Читать книгу Oedipus - Henry Treece - Страница 8

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It had been too easy. The gods do not wish us to find life too easy, and always exercise themselves to drag the balance down if we look to have made too good a bargain. This is how they keep the moira, the shape, in life.

As I entered our cottage, the air struck me, thick with anger and guilt. As thick as smoke from the hearth-fire.

My father was already there, sitting on his stool at the rude table, glaring and furious. He had broken several clay cups, which lay about the board and on the rush-strewn floor. In the far corner, Oresthea stood, her robe drawn up to her eyes, silent and shivering, as though she had already been visited by his wrath.

His pale eyes glaring, the spittle running down either side of his mouth, my father gave me no time to sit, but shouted straightway, ‘Do you want to kill me? Yes, you want to kill me. Indeed, now I know that you will kill me. It is plain in your face and in your hands. I think you have already killed me!’

I stopped, aghast at this attack, like an unsuspecting man who turns a corner and is suddenly drenched with icy water.

‘What do you mean, father?’ I asked, but knowing.

‘What do I mean!’ he echoed. ‘I mean that I was on the lower road, coming through the pines from the village, when I saw you fling old Metope to her death on the rocks. There was no more of her than the beetles could feast on when she came to earth. Is that the way? A son who destroys his father’s stock is already three paces forward to destroying the father himself. That is in your mind, Oedipus, it is clear. Your mind is as twisted as your feet. You are no true son of mine.’

As he went on like this, he rose higher and higher from the stool, and his hands reached out blindly to find a knife. But there was no knife, and he began to fling cups and jars at me, wildly, like an Egyptian ape. Some of them struck the wall beside me; others reached my head or body and stung me, as I stood entranced at his fury.

Suddenly Oresthea moved from her dim corner, and sweeping her arms wide to free them of her black robe, wrapped them round the old man, pinning his own thin arms to his bent body. He kicked and frothed at the mouth, flinging his head backwards again and again so as to use it as a club on her face. But she was too agile for this, and holding her own head to one side, called out over his shoulder, ‘Go, Oedipus, go! Leave this place now. It is no longer your home. If you do not go, he will die of anger. His old heart will burst with grief, and then his blood will be upon your head for father-killing.’

I did not question this; her words came so surely and hit the target so squarely in the middle. I turned, and with nothing but the staff in my hand, fled from the house, down the hillside path, stumbling in the darkness.

As I went, I still heard my father’s high reedy yelling, and then, after a little time, the woman laughing shrill and fiercely, like a Maenad when they tear the King.

My world had changed so utterly, so swiftly, that there was no thought in my heart but to go, and go, and go, from the house on the mountain. All my life seemed to have been leading up to this point, I cannot explain it, but now it came to me like a great truth—that this moment had been destined always. I felt no guilt, no remorse, no sadness, even—but only the great pulsing to be away, to be free of the incubus. I think that between them, the woman Oresthea, and the falling dream she had given me, had driven me over the cliff-edge of madness for a while, and that, like the old ewe, I was worthless now.

And then, as I ran into the poplar groves at the foot of the hill, where the white roads start and the common world begins, a great dark figure suddenly came up from the ferns that bordered the path and moved at me. God, at first I thought it was Pan, because of the shaggy shoulders and the great height and width. Then a hard-shafted javelin thudded across my breast and stayed me, and a man’s voice said, ‘Not so fast, fellow. You give me no time to feel in your pouch!’

It was a stern, but in a way laughing voice, the voice of a soldier. Trembling with relief that I had not met the goat-god, I said, ‘You will have to search elsewhere for pickings, man. I have only this staff I lean on, and this ragged wool that covers my back, and that not too well.’

He grunted, but ran his great hands over me all the same. Then, thoughtlessly, he took me by the shoulder and shook me, without malice, but for something further to do. In his great dry hand I was like a straw doll. I dared to say, ‘Steady, sir, I am lame and you will have me down.’

Then he let me go and stood away. ‘There will be no pickings from the mountain,’ he said, without feeling. ‘The shepherds carry nothing with them but a skin of wine and a goat-cheese these days. It is different in Corinth; there the cattle-barons go dressed in enough gold to buy a farm of one’s own.’

I found myself smiling and said, ‘Then why do you not go to Corinth?’

In the darkness he answered, ‘And why don’t you keep your advice to yourself? Do you want me to knock your teeth out, lad?’

