Sappho's Leap (31 page)

In all the years I had yearned for Alcaeus, I thought him my double, my twin, the only soul to penetrate my heart. His lack of understanding pained me. I wanted to tell him that I was sure Cleis was his daughter as well as mine, but something held me back. I wanted him to love her without proof of paternity—love her simply because I loved her. It was a kind of test. But why did I feel I had to test him? Was it that I wanted him to know without my telling him? Was it that I wanted him to read my mind? Surely he must have heard Cercylas was such an impotent old sot that he could never have fathered anything! Yes, I wanted him to understand without being told. This was the ultimate proof of love I required.

Later, I would ask myself why we allowed so many rifts between us. There were so many ways we could have reassured each other and built our love on a sounder foundation. Why did I keep procrastinating about telling him that Cleis was his daughter? Why did I never tell him how much I resented his intention to deliver me to the pharaoh? I don't know the answer to these questions. Many nights I lay in bed with him with Rhodopis on the tip of my tongue. Why didn't I confront him with her boast that she had bedded him in Delphi? Why was I afraid?

If I could have answered these questions then, wisdom would have been mine and my odyssey would have been at its end. But I didn't know myself well enough yet. I loved Alcaeus, but I didn't know how to love myself.

It was on the
Eye of Horus
that I thought again and again that perhaps I should have stayed with the amazons and become their queen. I wanted to tell Alcaeus that too, but I was afraid he would mock me. He thought the amazons were a myth.

Aesop understood my longings, but I loved Aesop only like a brother. Alcaeus was my destiny. Between my wild passion for him and my deep maternal yearnings, I didn't know which way to turn.

I do not know what to do.

My mind's in two.

It was then that Aesop made his move. He came to me one night when I was pacing on the deck to stave off insomnia.

“Sappho,” he said, “all these years I have agreed to be your faithful shadow. I have asked nothing for myself. I have honored your love for Alcaeus. But now I see how you long for your child, how troubled you are by Alcaeus' indifference to your plight. I must declare myself. Whatever you wish shall be my command. If you desire to return to Lesbos, I shall accompany you. If you desire to rejoin the amazons, I am yours. If you want to go back to Egypt, likewise I will take you. Say the word and I shall do it.”

“Don't tempt me, Aesop. My condition is weak. My mind's divided.”

“He is not good for you, Sappho. All these years you have been strong and brave. Alcaeus returns and you do not know your own mind. Love has made you childlike and unsure. With me you were a goddess. With him you have become a slave.”

I knew there was some truth in this. I took Aesop's arm and we paced the deck together.

“I cannot bear to see you weaken,” Aesop said. “I want my valiant Sappho back again.”

He led me to a small skiff, which sat on the great deck like a babe at its mother's breast. It was covered with its own sail. Behind the boat he kissed me. Within the boat he made love to me and gave his whole soul to me. When Alcaeus found us, we were still clinging to each other.

Far more sweet-sounding than a lyre.

More golden than gold.

—S
APPHO

“D
AMN YOU! SAPPHO,” ALCAEUS
shouted, “you are the first woman I ever trusted and you betray me like a common harlot!”

I looked up and there was Alcaeus. How long had he been watching us? I grew defensive, when an apology would have been what my heart dictated.

“You mean like Rhodopis? I know all about you two! She herself boasted of your prowess as a lover. How clever of you to forget to tell me!”

“She meant
nothing
to me!” Alcaeus raved.

“Can't you think of a better excuse?”

“I made love to her and thought of you!”

“And you expect me to say ‘I made love to Aesop and thought of
you
!'” I shouted. We were still inside the little skiff, perched on the afterdeck, and Alcaeus was leaning over the edge, staring at us hatefully.

“Well, it's true. I
did
think of you. Only of you.” This I whispered.

“You never told
me
that!” said Aesop from his supine position in the skiff. “I thought you loved me a little.”

“Forgive me, Aesop, I
do
love you as a brother, but Alcaeus is my destiny. I know that now. I've known it from the first moment I set eyes upon him!”

