The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (8 page)

Simo arose early to witness Chrysis’s funeral. The Greeks, for reasons that lay deep in their sense of the fitness of things and in their superstition, conducted their funerals in the hour before dawn, and it was therefore still profound night when the little procession of her household prepared to pass through the streets of the town. When Simo arrived at the square he found that many of the men of Brynos had already gathered there and, drawing the folds of their rough cloaks about them, were standing talking together in low voices. The men of his own age had brought their curiosity and contempt with them and were congratulating themselves on the island’s happy deliverance from the foreign woman; but the younger men who had known Chrysis stood with sullen faces, their throats rigid with antagonism at the glee of their elders. Simo took his place in silence beside Chremes, but refused to respond to the latter’s animated comment. Presently as the sounds of the flute and the mourners were heard approaching he discovered Pamphilus standing beside him, as silent as himself.

Mysis herded the shuffling and stumbling company before her as best she could. Philocles walked with lifted knees, as children do in a procession. In one hand he held some grasses and with the other he clutched the mantle of his companion, the old door-keeper; but he was continually straying off, or standing still to gaze with wide dazzled eyes at the torches that preceded him or at the laughing bystanders. Behind him the deaf and dumb Ethiopian girl could scarcely be restrained from running forward to walk beside her sleeping friend, Chrysis, whose rebuke had been so terrible when she had done wrong and whose smile had been sufficient compensation for her imprisonment in silence. Glycerium walked with lowered eyes, lost to hope and lost to the decorum that now required of her the wailing and the distraught gestures of a conspicuous mourner. All these passed forward under the bright stars that had received the first intimation of day and shone with a last heightened brilliance, and under the long garlands of smoke that hung above the company in that windless air.

As the onlookers accompanied the procession into the open country, Simo’s attention was fixed upon Glycerium, by reason of her condition, which was apparent to all, of her resemblance to her sister, of the dejection that invested her, and of the beauty and modesty of her bearing. And he became aware that his son also was watching the girl. In fact, during the whole journey, Pamphilus bent upon her his burning eyes, trying to intercept her glance and to communicate to her his encouragement and his love. But not until they reached the heaped-up wood whereon the bodies of a goat and a lamb were laid beside that of Chrysis, and not until the fire had touched it, did she raise her eyes. Then as the sound of the wailing increased in shrillness and the sound of the flute floated piercingly above all, she turned to Mysis and began to speak wildly into her ear. But the words of her vehemence were not heard in that din, nor were Mysis’s words of encouragement. Glycerium was trying to draw herself away from the supporting arm of the other and the slow faltering struggle of the two women was lighted up by the rising flames. Pamphilus, in the intensity of his concentration upon the suffering of the girl, moved slowly forward, his hands held out before him. And now he heard the words that she was repeating: ‘It’s best. It’s best so!’ Suddenly Glycerium pushed the older woman away from her and with a loud cry of ‘Chrysis!’ stumbled forward to fling herself upon the body of her sister.

But Pamphilus had foreseen this attempt. Running across the sand, he seized her by her disheveled hair and drew her back and into his arms. The touch of that encircling arm released her tears. She laid her head against his breast as one who had been there before and was returning home.

The scandal of this embrace was felt at once by all the bystanders and chiefly by Chremes, who turned upon Simo with his protest and astonishment. But Simo had moved away and was walking slowly home through the breaking dawn. Now he understood the Pamphilus of the last months.

The islanders discussed interminably the surprising event that had taken place at Chrysis’s funeral. They watched with hushed excitement the chill that had fallen across the relations between the families of Simo and of Chremes. Rumour presently asserted that Pamphilus had promised to acknowledge the child, though no one, naturally, even discussed the possibility of a marriage. Readers of a later age will not be able to understand the difficulties that beset the young man. Marriage was not then a sentimental relation, but a legal one of great dignity, and the bridegroom’s share in the contract involved not so much himself as his family, his farm, and his ancestors. Without the support of his parents and without a residence in their home a young man was a mere adventurer, without social, economic or civil standing. A marriage was only possible if Simo declared it to be so. The customs of the islands encouraged fathers in the luxuries of blustering and tyranny, but Simo’s relations with his son had always been strangely impersonal. He was confused by his own deference for his son, by what he thought was his own weakness. Yet Simo’s silence did not have the air of a final refusal; it even seemed to imply that the decision, with all its possibilities of lifetime regret and of a lifetime’s contention on the farm, rested with Pamphilus,