Then I heard him fling his javelin into the ferns, as though it was no longer needed, and say, ‘What are you doing, out at night?’

I told him I was running away, and that my father was old and mad. He said that all old men were mad, and especially the Kings. Peasants could claim no great credit for madness these days.

Then, turning his broad back on me, he said without interest, ‘I will light a fire and make the best of this night’s lodging. Stay if you wish, and share what I have. Perhaps, by the dawn-time, you will change your mind and go back up the hill to your father. There are worse things than an old fellow’s madness to put up with in the world these days.’

A strong comfort came from this man, as we sat in the firelight, eating his dry barley-bread and sharing his skin of tart red wine. His great hairy legs were thrust out before him, and he wore sandals as worn and tattered as my own. About his lower body, above the short, pleated soldier’s kilt, he wore nothing but a thick band of studded horse-hide, meant to keep spear-thrusts from his belly. His furry chest and arms were covered with a tracery of blue tattoo-marks, mostly of circles and waving lines like snakes. In the middle of his wide forehead, above the bushy beard and eyebrows, there was an eye tattooed in blue and red. His brown hair was cropped so short that, even in the firelight of small olive twigs, I could see the dark sunburned skin under it.

Beside him, on the rough grass, lay his javelin and a round leather helmet, like a cooking-pot, made stronger by short bronze strips.

There were no rings on his thick fingers, or bracelets on his thick arms. He was only a man, man undecorated save by his maleness. A strong smell came from him, of sweat and leather, and something else which I could not place. I think it was bravery. He was the finest man I had ever seen; he was like a great stallion that knows no master, but walks through the plains, under the thunder-stone and the jagged lightning, unafraid, as though his own thick hide could stand against them. Yet, beneath all this force, he was gentle in his voice and movements; more gentle than women are, for all their reputation of softness and compassion.

Munching a piece of hard cheese, I smiled at him and said, my mouth full, ‘Are you a hero, sir?’

He turned his blue eyes on me and said, ‘For the love of Zeus and Hera, do not call me “sir”. I am not a lord or a cattle-chief, I am Halesus the Wanderer, the man who sells his javelin to any one, black or white, who can find him in bed and board for a comfortable war. I am the simplest thing the gods ever made, a soldier.’

I said, ‘Then you have answered my question, soldier. You are a hero—or what I call a hero.’

Halesus bit off a piece of hard crust and chewed it in broad teeth, saying, ‘A hero! What is that? You shepherd folk who have never held a sword in your hands and have only seen sheep’s blood flow, you do not know what you are saying. There is no thing called a hero. There is only a man who gets his bread by selling his skill with the sword. It is like one who gets it by playing the lyre, or inventing verses, or weaving cloth. It is a trade, lad, and there is no more to it than that. All else is what the drunken poets sing, to please the lords who provide the wine that makes them drunk.’

I said, ‘Is there no glory, then, no standing high beside the gods?’

He began to tear up fern fronds and pile them under a tree on the grass. Over his broad shoulder he said, ‘I cannot understand half of what you say, lad. No one stands beside the gods; that is not in the power of man. The gods are now here, everywhere, up high, down low. You cannot even see them to stand beside them. The gods are prayers and songs, they are not anywhere, they are not men. And as for this glory ... Zeus, but when you put the spear-point into a man and you see yourself in his eyes before they close, there is no glory. Only the thought that next time you may be the one lying in the dust and spewing. And if you ever stood on a plain and heard the chariots coming against you, with the horses thumping the ground and the great wheels whirling, and all you have in your hand to stop them is a pointed stick—oh, then there is no glory, lad. Only sweat running out of you like a mountain stream. Zeus, but I have seen bigger men than me stand with their mouths gaping and the piss spurting from under their kilts when the chariots came. Don’t talk to me of glory. Make yourself a bed and go to sleep. Here, you are like a left-handed cripple—let me make a bed for you. It will save time.’

Halesus, Wanderer, paid soldier. I loved him from the moment I saw him. As he lay, his broad back towards me, fast asleep as soon as his shorn head touched the bracken-bed, I thought: Here is a man! Oh, by the gods, this is what I would like to be! Oh, gods, let me become this! To be so easy in the mind, to sleep so swiftly, not to be tormented by dreams! Zeus, but that is a glory in itself. This man has glory and does not know it!

