Sappho (4 page)

She lifted her head and looked at him. “I will keep anger from the words I sing.”

*   *   *

This was more difficult than Sappho imagined. Her island world was changing. As Alkaios predicted, the harbors that had been so serene filled with navy pentekoneters, and ships that had patrolled far out crowded dockside. Into her city through its crooked streets swarmed a race of strangers. Giants with unmodulated voices, they trampled the wildflowers with large, coarse-sandled feet. They gathered at taverns, roared their jokes, laughed harshly and unmusically. Their shouts when they hailed one another were enough to reach dark Tartarus. It was an invasion of creatures from some other world. They were called men.

Were they perhaps Poseidon's changelings, created by Kronos in ancient days? Or the offspring of the sky king, Uranus, whom Zeus imprisoned below the abyss that broods in unspoken darkness?

The city went mad. It welcomed these dolts as though they had been victorious and brought home great prizes. But the only prizes they had to bestow were themselves. Everyone seemed to think that quite enough. Petal confetti rained down on swaggering figures naked to the waist, glistening from scented oils the bemused girls rubbed them with.

Sappho watched this new race, exuding the lusty maleness of bulls and stallions, assume leadership in all things. They returned as masters in every house, and this was seen as natural. The best wines were brought from dark cellars and chill wells. Every kitchen competed in the making of jellies and preserves. The fattest among the flocks were slaughtered, and the maidens of Mitylene appeared in fine cambric with flowers braided in their hair. Music was everywhere: bells were fastened to the manes of horses, tied to chariot reins and over doorposts, accompanied by the sound of lute, lyre, and castanets.

Pittakos was the only Lesbian leader to return a hero. As the balladmakers and storytellers recounted the tale, Pittakos of Lesbos challenged the Athenian commander, Phynon, to single combat, choosing the art of wrestling-boxing. This seemed to give Phynon the advantage, as it was an event he had won years before in the Olympics. But now, at fifty, he was too old to fight and too proud to refuse. The Athenian met the Lesbian on the field. Pittakos, not trusting to his opponent's years, hid a net behind his shield. When they clashed, Pittakos, with a mighty heave, entangled his enemy and broke his neck.

The Athenians cried foul. But the Lesbians needed some claim to success, and for his deed Pittakos was the pride of the entire Lesbian army.

Sappho watched from her window as the hero rode through the streets with the merchant prince Melanchros and the noble Pinytos. It was plain to her that Pittakos was a rude man, a man of the people. In spite of this he held a strange fascination for her. She tried laughing at him. He did not know how to wear his himation, and the sureness of breeding was lacking, placed as he was between his betters—especially Pinytos of ancient lineage. One could see that Pittakos was flattered to be riding with these lords.

From then on there was a subtle difference in Sappho. During the day she wanted to be home in her chamber, where, looping the leather thong over her door stick, she could think without interruption. About whom? Pittakos, the unkempt commoner from Thrace.

Some god, she thought, has seized my mind, as rising in the night she pressed her lyre to her and sang the beauty of his limbs, when she knew he went unwashed, that even his beard was neglected and uncombed. She wondered at herself. This did not prevent her from intoning, “He knows wild things like a lion.”

It must be that her father had guessed rightly, and there were two Sapphos. Otherwise, how to explain that she could not keep this trickster from her thoughts? For with one part of her mind she derided him; at the same time he seemed to her virile and powerful.

To rid herself of these conflicting emotions, she called a slave, asking for a ritual bath. They retired to the bathing room, with its slatted marble floor, and ewers of warm water were poured over her as she chanted prayers. She began to feel purified, free of loathsome thoughts. “Rub me with oils of Lemnos,” she ordered.

A bed was set up on which she stretched herself, and the slave girl kneaded her body. She rubbed the inside of Sappho's thighs, letting the back of her hand, as though in carelessness, touch more private parts.

Sappho bit her. She would not allow this now she was grown. In one of the quick movements typical of her she was on her feet. “From this minute you belong to my brother, Kharaxos. I give you to him!”