For a minute nobody said a word. All we could hear was our own labored breathing. Aesop was clinging to me like a baby clutching at its mother. I struggled out of his reach, clambered out of the skiff, and tried to follow Alcaeus as he stormed off the deck. He went below to hide himself among the centaurs. By now I was sobbing desperately.

Why, after all this time, had I chosen to do the deed with Aesop? Had I needed to provoke Alcaeus? I was enraged at myself. I would have done anything to undo my foolishness. The regret I felt was the regret of the damned. I had seen it on my father's shadowy face in Hades' realm. I felt that I was back across the rushing river with the dead. Better
he
dead and numb to all sensation than to feel the way I felt!

I pursued Alcaeus belowdecks. He refused to see me. He sent Chiron to inform me that he was too ill to speak to me. The wise old centaur shook his shaggy white mane and said, “You broke his heart. There's nothing for it.”

“Help me, Chiron!” I begged. “Tell Alcaeus how much I love him!”

“How can I dispute what he just saw with his own eyes?”

“Tell him it meant
nothing
. Tell him it was a momentary lapse of judgment. Tell him I love only him. Please. I beg of you.” By now I was on my knees in supplication.

“He will not believe me. He refuses to share you with Aesop. He is a proud man and you have humiliated him.”

“But Chiron, you can cure
anything
.
You
know the secrets of healing. Heal his broken heart. I know you can do it. Besides, you have two wives
yourself
. You'd happily take three and think nothing of it. You love more than one woman. How can you fault me for loving two men? It's not impossible to love two men!”

“It's different for men. The phallus can accept no competition. You women are used to it. Deltas are less discriminating.”

All I could do was fall to the deck and wail like one in mourning. I pounded my fists and tore my chiton. But still Alcaeus did not appear.

Alcaeus put both Aesop and me off the boat at Samos. As I watched under the deep blue Aegean sky as the
Eye of Horus
sailed away bearing all my hopes and dreams, I knew I had lost the love of my life a second time. The first time is heartbreaking, but the second time is like an evisceration.

Why had I brought disaster down upon myself? Perhaps I was afraid to give myself entirely to Alcaeus because I loved him so utterly. And abandonment seemed as inevitable as death. I had broken three hearts—Aesop's, my own, and Alcaeus'—and I knew I was doomed to live with regret forever.

I remembered the legend of Leucas. It was said that lovers who jumped from the Leucadian cliff either got over their hopeless passion or died trying. In either case they were cured. Now I understood what always seemed so desperate before.

So here we were in Samos, Aesop and I alone together, and desolate. Aesop knew Samos well from his slave days, but he hated the place as crass and gold-loving. He was despondent about what he perceived as my rejection of him. You would have thought that with Alcaeus gone, Aesop would have claimed me as his own, but both of us were devastated. Something was deeply wrong between us. We both now knew we were friends rather than lovers, but we had tainted that long friendship with unrequited love. Sometimes you have to couple to uncouple. Unfathomable, the mysteries of love!

Why is it that you can love two men but love them in totally different ways? Why is it that one may claim your fealty and philosophy and the other your desire and your delta? Why is it that love is so damnably various? And why are men so unprepared to grant that women are as various as they? We are more various, in fact. Little good it did me to philosophize like this! It did nothing to ease the pain. Men were blind and narrow-minded, but I loved one of them!

Aesop and I stayed together for a while, chewing over the past, growing gloomier and gloomier. The more we talked about our dilemma, the less we could resolve it.

One evening we were crying into our wine in a little tavern in a back alley of Samos and we noticed a group of Lydians watching us, listening for every word.

A great gray-bearded fellow with sea-green eyes surrounded by innumerable crinkles finally rose from his table and came over to Aesop.

“Is it Aesop the fable-maker?” he asked.

“Why do you ask?” muttered Aesop grumpily. Then he looked up and his face spread with a smile. “Syennesis!” he exclaimed. “My dear old friend!”

They began a spirited conversation about things and people in the past I had no knowledge of. It turned out that Syennesis was a philosopher and a friend of Aesop's former owner.

