Читать книгу Oedipus - Henry Treece - Страница 10

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So I had come to Corinth; to that open, hot, dusty place, where the sun and the birds of prey cleared all carrion away, and where men and women lived most of their lives under the blue sky or the stars.

Corinth then was not as it has become, since the new folk came there and built their places. When I first knew it, you would not have called it a city, but a great cattle-ranch. The plain between the mountains was covered with pens and stockades, and in the centre of them all, on a slight rise in the ground, was Corinth. It was little more than a dozen mud-built huts and look-out towers, but all connected by hundreds of skin-tents, which led from one to the other, in a series of twisting tunnels and wind-breaks, supported on stout oaken poles, or ash posts. There were no streets, but only these tunnels, which led from tent to tent. A man would go in at one end, then he would not be seen until he came out, half a mile away, at the other side of the city. In other places I have seen, there are districts where Kings and barons live, then other places where the swordsmiths have their homes; and last, those filthy hutments where the conquered, the slaves, gnaw at bones and breed their fly-bitten children.

But in Corinth, all men were equal; all were barons and their families. So all lived together, in the great labyrinth of hide-tents, like one enormous family of tall, brown brothers and sisters.

In other places, also, such as Mycenae and Athens, a man could walk any day in the streets and point to five different families of folk who lived there—golden Achaeans, dark Cretans, brown thin-nosed Libyans, pale Phoenicians, and even yellow-faced and slit-eyed Sarmatians from beyond the Inland Sea where the gold lay hidden. But not in Corinth. Each man and woman there seemed to have come from the same womb. Even their features were so alike that for a time I could not remember who was who; they had that sharp, narrow look to their heads, with heavy handsome eyes and slightly curved noses which flared out into fierce nostrils. Their lips were well-formed but heavier than those of Cretans, and often looked as though they were about to speak, even when they were not. But of all their qualities, I admired most their slender arms and legs, and their slim bodies. These attributes gave them speed and grace. Yet they were as strong as any people I have ever seen, despite their light build. I have been there when a young boy of the Corinthians has thrown his long javelin through a charging lion, so that the weapon passed out on the other side, and travelled on for another twenty paces. Like their own bulls, the men of Corinth were sleek, dark-skinned killers; they were not like the fat and muscle-bound bulls of Crete, not like the heavy-limbed steppe-folk who rode in wagons because they could not breed horses strong enough to support their great bellies and thighs.

When Jaccus the Captain died, after they had got him from under the horns, the city spent the rest of the day in mourning. No men or women left the skin-tents, and the cattle were unfed. No one spoke or even sang mourning songs for the dead man. All was silent, so silent that I thought I could hear the sheep bleating on Mount Cyllene, a day’s march away.

In this strange place, I knew no one but the King and Queen, and the hard-faced warrior who had given me a cup of wine to drink. And they were nowhere to be seen now. The hot sun beat down on the deserted city of tents, and in the deep blue air the eagles circled. Out in the dusty plain, cattle lowed or bulls bellowed in fury. That was all.

Since no one came to lead me into the city, I stayed outside, lonely and lost, already feeling that what had begun in a warm blaze of friendship had suddenly fallen to dust and cold ashes. An hour before, I had felt courage and nobility growing in me, the seeds of greatness; yet now, as the sun declined, I was a boy again, a peasant, almost an outcast.

It was in this dream that I wandered away from the tented city down a narrow dry stream-bed which at last fell into a hidden valley, a closed green place, where the pine-boughs and laurels flung their arms across my path and seemed to forbid me to penetrate this secret place. The evening air was heavy with the whirring of small flies, and a dampness rose from the grass and mosses beneath my feet. Pigeons in the upper trees of the gully stopped their purring as I pushed through the bushes, and a laden silence fell upon the grove. Below me, I could hear water trickling, and I made my way down, as the moon came up, to where a narrow brook bubbled out of the rocks, and where I could bathe my hot feet in the cool waters.

As I sat there, I thought: Now which way, Oedipus? The folk of Corinth are beautiful and brave, but they live within themselves, and have no place for a wanderer of another blood. So, which way now, Oedipus?

As I was thinking this, a shaft of moonlight struck, straight and silver, from above my head and lit up a dim part of the little valley, showing me a tunnel that was formed by the stream-bed and the overhanging branches above it. It was as though Mother Dia had answered my questioning and had pointed with her silver finger the way that I should take away from Corinth. And so I dried my wet feet and stood up knee-deep among the rushes, and went along the dusky tunnel. And when I had found its entrance, the finger of moonlight withdrew, as though I had read the Mother’s message right. So I felt at greater peace within myself, and pushed on under the branches and reeds, until I should receive her next command.

There was still heat in the ground from the sun that had beaten down on the land that day, and it drew out all the deep scents of earth, of lichens and thick leaves and of water. Above my head, crickets shrilled in a constant turning of the wheel, almost providing a roof of sound to that hidden place. I thought: Here is a place where something could lie in wait for a traveller by night. Something, that could be dangerous to him.

As I thought this, a dove rose fluttering from above me, brushing among the branches, and a grey feather floated down and lodged upon my damp lips. It roused such a terror in me that I spat and spat until I was rid of the sign.

For a second, I almost turned and rushed back the way I had come, up onto the parched plain of Corinth. My heart thumped inside my chest so fiercely that I leaned for a while on the green trunk of a cypress, trying to find my breath and my courage again.

And as I leaned, I seemed to hear the sound of water and doves, of crickets and the sighing of boughs in the evening wind, forming themselves into a voice which said: Fare forth, boy. Fare forth, and see, see, see!

