Читать книгу Oedipus - Henry Treece - Страница 5

Table of Contents

We let the hearth-fire die, and rubbed ourselves with its cold, white ashes. From behind the cottage, we took the dark boughs of pine, and some of cypress from a little valley lower down our hill, and with these we filled the window-hole and doorway, to keep out the sun’s heat and the flies. Then we sat together in mourning, my father and I, before the door, one on either side, eating nothing, and only drinking from the water jar that stood between us when our thirst became unbearable in the three days of public grieving. We spoke no word to each other.

And at the end of the third day, shepherd women in black robes, with their hair uncombed and wild, came to our house and took my mother away, bearing her on their shoulders, and grinning awfully with their white teeth to drive away all spirits which might try to intercept them. A tall black-eyed woman went in front, singing a burial song of three sounds which made no sense to me, in a high voice like that of the wind crying through the grasslands at evening-time. In her right hand she carried a flask of red wine, which she spilled into the dust at every three paces; in her left hand she held a skin bag of white dust, which she scattered after the wine. I had never seen this woman before. I think she came from a hidden shrine beyond our pastures, and was called in at whatever house death visited, to lead the dead one away. My father did not answer me when I whispered, asking who she was, but only stared before him, still and heavy-eyed.

When darkness fell, this woman came back alone and stood before us, the night-wind shifting the long snakes of her hair about her shoulders. She stood, seven paces from our door, and pointed a black stick towards us both, carefully, like a bowman taking aim. This was to quench all sorrow, yet I do not know that it eased my pain at all for the loss of my mother.

After it was over, she leaned her staff against the wall and said to my father, ‘It is done, old man. The offering has been accepted, and the journey into the dark kingdom has begun. Persephone awaits her there, to make her one of the hand-maids.’

I was only a boy, I was too full of sorrow for any words to help me, I wanted my mother back in the flesh and not in dreams. No talk of Persephone could take the place of my mother’s smile, her gentle hands, the songs she sang to me at night when I was too hot to sleep in our stifling room. I looked away when this stranger smiled at me and said, ‘All will be well, Oedipus. Now there is no cause for grief.’ For me, there would always be grief, always this loss standing between myself and the sun, and no words from a black-robed woman from foreign places could alter that, I thought.

But my father nodded and smiled, as though he believed this woman’s words. Then he rose and unblocked the door so that she could enter. After he had kindled the hearth-fire again and let what light there still was come in through the window-hole, he poured out clay cups of wine for us and we sat about our rough-hewn table for a while.

When we had drunk a farewell toast and had flung the rest of the wine upon the floor as a libation, he said, ‘Priestess, we are alone, this boy and I. From now on our life will not be the same, with no woman in the house. What must we do, think you, to heal our wound?’

As he spoke, I saw this white-faced woman’s great eyes moving about the house, as though they touched and counted everything we had. They were like a dealer’s hands in the market-place, that feel everywhere to see if there is a good bargain to be had.

She was not a young woman, yet not an old one, and though her face was lined, it still had comeliness about it, and her hair was unmarked with grey.

She moved her long finger up and down her thin nose a while, then said softly, ‘How many sheep have you, old man?’

My father told her, and told her also how many rams, and how many lambs there might well be in the coming Spring.

She nodded and asked then, ‘Are the pastures rich in this part of the mountain?’

My father told her that there were no richer, until one got north of Mount Othys. I did not like the quick way his answers followed on the heels of her questions, nor the eagerness in his old face.

I think the woman sensed my feeling, because she turned her head and stared at me fixedly, before smiling and touching my arm. Her fingers were so cold that I drew away, in spite of the laws of hospitality. Even this she noticed, with her quick eyes.

Then, forgetting me, she said, ‘You have no other children to share farm and flock, but this boy?’

My father shook his head, now leaning over the table and gripping its edge with tight-clenched hands, so that the whiteness of his knuckles showed, even in the twilight.

Suddenly the woman rose and, taking an ember from the hearth-fire, lit the lamp that hung from the rafter above her. Her action, taking this on herself in our house, shocked me strangely. I wanted to jump up and snatch the ember from her hands, but dared not. I looked across at my father, and his smile showed that he was well pleased by what she had done.

Then the woman turned and said solemnly, ‘My duties at the Shrine are over. Another younger one has been sent to take my place there. This house will serve as well as any other, now that my race is run.’

My father rose then, as though to take her in his arms, but she shook her tangled head and held up two white hands to stay him, and her teeth showed white as she smiled. She said, ‘Not yet, not yet, old man. You are as hasty as a youth. That is not the way the Mother approves of, once the Feast of Dionysus is over.’

She moved away from him and turned her back. Then, stooping, she put her hands beneath her black robe and began to work at something. My father stood watching and impatient, his hands clenched by his side. He did not look at me, it was as though I had gone from the room; and, indeed, I would gladly have left it at that moment and have run across the hills, to anywhere, to nowhere, to be away from this changed place, which had been my home while my mother lived.

Then something the woman said fixed me in my seat. Her white face half-turned over her bent shoulder, she whispered to my father, ‘It is too much for me, this girdle-knot, the goatskin aegis of the Carian goddess. It was tied so long ago, I have forgotten the twist of the thongs. Follow my fingers and see if yours can unfasten it.’

My father stood close behind her, breathing fast and deep, his hands moving in the shadows, until at last he said, like a man drowning in despair, ‘It is no use. We must take a knife to it.’

Then she turned towards him, and I saw in the flickering lamplight that she was trembling, too. ‘Yes,’ she said whispering, ‘let us take a knife. But do it quickly, before the sound of Her wings has passed from my ears.’

I saw my father fumbling at his belt, then feeling again within the black folds of the robe. The woman gave a little gasp and said hoarsely, ‘Take care, it has grown tight with the years. It would go ill to shed a drop of the blood dedicated to her, yet.’

I shrank away, wishing I could be anywhere but in that room, where the mocking shadows danced through the thick air.

Then I heard the knife-blade cut through leather, with a sharp snapping sound; and I heard the woman suck in breath, as though freed from some long-borne burden. With a savage gesture she flung the thing onto the hearth-fire, where it curled and twisted like a snake, sending sharp and bitter smoke into the room. The bronze knife clattered to the stone floor and my father took her in his arms, guiding her to the bed where my mother had lain pale that same afternoon.

I stood up and went to the door, for this was a thing I did not want to see, this woman on my mother’s bed. I do not think my father saw me at all, his eyes were blind in a manner I had never known before.

But as I stumbled towards the night, the woman looked over his shoulder at me with wide eyes and said, ‘Stay, Oedipus! Stay! We must have a witness for our wedding, and who better than you to tell the people of the mountain that your father has taken a new wife, and that the gods have sent you another mother?’

I stayed, for I was too afraid to disobey her: but, on my knees with my head bowed, I saw nothing for my tears. I only heard; and hated what I heard.