happened. I kissed my life good-bye.
Let my death he swift,
I prayed.
Let Aphrodite grant me that if nothing else!
I was doubtful Aphrodite would save me. She had been silent for so many moons. It was clear she did not approve of the direction my life was taking. I imagined my fate—boiled slowly in oil like a fish until I died in agony. Only Aesop left alive to tell my story—if the pharaoh indeed spared him, which was uncertain.

Suddenly the pharaoh's serpent reared again. It lifted proudly like a bird in flight. It sought the wet nest between my legs.

“Can you make a song of this?” I challenged the pharaoh.

“Can you?”

You came when I lay aching for your touch

And you cooled my burning heart.

He stopped, midstroke. “Even the phallus of a god hesitates before a muse,” he said with no irony at all. Then he ravished me like a conqueror and fell in love with me like a schoolboy.

The more powerful a man is, the more he can be humbled by love. I learned that in Egypt and it helped me thereafter. Men claim they want obedience from women, but I have found that they prefer mastery—as long as it is
cloaked
in compliance. A woman who is bold and challenging, who knows her own strength, can rule the rulers of this world.

The pharaoh was concerned that his low birth would cost him the respect of his people. That was why he needed Aesop and me as his advisors. Aesop counseled him to take a golden footbath and have it fashioned into a beautiful statue of the goddess Io. When the people bowed down before it, he reminded them of its humble origins.

“It used to be a footbath in which you cleansed your muddy feet and spat and vomited, and now you
venerate
it! Things are seldom what they seem!”

It was doubtless because of the pharaoh's insecurity that he built so many sphinxes and colossal statues all over Egypt. He instituted a system of taxation in which every person had to account his entire income to the pharaoh's minions on pain of death. One-tenth of each person's income had to be paid to the state. With this tribute Necho built the mightiest monuments in Egypt. But even the monuments he built did not assuage his fears about the future. He needed to be constantly reassured of his greatness. This became my role—and Aesop's.

There are many kinds of slavery, I discovered. The slavery of the millstone is one kind, of the brothel another, of marriage to a man you loathe another. But the slavery of being needed by a powerful man is the most insidious. Whatever my life had been before I met Necho, my life now
was
Necho. It was a strong drug—this business of being indispensable to the pharaoh—but it was not freedom. And a singer needs freedom. So does a woman. I had no time to worry about Cleis or Alcaeus, or indeed my brothers or Rhodopis. I was constantly at the command of the pharaoh.

We traveled all over the land inspecting the pharaoh's building projects—up and down the Nile and through the deserts. We spent a great deal of time planning the tomb of the pharaoh, with its massive columns built of huge blocks of golden stone. If the pharaoh's life could have been extended by the lives of all those who perished through being crushed by the stones of his tomb, he would have lived forever. Yet he was never content. He was always anxious about invasions from his neighbors. He feared the Persians, the Lydians, the Hittites, the Phoenicians, even the Greeks whom he cultivated and imitated. He worried that the great civilization of Egypt was on a downward spiral. For three thousand years, the Egyptians had ruled the earth. Their warriors were the strongest, their painters the most skilled, their poets inimitable. Their sculptors could carve the most adamantine stone. Their goldsmiths could fashion the most beautiful ornaments. Their linens were the finest. Their wooden furnishings the most ingenious. They could save the body from corruption by means of mummification. They could build structures that made the whole world gasp. But now the other kingdoms had learned their arts—and the monarchy of Egypt was wracked by disease and death. Necho would not have been pharaoh in Egypt's glory days and he knew it. He was undone by doubt.

I learned so much from being his teacher—so much about men and so much about life. I learned that even the great are insecure, that even the rich feel poor, that even the loved feel unloved. Women get many things from love. It was true that the pharaoh's lovemaking did not stir my lust but rather my lust for power. I loved being needed by the ruler of a nation. I was beginning to understand my mother.

Painful though it was, I let my brothers remain in slavery for half a year—after which I appealed to the pharaoh for their freedom and dispatched them back to Lesbos to repair our fortunes. I never told them that I had been responsible for saving their lives, but I think they knew.

“When you see your beautiful golden niece, Cleis, tell her that her mother loves her with all her heart.” Tears rolled down my cheeks as I mentioned my daughter's name. Cleis would be walking by now, perhaps talking as well. Had it been more than a year since I had seen her? Would I even recognize her if I met her? It was too agonizing to think about.

