Sappho's Leap (27 page)

“Outrageous!” said Demeter. “He is usurping my ancient function.
I
make the crops rise and the babies burst forth from the delta of life.”

“Ah—but without me there is no lust, no desire, no current of life!” said Aphrodite. “Try making crops or babies without me! Try!”

Zeus lounged on a cloud with the disdain of the almighty and taunted Aphrodite:

“What has become of your darling girl now? She's at sea again with the
zephyroi
blowing, with her boat of souls sinking, with her foolish dream that she can save the world through song and invocation! Absurd!”

Just then, Poseidon drew Aphrodite close and whispered in her ear: “Ally yourself with me and we shall humble Zeus and make a fool of him. I'll lend you peaceful seas if you will lend me all the love you keep in your golden girdle. There is a maiden I would have as my lover—Maera of the coppery ringlets, the amazon maid with the two strong boys. Do we have a deal?”

So Aphrodite lent Poseidon her golden girdle—which he fastened around his stout blue waist—and, as the gods looked down and watched us bobbing on the sea, as the gods looked down and laughed at our travails as if they were a play, the epic of the amazons and the Egyptians sailed to its watery conclusion.

As I finished my invocation to Aphrodite, the seas began to grow calm. A fair wind filled our sails and we began to sail out of darkness, into light. Three strong girls slew a ewe upon the deck and roasted its thighbones to please the gods. Then we all ate heartily.

Maera hugged her two strong boys to her chest and cried out, “Praise be to Sappho for our deliverance!”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Aesop, leading the others.

Was it possible Aphrodite had heard?

For several days and nights the seas were calm. The
zephyroi
had died down. We sailed the broad back of the sea as if it were a flat road between green pastures. Sometimes the sea was so calm you could see your reflection in it.

Maera looked down onto waters from the prow of the ship and said, “At times I dream of living in a castle beneath the sea, a castle made of glittering precious stones and coral. Mermaids would arrange my hair and seahorses serve as footmen at my table.”

“You are mad, Maera,” I said.

“It's only a dream,” she answered.

Prometheus and Hercules had climbed the masts, looking for land. They were so high above us, they could have been birds or squirrels. The children rowed on, changing shifts every five hours, working in perfect harmony. Often, we sacrificed a ram or a ewe to thank the gods for their favor and pray it would continue.

I don't know how many days and nights were like this before we heard the sounds of singing over the waters.

“Whales are singing to each other,” Maera said dreamily.

“Or dolphins,” said Aesop.

Then the sounds would go away and we would hear only the wind singing.

I was agitated. I thought often of Odysseus and the dangers he had braved. Would we encounter Scylla and Charybdis to drown our young or another earthquake to roil the waves or mythical monsters more terrible than even Odysseus knew?

The sea's calm was unearthly. It would not last. That much I knew.

Then there was the distinct sound of female voices singing. They came over the sea as if they could charm the waves themselves.

Where is knowledge to be found

If not in love?

Rowers, row this way,

Into our loving arms.

Bring four boat, four shipmates

To our magic isle

Where love alone

Is the lesson,

Where love alone

Propels four questing arms,

Where love alone allows

Knowledge of the gods.

An island appeared in the midst of the clouds. On it sat beautiful young maidens with bare breasts. They were opening their deltas with their fingers—as if the voice of their song came from deep within.

The boys began to rise from their oars. Hercules and Prometheus shimmied down the mast.

“Plug your ears! These are the sirens!” I screamed out. But the wind carried my voice away. Young men began diving over the prow and sides of the ship and swimming in the direction of the unearthly voices. One after another they left their stations and jumped overboard to swim in the direction of the song.

Hercules and Prometheus held out longer than the other boys. They looked dreamily at the horizon and stood still, listening, but eventually they too began to clamber over the side of the ship.

Maera became hysterical. She grabbed at her sons' clothes, screaming, “Nothing awaits you but death!” They refused to heed her. Bewitched, they stood on the side of ship and prepared to dive into the sea.