One day several months after Chrysis’s funeral Pamphilus betook himself to the palaestra for some exercise. He entered the low door and, nodding to a group of friends that sat scuffling under an awning at the edge of the enclosure, he walked across the hot red sand. The old attendant at the door who had won a laurel wreath in his youth came trotting across the burning ring after him and as soon as Pamphilus had seated himself on a marble bench began kneading his calves and ankles. In the centre of the field Chremes’s son was going through the motions of hurling an imaginary discus; thirty and fifty times he turned with lifted knee, trying to fix in his muscular memory the perfect synchronisation of the gestures. Two other young men were practicing a festival dance, interrupting their work from time to time to criticise one another’s slightest deviation from a harmonious balance. The young priest of Aesculapius and Apollo was running around the course. Pamphilus sent the attendant away and lying down on his cloak let the sunlight beat upon him. He did not think about his problem, but left his mind a blank, suffused with a dull misery that identified itself with the drowsy heat. Presently he placed his elbow on the ground and raising his head rested his cheek upon his hand and watched the priest of Apollo.

The priest never entered the competitive games, but he was undoubtedly first upon the island for endurance and second only to Pamphilus in swiftness. Save on the days of festival he appeared for exercise daily and ran six miles. He preserved a perfect temperance: he drank no wine; he lived on fruit and vegetables; he awoke with the sun and unless there was some call to attend the sick he went to sleep with it. He had taken the vow of chastity, the vow that forever closes the mind to the matter, without wistful backglancing and without conceding the possibility that circumstance might yet present a harmless deviation, the vow which, when profoundly compassed, fills the mind with such power that it is forever cut off from the unstable tentative sons of men. His office required his passing so much time among the sick and the distressed that he had become inadequate to the cheerful and the happy and no one on the island knew him very well. But he had a strange power over the sick and the demented and only in their hours of confession and despair was the shutter of his impersonality lifted; such as had known him then followed him ever after with their eyes, in gratitude and in astonishment. He was only twenty-eight, but he had been sent to Brynos by the priests that attended the great mysteries of Athens and Corinth as a signal honour; for the shrine on Brynos was one of particular significance in the legend of Aesculapius and his father Apollo. Pamphilus had never spoken to him beyond the salutations of the field, but he would rather have known him than anyone in the world, and he in turn watched Pamphilus with grave interest. Now Pamphilus lay following him with his eyes and wishing he had his own life to live over again.

Suddenly he became aware that someone was shaking him by the shoulder. It was one of his companions. ‘Here comes your father,’ said the boy and went back to the awning. Pamphilus rose to his feet and waited respectfully as Simo approached, preceded by the old attendant.

‘Stay where you are. Lie down again,’ said Simo; ‘I’ll sit here on this bench. I want to talk to you.’

Pamphilus lay down, his face turned away towards the track.

Simo wiped his face with the hem of his skirt. ‘I won’t be long, my boy. . . . But we must consider this matter somehow . . . after all.’ He was not sure of himself. He blew his nose. He coughed several times and roughly adjusted the folds of his gown. He repeated ‘Very well’ and ‘Now’ and waited in vain for Pamphilus to say something. At last he launched forth among his prepared introductions:

‘Well now, my boy, I assume you want to marry the girl, Hm . . .’

Pamphilus put his head down between his folded arms as though he were going to sleep. He sighed in anticipation of all the irrelevancies he was about to hear. In his heart he knew he had only to say yes or no and his father would accede to his wish.

‘I don’t wish to coerce you. I think you are old enough to see the good and the bad for yourself. But for a few moments now I want to talk all around the matter. I want to put the other side of the case in its plainest terms and leave it there for a while. May I do that?’

‘Yes,’ said Pamphilus.

‘Well, to begin with, it’s only right to face the fact that there is no outward obligation to marry the girl. I’ve looked into the matter. She is not a Greek citizen. She happens to have been brought up in a sheltered manner, or so I take it. This Chrysis seems to have tried to prevent the girl’s falling into her way of life; but that does not alter the fact that she is a mere dancing girl, Now, mind you, I can see that she is modest and well-mannered. She appears to be just such a person as our own Argo. But she could never have hoped for anything above the situation she is now in. The world is full of just such likable stray girls as this Glycerium, but we cannot be expected to welcome them into the fabric of good Greek family life. You may be sure that Chrysis knew perfectly well that Glycerium must some day become a hetaira like herself, or a servant.’

Simo paused. He could see the back only of his son’s head, but he was able to imagine upon his face the set unhappy expression they had all been obliged to watch there for the last weeks. He coughed again and abruptly flung himself upon another of his openings:

‘No doubt you feel yourself fairly bound to her by a promise – but a promise, Pamphilus, in which you failed to consider the rest of us, and especially your mother. If you decided to marry the girl, your mother and sister would try to live with her as peaceably as possible, we know; but it would be a good deal to ask of them. You know them. This girl does not understand the first thing about our island manners. She doesn’t know how simple and monotonous our women’s lives are. I expect that life with the Andrian and with that strange company at the house on the hill was an odd affair. She’d be unhappy with us. And even if she didn’t contradict your mother all day . . . and worse . . . she’d become silent and sullen. Pamphilus, they would never grow fond of one another. It would be better to be cruel to her now and let her alone, than to set up discord, a lifetime of discord on our farm.’

