Sappho (16 page)

She dropped her cloak and dashed into the sea before him. He left his himation with his thrall and plunged after her. “You swim well,” he said, “like a boy.”

“I swim well,” she laughed back at him, “like a girl.”

“I have heard the women of Lesbos are brought up in a very free manner.”

“We are not slaves or servants, if that's what you mean.”

“Are other Lesbian women like you?”

“No one is like me—I am Sappho. But their lives are not bounded. They come and go as any other.”

“And swim where they will?”

“We may not have the organs of men. But we have arms and legs. And heads on our shoulders. Now I will go back to the women's side and try to behave myself.” With that, she jumped on him, pushing him under, then got well away so he could not return the treatment.

He came up spluttering.

She dived and broke surface too far away for further conversation.

Poles had been rammed into the sand shore and awnings stretched across them to keep off the sun, and there she dined, Niobe bringing honey cookies, fruits, and chilled wine. Her childhood by the sea came back to her. She remembered her swing in the garden and her little cart pulled by a pair of nanny goats, and that she left it all to search out shells and stand on the spray rocks. It was a different sea in Eresos, one that gathered with passion to dash itself against the shore. But the smell of brine-encrusted tangles, Poseidon's ropes, was the same, with berries inedible for humankind but from his deep kingdom. She picked up her instrument.

Come, holy tortoiseshell, my lyre,

and become a poem

Half-remembered things kept coming to her mind, and Niobe allowed no interruptions while she sang. So Kerkolas, coming to the entrance of the women's quarter, was obliged to wait. When Sappho laid aside her strings, she was told her host was detained outside the doors. Kerkolas bowed as she waved him in.

“You are so tall,” she complained, “it seems you are bending down to me.”

“I? Condescend to Sappho?”

“Tell me,” she asked pertly, “are you allowed on the women's side?”

“When I am invited.”

“I do not invite you then. I wish to see the other side.”

“It is my intention to show it to you. All houses here are laid out in much the same way. You will notice that they face south for sun in winter. While in summer the colonnades outside provide shade. Essential things we store, the produce from the fields my servants place in jars, while fish is smoked and hung. The coolest spot is reserved for wine.”

“Do you press your own?”

“Some we press. But for the most part it is imported, as you shall see tonight. The wealth of the home is in its fine vases, sculptures, and tapestries, so they are placed in the most secure room.”

She exclaimed at the collection of musical instruments: an Egyptian sistrum, a large sambyke—and on a simikion she counted thirty-four strings. She touched a kithara with tentative finger, wondering what notes could be coaxed from it. Pausing again before a barbitos lyre, she was more bold and plucked a resonant sound. Partly hidden, leaning against the wall, was a santir encrusted in gold.

Kerkolas, following her glance, said, “From Persia, perhaps beyond.”

Not large or imposing, its proportions appealed to her. Trying it, she made a face. “It badly wants tuning.”

Moving ahead of him to another part of the room, she came upon a stiff stone figure about which there was much power. Standing before it, Sappho concluded, “This is made by some older race.” Her attention was caught next by a battered sea chest. “And what does this hold?”

“Parchment scrolls and a book bound in iron.” He opened the chest and she looked inside, reverently lifting the book, the first she had ever seen. She was familiar with lines impressed on a single sheet, but never bound together. She studied the words that were in columns, but did not know them.

“It is written in some strange tongue.”

“And what do they write down?”

“Who knows? No one here can make it out.”

Sappho continued thoughtfully to examine this wonder, noticing how the semitransparent papyrus was pasted together, and puzzling over the mysterious words run on without demarcation. “It may be the work of some great poet of whom we know nothing.”

“Most likely it is a farmer drawing up his accounts.”

She laughed, placing the book carefully back in the chest.

“Sappho,” Kerkolas said impulsively, “I do not want you to hurry in finding a suitable place for yourself. I hope to keep you as long as possible as my guest-friend.”