The music became louder and louder. A strong smell of sex wafted over the waves. Now only girls were left at the oars. I went down to join them and we all rowed madly, hoping to catch up with the swimming boys. We threw spars over the sides for them to grab on to. We threw lines to them—all in vain. We begged them to turn back, but they could not hear us.

We rowed after them as long as we could, but finally they outdistanced us. From where I sat rowing at my station, I saw a huge blue arm rise up out of the water and seize Maera in its hand. The voices of the sirens dissolved into the wind as she was dragged under the waves. Maera should have been terrified, but at my last sight of her she was smiling. Aphrodite's laughter filled the sky.

One story is good until another is told.

—A
ESOP

L
EFT ALONE ON A
boat filled with grieving old men and women and girls who feared they would always be husbandless, Aesop and I wondered what we had done wrong.

“You can educate boys against war, but clearly you cannot save them from sirens,” I told Aesop.

“All creatures must respond to reason,” he said.

“Except young men,” I said. “Reason hardly governs their world. Aphrodite does. It's my own damned fault for calling on her!”

“How could you not? She is your tutelary goddess. But you cannot blame yourself. We were unprepared,” Aesop said. “We had no beeswax for their ears, no ropes to bind them to the mast. We were helpless. Odysseus was prepared by Circe the sorceress. We were not. I must make a fable of it.”

“You and your fables! Can a fable undo Aphrodite's power? I doubt it.”

Aesop scratched his curly beard. “We thought about every aspect of their education, but we did not think what would happen when they heard the sirens.”

It was true. Once again the gods had outwitted us.

“It is in the nature of the gods to outwit mortals,” I told Aesop. “If I've learned anything from my travels, it's that. They play with us as little boys play with flies—ripping their wings off. We amuse them with our dreams and desires, our vain hopes of improving the world.”

Aesop looked perplexed. Reason was his god and reason had failed him.

The ship sailed on.

The girls were strong rowers and the winds continued fair. Aphrodite was still in our corner. Poseidon was quiet. Was he in love? From time to time I thought of Maera and her sons transported to the grottoes of the sea god, living among starfish and sharks, octopi and seahorses, bedding down on seaweed, subsisting on sea grapes—those tiny succulent gifts from creatures of the deep, that burst on the tongue and are delicious without cooking.

We sailed and sailed. The girls wept and rowed. I tried to comfort them.

“Now we shall never be married!” cried Arete—one of the prettiest girls and only fifteen. Her shoulders were like dark honey softened by the sun.

“Never mind—there are better things in life than marriage. Marriage is not the beginning of life—it's the end. Trust me, I know.” And I told them about Cercylas and his paunch and his drunkenness. I recited my ironic epithalamia until they laughed and laughed.

Then they remembered their lost boys and they cried again.

Each night, I would take one of the girls to bed with me and teach her about pleasure—a priestess' prerogative.

How beautiful they were!

Arete was dark, with a delta that turned plum with pleasure. Atthis was blond; you could see her pink nether lips through her golden fuzz. Gongyla was coppery colored; her zone of pleasure was speckled like an undersea creature's shell.

I taught each girl not to be afraid of joy and to know how to please herself so as never to be dependent on a man. How sweet they were, with their deltas salty as the sea. Some of them had merest buds for breasts. But deep within them, Aphrodite dwelt.

Atthis was my favorite. Shy at first, she woke to pleasure quickly. I would place her high on the ship's rail and lick her till she throbbed within, grasping my probing finger with the pulse of life. Then I would bring my lips to that nub, gleaming like a wet ruby, half veiled in cream, and flick my tongue against it till she screamed.

As long as I seduced the maidens, Aphrodite sent us gentle seas. But when Aesop put a stop to my seductions, the weather turned and we were rocked again by ill winds.

“Sometimes I think you're glad the sirens lured our boys away so you could have the girls all to yourself,” said Aesop.

“Are you jealous?”