With him I felt safe for the first time since I was a little lad and had walked with my mother Rhene, hand in hand, outside our house. I felt that the gods had led me to him, though crookedly, in bringing Oresthea to our house, in letting her make me murder the old ewe Metope. It all worked towards a purpose—that I should meet Halesus and learn what a man really was.

I smiled to myself under the open sky, watching the poplar boughs waving in the breezes, and then I was asleep, undreaming, in the presence of the man’s great strength and reasonableness.

We were together for two changes of the moon, walking down through the Isthmus towards Corinth. No man offended us, all came out of their cottages to ask if we were hungry or thirsty. It was a simple life, that of a wandering soldier. Who would be a lord, a king even, if he could walk under the sky through the world and have all given him, and no evil thoughts to keep him from sleep?

Only once did we have a mishap; it was in a gully overhung with cypress trees, north of Commyon in Megaris, where the land was infested with robbers. Yes, in spite of what Theseus of Athens boasted, that he had cleared all that place and had torn the bandits apart on bent saplings, there were always robbers there. It would have taken more than the Athenian braggart to clear the soil of robbers. They grew as fast as acanthus; they were about all that did grow in that place, apart from a few brown laurels and dusty cypresses!

Four of them leapt down from the rocks in front of us one bright afternoon, men dressed in old hides, and carrying flint axes. Halesus stopped and stroked his beard gently, looking at them. He whispered to me, ‘Step behind me, Oedipus, I don’t want anything in my way when I start.’ Then he jutted out his stubbly beard at their leader and said, ‘Very well, if you ask for death, who am I to deny it? Come on, let us have it over. My boy and I have a long way to go.’

The leader came forward, stiff-legged like a fierce dog and holding his axe tightly, with white-knuckled fingers. His black eyes were shifting like a snake’s head as he came, searching for advantage. But Halesus stood as still as a statue, and even flicked some flies from about his head as the man came on.

Then, just when the robber jumped in with a sudden fierce lunge, Halesus was not there, but by the man’s side. He swept his left foot round, knocking the fellow’s legs from under him, and then pushed the short javelin slowly into the man’s black beard, under his chin. The robber lay so still and staring, with the beads of sweat breaking out of his dark forehead, that I could have laughed; he was so changed from what he had been.

His fellows stopped still, their axes now hanging down, their mouths open, as though they were about to ask permission to leave.

Halesus suddenly kicked the fallen chief in the groin and then withdrew the javelin and stood away from him. I saw the man in the dust reach up into his beard to see how bad his wound was; his fingers came away stained red, but there was no great hurt done.

Halesus then said, ‘The day is too hot for boy’s play. My lad and I are weary; and I am sure you must be also. While you good fellows sit down in the shade, under the rock, your chief will fetch us bread and wine and we will put from our minds all thoughts of loot and blood-letting—which are, after all, things for small men to consider, and not for the likes of us.’

So the robbers sat down as Halesus sternly invited them, and their chief went somewhere and came back soon with wine-skins and round loaves under his arm. He also brought cheeses and apples, and we sat and ate and passed the wine, as though we had known them a year.

The black-bearded chief sat near us and said, ‘If I could only afford a bronze javelin like that, instead of a flint axe, I should be better off.’

Halesus glanced at his javelin negligently, where it lay close to his hand, and said, ‘I don’t know. Trade is bad everywhere these days, chief. The cattle-kings eat up the land and take all the profit. You are as well up here in the rocks as you would be anywhere. As long as you have good wine like this, and crisp bread like this, what are you grumbling about? As you can see, my boy and I have no such luxuries.’

The men laughed at this, and so did the chief. He said, ‘Aye, soldier, but you have a fortune in your arms and legs; you do not need riches. They come to you as you pass along.’

Halesus said, ‘I spent five years of my life working from dawn till sunset, to learn my trade. At the end of it, I possessed only what I stood up in. I even had to kill three good fellows to get this javelin. Do you think that was easy?’

The robbers stared at him silently, saying nothing. Halesus said, smiling, ‘Nay, fellows, stick to your rocks, and pray that the next traveller that comes down the gully is some rich Phoenician with a thin beard like a goat, and a fat belly quivering with fright.’

The chief said grinning, ‘It would not be the beard or the belly we wanted, but what was in his donkey’s panniers, soldier.’

Halesus said, in a pretended gravity, ‘Well, when you find this trader, do not take all from him. He may overtake me on the road, and I might want to dip my own hand into his panniers.’

