Katherine Anne Porter (115 page)

Take the single point of fidelity: It is very hard to be entirely faithful, even to things, ideas, above all, persons one loves. There is no such thing as perfect faithfulness any more than there is perfect love or perfect beauty. But it is fun trying. And if I say faithfulness consists of a great many things beside the physical, never let it be dreamed that I hold with the shabby nonsense that physical infidelity is a mere peccadillo beneath the notice of enlightened minds. Physical infidelity is the signal, the notice given, that all the fidelities are undermined. It is complete betrayal of the very principle on which love and marriage are based, and besides, a vulgar handing over of one’s partner to public shame. It is exactly as stupid as that, to say nothing more.

Yet every day quite by the thousands delightfully honest young couples, promising, capable, sometimes gifted, but in no way superhuman, leap gaily into marriage—a condition which, for even reasonable success and happiness (both words seem rather trivial in this connection), would tax the virtues and resources and staying powers of a regiment of angels. But what else would you suggest that they do?

Then there come the children. Gladly, willingly (if you do not think so, I refer you to the birth records of this country for the past ten years. There haven’t been so many young wives having so many babies so fast for at least four generations!) these pairs proceed to populate their houses, or flats—often very small flats, and mother with a job she means to keep, too—with perfect strangers, often hostile, whose habits even to the most adoring gaze are often messy and unattractive. They lie flat on their noses at first in what appears to be a drunken slumber, then flat on their backs kicking and screaming, demanding impossibilities in a foreign language. They are human nature in essence, without conscience, without pity, without love, without a trace of consideration for others, just one seething cauldron of primitive appetites and needs; and what do they really need? We are back where we started. They need love, first; without it everything worth saving is lost or damaged
in them; and they have to be taught love, pity, conscience, courage—everything. And what becomes of them? If they are lucky, among all the million possibilities of their fates, along with the innumerable employments, careers, talents, ways of life, they will learn the nature of love, and they will marry and have children.

If this all sounds a little monotonous, and gregarious, well, sometimes it is, and most people like that sort of thing. They always have. It is hardly possible to exaggerate the need of a human being, not a madman, or a saint, or a beast, or a selfalienated genius who is all of these in one, and therefore the scapegoat for all the rest, to live at peace—and by peace I mean in reconciliation, not easy contentment—with another human being, and with that one in a group or society where he feels he belongs. The best, the very best, of all these relationships is that one in marriage between a man and a woman who are good lovers, good friends, and good parents; who belong to each other, and to their children, and whose children belong to them: that is the meaning of the blood tie that binds them, and may bind them sometimes to the bone. Children cut their teeth on their parents and their parents cut their wisdom teeth on each other: that is what they are there for. It is never really dull, and can sometimes be very memorably exciting for everybody. In any case, the blood-bond, however painful, is the condition of human life in this world, the absolute point of all departure and return. The ancient biological laws are still in force, the difference being merely in the way human beings regard them, and though I am not one to say all change is progress, in this one thing, a kind of freedom and ease of mind between men and women in marriage—or at least the possibility of it, change has been all for the better. At least they are able now to fight out their differences on something nearer equal terms.

We have the bad habit, some of us, of looking back to a time—almost any time will do—when society was stable and orderly, family ties stronger and deeper, love more lasting and faithful, and so on. Let me be your Cassandra prophesying after the fact, and a long study of the documents in the case: it was never true, that is, no truer than it is now. Above all, it was not true
of domestic life in the nineteenth century. Then, as now, it was just as good in individual instances as the married pairs involved were able to make it, privately, between themselves. The less attention they paid to what they were expected to think and feel about marriage, and the more attention to each other as loved and loving, the better they did, for themselves and for everybody. The laws of public decorum were easy to observe, for they had another and better understanding. The Victorian marriage feather bed was in fact set upon the shaky foundation of the wavering human heart, the inconsistent human mind, and was the roiling hotbed of every dislocation and disorder not only in marriage but all society, which we of the past two generations have lived through. Yet in love—this is what I have been talking about all the time—a certain number of well-endowed spirits, and there are surprisingly quite a lot of them in every generation, have always been able to take their world in stride, to live and die together, and to keep all their strange marriage vows not because they spoke them, but because like centuries of lovers before them, they were prepared to live them in the first place.

