Sappho (2 page)

Although Sappho brooded on the tale of struggling birds, and war was known to her through the recitation of many wandering singers, she did not yet understand that war would end the life she had known. So she tasted, then gorged, burning her small eager fingers on the flesh heaped on her plate. She sucked her fingers and stared at the entrails flung upon the hearthstones that foretold victory.

Her mother, paying no heed to omens, said fearfully, “Eresos is only five hundred stadia from Sigeum by sea, and will surely be attacked.”

Her father inclined his head. “No one will be found here. You are to take the children to my brother Eurygyos, whose house is safe in the hills of Mitylene.”

Hearing this, her mother wailed in a frightening way, all on one note. The attendant ladies did the same, and her brothers added to the din. The room was solid with noise, there was no place even for the thoughts in Sappho's head. Her large dark eyes moved from face to face. She felt a terror against which it did no good to cry, for her father welcomed dead heroes and ancestor-gods to the feast. Unseen, the Ever-living arrayed themselves with silent dignity to taste the fine barley bread, the dainties in woven baskets, the haunches of flesh and the spilled wine.

Her mother, quiet now, took Skamandronymos's greaves from a slave and fastened them herself about her husband's legs. Helping him draw on the breastplate of leather and bronze, she placed a close-fitting cap of plaited leather on his head and lastly the metal casque with its rim of wild boar's teeth and flying plume. This solemn ritual was broken by the howling of the baby, Larichos. Her father held the infant above his head before returning him to his mother, then pressed the two boys to him. He turned to Sappho last. “Little Pebble,” he murmured into her dark hair.

She never saw him again.

*   *   *

In the morning the inlet was deserted. For the first time since Sappho could remember, not one of her father's ships rode at anchor. All were gone. She ran to the stables. The champing horses had been taken, and the wraps to spread over them. Even the stores of barley and rye were no longer there. Only the mules remained, and it was they, harnessed to a cart heaped with household goods, with which the family of Skamandronymos began the long journey to Mitylene.

Sappho had imagined much, but never that she would leave the sand shore, the encrusted rocks, the swing in the garden, her little cart and goats, or the house of her parents that clustered with other houses near the water.

The way was uphill and the slaves groaned under their burdens, for nothing was left behind. Linens, bedding, wardrobes, chests of toiletries, jars of oil and wine, baskets of bread, her father's high-backed chair richly carved and inlaid with gems—all were carried on the backs of servants. But not all—not the broad vineyards, not the garden, not the sand shore.

Sheep bleated as shepherds piped the stragglers. And Sappho, wrenching her hand from her nurse, looked back. The rocky headland of Eresos rose straight as though lifted by waves. The small harbor without the graceful black boats seemed alien. Trees were heavy with apples, quinces, and pomegranates, but the fruit was unpicked. Even the grapes in the vineyard were unpicked.

“Sappho, Sappho, don't look back.” Her mother's tears fell on the child's upturned face.

They left the familiar cypress and sycamore; elms and willows now lined the path, the tamarisk too was thinning. Beech replaced the shady lanes of mulberry and honeysuckle. They climbed higher, through olive groves sacred to Aphrodite. Small rivulets from the hillside tumbled into glades of maidenhair fern. She no longer knew the way and in panic turned once more for a sustaining glance at her home, but it had disappeared.

They stopped at midday and ate roasted chestnuts served with fruits and dried fish. By the time they reached pine country, Sappho was asleep. With Eresos, civilization vanished. The party kept close by day and at night huddled around fires for fear of lions and wild boar. Sappho, wrapped in shawls, half woke and listened in a far-off way to the talk of the grown-ups. She was not afraid of lions or boar, but of Phorcys's terrible children, the earth-dwelling Gorgons, dragons with wings, whose look turned little girls to stone. When long-shadowed Night waved and groaned, she clutched her mother and whispered her fears. But Kleis told her such creatures were no longer upon Earth. Once, yes, certainly there had been monsters, but now they were gone.

