Sappho's Leap (24 page)

“I've never been here before either,” he said, “and Homer never warned me of a boat of souls or indeed of any boatman to ferry them.”

Suddenly a red-gold cat with one blue eye and one agate leapt into my lap, crying like a human baby.

“Sesostris!” I shouted, recognizing Isis' beloved lost cat from her description, but when I put my hand down to stroke him, my fingers felt only air. Here was the magical cat I had searched for all over Syracuse, and I could not stroke his beautiful fur.

I looked down into the black water. Under the rippled darkness, the pale face of my little brother Eurygius stared up at me. Pink fingers reached up to grab the side of the boat.

“Eurygius!” I called out.

Charon brought his oar brutally down and smashed the tiny hand. I screamed as if it were my own.

“He can't feel it,” Charon said. “But he has the power to keep you here forever.”

My brother disappeared again in the inky water.

We reached the other side. A tumult of forms came surging toward us as if they would be taken back to the Land of the Living. I remembered Odysseus in Hades' realm feeding blood to the ghosts so they could speak to him.

“Where is the pool of blood?” I asked.

“What pool of blood?” Charon asked.

“The one that allows the souls to speak.”

Charon laughed bitterly. “Homer was blind. What he thought was blood was only water—the thick, frigid water of the rushing river, sticky with souls.”

I was astonished to hear that Homer had been wrong. If great Homer was wrong, anything was possible! The souls surged forward. As they came toward me, I could make out familiar faces.

“Ignore them,” Charon said, “if you ever want to return to the Land of the Living.” But I could not ignore them. At the front of them all was my father, Scamandronymus.

“Sappho, little whirlwind,” he said, “what are you doing here? Don't tell me you are dead. I cannot bear it.”

I ran to throw my arms around my father, whose battle wounds still oozed dark blood, but he pushed me away.

“Do not embrace the dead,” he said, “if you want to go on living. Lord Hades will take it as a sign you wish to stay. I did not willingly run to my death. I was sent by Pittacus to the Troad to fight the Athenians. Only he and his cohorts came home alive. If I had died to keep Mytilene free, I would not grieve, but I died for him and his vile satyr's lust. Sometimes I think he and your mother planned the siege just to get rid of me.”

“No! Impossible!”

“All too possible. Husbands have been dispatched in war from the dawn of time. Why should I be immune? The fates decreed it and my wife's lover carried it out.”

“But she loved you so—were you true to
her
?”

“Never untrue—to my dying day—except with meaningless slaves and concubines and pretty boys. My love for your mother was the ruling passion of my life. I loved her as you love the father of your only child.”

His words went through me like a knife. Alcaeus! How did he know? And he had betrayed my mother too—with meaningless slaves and boys, just as Alcaeus betrayed me.

“I have been watching as your life unfolds, unable to do anything to help. I would never have married you off to an old sot, nor taken away your only child, nor let your brothers come to grief in Egypt, following their foolish pricks. Your mother always thought first of herself and how she could best survive—but do not blame her. Women make strange compromises with power and Pittacus served her better than I did. The old aristocratic code is dead. Gold rules the world today. Your mother was as quick to take advantage of the changing winds as I was blinded by antique ideals of glory. But never forget that you have some true friends. Alcaeus is one. Aesop is another. Praxinoa will always love you. As queen of the amazons, she may do you much service in the future. Treasure your friends. They will bring you home. Stay true to your tutelary goddess, Aphrodite. She is tricky and fickle, but she will bring you lasting fame. Good-bye, my daughter, I am watching over you. I will not let you die before your time.”

“Don't go!” I shouted, but he was fading fast. “Stay!” I cried, embracing the air where he had stood. He had slipped away. I whirled around, looking everywhere for him. I stared deep into the cold black water for some trace of Eurygius, but he and my father were nowhere to be seen. Aesop too was gone, and Charon and the boat of souls.