Example: A certain woman was apparently a prisoner for life in several ways: already thirty-five or -six years old, supposed to be an incurable invalid, whose father had forbidden any of his children to marry; and above all, a poet at a time when literary women were regarded as monsters, almost. Yet she was able to write, in the first flush of a bride’s joy: “He preferred. . . of free and deliberate choice, to be allowed to sit only an hour a day by my side, to the fulfillment of the brightest dream which should exclude me in any possible world.”

This could be illusion, but the proof of reality came fifteen years later. Just after her death her husband wrote to a friend: “Then came what my heart will keep till I see her again and longer—the most perfect expression of her love to me within my whole knowledge of her. Always smilingly, and happily, and with a face like a girl’s; and in a few minutes she died in my arms, her head on my cheek.”

If you exclaim that this is not fair, for, after all, these two were, of course, the Robert Brownings, I can only reply that it is because I sincerely believe they were not so very special that I cite them. Don’t be thrown off by that lyrical
nineteenth-century speech, nor their fearless confidence not only in their own feelings, but the sympathy of their friends; it is the kind of love that makes real marriage, and there is more of it in the world than you might think, though the ways of expressing it follow the fashions of the times; and we certainly do not find much trace of it in our contemporary literature. It is
very
old-style, and it was, long before the Brownings. It is new, too, it is the very newest thing, every day renewed in an endless series of those fortunate people who may not have one point in common with the Brownings except that they know, or are capable of learning, the nature of love, and of living by it.

1951

S
HE
was one of the immortals, a daughter of Helios; on her mother’s side, granddaughter to the Almighty Ancient of Days, Oceanus. Of sunlight and sea water was her divine nature made, and her unique power as goddess was that she could reveal to men the truth about themselves by showing to each man himself in his true shape according to his inmost nature. For this she was rightly dreaded and feared; her very name was a word of terror.

She was a beautiful, sunny-tempered, merry-hearted young enchantress, living on her own island in a dappled forest glade, in her great high open hall of polished stone, with her four handmaidens, nymphs “born of the wells and of the woods and of the holy rivers, that flow forward into the salt sea.” Tall, golden haired, serene, she walked up and down before her high loom, weaving her imperishable web of shining, airy splendid stuff such as goddesses weave. As she walked she sang in such a high clear sweet voice the sound carried through the halls and into the forest to the suspicious ears of the fearful men, that half of Odysseus’ companions chosen by lot for the dangerous task of approaching and entering if possible the enchanted lair.

The proud and lofty-souled Eurylochus, near kinsman of Odysseus, was by his bad luck at the head of this foray or was supposed to be. He had not liked anything about his mission. Far from leading, he held back. But peril was everywhere—there roamed about the place savage mountain-bred lions and wolves, which gave our heroes a fresh turn. These boisterous veterans of the ten years’ war over Helen (I follow Homer strictly) had gone through more than enough disaster lately, and almost anything could upset them. These frightful animals behaved in a way to confirm their worst fears: far from attacking the company, they came romping and fawning with a human
gaze of entreaty in their eyes; unnerved at last, the heroes rushed upon the palace, shouting in voices tuned between fear and anger; when Circe instantly opened the great door and gently bade her uninvited guests welcome, they surged in heedlessly—except Eurylochus. He, guessing treason to lurk within, deserted promptly and ran back to the safety of Odysseus and the rest of the company on the shore near the long black ship, bawling like a calf all the way, of course; this dastardly act—dastardly even by ancient Greek heroic stan-dards—has not been so generally condemned as it merits. But, he brought the terrible news they had been half-expecting. Odysseus, against the clamor and tears and lamentations of Eurylochus, who refused to show him the way back, cast upon his shoulder his silver-studded sword, and slung his bow about him and set out by himself to the rescue.

