Sappho's Leap (23 page)

Here was great loveliness of ghosts!

—
H
OMER

W
E WERE SAILING NORTH
into stormy weather after many months with the amazons. Delphi was still our destination, but I had begun to understand that this journey would be no more predictable than those that had preceded it. The gods were in charge, not I. Perhaps they had something else to teach me.

ZEUS
:
Well, at last she's learning something!

APHRODITE
:
I told you she was worth saving.

ZEUS:
I'd hardly go that far.

We had rams and ewes aboard, and chickens and pigs. We were stocked with amphorae of wine and barrels of barley and grain. If our luck held, we might reach several safe anchorages on the way back to Delphi. And if it did not? Best not to think about it.

Deeply troubled about my experiences with the amazons, I was hardly sure I had done the right thing by refusing to be their queen. I missed Praxinoa, who had been my only lifelong witness. It was as if, with her disappearance, my whole past had vanished as well. Alcaeus suddenly seemed a distant myth. Did he really exist at all? And Cleis? How old was she now? Two? Three? She was definitely not a myth. Her baby smell came to me whenever I closed my eyes. But how would I ever find her again? Perhaps if I had accepted being queen of the amazons I would have had a better chance. I could have ridden to her on the back of Pegasus! And carried her away.

Aesop slept as we sailed away from the land of the amazons. He was impossible to rouse. Had he been drugged? He knew nothing of my discussions with the amazons, nothing of my epic, nothing of Praxinoa's conversion, nothing of Pegasus. What a pity! He had missed all the greatest adventures.

Days passed. We sailed and sailed. Once I was able to rouse Aesop, I regaled him with everything that had transpired. While I was in a cave forced to compose, while Praxinoa had her breast removed, he had been fed and bathed and cosseted by the amazon maidens and urged to feast endlessly on young amazon flesh. He hardly seemed happy about it.

“Men
dream
of such things—a cave of virgins and you the only stud! Didn't you at least enjoy it?” I asked.

“Let me answer you with a fable,” Aesop said. “A hare was very popular with the other beasts, who all claimed to be his dear friends—even his lovers. But one day he heard the hounds approaching and expected to escape with the help of his many admirers. He went first to the horse and asked him to carry him away from the hounds. But the horse refused, claiming that he had important work to do for his master. ‘All your other friends will come to your assistance,' he said. The hare then approached the bull, hoping that he would repel the hounds with his horns. The bull replied, ‘I am very sorry, but I have an important appointment with a beautiful young cow; I feel sure that our dear friend the goat will do what you want.' But the goat feared that his bony back might harm the hare if he balanced him on it. He suggested that the ram was the proper friend to apply to for help. So the hare went to the ram and told him his predicament. The ram replied, ‘Another time, my dearest hare. I do not like to interfere on the present occasion, as hounds have been known to eat sheep as well as hares.' As a last hope, the hare went to the little calf, who in a baby prattle said that he was unable to help since he did not like to take the responsibility upon himself when so many older and wiser animals had declined. By this time the hounds were quite near, and the hare took to his heels and escaped like the wind.”

“And what is the moral?”

“
He that has many friends, has no friends
,” Aesop said.

“The story you have told does not prove that,” I said. “You will have to come up with more appropriate fables if you wish to be immortal. I think the amazon maidens have addled your brain. Perhaps you should write a tale about the amazons and the fable-maker, about a good man locked up in a cave, assigned to the tough duty of impregnating virgins, and how he goes a little mad. What a fable that would make. It would make your name for all eternity.”

“I have vowed to write only about animals in the future,” Aesop said.

“Why?”

“Because when you write about people, you inevitably offend—but if you write about animals, the evil do not recognize themselves but the good understand immediately.”

“Since when should the fable-maker worry about offending the subjects of his fables?”

“It is human to care,” said Aesop.

“It is godlike not to care,” I said, “and a fable-maker must imitate the gods.”