“I thank you, Kerkolas of Andros. Then I will follow our Aeolian custom. You shall give me dinner this night. Thereafter during my stay I shall provide for myself and those who are with me.”

“And you will not hurry to find a villa?”

“It is always nice to be settled, but I will not hurry.” She gave him her hand in friendship, and he clasped it with ardor.

*   *   *

It seemed Kerkolas invited all Syracuse to meet the exiled poet of Lesbos. Her songs were a craze here. Everyone had been repeating them for months, and each arriving ship brought new ones. That she was a woman they looked on as a strange miracle. The gods, who are ever capricious, had put genius into a female, and who could say why?

This female Homer did not write in the old-fashioned style. Her words revealed her, and through her they knew themselves. Through her they saw not the gargantuan world of heroes and monsters, but a natural world. Sappho described accurately what she saw, and she knew how to look. Nature was her teacher, Nature and her own untouched heart. Her virginity surprised everyone and was the subject of endless debates. How did one who had not known a man know such passion? Had she secret lovers? What about Alkaios? It was said that he was willing enough but she would not have him.

Kerkolas was congratulated on all sides on his good luck in making the crossing with her and securing her as a guest-friend for his house. It was rumored she was very wealthy, others said she was quite poor. Some said she was a revolutionary who had plotted the overthrow of Melanchros, that she and her brother had a hand in the murder of Mysilos, former Tyrant of Lesbos. The allegation was brought up that she, her brother, and a co-conspirator had paid for the deed with Lydian gold.

A dangerous woman, one they would not allow their wives to consort with, but whom they looked forward to meeting themselves. They would boast of knowing her, although they agreed that an intellectual woman could not be completely respectable. Her swim to the men's side of the pier was already talked of in the city. Some thought the act one of bravado, others of defiance. “She is determined to prove that artists are not subject to rules.” A few voices pleaded her ignorance: “She does not know our customs.” But what were customs to a revolutionary who sang so prettily of flowers?

Sappho had no desire to be the baffling personality she was. Opposing forces had always dwelt in her. Sometimes she listened to the fastidious side of her character. At other times she was seized by some dark, unfathomable being, and gave song to it because there was no resisting.

To prepare for her presentation into Syracusan society, she spent the afternoon in the complicated rite of toiletry. She must look as splendid as possible for the sake of Aeolian Lesbos. She was bathed, hennaed, oiled, perfumed, pedicured, and manicured; flowers were braided into her hair, bracelets snapped around wrist and ankle. When all ministrations were done and her women stepped back, she consulted her mirror. She remembered her mother's comment—“You have a sweet smile.” Beautiful you are not, she told herself, adding—but you are Sappho.

She had little idea of the idolatry in which she was held. She knew her work was known, but the craze for it, and for glimpses of herself, was something as yet unimagined.

When she entered the great hall it was light as day. A fire blazed, on which flesh would shortly be spitted, and perfumed torches flared from brackets on the walls. Many of the artistic objects she had seen in the afternoon had been brought into the room, including curved marble benches on which several persons could sit. The guests, all male, lounged both indoors and out. An oboe player, a girl of perhaps fourteen, was being carried naked on the shoulders of one of the company. Sappho had heard about this game in Corinth. He who outdid the others in the number of trips back and forth claimed her for the night. But even the man with the oboist stopped where he was, the babble of voices died away. It was she, she of Lesbos.

Kerkolas was immediately by her side. He made no attempt to introduce her, he simply announced her and led her to the hearth where the sacrifice stood, a boar with feet shackled in gold whose horns were gilded and garlanded. Kerkolas cut the bristles from the animal, as he began his oration to Zeus, then expertly slit its throat. Slaves drained the blood and it was poured out. The carcass was bound to the spit and turned. Lesbian wine was brought and as Sappho drank from the cup extended to her, she found her name and one of her poems inscribed. She smiled over the rim at Kerkolas.

As she lounged on pillows and panther skins, cups were raised to her and her name called out thrice before any drank. “I thank you friends,” she said loudly, looking at Kerkolas, “and would that every exile knew happiness such as this.”

