The Sweet Girl (26 page)

I spend a lot of time watching him. I am alert to him—his body, his moods, what focuses his attention and what releases it. I find myself wanting a private glance across the table, a casual touching of hands, any acknowledgement at all. But he is cool. His eyes don’t change when he looks at me. He’s tired, and spends a lot of time alone in the room he’s chosen for himself. He dislikes loud noise. I’ve seen him wince at Nico’s high spirits, less in dislike than in physical pain. He has a ringing in the good ear, he’s told me, and he gets headaches. After we’re married, I’ll see if he’ll let me put herb poultices on his temples, the way I used to do for Daddy. He’s already told me he’ll be keeping his own room.

Herpyllis asked after Myrmex within minutes of her arrival in Chalcis. I told her the truth: that he had stolen from us, that he was gone and he would not be coming back.

“I should be surprised,” Herpyllis says. But her eyes still fill with tears.

“Who’s Myrmex?” Nicanor asked.

“A poor relation. Daddy took him in years ago. He was like my brother.”

“What did he steal?”

“Money.” I hugged Herpyllis again. She couldn’t stop kissing me, all over my face. “He was a little shit.”

“Pytho.”
Herpyllis looked mortified, then laughed. “Language!”

“He sounds like it,” Nicanor said. “Good riddance, then. You’ll excuse me.”

Then he was gone to his room for the rest of the afternoon, leaving Herpyllis and me to supervise Pyrrhaios’s unpacking, and generally boss him about. We laughed so much, the three of us, until Pyrrhaios looked at Herpyllis and said, “I don’t care,” and hugged me, too, and I let him.

“We’ve missed you.” He put his arm around Herpyllis and the two of them stared fondly at me. “We were so worried about you.”

Love had wrought magic in him, a metamorphosis; he liked me now. Herpyllis was more relaxed than she’d been in the months before Daddy’s death, and her prettiness was back, in her eyes, especially. They were happy together.

Now, in the courtyard, Pyrrhaios leans over to prise Nico off his mother’s lap. “I can still pin you,” he says, and takes a few steps away from the table, hauling Nico onto the ground to wrestle, to prove it. Nicanor flinches at Nico’s delighted shrieks but, unusually, doesn’t leave. He’s making an extra effort tonight. The wedding is tomorrow.

Theophrastos appears in a doorway, drawn by the noise, and watches the wrestlers with his dry smile. Neither he nor Nicanor has Pyrrhaios’s tree-branch arms. Pyrrhaios gives Nico the exhilaration of the body, Theophrastos that of the mind. What, if anything, will Nicanor give him? So far, they’ve barely spoken.

The next day’s festivities begin at sundown. A priest comes to the house to supervise the ritual. Nicanor and I exchange
gifts. He gives me a bolt of pink silk and a necklace set with pink tourmalines I’ll wager anything Herpyllis picked out for him. I give him a branch of snow-white plum blossoms. I wanted to give him plums, for my first memory of him, but of course it’s only spring. He holds the branch without curiosity, waiting to be told what to do next.

The wedding supper is hosted by Herpyllis and Pyrrhaios. Herpyllis explains each dish as it comes.
Beans with mint, you stew it with a ham hock, and honey bread, and lamb rubbed with spices, you have to crush them first and use quite a bit of salt, and quince cake of course, seedy quince cake!
A seedy meal for a seedy wedding night; I blush, and they beam.

Nicanor sits apart from me, and sips from his cup, and listens with his head cocked, smiling his polite, dull-eyed smile. Finally it’s time for the procession back to the house. Normally we would walk from my father’s house to my husband’s; but here, of course, there’s no distinction. This morning, I asked Nicanor if he wanted to stay in Chalcis, or return to Athens, or go somewhere else altogether. He looked at me and said, “I really don’t care.”

Nicanor takes my hand, and together we lead the wedding party, by torchlight, on a short walk up the street and back. In the few days she’s been here, Herpyllis has taken the servants in hand and had the house scrubbed to a moony glow. Even the outside walls are clean and polished. At the threshold, Nicanor turns to thank the party. Then he leads me inside.

They have prepared Daddy’s old bedroom, which is to be ours now.

We stand in the doorway. Many lamps are lit, and flower
petals toast in a brazier, scenting the room. The bed’s laid with silk and fur, and there’s wine on the table. Nicanor moves first; he goes for the wine. I attend to the brazier with the petals, blowing them out.

Nicanor glances over. “Thanks. Perfume makes me sneeze.” He takes off his clothes and gets into the bed with his cup. “This wine is decent.”

“It’s a wedding gift. From Euphranor, I think.”

Our first married conversation.

After a blank moment, he looks up at me. “You can read, if you like,” he says. “The light won’t bother me. You like to read?”

“There’s no book here,” I whisper.

He closes his eyes.

I take a lamp across the courtyard to Daddy’s old workroom. The house isn’t asleep yet. Doubtless they’ve noticed me; perhaps they’ll think he’s asked me to read to him.

When I return, Sappho under my arm, he’s asleep.

After the first night, he leaves the big bedroom to me and returns to the small, windowless room he claimed as his when he first arrived. There’s no sneaking, no pretence; he doesn’t care who knows. Herpyllis takes me aside to ask if he’s injured there.

“I don’t know,” I say. That hadn’t occurred to me.

“But the first night—”

I shake my head.

“But then you aren’t married.”

“I suppose not.”

“Pytho.” She takes my shoulders in her hands so I have to look at her. “Do you want me to ask him?”

“No!”

“Then you have to find out. It’s grounds for—”

I hold up my hand,
stop
.

“We can all see he’s suffering,” she says. “We all have compassion for him. But we have to think about
your
future, too.”

“I said I’d do it.”

