Helen of Troy (92 page)

But there had been so many funerals, and tears were dried up. Troilus, Hector, innumerable private losses, made Paris a latecomer. Always there was the feeling that Paris had brought all this about, and without him the other deaths need not have taken place.

They were right. Without that fateful glance in Sparta, none of this would have happened. For that reason I had been willing to take his place. But adamantine Zeus would not permit it.

The oldest brother left to speak words was Deiphobus. His speech was brief, commending Paris to the gods. Priam spoke, touching on the sorrow of having found his son only to lose him. Hecuba wept.

The wood was torched. There were no sacrifices scattered amongst the fagots—no slain horses, dogs, or hostages. Paris would not have wanted that, and I had insisted on his wishes. The flames leapt upward, licking toward Paris. I shuddered, trying not to think of the pain when the fire reached him. He knows no pain any longer, I told myself. But I did not believe it. We feel pain forever, even after we are dead. I watched the fire reach him. I turned away; I could not look. But I could smell it. The smell changed when fire encountered something new.

“No, no! Stop!” someone cried. Still I cringed and did not turn back to the fire.

“Stop her!”

Now I did turn back, and I saw Oenone rushing toward the fire, her garments streaming. “Forgive me! Forgive me!” she was crying. Before anyone could take hold of her, she flung herself into the flames. With a shriek she was immolated. The flames leapt up as they fed on her. Nymphs cannot die. But it seems they can, if they so wish.

“A woman has thrown herself in,” the guards were crying.

“Not a woman, but a nymph,” I said. “Of her own free will. You cannot save her, she will have vanished into her elements.” I was stunned by her wild act of love and in some deep part of me wondered why I had not thought to do the same.

I looked at Priam and Hecuba, expecting them to solace me. But they turned away. I was alone.

LXVI

W
hen I returned to our—my—chamber, it had been cleared of all the sickbed detritus, swept clean. No incense or perfume lingered in the air, and bright sunshine played in the empty room. Paris’s armor, still dusty from his last battle, was piled in a corner.

Tomorrow when the pyre cooled they would collect his bones, put them in a golden urn. Then the bones would be placed in his family tomb, and afterward there would be dispirited funeral games. And then it would be back to war, back to dreary war for the Trojans.

And for me? I could think of no life for me at all. There was nothing waiting but sublime emptiness, as empty as this room.

The rest of the day I stumbled about in my quarters, barely able to see for the tears that would suddenly well up, blurring everything. Attendants brought trays of food, but I waved them away. I admitted no one to the rooms. Sometimes I fell on the bed, dizzy while the room rotated around me. Other times I got up and addressed myself to absurd tasks like sorting through different balls of wool, dividing them into big piles, rearranging them, finding containers to store them in. Everywhere I looked I seemed to see something of Paris, except when I bent my head over the wool balls or, for some reason, removed my jewelry from its box and laid out the necklaces, bracelets, and earrings each in their separate rows. Then I put them all back in the same place. As long as I was bent over this task, I could not see the face of Paris.

And how could I ever restore the face I had loved for so long, and erase the one that had usurped it in his last hours? The hideous swollen one had blotted out the gentle one. The poisoned arrows of Heracles had stolen not only the life of Paris from me, but his face as well.

In my numbness and bewilderment I found myself dragging his clothes and possessions out of their chests, putting them on the floor. With trembling hands I arranged and smoothed the clothes, preparing them for a visitation that would not come. I could not even feel foolish; I wanted him to appear so badly, I believed I could will it. With all my power I called out to him, raising my arms and falling down upon the clothes, the clothes that still smelled like him.

“Helen, get up!”

I swam up through what I thought were the fogs of Hades; it was dark and I could not see where I went. I clutched at cloth beneath my fingers. I was lying flat.

Wavering light came toward me. Someone set an oil lamp down. A face bent over me. “Helen, get up! Oh, for shame!” Evadne cradled my head. “For shame, that they left you here alone.” She smoothed my hair. “You are deserted!”

I looked into her deep eyes. “Yes,” I said. Paris had deserted me. She spoke true, there was no other truth for me.

“I mean your attendants!” she said. “How dare they?”

“I sent them away,” I assured her. “I wanted no one here. No one, not even you.”

“It is dangerous for you to be alone now,” she said, rubbing my forehead.

As if I cared if anyone killed me. I gave a feeble laugh. They would be doing me a favor.

“I meant it is dangerous for your spirits to suffer alone,” she said.

“There is no other way,” I said. “I suffer alone even in your presence; no one can share it with me.”

“Someone can be present.” She was stubborn.

“Why waste their time? There is nothing they can do.” Slowly I picked myself up. “Go, Evadne. I want no company.” I was eager for darkness.

The funeral games. I shall not even describe them, for does it matter whose horses won the chariot race, whose javelin went farthest, whose legs propelled him fastest? One thing was certain: the Trojans were weary, even when they were rested, and their performances were slow and clumsy. War had worn them down, as the steady tunneling of rodents will collapse a foundation. I awarded prizes from Paris’s armor and weapons. In my chambers, they would be only another thing to grieve me. I could not pass his helmet without imagining him still wearing it. Some eager Trojan boy won it; let him revere and keep it.

