The Woman of Andros and The Ides of March (5 page)

‘You wish to serve the state, Niceratus?’

‘I do.’

‘And you admire courage?’

‘I do, Chrysis.’

‘Then go bear children,’ she replied, turning away.

Niceratus found this remark unseemly and left the house. (He absented himself from the two successive banquets, but later returned and asked her pardon for making a personal grievance out of a difference of opinion. Confessions of error always gave Chrysis great pleasure. ‘Happy are the associations,’ she would say, ‘that have grown out of a fault and a forgiveness.’)

The conversation then turned upon the plays concerning Medea and Phaedra which she had read to them at an earlier banquet and upon all manifestations of extravagant passion. The young men declared that the problem was not as complicated as it appeared to be and that such women should have been whipped like disobedient slaves and shut up in a room with a jar of water and a little plain food until their pride was subdued. They then recounted to her, almost in whispers, the story of a girl from a village on the further side of the island whose behavior had thrown her family and her friends into consternation. The girl had continued for a time, glorying in her disorders, until one morning, rising early, she had climbed a high cliff near her home and thrown herself into the sea. A silence fell on the company as all turned inquiringly to Chrysis asking for the explanation of such a reversal.

To herself she said: ‘Do not try to explain to them. Talk of other things. Stupidity is everywhere and invincible.’ But their continued expectancy prevailed upon her. She seemed to struggle with herself for a moment, deeply troubled, and then began in a low voice: ‘Once upon a time the great army of women came together to a meeting. And they invited to this meeting one man, a tragic poet. They told him that they wished to send a message to the world of men and that he was to be their advocate and mouthpiece. ‘Tell them,’ said the women eagerly, ‘that it is only in appearance that we are unstable. Tell them that this is because we are hard-pressed and in bitter servitude to nature, but that at heart, only asking their patience, we are as steadfast, as brave and as manly as they.’ The poet smiled sadly, saying that the men who knew this already would merely be ashamed to be told it again, and the men who did not know it would learn nothing through the mere telling; but he consented to deliver the message. The men at first were silent, then one by one they broke out into laughter. And they sent the poet back to the army of women with these words: ‘Tell them not to be anxious and not to trouble their pretty heads with these matters. Tell them that their popularity is not dying out, and let them not endanger it through heroics.’ When the poet had repeated these words to the women, some blushed with shame and some with anger; some rose with a weary sigh: ‘We should never have spoken to them,’ they said. They went back to their mirrors and started combing their hair and as they combed their hair they wept.’

Chrysis had barely finished this story when a young man who had hitherto taken little part in the conversation suddenly launched into a violent condemnation of her means of livelihood. This youth was of that temper that seeks to mould the lives of others abruptly to certain patterns of its own choosing. He now commanded Chrysis to become a servant or a sempstress. The other guests began to whisper among themselves and to avert their faces from confusion and anger, but Chrysis sat gazing at his flashing eyes and admiring his earnestness. There was a certain luxury in having an external mortification added to an inner despair. She was already troubled by her recent discomfiture of Niceratus and now chose to be magnanimous. She arose and approached the young fanatic; taking his hand she smiled at him with grave affection, saying to the company: ‘It is true that of all forms of genius, goodness has the longest awkward age.’

But these incidents were not of a nature to distract her mind from the protracted oppression of the day. ‘Vain. Empty. Transitory,’ the voice within her repeated. But just as she was about to finish the day with the comprehensive summary that she had nothing to lend to life and no place to fill, her eyes fell upon Pamphilus. It was his custom, through lack of self-confidence, to take the last seat at the remote end of the room. The guests acknowledged his preëminence among them, but when one evening they had wished to elect him King of the Banquet he had furtively and savagely intimated to them his refusal and the votes had passed to another. But Chrysis’s eyes had often, as now, rested upon that head bent forward to receive her every word and that received each one with so earnest a frown.

‘That is something!’ she said to herself suddenly and for a moment her heart stopped beating.