“So must a singer. Yet you care,” Aesop said.

“I wish I didn't.”

“Ah, so do we all!”

“Then you feel like a hare among fair-weather friends?” I changed the subject.

“I did not say that.”

“You implied it.”

“That is the beauty of speaking in parables,” Aesop said, his black eyes burning. “I was only giving you an example of how someone might feel surrounded by too many sweethearts and suitors. Love is singular, by definition. The great king who has a harem has no real lovers among the ladies.”

“And why do you think this is?”

“Because they are all thinking of each other and not of him. By eliminating risk with numbers, you create another sort of risk—no one really feels loyal to you. They are all worried about the others and how to get the better of them. This can be very tiring. Instead of being a lover, you become a diplomat. You spend your time arbitrating disputes among your suitors. That leaves little energy for making love. Eventually you have to take to your heels and escape.”

“So it was no fun at all?”

“I didn't say that,” Aesop said, “I only said it was not what it seemed to be. Or one man's pleasure may be another man's pain.”

“Hardly pain, I should think.”

Aesop smiled slyly. I was never able to get a straight answer out of him.

The atmosphere of the ship was much changed, with so many of the amazon maidens aboard. The men seemed much happier—even if there were not enough maidens to go around. Just the presence of women cheered them. One of the most beautiful of the young amazons, Maera, she of the red ringlets and eyes the color of young emeralds, of the sun-freckled nose and rosy ankles, took me to task for having left the queen alive.

“You should have killed her while you had the chance,” Maera said, “she'll never be able to share her power with the others. She'll revert to her wicked ways soon enough. If you were going to refuse to
be
queen, you should at least have appointed Praxinoa in your stead. A three-woman team will fall apart bickering. The amazon ideals are good in theory, but in practice, they don't work. For example, I'm sure they never showed you the graves of the boy babies.”

“What boy babies? What graves? I thought the amazons had eliminated all boy babies.”

“And how would they do that, Sappho?”

“I thought they had pessaries to filter out the male seed. Or so I was told by the priestesses.”

“Rubbish! They kill them or expose them, just as girls are exposed in the Greek world. Surely some of them survive, nursed by wolves who prowl the ruins of the labyrinth, but then they grow up more brute than human—which justifies the amazons hunting them down as beasts.”

My mouth hung open. “Why did no one tell me that?”

“Why indeed. You were our honored guest. The more you are honored, the more people tell you lies.”

Now I felt like an idiot. Why had I not seen? Had I been lulled by the foolish tales of the priestesses? Was I too busy writing my epic? Or was I just too hopeful that somehow, somewhere, peace and justice could exist between the sexes?

“I thought the amazons had solved the problem of warfare between men and women.”

“Well, if you kill all the boy babies, that's a kind of temporary solution. But remember the stunted winglets of the foals? You yourself pointed out to the queen that true flight is impossible without love!”

“So what are we to do about the two sexes?”

“Why
do
anything?”

“Because otherwise men dominate women or women get even by dominating men. Two sexes seems to be a recipe for grief and warfare.”

“Then we should invent
more
sexes—just to confuse everyone! That will solve the problem!” Maera said, laughing. “Let's have men with breasts and women with phalli! Some men should have
more
than one phallus so as to love a woman and a boy at once! And some women should have deltas all over their bodies!”

The gods had arranged the world rather poorly. Even Zeus and Hera couldn't get along—so how could mere mortals? And poor lame Hephaestus was always catching Aphrodite in her adulteries. Zeus wanted a womb and Athena wanted a phallus. Why should we mortals be content with our limited equipment when the gods
themselves
weren't?

ZEUS:
Now she is criticizing us again—what hubris!

APHRODITE
:
Perhaps she needs a stronger lesson.

ZEUS
:
There's only one place for that—the Land of the Dead.

APHRODITE
:
Only if you promise to spare her life!

ZEUS:
Why should great Zeus promise anything?