“I always knew you'd become famous!” he said to Aesop. What about me? I thought. Was I a cipher? The man did not recognize me at all, nor did Aesop remedy the slight.

“We are bound for Delphi,” said Syennesis.

“Of course you are!” I said peevishly. “Whenever anyone in this part of the world is at a loss for anything—Delphi is the answer.”

“And who is this?” the Lydian asked Aesop, as if I could not speak for myself.

“Why, this is the famed singer, Sappho of Lesbos,” said Aesop.

At that, the hairy, wrinkled Syennesis fell to his knees, clasped his hands, and began to sing, “
I have a daughter like a golden flower. / I would not take all of Alyattes' gold with silver thrown in for her!
I'll never forget where I first was when I heard that. If you are the divine goddess who first composed that song, then I am at your service, Lady.”

I must admit this softened my mood somewhat—though he had misquoted me.

“Thank you,” I said simply. And then the accumulated tears I had been storing up began to flow. I thought of Cleis as she had been as a baby and great sobs shook my body.

“Forgive me,” I mumbled. Aesop put his arm around my shoulder.

“I think it is time for you to go home,” he said softly. And I knew he was right.

So Aesop went with the Lydians to seek the wisdom of the Oracle of Delphi (that charade again!) and I steeled myself to return to my native isle despite the order of exile probably still in force against me. Aesop and I said farewell sadly, knowing the gods had made us tools of each other's wisdom but not lifelong partners. Aphrodite had asserted her power over me again in a new and tricky way.

Damn you, Aphrodite, I thought. I knew now how Chiron had felt about Zeus, how angry one could be at the gods, but I humbled myself before Aphrodite, knowing now that she was far shrewder than I. You win, Aphrodite! You've ruined my life! You've taken me to the edge of the cliff!

ZEUS:
Do you intend to let this insult pass unpunished?

APHRODITE:
Of course not! Phaon will be waiting to humble her once more.

Then I made my way to Lesbos secretly, not disclosing my identity. I crept upon my native island like a ghost.

I went first to Eresus, not Mytilene, hoping to conceal myself as long as possible. As far as I knew, Pittacus' minions would dispatch me for daring to return. No doubt I was still under sentence of execution. And yet it was sweet to be home. If I was meant to die here, so be it. I had reached the end of my winding road. I could smell death waiting in the wings.

At the little town where I was born, there was a strange hush. The hills were green as ever, the olives silver, the sea sparkling, but the people were subdued, as after an enemy attack. Everyone seemed to be waiting for something to happen. I asked the boatman who brought me what the trouble was.

“The tyrant's love is dying,” he said. “Cleis, beloved of Pittacus, may be breathing her last.”

Somehow, I had sensed this. Perhaps it had drawn me back to Lesbos as surely as my longing for my daughter.

“Where does she live?”

“Here in Eresus….A great lady.”

He rowed me to my grandparents' house—it seemed so much smaller and more modest than I remembered it—and into a courtyard filled with people weeping. I had the feeling I was back in the Land of the Dead. Everything seemed hazy and insubstantial, as if I walked among ghosts.

I drew my veil over my face, still not wanting to be recognized.

Then there was a commotion—guards pushing the people aside, myself included—and a great paunchy man with a white beard sailed in, a golden-haired young woman at his side.

The man was clearly an aged Pittacus. But who was the young woman?

I pushed through the crowd and found myself borne on a sea of sobbing humanity. Two guards restrained me and held me painfully by the arms. But now we were in a chamber where a woman lay dying, and she recognized me.

“Sappho!” she whispered. “Forgive me!”

The grizzled man and the golden girl stood aside in surprise. The man indicated to the guards that I might be released.

I ran to my mother's bedside and fell to my knees. Her face was gray. Her eyes had lost their luster. She smelled of mortality.

“Forgive me,” she said again. “Is it really you? Am I dreaming? If it is really you, I can die. The pain is so terrible that all I want to do is sleep. Sleep has become my only blessing.”