“Your father's brother,” her mother said, “Eurygyos, has also gone to the war. But his wife, Tyro, is kind. Barren women have to be, and it is to this home we travel.” To cheer her a bit, she added, “Mitylene is a city I have heard compared to Rhodes and Corinth. When I was a bride I visited there. The western side is spanned by bridges of white stone, and there are two harbors, one on each side of the peninsula. You have seen nothing like it. The market is set on a spit of land. So many things to buy, wares from distant places, perfumes, baskets, pottery, candles, and such confections, such delicacies. We will go there, Little Pebble.”

“Don't call me that,” the child said sharply and drew away.

On the third day, they came to washing springs and stone troughs. But everything was deserted. The path had become a wagon road lined with weather-beaten fig trees whose humped roots ran under the wall of the city. From the bastions, sentries hailed the bedraggled band, and they were made to state their family name and business before approaching.

Three massive bolts protected the gates of Mitylene. These were not opened in such unsettled times, and the party entered by a small postern door. Although she had visited her husband's brother years before, Kleis had to ask the way.

The old soldier who admitted them stared hard at her. “You are a relative and you do not know?”

“Please, we have traveled in flight from Eresos; the children are tired.”

The elder nodded, his face falling into deep furrows. “Then you have heard no word of the battle?”

“A battle? So soon?”

“Athenian ships lay hidden by the crags of Chios. Our fleet was burned and scuttled. The house to which you ask the way is a house of mourning. They say Eurygyos, like Hector, went to his death with open eyes.”

Kleis's voice was tight in her throat. “Is it known who else…?”

She is asking about Father, Sappho thought. But the old man didn't know.

Kleis pressed a coin into his hand and urged the servants to pick up their bundles. The wide streets had no one in them, except for some boys rolling hoops. They had been sent outside for this purpose and played without laughter or joy.

“Mother, I want to go back to Eresos, I want to go home.”

Her mother didn't answer. She looked like one of the Gray Women.

The threshold of the house they sought was of stone. They stood there listening to the keening from inside. Red-eyed servants admitted them, calling their mistress. Tyro, wife of Eurygyos, embraced Kleis and the baby distractedly, then knelt and put her arms around Sappho. “This night, child, you will water the bones of your father.”

Kleis's breath sucked inward. “Dead?”

“All. With the death that lays men at their length.”

Kleis smiled at such nonsense. “He was with me four days ago. He told me, ‘Take the children.' He told me…” She looked around. “How can it be?” She was still smiling.

“The gods looked with favor on the hekatombs of the Athenians. The owl of Pallas Athene escaped and betrayed our battle plans. For it is certain someone betrayed the route. In a cove west of Eresos our men died. My Eurygyos urged the rowers to a fast turn. An ax cleaved the nape of his neck. Still, they say, he gasped out instructions to save the ship, holding his nearly severed head clamped in his hands.”

Kleis sank to the floor whispering, “No more, no more.”

Tyro ordered that salts be brought.

Sappho wandered away. Slaves were attempting to start a fire. “How did Skamandronymos of Eresos die?” she asked.

An obese eunuch looked at the small travel-worn figure with disapproval. “I heard he was struck in the buttocks.” This raised a general laugh and, encouraged by his audience, he continued. “The shaft of a spear was driven upward through his bladder and you might say when it burst, he drowned.”

Someone nudged him. “The girl is his.”

“Oh, Skamandronymos of Eresos, you say?” he said, suddenly polite. One had to be circumspect where the upper class was concerned. “Now that's a different matter. He jumped on the Athenian boat as if for the sport of it. And hurled fire upon their decks before he was overpowered.”

Sappho walked on, stopping beside a maidservant busy with the preparation of mint. “How did Skamandronymos of Eresos die?”

“It was dreadful, that. A spear entered his eye and was driven downward, crashing among his teeth, knocking them every which way, cutting out the root of his tongue. And the Athenians burned him in his armor.”

Another slave joined in. “I have it from one who was there that he was hit on the forehead, just at the rise of the nose. The bone cracked, and they say his two eyes, dripping gore, fell at his feet, and he crawled around trying to find them.
Then
they burnt him in his armor.”

