Читать книгу Electra (Mycenaean Greek Trilogy) - Henry Treece - Страница 10

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The nightmare of the frightened boy, and Aegisthus, and the snake in the wrapping stayed with me for weeks; but I dared tell no one, not even my dear sister, Iphigenia. Perhaps I might have told my father, but as the time went on, and he grew more irritable preparing for war, he seemed less and less near to me, more like a god whose temper rested always at a point just below outright fury. So I kept it all locked inside me, and cried at night in my bed, under the covering so that none should hear me.

My mother must have noticed something, because once as I hung about her door I heard her say to Agamemnon, ‘She is growing fast. Would you like to betroth her to one of the princes before you sail? It might keep her from doing something foolish while you are away.’

But Agamemnon shook his great mane and scratched his furry chest and yawned, throwing the covers off him. They had just given him the title of Lion King, the princes, because of his courage and because of the great gates he had had set up, with lions carved on the posts. Seeing him that bright morning, his head and body all hairy, I thought how much like a lion he really was—all but the eyes, which were a bluish-grey and not yellow, like a lion’s.

He only said to my mother, ‘I have all the world’s problems on my back. There are thousands to be fed, princes to be pacified, barons to be paid, footmen to be whipped into obedience. Is that not enough for me?’

My mother rolled over in bed and almost saw me—but I drew back just in time. She said, ‘She is your daughter. Is she not worth a father’s thought?’

My father was stumbling round the room, rubbing his body with oil and still yawning. He said, ‘She is close to my heart, but she is still only a young girl. I am concerned with the fate of the world—and it seems that I have the god himself to contend with now. He must be angry with me, this Poseidon, for he will not give me a wind to drive our ships towards Troy.’

My mother said quietly, ‘If you were ruled by me, you would say your prayers to another—not to him. Then the wind might change and let you go.’

Agamemnon sat on the bed to clean his feet. He laughed sleepily and answered, ‘I will not change now, woman. The House of Atreus, my own folk, have always offered to Zeus and Poseidon. Ours is the man-god; we could not change and beg favours from the bitch-goddess now. She is well enough for women and slaves, and some of the old outworn families who held this land before my people took it from them—but not for us. We have set our hands to this task in the god’s name, and so it shall remain. If we fail, we fail: but there shall be no weeping.’

Clytemnestra was silent a while. At last she said, ‘Men are only boys grown bigger. They rush on like stupid boars into the net, all because of their pride. They die for pride, when by a little thought, a little feeling, a little surrender, they might live.’

Agamemnon began to put on his wool shirt and leather tunic. He smoothed his hair and beard, then laughed.

‘You women twist words to suit yourself. This surrender you speak of is nothing. What you mean is that a woman lies still while her mate covers her. But that is only to make a consummation possible. It is not true surrender. It is her way of working at the game. For a man, surrender means something else: it means placing your neck beneath another man’s foot, it means running at his command, it means sacrifice—and no twisting and turning in a bed can be called that!’

My mother smiled bitterly then and said, ‘I sometimes wonder if men know what sacrifice means. I think men are blinded to the meaning of words by the blind poets themselves. They sing of the gay maidens who gain a joyous freedom by love—but none of these poets has known the joy of being liberated by such frenzied bulls as men are! They sing that a woman in labour feels her time coming like the surges of waves on the sea-shore, and at last opens like a pretty flower-bud to let a new life into the daylight. But they should suffer it themselves before they sing; they should feel what it is like to be wrenched apart, to be torn, to bleed from the very heart—and all for a life that may well be one too much to feed after all. A life that may well end on the hill the next day. Is it joy to be tortured to provide a meal for the wolf, to wander about half-mad with breasts that howl, with milk no one will suck?’

My father was strapping on his sword. He was whistling and looking out through the window-hole to see what sort of day it was going to be. He said, ‘There is one consolation. The pythoness at Delphi has forecast that Troy will fall and that King Priam’s House will fall with it. And there is even better news: the Trojan priest, Calchas, who is friendly with our dear Achilles, said only yesterday that if I will give him leave to make an offering the wind will change. He swears it.’

Clytemnestra said, ‘You are not listening to me after all. Very well, let Calchas make an offering. Let Priam’s House fall. Let the world itself crumble, for all I care. I have been a wife to you, since you took me by force from poor Tantalus. I have borne and suckled your children. And little good have I got from it all my life. Men call you the Lion: but I tell you that once you have led them to where the gold lies, even the mangiest jackal of them all will bare his fangs against you. And at last you will come back home, as old Jason did, your sting drawn, asking only for a quiet place by the hearth and a bowl of gruel in your hand. We shall see the end of the Lion, Agamemnon. We shall hear what roaring he makes then.’

My father’s brows puckered. He did not understand why the queen should speak so. Nor did I. He went away, clanking from the room to see to the men. I watched a while longer and saw my mother stagger to the runnel beside the wall and groan above it. She looked so small now, kneeling with her back to me, only like a girl. Even the blue tattooing over her legs and back, which had frightened me before, seemed nothing.

I went to her and placed my hand on her bare shoulder. She started and looked round at me, then smiled and wiped her mouth.

Before I could speak, she said gently, ‘All is well, little one. I am not poisoned. It is a new baby in me that causes this. It will pass in time.’

I said, ‘Will the king be pleased, mother?’

She looked away and said, ‘Does it matter? He is going away, I shall not tell him. It is not his baby, it comes from another. This must be a secret between you and me, to bind us close together, as mother and daughter should be. I tell you this to bind you.’

Then she smoothed my hair out of my eyes and held me to her. I had never known her so gentle and warm and for a moment I forgot my father and even envied the baby within her. I wanted to be as close to her as that.

I whispered, ‘Mother, did the god put this baby inside you then, if it is not the king’s?’

Clytemnestra nodded. ‘You can say that,’ she said. ‘It is as true as anything else.’

So, though I had always loved and feared my father, this was a secret I kept from him. A month before I would have run after him and told him all I knew: but something was happening to me now that made me want to share secrets with my mother. It had begun that evening in the quarry and it had been finally sealed, this difference, the night when Aegisthus had taken me to that strange dark place of wine and had put me, flesh to flesh, with the poor frightened boy. I was never the same again in my heart. Even my dreams began to change after that, and when I looked at the buds on the trees, or the birds in their nests, I began to wonder where they came from, how they started, what it felt like to have a baby inside one’s body, close to the very heart.