In the crowd of shades I saw tall Jezebel, the Motyan priestess, holding the sacrificed slave baby in her arms, stroking it tenderly. I saw Sisyphus rolling his rock everlastingly uphill. I saw Tantalus bending down to drink from a stream, only to see the stream dry up. I saw him reach over his head to pick a red apple, only to see its branch bounce out of reach. I saw paunchy Cercylas, my unlamented husband, holding aloft a cup for wine on which lewd scenes were painted. He was still drinking, even in Hades' realm—though he could not taste the wine. I saw vulgar Cyrus of Sardis, who had drowned with all his gold. He waved limp fingers at me and winked a shadowy eye.

“Gold is no guarantee of eternal life, alas,” he muttered. This I already knew.

I had nothing to say to any of them. I knew their sad stories. Sesostris jumped like lightning from one shade's shoulder to another's.

Let me not find my soul mate Alcaeus here,
I prayed, looking at the pale, transparent faces.
Let me not find my darling Cleis. Let me not find dear Praxinoa.
Was she indeed queen of the amazons? Good for her! Long may she reign!

Orpheus was there, holding his head in one hand and his lyre in the other.

“The reward of poetry is to be torn to bits,” he sang. “But all the bits still sing.”

I remembered the Orphic lyre kept in a temple on my native isle, how all the poets worshiped it because it was said to bring immortality.

“Even if they tear you limb from limb,” the headless Orpheus said, “your songs remain. You whirl in bliss through eternity to the music of the spheres.” Then, behind Orpheus' fading headless form, I saw Antiope, the amazon queen.

“You!”

“You!”
she shouted back. “You brought your slave to overthrow me! My priestesses revolted when you left and put Praxinoa and Penthesilea in my place. Until you came, no one would have dared. You corrupted my followers with your quaint ideas of justice. Now they nurse their boys instead of throwing them to the wolves. They suckle their own doom!”

“Let them train their sons to justice, then.”

“Justice is the dream of philosophers. It cannot exist. I drank the hemlock willingly rather than remain in a world where women share their power with men. It will come to no good. Their own sons will overthrow them! Mark my words!” She began to fade.

I was walking in circles around the smoking mountain. I looked around and could not find Aesop anywhere. The river and the ferryboat were gone. The ground was gray with pumice pebbles. I looked up at the sky and saw the lyre of Orpheus outlined in glittering stars. The sky was black. Out in the middle of the bay, there was a ship from which sweet singing rose. I wanted to go home.

Finally, I reached the base of the slippery mountain, and there, on the rocky beach, Aesop slept, wrapped in a woolen cloak. I shook him awake.

“Did you find fresh water?” Aesop asked.

Home is sweet as honey.

—
H
OMER

Y
OU MIGHT WONDER HOW
I could even think of suicide after my trip to the Land of the Dead. Those who have seen the shades close up generally do not wish to join them. It is not that the punishments there are so severe. I saw no frozen canyons, no burning lakes, and no spikes to pierce the heart more sharply than motherhood pierces it. To be dead is to lose the power of physical feeling. Whatever wisdom comes to replace that bittersweet ability is not enough. And the dead still long for life—that much I knew. They cannot feel the warmth of human flesh, yet they can feel regret.

We had left Hades' realm—or whatever glimpse of it I had been granted. (Perhaps, not being truly dead, I could not really know its essence.) Much time had elapsed during my brief travels there. I knew this when Aesop and I came back to the ship—for some of the amazon maidens were now mothers of three-year-old children, and there were many younger children as well. I had wandered among the dead, marveling at how much they looked like their living selves. Aesop had slept and slept and the whole ship had become a nursery! I saw these newly hatched children with an aching heart, missing Cleis more than ever. She would now be five years old!

Some of the sailors were happy to be fathers and doted upon their children, but others were restless and jealous, feeling themselves displaced in the affections of their women. These had begun to court the other amazons and the community was hardly as harmonious as it had been when last I left it.