Odysseus was Pallas Athene’s darling, she never failed him in battle or any manly exploit. She loved to swoop down like an eagle at the side of her hero in times of hurly-burly and uproar. There was nobody like her for putting on whatever shape was suitable to the occasion and appearing beside him upon the disordered scene with her powers in full play. He was, she told him, the only mortal who could almost match her for guile and subtle trickery—for that she loved him. But she took no interest in his erotic entanglements and at such times abandoned him to his troubles. Such trivialities were not her province—she left that sort of thing to Hermes, whose business and delight it was to interfere in the love between men and women and to sever and to separate; he was the messenger of the high gods in this matter; for, as the goddesses had cause to complain, the gods who made so free with mortal women were jealous of goddesses who loved mortal men; Calypso complained bitterly of this, and even Aphrodite, the very goddess of love herself, was not free from the reproaches of Zeus or the tamperings of Hermes.

So there was Hermes, the ambiguous and beautiful, a youth with the first down on his lip; in his golden sandals, carrying his wand, lurking in the forest to waylay Odysseus, to give him advice about Circe and to offer him the curious herb moly, more easily gathered by gods than by men, the one sure countermagic
for men against the enchantments of women. Now all the gods were crafty, but they kept their word with their favored ones. Not Hermes—he was on all sides at once, stealing from anybody—Admetus’ oxen, you remember, and the girdle of Aphrodite right off of her, that time he begot the monster on her; and other incidents besides. A thoroughly untidy if fascinating character, he was, in this instance, thoroughly reliable; his heart was in his work. Odysseus accepted the herb and the advice, and there was a wonderful fairness in him being thus armed, for Odysseus, often called divine, was not so; he was of the seed of Zeus but not a half-god; and it was not justice that he should encounter with merely mortal weapons the half-goddess Circe with her fearful power. Circe, said Hermes, once outmagicked by the herb, will invite Odysseus to become her lover. She will be very likely to amuse herself by making him “a dastard and unmanned” once she has got him stripped and in bed.

Odysseus, therefore, to avoid this fate worse than death, must force her to “swear a mighty oath by the blessed gods” that she will do no such thing, nor any other harm to him or his companions.

This gives us an oblique glimmer of truth about Circe; for these two methodically unreliable beings, strangely enough, never doubt for a moment that Circe can be trusted to honor her oath. It might reasonably be expected that she could not be relied upon any more than any of the other gods once they were set against one; but she could be trusted, it seems; they both knew it and set out cheerfully to take advantage of their knowledge.

Not even a god, having once formed a man, can make a swine of him. That is for him to choose. Circe’s honeyed food with the lulling drug in it caused them to reveal themselves. The delicate-minded goddess touched them then with her wand, the wand of the transforming truth, and penned the groaning, grunting, weeping, bewildered creatures in the sty back of the hall. In the whole episode she showed one touch of witty malice, when she tossed them a handful of acorns and other victuals suitable to their new condition. No doubt she did it
smilingly with her natural grace; what else should she have offered them at that moment? I think it was very good of her to go on feeding them at all. But then I am only human.

Then Odysseus with a darkly troubled heart called aloud at the great shining door, and the goddess like a rainbow made of sunlight and sea water welcomed him gently, and the drama was played out again, up to that point where she tapped him with her wand and said, “Go thy way now to the sty, couch thee there with the rest of thy company.” The gods know each other on first sight but they do not always fathom each other’s magic. Was Circe so blinded by Hermes’ ambiguous herb she could not see she was dealing with a fox?

Hermes had advised Odysseus instantly to draw his sword upon her and threaten her with death. She was deathless, as Hermes must have known and Odysseus might have guessed; but he seems to have forgot this, so convincing was her manner and look of a mortal woman. She did then, instantly and flatteringly, exactly what Hermes had said she would do—she slipped down and clasped his knees and bewailed her fate in perfect form, and said the one thing most calculated to win his heart; she guessed that he was Odysseus and that he had a mind within him that could not be enchanted, and ended: “Nay come, put thy sword into the sheath, and thereafter let us go up into my bed, that meeting in love and sleep we may trust each other.” Her tender, appropriate, womanly intentions were entirely misunderstood by Odysseus, experienced as he was in the ways of goddesses and women. He was irresistible to them all alike, except to Helen; he was the fate of women as Helen was the fate of men. He had married his dear mortal Penelope as a long second choice after half-goddess Helen, who refused him along with a phalanx of other suitors. Penelope had no rivals but goddesses ever after. In a way, he was tender to weakness with women, as men who really need them are apt to be; he wept upon them and pleaded and touched their hearts when he was getting ready to go. . . .