For a moment his memory failed him, but he rallied and continued:

‘Well, even assuming that your mother and sister came to like her and to accept her cordially in the home, all her life she would have to endure something insulting in the manner of the other women on the island. We men do not take that interest in social discrimination, my son, but women . . . women with their few interests and . . . and so on . . . they enjoy having someone to ignore or to stare down. It warms them. Glycerium is not a Greek citizen. Her sister was a hetaira. All her life she would be obliged to endure their looking at her with straight lips and (I can see them) with half-closed eyes. But even that is not the chief thing.’

He hoped that the suspense in this splendid transition would be reflected in some change in his son’s position, but the young man lay motionless. Simo’s weary eyes turned slowly about the palaestra.

‘The girl is not strong. The women of the village seem to know something about it. She’s a quick nervous high-strung girl and she’d bring you a series of thin and sickly children. You and I know those homes. She’s not unlike our neighbor Douro’s wife; isn’t she? and the uneven health of such women – even though they’re often more likable, yes, more likable, than the Philumenas – takes the shape of complaining and quarrelsomeness. And in their children. One has no right to bring into the world those children that cannot join others in their games, silent children who go through life regularly subject to fevers and coughs and pains. The most important thing in life is a houseful of strong healthy boys. Take Philumena, now. You do not ‘love’ Philumena, as the poets use the word. Well, when I married your mother perhaps I did not ‘love’ her in that sense. But I grew to love her and . . . euh . . . now I cannot imagine myself as having been married to anyone else, as satisfactorily married to anyone else. Philumena is handsome. But most important of all, Philumena is strong. So . . . so, Pamphilus, does what I am saying seem to have some truth in it? . . . Pamphilus?’

But Pamphilus had fallen asleep.

His last thought had been the recollection of one of Chrysis’s maxims, an ironic phrase which he had chosen to take literally:
The mistakes we make through generosity are less terrible than the gains we acquire through caution.

Simo was not vexed. He sighed. Looking up he saw the priest of Aesculapius and Apollo running around the course. He recalled the day several months before when he and Sostrata had taken Pamphilus’s sister to the temple. For two days and two nights, Argo had been suffering from an earache, and although they knew that the priest was often ungracious when his attention was asked on smaller ills they ventured to present her to him. The hour at which he was accustomed to receive the sick was a little after sunrise and there they found his colony. There were invalids brought to him on beds; there were sufferers from tumors, from protracted languors, from sore eyes; there were the possessed. Simo and Sostrata had passed their lives without ailments. They regarded them, like poverty, like uncleanliness, as mere bad citizenship; they were on the point of returning home, so great was their distaste for such manifestations. The priest required that the guardians who had brought their sick to him should retire to a distance during his interviews, and Simo and Sostrata had withdrawn with an ill grace to a nearby grove. Argo seemed not to share her parents’ revulsion from these matters; even before she approached the place (her fingers pressed upon her ear) she had been subdued to awe and when her turn came she told her little story with caught breath. The priest gently touched her ear, reciting a charm. He poured in some oil and looked deeply into her shy eyes. And gradually as he gazed at her a smile appeared upon his lips and slowly she smiled in return. True influence over another comes not from a moment’s eloquence nor from any happily chosen word, but from the accumulation of a lifetime’s thoughts stored up in the eyes. And there is one thing greater than curing a malady and that is accepting a malady and sharing its acceptance. The earache did not abate at once, but Argo pretended to her parents that it did, for the other healing they would not have understood; and all night long instead of complaining she pressed against her ear the little bag of laurel leaves he had given her and talked to herself, rehearsing that interview and that glance. Thereafter she never had any conversation with the priest, but when she happened to meet him upon the road, her heart was filled with excitement; she gave him a shy greeting and her eyelids fluttered in a quick intimate glance and he in turn let fall upon her a faint allusion to his smile. Her parents were amused by this bond; the priest had brought out in their daughter a side they had never known in her, and one that sent messages all along her life. Henceforth she even stood up straighter. One day a cousin who lived on the other side of the island came to a meal with them and let fall a remark in disparagement of the priest, saying that he was a comfort chiefly to old women who imagined themselves to be ill. Argo’s eyes grew dark and her lips straight with anger. She refused to eat another mouthful and forever after the poor foolish cousin could never draw a word from her and never knew why. All this now returned to Simo’s mind as he watched the priest,