Maera ran back to her Egyptian sailor. “Right now he loves me and follows me like a dog with his tongue hanging out! If he ever stops, I'll become an amazon again! I can fight as well as he can—maybe better. I'm certainly not afraid of him—or any of them!” Her laughter echoed after her.

I was vexed about the amazons. Was there no land free of violence and pain? Or was Maera lying about the slaughter of the boy babies—in order to justify her own escape from the amazons? Was she lying to herself most of all? And what would become of Praxinoa? Had I freed her from bondage only to see her become Antiope's slave?

The weather was stormy, but the crew rowed on. Endless days and nights we rowed and sailed. There were bone-white islands stuck in misty seas where we could not stop because it was said they were inhabited by fierce monsters.

“Fiends with the heads of birds of prey and the claws of tigers inhabit these islands,” one sailor said.

“Snake-headed goddesses,” said another. “They turn men to stone.”

It was true. Ravenous birds followed us, hovering, screeching, and threatening. We saw bloody parts of sea creatures dangling from their sharp yellow beaks. Sometimes drops of dark blood fell upon our decks or spotted our sails. The waters themselves seemed ever more treacherous.

We rowed straight on. Often the fog grew so thick that we didn't know whether we sailed in the sky or on earth. The ship rocked so hard that we had to tether ourselves to the rails with rope to stay aboard. We lost three sailors overboard and watched in horror as birds of prey dove down and plucked out their eyes.

“Never have I seen such a sight,” I cried to Aesop. “The gods are angry,” Aesop said.

At last, lacking fresh water, we were forced to stop, however inhospitable the shore.

A conical volcano topped the island we found. It was spewing smoke and lava. Gray dust hovered in the air.

“We should turn back!” the sailors said.

But as we drew closer in, we saw that the island's shores were verdant as those of Lesbos. The weather cleared for a while, revealing a huge lagoon surrounded by green hills. The island was shaded with trees of all description. At first I thought it might indeed be my native isle and my heart leapt, thinking I might soon see Cleis. Even if Pittacus had condemned me to death, at least I'd clasp my child before I died. But I was wrong. This island was not Lesbos. My mind was playing tricks.

We sent our scouts ashore to look for fresh water. We planned to stop only one night before proceeding to Delphi.

It was almost sunset when the scouts came back to the ship to tell us the coast was clear. No vultures or raptors or mythical beasts had been seen ashore. The island appeared to be uninhabited. But the sailors and maidens were frightened by what they'd already seen at sea and they refused to join us. While the rain held off, they romped and swam around the boat like sea sprites and dolphins. Then the sky darkened again and they clung to the boat, refusing all blandishments to come ashore.

Aesop and I rowed in with the water-bearers just as the sky opened up with rain.

The rain was full of ash and grit—almost as if it were a solid substance. It stung our faces where it fell. We wrapped our cloaks around us for protection, but we were already soaked and our capes were heavy with this wet dust. Up ahead, there seemed to be a clearing where a few last rays of red sun still shone. We ran to it as if that were the way to get out of the gritty rain. It led us up a narrow path on the slippery side of the volcano. The stone was pumice and it slid under our feet. We went around and around the conical sides of the volcano, losing our bearings. Then suddenly the road dipped down and we seemed to be under the mountain as well as on top of it. How this was possible, I don't know. I reached out for Aesop's hand and clung to it. Darkness fell very swiftly. There was a rushing river under our feet that appeared out of nowhere. We waded across it, thigh-deep in the freezing water. A shadowy ferryman put out his oar.

“Come aboard,” he said. It was Charon and his boat was full of souls.

“I'd rather walk,” I said, thinking that if I refused Charon's ferry I could return to the Land of the Living.

He laughed at me. “Whether you ride or wade or swim hardly matters,” Charon said. “If you don't believe me, ask your guide.” I turned to Aesop, who was climbing into the boat. He shrugged his shoulders.