She had intended to recite to them
The Clouds
of Aristophanes that evening, but she now changed her mind. She felt the need to nourish her heart and those watchful eyes with something lofty and deeply felt. Perhaps what she called the ‘lofty’ was in this world merely a beautiful form of falsehood, cheating the heart. But she would try again tonight and see whether, after so dejected a day, it woke any stir of conviction. ‘What shall I read?’ she asked herself as the tables were being removed. ‘Something from Homer? – Priam begging of Achilles the body of Hector? No. . . . No. . . . Nor would they understand the
Oedipus at Colonus.
The
Alcestis?
The
Alcestis?’

One of the shyer guests, seeing her deliberating over the choice of the evening’s declamation, timidly asked her to read the
Phaedrus
of Plato.

‘Oh, my friend,’ she said, ‘I have not seen the book for several years. I should be obliged to improvise long stretches in it. . . .’

‘Could you . . . could you read the opening and the close?’

‘I shall try it for you,’ she replied and rising slowly disposed the folds of her robe about her. The servants withdrew and silence fell upon the company. This was the moment (on happier evenings) that she loved; this hush, this eagerness, this faintly mocking affection. What drives them – she would ask herself – in the next fifteen years to become so graceless . . . so pompous, or envious, or so busily cheerful?

At first all went well. The boys listened with delight to the account of how other young men gathered in the streets and palaestra of Athens to hear the arguments of Socrates. Listening, they agreed that nothing in the world was more to be prized than a beautifully ordered speech. Then followed the description of the walk that Socrates and Phaedrus took into the country.
‘This is indeed a rare resting-place. This plane-tree is not only tall, but thick and spreading. And this agnus castus is at the very moment of flowering and its shade and its fragrance will render our stay the more agreeable. These images and these votive-offerings tell us that the place is surely sacred to some nymphs and to some river-god. . . . Truly, Phaedrus, you are an admirable guide.’

From there she passed to the close:

‘But let us go now, as the heat of the day is over.

‘Socrates: Would it not be well before we go to offer up a prayer to the gods of this place?

‘Phaedrus: It would, Socrates.

‘Socrates: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, grant that I may become beautiful in the inner man and may whatever I possess without be in harmony with that which is within. May I esteem the wise men alone to be rich. And may my store of gold be such as none but the good may bear. Phaedrus, need we say anything more? As for myself I have prayed enough.

‘Phaedrus: And let the same prayer serve for me, for these are the things friends share with one another
.’

All went well until this phrase. Then Chrysis, the serene, the happily dead, seeing the tears that stood in the eyes of Pamphilus, could go no further, and before them all she wept as one weeps who after an absence of folly and self-will returns to a well-loved place and an old loyalty. It was true, true beyond a doubt, tragically true, that the world of love and virtue and wisdom was the true world and her failure in it all the more overwhelming. But she was not alone; he too saw the long and failing war as she did, and she loved him as though she were loving for the first time and as one is never able to love again. That was sealed; that was forever assigned.

After a few moments she collected herself and quieted the guests who had risen in concern about her. ‘Sit down, my friends. I am ready now,’ she said smiling. ‘I shall read you
The Clouds
of Aristophanes.’

But it was some time before the laughter rose among the couches, the laughter that was a just tribute to the divine wit of the poet of
The Clouds.

Brynos rose with the dawn, and it was not many hours later that the morning’s work was over. Several days after the conversation recorded above, Pamphilus, having helped his father in the warehouse and being in no mood for exercising in the field, started out to walk to the highest point on the island. It was early Spring. A strong wind had blown every cloud from the sky and the sea lay covered with flying white-tipped waves. His garments leapt and billowed about him and his very hair tugged at his head. The gulls themselves, leaning upon the gusts, were caught unawares from time to time and blown with ruffled feathers and scandalised cries towards the violet-blue zenith. Pamphilus led his life with much worry and self-examination and all the exhilaration of wind and sun could not drive from his mind the anxious affection with which he now turned over his thoughts of Chrysis and Philumena and of the four members of his family. He was straying among the rocks and the lizards and the neglected dwarfed olive-trees, when his attention was suddenly caught by an incident on the hillside to his left. A group of boys from the town was engaged in tormenting a young girl. She was retreating backwards up the slope through a disused orchard, shouting haughtily back at her pursuers. The boys’ malice had turned to anger; they were retorting hotly and letting fly about her a few harmless stones. Pamphilus strode over to the group and with a gesture ordered the boys down the hill. The girl, her face still flushed and distrustful, stood with her back against a tree and waited for him to come toward her. They looked at one another for a moment in silence. Finally Pamphilus said:

‘What is the matter?’