In my absence, all attempts at sailing had ceased. The ship had been dragged up on land and the sails had become tents. The animals we had carried aboard now roamed free on the strand—at least those that hadn't been eaten. The amphorae of wine and grain were empty and it was time to stay and plant crops or move on to another island. But nobody seemed to have the discipline to make any decisions. Between the squalling babies, the wooing and courting of the amazons and the sailors—chaos had come again.

The Nubian galley slaves had also become full members of the community and had intermarried with the amazon maidens. The captain's power over his mariners and oarsmen was at an end. And he was in love with an amazon maiden who had borne him two sets of twins. He had become such a passionate father that he wished only to babble at them in baby talk and stare into their bright eyes.

I'd emerged from Hades' realm to find a sprawling settlement at the edge of the sea—without laws, without sufficient food, without peace or serenity.

Maera was now the mother of two—an infant and a two-year-old. She had banished her lover from her tent for wooing another young amazon called Leto, who had no children and was liberally entertaining those sailors who'd grown tired of fatherhood. Leto, named for Apollo's mother, had become a sort of Rhodopis of this uninhabited island, luring sailors into her pleasure tent on the edge of the strand for orgies.

I had returned from Hades' realm, in short, to find a mess that nobody had sufficient power or authority to end. The amazons were used to being ruled by their queen; they saw no reason to obey a man—even if he had been appointed captain by a distant pharaoh.

Who was the pharaoh to them? Simply a man in curious robes and a double crown. They had no fear of him—or any man.

As for the Nubian slaves, they saw no reason why they should row the ship rather than steer it from on deck—but the Egyptian mariners refused to row, being unaccustomed to the task. While the slaves and masters fought over their future duties, the ship moldered. Its hull had not been tarred, nor its sails—those that had not been cut up for tents—mended. It was rotting even as we watched. Clearly, we would all perish on this rocky island on the edge of the Land of the Dead unless something was done. Water had been found, but food was running low. You cannot live on fish forever—at least without oil, without grain, without fruits and vegetables. We had goats' milk and cheese, but no fruits. The island grew none and its rocky soil was inhospitable. The ale and wine were gone and some of the men found life without these anodynes intolerable. The babies had milk, but their mothers were malnourished for lack of fresh foods. Some beautiful amazon maidens were losing their teeth from nursing.

Already several amazons had died in childbirth and babes had perished in infancy. Beyond Leto's pleasure tent was a little graveyard by the sea that grew daily. Its grave markers were made of driftwood and shells. It was open to the wind and bodies had to be buried quickly before the wild seabirds could feast on them.

I consulted Aesop.

“A leader is needed—and a strong one,” he said.

He was right. But who could claim authority over this disparate crew? The amazons were used to one form of society, the Egyptians to another. They had worshiped different gods, followed different ways of life, different sacrifices, different rituals. The Egyptians believed the body must be preserved after death. The amazons fed their monthly blood to their goddess. And yet, no matter how various their ways, they had common needs: for order, for feeding themselves and their children, for educating their young.

I thought about the amazons and the rules they had lived by. They had accepted a world without men, but as soon as the joys of sex beckoned, they converted quickly enough to the worship of the goddess of love. What was the answer here? A world where love was free or a world where love was chained? Where was happiness to be found? In freedom or in deprivation? Had my brothers found happiness in Naucratis? A city of rampant luxury and sin—and they fall prey to a courtesan who enslaves them. Some people will turn freedom to slavery and others will turn slavery to freedom—like Aesop. Aesop understood all these paradoxes better than anyone.

“You must become the leader of these people,” Aesop said, “or they will never survive. They are confused. They have no rules to live by.”

“Why not you? You have a beard. A beard is always helpful to those who wish to rule!”

“Sappho, you jest. You know that a beard is no sign of authority to amazons.”

“How shall I—a mere musician—command the Nubians, the Egyptians, the captain, the navigators?”

“By making them think you have the gods on your side, as kings and queens have always done. You have returned from the Land of the Dead. Surely that gives you authority!”

I wondered. By what right could I seize command? I wavered as I had with the amazon queen. The only power I knew was the power of song.