So, all laughing now, we took our leave of the robbers. They stood on their rocks and waved until we were out of their sight.

And when we were alone again, Halesus said, ‘That turned out well, Oedipus. I feel better after that good dinner.’

I said, ‘Zeus, Halesus, but you were splendid. That is the glory I meant, when I spoke to you.’

He swept big his hand out and scooped a green lizard off a rock before the creature could flicker away. Then, breathing on it, he let it go running into the fern. He wiped his brow and said, ‘That was not glory. I felt sure they would knock us both on the head with those terrible axes. But you never have to let them know you are afraid. You have to see what is the best you can do; and I saw that their chief was a bit unsteady on his right leg. He had a bandage round it, at the ankle. He must have sprained it, leaping down from his rocks onto fat Phoenicians! It was that bandage which gave me the answer; so I kicked his legs from under him, no more. This javelin did the rest. I won’t gainsay, it needs practice to know how far you should push it in, at a tender place like the throat, but as I said, I suffered a long training at such things. I have always found you can frighten these fellows more if you stick your point in where they cannot see it. Then they go only by the feeling of it, and think they are murdered before you have even drawn blood. Oh, they are a good simple lot of men, these Megarians. It is a shame the cattle-kings don’t come up here and recruit them. They would fight for no pay at all, and they are easy to handle. If ever I become a captain, and have my own band of wandering soldiers, I shall come up here and comb the rocks for my axe-men. They do what they are told, and have no hero-dreams that get in the way of obedience.’

I could have stayed with Halesus for ever, his words were so real and true. But when we got within a day’s walk of Corinth, his manner changed towards me, and he became a little more distant.

On the high road, sheltered by poplars, and ringed about with a sort of heather, was a white cottage with a red tiled roof. Vines grew before the house, and white cows grazed on the green slopes behind it. Seven grey doves perched on the roof-ridge, purring in the sun. I said, ‘This looks a pleasant place. One could stay here and live like a king, if only there was a woman to cook and to gather olive-wood for the fires.’

Halesus gave me a long look, then set his fingers between his lips and whistled three times. The hide before the door swung aside, and a young woman came running between the vines towards us. She wore only a grey skirt of unbleached linen, and her breasts were as golden as honey, and as freckled as a thrush’s breast. Her long brown hair was bunched up on the top of her head with red ribbons. She laughed as she came running, and flung herself into the open arms of Halesus.

When they had finished rubbing their faces together, he said to me, over her shoulder, ‘This is my sister. She is always glad to see me home again.’

But I knew that she was not his sister. I could tell that from the way she looked at him and held him close, and the way his right hand went up and down her body as he held her like a doll in his arms.

So I lost Halesus, and all so suddenly. True, the laughing two gave me food and drink, and a pair of sandals for my bruised feet, but though they smiled at me often and stroked my head, I knew they were only waiting for me to go, before they got about whatever it was that held them together.

While the woman went into the house, to prepare, as she said, Halesus stood out on the road with me, pointing with his short javelin, and saying, ‘Keep on and on, over those blue hills, and then down into the plain. And there you will find Corinth. The King and Queen there are friendly folk, if you like their sort. As for me, I do not go there, because there is no place for my trade. They have their own warriors. Besides, I do not care for their sort of cattle. You will see what I mean if you go there. For me, there is a limit to what a man can stand.’

He waved to me briefly and went towards the house, never looking at me again. He was like a god walking between the vines—but not Dionysus! This god would have torn ten Maenads apart before ever they laid hands on him.

Truly, when I was out of sight of that pleasant cottage I wept and wept, to lose such a friend. Oh, Zeus, I prayed, let me meet him again! Let me grow to be like this paid warrior, this wandering soldier, for there can be no better sort of life under the sun.

And so I went on, slowly, weeping and laughing in turns, to think of losing him but also of the pleasant time we had been together as friends. Not once, as I climbed the blue hills, did I think of my angry old father and of evil Oresthea; not once, even, did I remember Rhene my mother, or the old ewe I had tempted to her death. And now, my heart was free of Icarus and his frightful falling from the sky. It was as though I was cleansed of so much, by running away from the mountain.

And then I had other things to think of, for suddenly, as I topped a rise in the land, I saw the place to which my footsteps had led me by chance. The place where another thread would be woven into the pattern of my small life.