Sappho (30 page)

Sappho felt Gongyla's rhythmic contractions as her own, and, changing places with her, she experienced the ultimate more times with Gongyla than ever before. How often her body had gone rigid she no longer knew. At last she laid the girl gently down and stretched beside her.

Gongyla said, “It is past anything.”

“Yes.”

“But tell me, Sappho, did your slaves not dry you?”

“They did. For then, like now, there were drops between my legs.”

“Then it is the same with you? O Sappho, do we love?”

“We love, my Gongyla. Every night I will fasten my lips against your third teat and suck as though you were my dam. This I will in these darkened chambers, and also in the blessed light that floods the meadows. In rushing streams we will mingle and know ecstasy.”

*   *   *

From that moment on, over the following days and nights, Sappho and Gongyla bathed, fed, and dressed each other, poured out wine and sipped together, clasped gems upon each other, braided flowers and tied fluttering ribbons on willing thighs, for the gods had laid a fascination on them.

Kleis, observing her mother and her friend while seeming not to, fed her anger. Sappho had and was everything—great poet, wealthy patron, adored teacher, mistress of the hearts of all, with the admiration of Hellenes up and down the world. This same Sappho, her mother, who had all this, had taken from her the one thing that was hers—friendship with Gongyla. Now that she was of an age to take her place among the hetaerae, it seemed to her she had grown without distinction. Her face and body were pleasing enough, except in the company her mother kept around her, where she was much outdone. Her singing, while tuneful, was not outstanding. No particular talent was hers, and certainly not the one her mother possessed of making all who knew her, love her. This ability she considered a more important asset than her fame as a poet, not understanding that the two were one.

Kleis walked proudly by herself, and when Gongyla remembered her and had some small word in passing, she turned away as though she had not heard. Soon, she consoled herself, her mother would weary of Gongyla, and then her friend would turn to her for comfort.

It did not happen. And the resentment and jealousy bottled up in Kleis's small twelve-year-old being became a poison. It overflowed; she could not contain it.

She went to Gongyla's bungalow and found her preparing to go out. “Don't let me keep you. You haven't time these days for your friends. Only for her. She has bewitched you as she did the others.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” Gongyla said, flushing.

“I'm talking about my mother, and so is all Mitylene. My uncles no longer speak to her or associate with her. She is notorious for conducting love affairs like a man. There's a name for it, an ugly name—tribadism—and some say Lesbos itself will become synonymous with her corruption. How you can lend yourself willingly and indulge her in her practice, I do not know.”

“If you do not know, keep silent. You are still a child, Kleis. All those with any sensitivity revere your mother as peerless among singers since great Homer. You must not listen to the small-minded. Your mother is all-burning flame; she needs love as others need air. It kindles her, it brings the Muses to her side. Without love, Sappho would not be Sappho.”

“Sappho, Sappho, Sappho! Must everything be sacrificed to her as though she were an immortal, and we goats or pigs to have our throats slit? For you, Gongyla, have cut out my heart.”

“I did not mean to hurt you, Kleis. You are my friend, but also a child.”

“Does that mean I have no feelings? Neither of you so much as thought about me. You are a false friend, Gongyla, but you have met your match in Sappho. She will tear you apart and not notice your suffering. Look at Erinna, if you want to see Gongyla. And do not come to me then.”

There is something of Sappho in her after all, Gongyla thought, for even if sprawled bodies were left lying, Sappho would speak as she was minded. Gongyla hastened to suppress the thought. As for the rest of Kleis's outburst, it could be laid to a spoiled and jealous child. Besides, had not Sappho sworn a dozen times to love her always?

But Gongyla was disquieted. Had she known where Kleis was off to or suspected her rage, she would have run after her.

Kleis went directly to her mother's well-proportioned house of white stone, passing the watchdog eunuch from Chios, who sat cross-legged and asked each their business. But the question was not asked of the daughter.