Do not mistake me, I did not hear this in the way that I can hear a man speaking to me in the hot daylight, asking for orders, clear and sharp. I heard it rather as a faint buzzing in the head, somewhere behind the head, or above it, not near the ears. The words shaped themselves within me as the sound of water dripping onto a cottage roof from the trees above may shape themselves into an old song, every note and beat of the rhythm so right that one knows the god had meant it so.

And when I had convinced myself, in that dark valley, of the words I had heard, I began to wonder, with the green dusk wrapping me round and causing me to lose myself, if I had been wise ever to leave my old father’s shepherd hut on the mountain-top; if such as I ought ever to dare the great world beneath and go looking for a truth in life. I was, indeed, afraid, and my teeth chammered against each other as though some Phoenician puppet-master drew on the strings of my lower jaw. It was evening, and cool now, and I felt the flesh on my back creeping in the dusk; yet my hands were streaming with sweat and my brows were so flooded that the water ran into my eyes in torrents, blinding me.

And at that moment, that very moment, as I tried to sweep away the sweat from my eyes, a sudden high, sharp laugh sounded in my ears, a young woman’s laugh, so close, that I clenched my hands and almost screamed with fear. Above me the crickets and the doves still built their roof of music over me, as though nothing had happened down below. And though the echoes of that clear-throated laugh still sounded in my head, I began to wonder whether I had truly heard it or not; whether my weary heart had created yet another sound inside me, to increase my ordeal of suffering.

Then the laugh came again, but now distantly and smothered, as though not for my ears only; as though it had a meaning and a life of its own, which it would still have even if I were a hundred miles away.

And now my thudding pulses drew me forward, telling me to find out what this was, what this meant for me, or for anyone; and, knowing how daring I was, praising my own boy’s bravery in silence, I pushed on down the dark tunnel.

At last my feet sensed solid ground again and I knew that I was walking on rock which sloped upwards, away from the stream. I put out my hands on either sides and found that I was in the mouth of a cavern, for there were no leaves and branches to touch now. I went cautiously, making no sound, moving like a snail, slow and close to the earth. And at length, as I came round a bend of this rocky corridor, I saw a round clay fat-lamp burning on the floor of the cave, sending up a twisting whirl of black smoke, and casting forth an orange glow which caused the air above it to flicker as though a moth’s wings beat there. Great shadows crouched and lurched above me on the walls and roof of the high limestone dome. I crouched too, wondering if a javelin would come to my heart from the inner dimness of the cavern. But nothing came, and so I stared in front of me, above the lamp, and saw that the light stood at the base of a great column of rock; but a rock of a different sort from the cavern about me. It was of black, streaked with grey and yellow veins, and its lower parts were shiny as though it had been rubbed by many beseeching hands in its lifetime. As my eyes became used to this orange half-light, I saw that the tall rock was shaped, by the gods or by men, so that it had something of the shape of the Mother, a high image, reaching up and up into the darkness, the curves of its breasts jutting out well above my head. It was the Libyan goddess, Ngame, from beyond the Nile.

As I stood wondering at this secret shrine, I heard once more the laugh which had drawn me onward. It came from behind the mother-image, deeper in the cavern. Softly I leaned by the rock listening, holding my breath, and heard the rustling of bracken, and the restless movements of bodies. All that I heard, I already knew of, having been reared among the creatures, and being familiar with the getting of things. And, now that I was in the presence of folk who were doing what I had seen my father’s creatures do, I felt no more excitement than I had known seeing a ram mount a ewe. I was curious, certainly, because in our house my mother and my father had been old folk since I could recall, and between them I had never seen what happens to a man and a woman in the heat of love. Nor, up on the mountain, at the festivals, had any of the light-hearted girls been able to rouse in me any feeling but uncertainty and fear.

So I waited and listened, curiously, at what went on in the cavern. And after a while, when the bracken had ceased to rustle and the folk in the darkness were drawing deep breaths and making such sounds as they might do after a hard race, I heard a woman’s voice which I already knew. It said, ‘So, it is finished, dear one. Now we can sleep a while, until the god visits us again.’

And then, there was a pause before Polybus answered, ‘And what of the sign he sent us today—the lame boy? What is to become of him, my Queen?’

I shuddered with my chest against the chilly stone of the mother-image as I waited for Periboea’s reply. When it came at last, her words were so smothered by weariness and warm comfort that I could hardly hear them. Quietly yawning, she said, ‘He shall be cared for, husband. I think we came whole from the bull-pen because he watched over us, so that merits some gratitude, I would say. The god sent him and he shall stay.’

I felt as a ghost must feel, hovering above the feast-board and hearing his name mentioned as though he had gone completely from the earth.

The King said, ‘We must do as the old custom demands, and name him as our son. Is that well, wife?’

Periboea laughed in her weariness and said, ‘Aye, that is well! He shall come from me in the presence of witnesses and be named Oedipus of Corinth. Now will you lie back and rest, my love, or the god will not visit us again this night for sheer exhaustion.’

I waited until they were both quiet and breathing heavily in sleep, then, taking care not to knock over the fat-lamp set for the Mother, I crept from that cavern and made my way back through the dappled moonlight along the little stream.

At a place where the rushes grew thickest and would make a sheltered bed for me, I lay down, with the doves still murmuring above my head, and went into a dream, smiling and thinking: So, at last the wheel turns towards home! At last the god’s will makes itself known by little and little. So, I was not wrong to set my feet towards Corinth, for there I have found a kingdom where I may become a hero. There I have found a father and a mother.

It was not long before the endless chorus of the stream put an end to my thinking and let me escape from the trials of the day.