“Maybe I am,” said the fable-maker. “I wish you loved me even a little.”

This statement came as an arrow to my heart. I looked at Aesop, with his broad chest, his commanding height, his tawny brown skin. He was a fine specimen of a man, and yet I never thought of him as a lover. Why?

“Is it because I was born a slave?”

“Not at all. Any of us could be enslaved at any moment. I think of you as mentor, guide, and friend—not lover.”

“Cannot a friend be a lover?” Aesop asked. The question hung in the air, waiting for Aphrodite to come answer it.

I turned and paced the deck. Around and around I walked. Aphrodite was a capricious goddess. Yes, she was indispensable, but chaos came in her wake. I thought of the sirens in their bloody meadow surrounded by the clean white bones of the men they had seduced and devoured—the heaps of shinbones, the pelvises like bows, the femurs like arrows.

“O Aphrodite! Moderate your awesome powers a little! Let us live to see home again!”

The next morning we awoke to see an island on our horizon. It was mountainous and green and at first sight it seemed to be uninhabited. We looked for a harbor in which to land and saw none, so we stood off and waited. Then we circled the island again and again. Soon a small craft came up, seemingly out of nowhere. Three stout young men were rowing it. They were followed by other boats with other young men. Their chests were muscled and their arms were thick as tree trunks. The girls looked out their oar-holes and melted with desire. The men gestured for us to follow them. And so we did. They led us to a hidden cove between two tall white cliffs and bade us tie up there.

Dry land! We couldn't wait to leave our foul-smelling boat and feel our feet upon the earth again. The maidens leapt from the galley, followed by their elders. Aesop and I hastily engaged some of the strong-looking young men to clean and provision our boat. They were more than willing. Some of the maidens lingered, watching them.

“What is this place?” I asked one of the young men.

“You have come to the Island of the Philosophers,” he said. “Here we ponder truth and beauty and study how the world is made. Don't judge by us.” He gestured to his companions, one handsomer than the next. “We are only the philosophers' slaves. The philosophers themselves are next to the gods.”

“If you are the slaves, I imagine the philosophers must be blindingly beautiful.”

“You'll see,” the young man said. He put his fingers to his lips and whistled shrilly. Down from the hills they came—more beautiful young men with broad shoulders and muscled backs. They wore only loincloths of snakeskin and seemed as unaware of their own beauty as the maidens were transfixed by it.

The beautiful young men began to clean and provision the boat. Their leader, Creon—for that was the name of the golden young man who first had greeted us—inquired if I was the captain of the ship.

“Priestess,” I said, “and this is my priest, Aesop.”

“Then come with me,” said Creon, “to the Cave of the Philosophers.”

“Must we go with you?” wailed the maidens.

“Stay and help with the ship,” I said, seeing that they longed to.

Aesop and I followed Creon up a rocky path that led to a narrow staircase cut into the chalk-white rock. Creon leapt ahead of us like a mountain goat. Aesop and I puffed and clutched our pounding hearts. We had to stop often to catch our breath. Weeks on the ship had left our legs feeble and we still expected the ground to pitch under our feet like the ship's deck. The climb seemed interminable. Up and up and up we went. I was beginning to wish I had stayed on the ship myself.

Near the top of the cliff there was a carved archway. Creon had bounded into it and was lost in the gloom.

“Shall we follow?” I asked Aesop. “Is it safe?”

“Safer than this climb,” said Aesop, panting and wheezing.

We followed Creon into a long corridor cut into the rock. Again we struggled to keep up with him. He rounded a corner in the rock and disappeared into a dark cave.

“Come!” he called, urging us on.

As our eyes slowly adjusted to the gloom, we could see three withered old men sitting cross-legged on the floor around a fire that flickered like the tongues of serpents. They had been sitting there so long that they seemed to grow out of the rock itself.

“The earth is made of fire,” the first one said. “Great rings of fire from which the light shines forth. As light is truth and truth is light, fire set this world in motion and will be its end.”