‘They’re just country fools, that’s all. They’ve never seen anyone before who didn’t come from their wretched Brynos.’ And then from rage and disappointment she began to cry uncontrollably and despairingly.

Pamphilus watched her for a time and then asked her where she had been going.

‘Nowhere. I was just going for a walk and they followed me from the town. I can’t do anything. I can’t go anywhere. . . . I wasn’t hurting them. I was just going for a walk alone and they called names after me. They followed me way up here; I called names at them and then they started throwing things at me. That’s all.’

‘I thought I knew everyone on the island,’ said Pamphilus thoughtfully, ‘but I have never seen you before. Have you been here long?’

‘Yes, I’ve been here almost a year,’ she replied, adding indistinctly, ‘. . . but I hardly ever go out or anything.’

‘You hardly ever go out?’

‘No,’ and she fumbled with her dress and stared at the sea, frowning.

‘You should try to know some of the other girls and go out for walks with them.’

This time she turned and looked into his face. ‘I don’t know any of the other girls. I . . . I live at home and they don’t let me go out of the house, except when I go out for walks nights with . . . well, with Mysis.’ She continued to be shaken with sobs, but she was adjusting her hair and the folds of her dress. ‘I don’t see why they have to throw stones at me,’ she added.

Pamphilus looked at her in silence, gravely. Presently he collected himself and said: ‘There’s a big smooth stone over there. Will you go over there and sit down?’

She followed him to the stone, still busy with her hair and drawing her fingers across her eyes and cheeks.

‘I have a sister just about your age,’ said Pamphilus. ‘You can begin by knowing her. You can go for walks with her and then you wouldn’t be a stranger any more. Her name is Argo. You’d like one another, I know. My sister is weaving a large mantle for my mother and she’d like you to help her with it and she could help you with yours. Are you making a mantle?’

‘Yes.’

‘That would be fine,’ said Pamphilus, and from that moment Glycerium loved him forever.

‘I probably know your father, don’t I?’ he asked.

‘I have no father,’ she replied, looking up at him weakly, ‘I am the sister of the woman from Andros.’

‘Oh . . . oh . . .,’ said Pamphilus, more astonished than he had ever been in his life. ‘I know your sister well.’

‘Yes,’ said Glycerium. Her bright wet eyes strayed over the streaked sea and the blown birds. ‘She doesn’t want anyone to know that I’m there. All day I stay up on the top of the house or work in the court. Only at night I’m allowed to go for a walk with Mysis. Even now I’m supposed to be in the house, but I broke my promise. She has gone to the market and so I broke my promise. I wanted to see what the island and the sea look like by day. And I wanted to look across to Andros where I come from. But the boys followed me here and threw stones at me and I can never come again.’

Here she fell to weeping even more despairingly than before and Pamphilus could do nothing but say ‘Well’ several times and ‘Yes.’ At last he asked her what her name was.

‘Glycerium. Chrysis went away from home a long time ago and I was living with my brother and he died and I couldn’t live with him any more. And I had nowhere to go or anything, and one day she came back and took me to live with her. That’s all.’

‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Who is Mysis?’

‘Mysis isn’t Greek. She is from Alexandria. Chrysis found her. All of them in the house, – she just found them somewhere. That’s what she does. Mysis was a slave in the cloth mills. Sometimes she tells me about it.’

Pamphilus still gazed at her, and bringing back her wandering evasive glance from the sea she looked at him from her thin face and enormous hungry eyes. Even a long glance did not now embarrass them.