Sappho had spent the morning on the sand shore looking for agates and letting the scalloped prisms of foam wash her ankles. Now she stood contemplatively in the unroofed courtyard before the stone water clock, to see what hour its markings showed as it slowly and predictably drained.

“Kleis.” It was a glad note at the sight of her child. But there was a certain warning in the way the girl strode up to her. Instinctively Sappho drew back. “Have you come to share the midday meal with me?” she asked, knowing she had not, knowing all was not well, but unprepared for the savage torrent that poured over her.

Kleis addressed her with a curse, a terrible prayer to the Moon goddess: “Deprive my mother of sleep. Throw a firebrand into her. Punish her with the unrest of madness. Scatter her songs like leaves.” Even this did not satisfy her— “Take the breath from her nostrils!”

Sappho felt behind her for the support of colonnades. “What are you saying?”

“I am cursing you, Mother. I want your life to wither. I want what you touch to shrivel and die. I want the Muses to desert you … and Gongyla, and all you love. I want you to grow old and be ugly and alone.”

Sappho fell to her knees. “Kleis! My Kleis, what god so hates me as to seize your tongue and speak such things with your voice?”

“No god, Mother. It is I, Kleis, whom you brought forth from your body. It is your only child who hates and despises you. I say with my uncles that your life is an abomination, and that is how you will be remembered.”

Sappho let her head touch the stone flagging. She could not rise.

Servants found her there. But with all their skills they could not undo the rigidity of her limbs. Gongyla was summoned. She was appalled and would not leave her side. “Some fit has seized her to keep her so unmoving.”

But when Gongyla was told of Kleis's visit, she began to understand. She stroked Sappho's burning forehead and murmured to her: “Will you let a bad child, a naughty little girl, make you ill? She has forgotten her words already, I know she has. And you must forget them, too.”

“You don't … know…” Sappho's speech faltered. She began again. “You don't know what she said.”

“Do not think of it, sweet Sappho.”

“She wants me dead, Gongyla.”

“No, no she doesn't.”

“And worse. I cannot tell even you.”

“And you will oblige her? Will great Sappho lie down on the command of a twelve-year-old and give up her life that has brought light and beauty to the world? I never knew you to be lacking in sense, Sappho.”

Sappho strove to sit up, and pillows were placed behind her. “Bring me my mirror,” she ordered hoarsely. She gazed into it a long time, and touched her skin and examined around her eyes.

“What are you doing?” Gongyla asked.

“She wanted me old and ugly. I would rather be dead.”

“You are pale, it seems to me. But you are she whom we all love and honor.”

“She said the sacred nine of Pieria would desert me, my songs be scattered like leaves … She echoed a dream that once … She used the words of a dream. Gongyla, how can that be?” She clutched the girl with hot fingers. Could it be true that her songs would be forgotten and she herself remembered for ill and not for good? Could a daughter's curse do this? She had never meant to hurt Kleis. What other child had she? Surely she could have found another friend.

Some of this she spoke aloud to Gongyla, but Gongyla would not listen. She took it on herself to call slaves, have water heated, to bathe, oil, scent, comb, and dress the distraught Sappho, who gradually calmed under these ministrations.

“You are right,” Sappho said at last. “It would be odd indeed if Sappho allowed herself to be governed by a child. And yet, Gongyla, I cannot face her. Not yet, not for a while.”

“There is no need. She has gone to Gorgo's old bungalow.”

A trace of irony crept into Sappho's lips, but she would say nothing against her daughter. Instead, fearing that Kleis would not eat well or be taken care of properly, she sent slaves and servants to her.

No songs were in her head, only the curse. She could not tap into her strength, or will herself to be as she had been. The hetaerae were told only that Sappho was ill, and they tried to cheer her. They made snares to catch grasshoppers, and came singly to bring her little treasures—a comb worked with gems, earrings of emerald, a girdle richly braided, perfumes, wines as tonics. With each gift were flowers. Sappho smiled wanly, accepted listlessly. She noticed that in the tumble of gifts there was nothing from Erinna. In an odd way she was closer to Erinna than any. They were sisters in art. Erinna should understand and forgive her. At one time Erinna had said she would not put herself in the way of her happiness, but her thymos had her by the throat. Sappho felt alone—and lonely.