“You don't know at all, do you?” The small dark girl glared at them malevolently. “May strange dogs lap your blood from gutters in the street.”

“What! Who is this miserable dark dwarf?”

Sappho stared them down. “In death there is a happy place reserved for heroes. My mother told me.”

“Hush,” one slave told the other. “She is of a great house by the way she speaks.”

“If not how she looks.” The other giggled.

Sappho's nurse had come looking for her. She laid hold of the slaves and shook them as though they were dust cloths. “Know-nothings! She is Sappho, beloved daughter of the Lord Skamandronymos, and a guest in this house.”

The arrival of messengers with laurel in their hair brought everyone to the courtyard. The messengers were given wine and when they had breath to speak cried, “Honor to Father Zeus, first in power!” They told that the bodies of their slain comrades were in the hands of compatriots. A great funeral pyre had been raised on the sand, a hundred feet high and in all directions a hundred feet. The bodies were washed, anointed with sweet oils, and wound in fresh cloaks. Their friends covered them with locks of their hair before carrying them by ladders to the apex of the mound, now surrounded by flayed sheep and oxen. Against the bier, jars of honey and unguents were piled. Six proved horses were killed and placed at the bottom of the burial hill. For each cup of wine drunk by their friends, one was spilled to the dead. And at the last it was the aureate wine of Lesbos that quenched the flames.

When the cremation was complete, the heroes' bones were separated from those of the offerings and laid, each in a golden krater, between layers of fat. They were wrapped in linen, and earth heaped over them covered by close-set stones.

The women wept as their loss was brought freshly before them, and servants led the messengers to food and rest while singers began extolling the fallen so that all might hear.

The child Sappho was carried to a room where a bed had been set up for her. Dreams born of Night sucked her beneath five thicknesses of darkness to Tartarus, the deepest pit under Earth, as far beneath Earth as Heaven is high. She saw her father and held out her arms to him. But he was pale and the sinews that bind together flesh and blood were no more. He did not approach her but sorrowfully shook his head, murmuring, “Little Pebble. Little Pebble.”

She ran after him, wanting him to scoop her up in the old playful embrace. But her outstretched arms penetrated through Skamandronymos.

She woke screaming. It was the hour when the morning star brings light. True dreams pass through gates of horn, false dreams through gates of ivory. “It was a lying dream!” she shrieked. But she knew that dreams which come at dawn have passed the gates of horn. Her father was dead.

The war that killed him was to last ten years, until she was seventeen.

P
ITTAKOS

“I desire, I desire, I desire!” these words were most often in her mind. Although what it was she desired she could not express. Sappho felt the world press against her and desired it without knowing what it was. Her mind seethed as music and words came together. “I long and I yearn…”

She had always sung her private thoughts, with a plea first to the Muses that the sacred Nine guide her. She did not regard the poems as something invented, but as given her. Sometimes she asked the Ever-living why she had been so favored. Their rejoinder was gentle mirth and laughter. So she would slip away to the sacred grove where nature itself taught her to weave simple melodies, simply phrased.

Though few

they are roses

She had, over the years, grown in wild, untrammeled ways. There was no one to whom she must give way. Her mother was lenient, and Sappho was the leader of her brothers, who formed a free band, plunging into icy streams, climbing for chestnuts, running down to the sea for warmer bathing. They explored the forests, danced and sang in its glades and on the shore.

Sappho had a tortoiseshell lyre of four strings with a crosspiece joining two rams' horns on which she learned her lessons: the great epics of Homer, Hesiod too, she was made to memorize. “He's an old woman, a scold,” she stormed, impatient of Hesiod's many admonitions. But hidden in all the moralizing she found the wonderful tale of Pandora's chest. Two hundred years before, the crusty old poet sang: “Hope was the only spirit that stayed there.”

Sappho's memory for songs was faultless, and she made every passing singer sit with her until she knew each word of his repertoire. In this manner she discovered that an Ionian, Archilochos by name, ripped out his soul for a girl named Neobule—first in love, then in hate. From him, Sappho discovered that pure rage uses short phrases.