The girl set up a noisy weeping and clasped her mistress's feet, Sappho kicked her and the girl crawled away. Alone, Sappho paced the room unable to find gentle Sappho. Lawlessness and madness, two sisters born of Night, had hold of her. And the cause was Pittakos. Pittakos, on whom ordinarily she would not bestow a word. Pittakos, whom not even a ritual bath had banished from her mind. Pittakos, whom she loathed and detested. Her small fingers pressed the palms of her hands, making fists. She struck herself about the body to dislodge the god who inhabited her, for it was not she who admired coarseness and had wayward thoughts of a great hulking male body. She, a virgin, denied it.

She wanted to use herself as she had the slave. If only she could say “Out of my sight!”

*   *   *

Alkaios brought attention to Sappho's work by repeating her poems with his. So when he invited her to attend the games at which contenders for the Olympics would be chosen, she agreed.

Kleis worried about her daughter's conduct now that the men had returned. “Sappho, to appear in public with a man of Alkaios's reputation … He is known as a drunkard, and, and—”

“I know his reputation, Mother. But Alkaios has been generous to me.”

“If you want my opinion, he is furthering his own reputation by increasing yours.”

“We are friends, Mother.”

“But my dear, for a woman—”

“Do not speak of women. Or of men. I am Sappho.”

“The returned warriors already say that you are too clever to make a good wife.”

Sappho laughed. “They may be right.”

“But, Daughter…”

Sappho no longer laughed. A new confidence born of her new poems was strong in her. She looked sternly at her mother. “Small I am. But a name which fills all the world will be mine.”

Her mother drew back from her. “Has some god told you this?”

“I have told myself this.”

When she appeared beside Alkaios in the stands erected for the games, there was a general movement in the crowd. They strained for a look at the diminutive figure and pointed her out to one another, for though only a girl, her songs were sung.

The first event was the chariot race. Her favorite brother, Kharaxos, the one next to her in age, was driving. So was the war hero, Pittakos.

She had not foreseen this. She pulled her eyes from Pittakos and tried to concentrate on the scene before her. A black bull without spot was slain to the deathless gods, and garlanded horses, their manes shining with oil, champed in their traces. The felloes of the chariot wheels were of gold, the eight spokes bronze and the naves silver, but the strength was in the oaken axles.

“The skill here is in wheeling around the post,” Alkaios explained to her. “The chariots must not go wide in circling either end of the course. The nave of the wheel must almost graze the stone of the goalpost. One miscalculation, and the chariot is dashed to pieces.”

Sappho nodded; she understood the race and had no need of Alkaios's well-meant instruction. She found herself praying as the charioteers took their places, but she did not name the one she prayed for. It was her brother Khar, of course.

How brutish Pittakos appeared beside her slim brother—how brawny, how strong. Again she forced her eyes from him. For Sappho was double-seeing. She saw him for what he was, an opportunist rising fast in the influential circles of politics. This upstart, this outsider, she was certain, intended to rule Lesbos. She resented the male resumption of power. Women had done very well for the ten years that Lesbos had been left in their hands. Their decisions had been wise and equitable. Now that the men had returned, all that went before was forgotten. Only she did not forget.

The contestants mounted their flower-strewn vehicles. An umpire gave the signal. The chariots leapt at air. “Lean to your left! Your left!” She was dancing up and down, catching only a glimpse between the shoulders and heads in front of her.

“Can you see?” Alkaios asked.

Sappho hated any reference to her size. “Of course,” she said. “Khar should urge his right-hand horse, give him a looser rein.”

Alkaios looked puzzled. Had he guessed that while she said Khar, she had described Pittakos, who was holding back, planning a last-minute spurt?

A horse fell, breaking its leg against the painted white stone; the chariot shuddered and overturned, pinning its driver. The scene was enveloped in dust. “Who is it?” Sappho screamed.

“Not Khar. He is well in front. He and Pittakos, they are both holding.”

Sand and grit sprayed the drivers. Sweat from the animals fell in streams on the ground, and the wounded horse writhed under the chariot, while the man was still.