There was foot-stamping and hand-clapping approval of her remark. Then the first tables were brought, salt fish from the Black Sea, and oysters piled high, with nuts and fruits sweet as nectar. After wine and before the next course, slaves brought the santir she had admired. “It is yours,” said her host.

Sappho inclined her head, accepting it, but she called for her lyre, which had seen the first exile with her. Her hands knew its strings, which seemed extensions of her fingers. She spoke to the nine sisters: “Daughters of Zeus, I greet you. Add passion to my song.”

It was her intention to meet the most damaging rumors boldly by singing the song that led to her exile. All was hushed as she sang in her low, clear voice:

Gold is the child of Zeus,

neither moth nor worm devours it

and it overpowers the strongest

of mortal minds

Wild applause erupted in the hall. For this she must wander the wine seas and the world? Pittakos was an old woman to think a girl like this was implicated in murder! These sentiments flew from table to table.

Now that she had set before them her statement, she plied them with:

It was summer when I found you

in the meadow long ago

And the golden vetch

was growing by the shore

Her poetry shed radiance on whatever it touched. The Aeolian dialect, soft and exotic to the ears of her listeners, and the manner, reticent and unaffected, caused each to feel she sang to him alone. As always her body crouched against her instrument, while voice and string were one sound.

The wine passed yet another time, requests were called out: “Though few…!” “Upon what eyes…!” “I yearn and I seek…!” “O sweet tongued…!” “They say that Leda once…!”

Her instrument quickened with the assault of her fingers, and her voice accentuated the intimate meter. Singing of Leto, she recalled not the girl, but the pain she had known then. Line by line she offered up what she had and what she was. Yet, like herself, it was elusive. One thought one had hold of it, only to have it slip away. Was it her phrasing that made it unique, or the abrupt changes of mood? Sentences striking like the flick of a lash sent an amorous quiver through the guests, yet the next instant she called to mind such ordinary things that they wondered if they had heard correctly. She wove patterns of sound that entangled emotions. At times she questioned, and the answers leapt from her in flame. Finally she put by the lyre, bending her head to remove the silken sling.

There was silence. Sappho had sung. An hour before they had been interested in her dress, her diminutive stature, the way her hair was done, her ornaments, the expression on her face, and the face itself. Now those were externals. None of it mattered. Sappho had sung.

They had experienced something intangible, Sappho with her simple words, her soft enunciation, had reached these sophisticated hearts, for it was part holy religion. They felt both purified and strangely stirred: purified of old sins, yet desiring to find such passions as she knew, who was neither maid nor woman. Her eyes had the look of one who has drunk poppy juice, the pupils swallowed the iris to the rims. They looked and saw. “Divine madness overcomes her,” they whispered. “She is a treasure,” said one official to another, “an acquisition for our city.”

*   *   *

Over the next several days a number of people busied themselves on her behalf. Sappho was told of a villa on the sea, which was surprisingly inexpensive. She did not question her luck. Sappho never looked too hard at luck. Taking ceremonious leave of Kerkolas, she moved her small retinue.

Her new home was neither as large nor as richly appointed as the one in which she had been a guest, but it lay not too far distant, and the exposure was the same, the courtyard joining the sand and the sea fringing the edge of the property. She twirled through every room, her arms thrown over her head, calling on her sisters, the nine Muses, by name to share her home.

The first day she took the bundle of rags into the garden and knelt on the ground with a small digging tool. A pergola, she decided, would be erected here for her vines to climb. Perhaps after several harvests there might be enough grapes to press.

In the midst of her digging, she reached out suddenly with one hand for support, and the trowel fell to the ground. Homesickness gripped her so that she saw the double harbor of Mitylene, the long agora on the peninsula, the steep climb past groves of olives, the winding path leading to her aunt's house and garden. The entrance to Heaven guarded by the Seasons seemed not as good to her. Her tears spilled onto the earth.