The girls begged her to weave garlands of celery with them, but she said her head ached. When they left without her, she was sorry she had stayed at home for there was nothing she wanted to do.

Gongyla had gone with the girls, and even had she stayed Sappho would not have been satisfied. For Gongyla was still solicitous of her health and would not indulge her or allow her what she craved.

She drew her knees up to her chest in a womb position and addressed the goddess with whom she was most intimate. “You, O Aphrodite, had a sea birth, and my father and my husband sea deaths. You sprang from foam;
they
drank it as their last drink. Therefore have I followed after your ways, O goddess. Now I beg, release me. Your servant Sappho will tie up her hair with pins of bone and metal. Do you, O immortal beauty, forget me? From this time, Daughter of Zeus, pass me by.”

She woke in the morning, remembering her prayer of the night before. Terrified that Aphrodite would do as she had begged, she immediately set about making things right with her by explaining what her body wanted and her soul needed:

Be kind to me

Gongyla; I ask only

that you wear the cream

white dress when you come.

Desire darts about your

loveliness, drawn down in

circling flight at sight of it

and I am glad, although

once I, too, quarreled

with Aphrodite

to whom

I pray that you will come soon

Certain it was that Aphrodite knew her heart better than she did herself, and would not withhold love, though she asked it. If only she could lie at Gongyla's side continually, sip wine, let each day reach its zenith, listen to the girl's harp. For this she had come back to life. And now she must convince Gongyla she was well.

She began by selecting half a dozen maidens—Timas, Telesippa, Anaktoria, Atthis, Kydro, and Megara of the shining hair. With these girls Sappho made her first foray out of doors. She had not chosen Gongyla, though Gongyla was the reason for the diversion.

She heard the swallow, glimpsed the scented white violet beneath its furry leaves, reached for a sprig of thyme, parted myrtle branches. The girls ran beneath the olive trees and stopped to pick oleander, which they wove together with bloodred windflowers. They gathered honeysuckle to the drone of bees, who more than once drove them from the drooping, heavy-burdened bowers. The world was festooned with wild beauty, carpeted in anemones, arrayed with myrtle, and she had lain as one dead. “Mother Earth, you greet me with your wonders.” And she stretched out her arms. If only she could hold some portion, however small. Sappho hid the purpose of this walk from her hetaerae.

The girls debated animatedly which glen was best for the lunch their slaves carried. They decided to dine by the stream, and the slaves unrolled mats for the sweetbreads, figs, dainties, and wines of two colors. Little Timas put her head in Sappho's lap and asked for songs.

Sappho smiled and recited:

Golden chickpeas

growing on the seashore

Earth of the many chaplets

puts on her embroidery …

She ended for the day with:

I love that

which caresses

me. I believe

Love has his share in the

Sun's brilliance

and virtue

The songs heightened Sappho's longing. Her pulse kept the rhythm. The whole day, the entire charade, was solely to enable her to pass by Gongyla's bungalow and leave a poem inscribed on a transparent scroll, tied with ribbons. She brought it out and added flowers, threading them through the gaily colored ties.

“What are you doing?” Timas asked.

“Oh, it is nothing. We pass Gongyla's presently. It is a small gift for her, for her goodness to me when I was ill.”

The girls exchanged glances. They were not deceived, but Sappho didn't care. The poem would ensure Gongyla's coming. Aphrodite would oversee it.

For you came to my house the other day and

sang to me, and for that reason I am come. Oh, speak

to me! Come down, and give me freely of your beauty;

for we are out walking and are near, and well you know

it. But as quickly as you can send your slave girls away,

and let the gods give me whatever they have for me