With bodies leaning toward the goal, the drivers made the final pass. Khar was wide of the post and Pittakos won. Sappho's face flamed with shame. She took it as a personal disgrace that one of her house should lose to that great bumpkin. The prize was a woman skilled in the arts of love and valued at four oxen.

As they moved to the waterfront for the next event, Alkaios drew her attention to a pigeon tied by a foot to a ship's mast. To cut the string was to win, to miss or kill the bird was to lose.

Next came the javelin throwing, and the naked bodies of the young athletes were sweet to gaze upon. Sappho thought, as she had recently, that the male had much equipment for love.

Footraces followed. The contestants, their bodies taut and gleaming with oil, their muscles tense, bent at the ready. Sappho studied their lean haunches, bulging calves, slender ankles, and dangling parts of love with foreskins drawn down and fastened securely to protect their manhood. Was it because of these instruments for cleaving and entering the body of women that they deserved to be lords over everyone? What god had decreed this? For it seemed a peculiar claim. Why were the qualities “larger, stronger” preferred over “delicate, kinder”? Why was the world everywhere under the control of men who gave no place to women and yet decided their fate?

The trophy was a mixing bowl of silver finely wrought by Phoenicians from beyond the sea. Second place brought a large ox and a talent of gold; this was won by Sappho's brother Eurygyos, named for the uncle in whose house they lived.

Discus throwers now took their stance. Sappho thought of the story of Apollo. It was in such a game that he accidently struck his friend Hyacinth, who died in his arms. “Alas, alas!” Apollo wept. And where his friend fell a hyacinth flower sprang up with “Alas!” etched on every petal.

The final contest of the day was the wrestling match. Sappho's attention was riveted once more on Pittakos, who, rested from his exertions of the morning, stepped forward to try his skill as he had with Phynon the Athenian. Sappho took in the raw power of his body, the naked, gleaming sinews of a lion. His breast heaved as he circled his adversary looking for an opening. They gripped tentatively, and moved apart. The opponent closed but Pittakos broke the hold. Again they were at each other like Zeus's lightning. The crowd thrilled to see them wind their bodies around each other in attitudes intimate as sex. Feeling the erotic arousal of the spectators, both men swelled like stallions. The crowd shrieked their pleasure at this proof of virility. The next instant, one of the stallions was on the ground, deflated, sweating from every pore and groaning. Pittakos had given him a tremendous knock behind the knees that sent him sprawling.

The audience yelled derisively as an old she-goat was led out. There were catcalls and laughter as the defeated wrestler got lumberingly to his feet and with chagrin led away his prize. The winner, Pittakos, was presented with a double goblet of handcrafted gold. He stood turning slowly for all to see—the cup, Sappho wondered, or his own magnificent torso?

Sappho was on her feet. Curving her hands about her lips she called, “Where's your net?” The mocking tone carried. There was a moment's silence while the joke penetrated. Heads wagged; sharp-tongued Sappho had hit the mark.

Laughter swelled against Pittakos, who seemed to shrink as he stood there, his role reversed from hero to butt. He turned and looked at the woman who had robbed him of his triumph. All who saw that look knew a struggle had commenced between the poet and the strongman.

Sappho smiled at him. She knew he knew lawless things and was without shame, and that he was her enemy. As her enemy she could withstand him, but if he turned his parts and passions toward her, she would be his slave. That she would not have.

*   *   *

The merchant prince Melanchros was declared Tyrant of Lesbos. He made a stern, inflexible ruler, and it became fashionable to quote Sappho:

You cannot bend a stiff mind

Melanchros made things worse by taking up the Spartan cry “No one belongs to himself, but all to the State.” Would he segregate women then, Sappho wondered, and take their children from them? She saw that privileges taken for granted could easily vanish. But it was the tax laws, enforced with new rigidity, that had the common people openly muttering. Even the aristocracy were critical of Melanchros's heavy-handed approach, and plots against him seethed. In the taverns men put their heads together; in many of the wealthy homes there were meetings that lasted late into the night.

Alkaios and his brother, Atreus, met often in the home of Sappho's aunt. Sappho sat with them and Kharaxos over spiced anchovies and nettles fried in oil, sipping wine, talking revolt.