The first, most elaborate funeral banquet proceeded according to protocol. Paris presided, as Troilus had presided at his. Now at Paris’s I heard the echoes of his words at Troilus’s. All the losses melded together, one great cry of grief for Troy, a private one for me. Paris’s favorite foods were served—roasted kid and honey cakes, and equally honeyed, unctuous words were uttered over them. No one bleated out the insults that were bubbling inside.

Of all the people gathered, only Priam, Hecuba, and I felt true grief. The others just painted themselves with grieving colors. Priam’s voice trembled as he spoke of finding his lost son only to lose him again, and Hecuba bemoaned the years that had separated them, when they were both still walking in the sunlight.

“What I would give to have those years restored,” she whispered. I had to strain to hear her. “We were both here, but could not reach one another. In my folly of sending him away, I robbed myself. Now I have all the time in the world to lament.”

I could say nothing. My throat was clutched by an invisible hand that made it ache. I merely stood and bowed my head.

The bones and ashes were ceremonially conveyed to the tomb, libations left, the lid opened and closed. Paris inside. Vital Paris—how could he rest content there? But we know nothing of the dead, what they want, what they feel. We only know they are profoundly different from us. Even those we love are changed into something we cannot fathom.

As we trod through the streets afterward in our sad procession, Priam fell back to walk beside me. Deiphobus, as the foremost surviving son, took his place beside Hecuba.

How stooped and frail Priam had grown! I remembered the sunlit day I had first encountered him, how muscular and strong he was, even at his age. But that day was with Paris. Paris beside me, Paris proudly presenting me, Paris protecting me! “Helen . . .” Even his voice was thin, old-man thin.

“Yes, Father,” I answered.

He fumbled for my hand. He must have something momentous to say.

“Some would say the war is now over,” he said. “Paris, who violated the sacred laws of hospitality—although we all recognize that love-madness can overturn peaceful laws—has relinquished you. You are now his widow. We must make our way without him.”

I stiffened. Now he was going to ask me to make the sacrifice of returning to the Greeks, to Menelaus. What else could it be? It was the only sensible response. Troy would be saved, as its original reason for punishment was removed.

He was finding it difficult to frame his words. I would help him. “Dear Father,” I said, “you need not force yourself to say the hateful words. I will do whatever lies in my power to save Troy. I will return to the Greeks.” How could he know, after all, that a dead person did not care what she did, where she went? There is no abasement when you are dead. And I had died with Paris. “I will go to Menelaus, bow before him, and then the Greeks will have to leave the Trojan plain.” I cared nothing for what happened to me. Let Menelaus kill me. Then I could join Paris, and be spared Menelaus.

“No, there is another way,” he said. “You must marry Deiphobus.”

I jerked my hand away. “No! I am Paris’s forever.” The words poured forth before I had a single thought.

“It will put heart into the resistance,” he said.

“The best resistance is for me to end the war. Its pretext is gone.”

“Deiphobus demands this.” He forced the words out.

“As a price for what?” Surely he had no basis for demands.

“As a price for defending Troy.”

“So he would turn traitor if he cannot have Helen?” I could not keep the disdain from my voice. “What sort of son have you sired?” And to think they dared call Paris coward, ignoble!

His reply was abject. “I sired many sons, but few, it seems, who are heroes.”

I started to make a sharp retort, then I heard the failure in his words. To have so many sons, and so few in whom one could have pride. “I cannot wed Deiphobus,” I said.

“You must,” he insisted.

On both sides of us now, in the falling twilight, people were lining the street, leaning forward and calling out. We could speak no further, and I believed my silence would serve as adequate refusal.

I sat in our bedchamber. The megaron was still occupied by the foreign allies and refugees; most of them had dutifully attended the funeral games, and I was grateful to them.

In accordance with my wishes, I had been left alone. No attendants fluttered about, no family members kept me company. The chamber seemed, somehow, more deserted now, as if the shade of Paris had obeyed the mourning ritual and duly fled into his tomb. I had expected to return to this retreat and find him waiting for me here, but he had melted away.

I circled the chamber like one of Priam’s hunting dogs seeking a place to lie down. Only there would be no resting place for me again, no matter how many times I lay down. I sank to one of the chairs, and stared out in the darkness.

If only we had had a child . . . if only he had left something behind to indelibly recall him . . .

If only I could speak to him, see him once more.

I rose, went to our bed. I stretched myself out on it, hoping for surcease. But not for sleep, only for utter oblivion. Should I do as my mother did, knot a length of rope around my neck and let them find me swinging in the dawn? Never see another moonrise, never see another noonday, be spared the entire black road stretching out before me?

I could feel my breathing, feel my chest rising and falling.

In—out. In—out. Soft as a whisper, but it meant I lived and Paris did not. The chamber was dark, dark. The doings of the day closed in on me, swirled me away.
A tunnel is sucking my feet away, making me slide down it
.

Paris, I follow! I follow, I fall down the tunnel with you.

Long, black, close sides in the tunnel. So close I can claw at them. It is over, then. It is over, and without the ugliness of dagger or rope. Helen is gone.

I land, softly. Still it is dark. I pick myself up, my legs trembling, and see nothing. Something brushes against my legs and I reach down to touch it. Asphodel. The flower of the fields of the dead. I am here at last.