My brothers kissed my feet and blessed me for their deliverance. They had been humbled, as Aesop had predicted.

“Sappho—you are the leader of our family now. If only you could come home with us, what joy we'd know. We will send for you as soon as you are pardoned. We will work tirelessly on your behalf.”

Larichus kissed me on both cheeks. “Bless you,” he said. And then he whispered in my ear, “I will never forget how you saved me from the treadmill.”

Even Rhodopis had fulfilled her wish to journey to Delphi, where she had dedicated an altar and twelve huge spits for roasting sacrificial oxen. She was very pleased with herself and requested an audience with the pharaoh.

“Why should I meet this trollop?” Necho asked.

“Because she comes back from Delphi and may have picked up portents of the future,” Aesop wisely counseled.

We studied Necho's face for news of his mood—something you always do with tyrants.

“Send her in!” he thundered.

Rhodopis appeared, looking as fetching and rosy-cheeked as ever. She minced toward the pharaoh in her high-heeled sandals. She bent over double and kissed his feet. She flattened herself before him, showing her comely bottom beneath transparent linen.

“Get up!” the pharaoh said rather peevishly.

“Sire, I have come from the great
omphalos
of the earth at Delphi.”

“So we hear.”

“I have dedicated an altar and consulted many sages there. They say the Pythia has stirring news for Egypt but will only give it to an appointed emissary of the pharaoh. Other great leaders send their emissaries there—Alyattes, Nebuchadnezzar, the Persian and Hittite kings. All were waiting there for the Pythia to speak. Egypt is the only nation with no representative at Delphi. I fear for Egypt, Sire. I volunteer my services without charge.”

At this, the pharaoh perked up. The richer they are, the more they like gifts from subjects.

Aesop cleared his throat nervously.

“Sire, we must discuss this generous offer. Why not let the ladies withdraw?”

Rhodopis and I were taken to a small room adjoining the pharaoh's throne room, where, watched by courtiers, we whispered to each other.

“I have met a friend of yours,” Rhodopis hissed tauntingly, “another well-known exiled singer.”

“Alcaeus?”

“The same. He may travel with beautiful boys, but he beds down with beautiful girls. This I know for a fact.”

“You lie!”

“Hardly. I have experienced the pleasures of his couch and, as Aphrodite is my witness, he is a lover even goddesses would die for.”

Of course I knew this. I was stung with jealousy. I didn't mind that Alcaeus took pleasure with boys, but his taking pleasure with Rhodopis made me rage inside. I tried not to show it.

Aesop now called us back to the pharaoh's presence. We left the antechamber and appeared again before Necho.

“Thank you, Rhodopis, for your most generous offer, but Sappho and I will journey to Delphi on behalf of the pharaoh,” Aesop said. “Sappho knows Delphi as well as Rhodopis does, if not better.”

I held my tongue. Words could not contain my joy. Perhaps this time I would find Alcaeus in Delphi and he and I would discover some way to return to Lesbos and our daughter. I could not bear to believe the oracle's prophecy that she would grow to womanhood without me. How could she grow up without a mother's loving gaze? And how would I live without her?

Evil wishes, like chickens,

Come home to roost.

—A
ESOP

A
FTER WE HAD LEFT
the pharaoh's quarters and were outside where we could talk, I asked Aesop, “How did you convince him to let us go?”

“I thought
you
convinced him by piquing his worry about the Persians and Lydians.”

“
Rhodopis
did that,” I said. “I hate to admit it, but she
is
good for something. She frightened him with her descriptions of other leaders sending emissaries to the oracle. He is clearly afraid of what they might learn at Delphi, afraid they might find some advantage over Egypt.”

“A man will show his Achilles' heel to a woman. With other men, he will pretend to be invincible,” Aesop said.

“Rhodopis knows that, if anyone does,” I said. “I must grudgingly admit I admire her. Sometimes I think I am even a little in love with her myself. She has such
fire
. She has the gifts of Aphrodite. I can even understand my brothers being drawn to her. I am drawn to her myself. Isn't it remarkable that erotic attraction has nothing to do with goodness or kindness? Goodness and kindness can, in fact, kill it. Damn Aphrodite! Damn her sneaky son.”

“So you wish you were more like Rhodopis,” Aesop said.