“All right, all right, all right, I’ll stop talking about it.” But something else occurs to her. “It
is
him, not you? I know the first time can be—especially if you’re shy, or—”

I close my eyes and stick my fingers in my ears.

“Forget I asked,” Herpyllis says.

Nico comes loping into the kitchen, where we’ve been having our little talk, looking for another in an endless series of snacks. Herpyllis ruffles his hair, kisses me, and leaves us alone.

“You’re so tall now,” I say.

“Your voice is still deeper.” He sits at the table and lets me serve him, bread and dried apricots. I sit down across from him. “I’ve missed you,” I say.

“Me, too.” He eats an apricot. “Nicanor told me Daddy’s will said he was responsible for me, and anytime I wanted to leave Theophrastos and come back to live with you, I could.”

“Is that what you’d like?”

He looks at me steadily, with his clear, good eyes. “Not really,” he says. “But I’ll do it if you need me.”

I lunge at him across the table, tackle him to the ground,
and tickle him until we’re both breathless. “Who needs you?” I say, again and again, digging my fingers into his armpits and wiggling them. “Who needs you?”

That night, I go to Nicanor’s room. I had thought to follow him, very naturally, when he first went. Early, as usual; earlier than the rest of the house. But courage failed me, and instead I stayed up, playing tiles with Herpyllis and Pyrrhaios and Nico, while Theophrastos read in his corner. We talked about their respective journeys home, the day after tomorrow, and Theophrastos’s upcoming marriage, in the summer, when we would all be reunited.

“And we’ll come again, the moment you—as soon as you—as soon as you need us.” Herpyllis falters.

“She means when you get pregnant,” Nico says. Daddy taught us both not to be mealy-mouthed.

“That will be lovely,” I say to Herpyllis. And to Nico: “You won’t be invited.”

“Disgusting.” Nico makes a show of considering his tiles. “Don’t even tell me. I guarantee you, I won’t want to know.”

“Actually, it’s a fascinating biological phenomenon.” Theophrastos looks up from his book. “When we’re home, we’ll dissect a pregnant sheep together. It’s quite similar.”

“Fun!” Nico says.

“Oh, fun.” Herpyllis swats at him across the table. “Disgusting, both of you. Theophrastos, you’re as bad as their father was. Dead animals all over the house, and always some
carcass boiling away in my kitchen so he could preserve the skeleton. Pytho, you look tired.”

My cue. “I am, rather. I think I’ll say goodnight.”

I make the rounds of kissing cheeks and none of them quite looks at me. I wonder who Herpyllis
hasn’t
told.

“I thought we’d go out to the farm tomorrow,” I say. “Take a picnic.”

Everyone agrees that is a first-rate idea.

I wash in the big room and change into my nightdress. By the time I’m done, the courtyard is empty. Herpyllis’s doing, no doubt. I cross to Nicanor’s room.

“Yes,” he calls.

I open the door. The room is dark, but he’s not sleeping; I can feel his tense alertness, even flat on his back in the narrow bed.

“We thought to visit the farm tomorrow, for a picnic. We’d—I’d like it if you came.”

He breathes out.

“May I come in?” When he doesn’t answer, I close the door behind me and place the lamp on the table. “May I sit?”

“Pythias.”

I sit on the edge of the bed.

“Pytho.”

“Herpyllis says I should ask if you have an injury.”

“Ah.”

We sit for a moment, breathing in the excellently honest silence.

“No,” he says.

I touch the tie at my shoulder.

“No.” He pulls my hand down, quickly, and holds it in both of his own. “I don’t want you to do that.”

I tell myself: he would do it if it meant nothing to him. I tell myself: therefore, it means something. He’s packed in thorny burnet, still, or I am. Packed in spikes, both of us, until we arrive at a safe place.

I go back to my room.

The next morning he’s there for breakfast, and supervises the packing up of our caravan. He’s fast and silent at the work, and when he’s done, he and Pyrrhaios go for the horses. “Will you ride?” Nicanor asks me over his shoulder.

“Yes.”

We all ride, in the end, even Herpyllis, her arms around Pyrrhaios’s waist. Nicanor slings the picnic in saddlebags so we won’t have to bother with the cart.

“Army-style,” Theophrastos says.

If this is criticism, or snobbery, it’s lost on my little brother. He seems taken with his big cousin, my husband, and nips around on his pony, asking questions about army life and army style. For the moment, anyway, Nicanor tolerates him.

As for me, something happened to me last night when he turned me away. Now, when he comes back to us after being somewhere far away inside himself—a word or two in his deep voice; his sudden frail, sweet smile—I catch my breath. When his eyes pass over me, I feel it. I know this is probably only because he is indifferent to me, but there is something in that indifference that I feel in the palms of my hands. My vanity is pricked; I’m humiliated, challenged. Stumped. Where’s the way in?

Demetrios is in the yard in front of Euphranor’s farm with a couple of slaves, sorting through a cart loaded with bags of seed. The slaves open each bag and call out the contents while Demetrios ticks them off on a tablet. A new delivery; spring is here. Demetrios looks up as we pass, raises a hand in greeting, and returns to his work.

“What do they plant?” Nicanor is beside me for a moment.

“Wheat, barley. A few vegetables—onions, beans. Mostly it’s grain, though, for export to Athens. That’s where the money is. The trees are oak and chestnut. A few fruit trees.”

“Vines?”

“Not on our property.” I point with my chin—we’re here. “It’s run down.”
A bit run down
, I was going to say, but that would be wrong. “I couldn’t—”

He grunts, rides ahead, dismounts. Looks around. Breathes deep. Looks up at the sky through the treetops, then down at the dirt. Kicks at it with his toe; squats to run some through his fingers. Shades his eyes to look into the abandoned fields, into the sun. He’s all here.