Sappho (15 page)

She did not wish the end to come upon her crouched with her women, the tent blown in on them. Rather, she stood alone, holding to any support she could find, lashed by Sea, shaken by Poseidon, struck by rain, harassed by winds. She did not pray for mercy. She did not pray at all. Deep in her there danced a madness that reveled in the deeds of these gods. It was a splendid end, to go with the crash of a thousand cymbals, to drink the fatal spume. She lifted her face to the might hurled against her.

When the worst of the raging had worn itself out and she stood wet and shivering, she noticed the other passenger. He had come aboard at Corinth but kept to himself. Her women said he was the owner of the ship, a merchant prince of a princely house. She looked at him with curiosity, for they had ridden out the storm together. His dark eyes watched her with the same intensity as the gale they had just weathered. He made a single comment: “You loved it.”

She laughed, shaking herself like a wet dog, shaking the seas from her lashes and hair so she could see him more clearly. She knew his face—he had been among the guests of Periander. In a moment his name came to her. “Kerkolas,” she said.

He bowed and, being as thoroughly wet and bedraggled as she, presented so comical a picture that she laughed again.

The next instant her women crept out of hiding and led her to a draped tub. They had managed to heat water with charcoal, and when it washed over her, her eyes rolled back into her head and her limbs loosened. Niobe fed her drops of wine, a gift from her fellow passenger, and rubbed her body until it coursed again with its own hot blood.

*   *   *

If Delphi was the navel of the world, Syracuse was its heart. The harbor greeted them with saucy red Samian craft riding lightly at anchor. They slipped past vessels with painted sails, Kypriot and Tynan, sleek Sicilian and stately Egyptian galleys. The narrows connecting the harbor to the mainland were heavily bridged, and from the mighty citadel in the heights of Ortygia, the Syracusan acropolis guarded the city. Kerkolas appeared and arranged that Sappho and her retainers were the first to be put ashore.

“I claim the right of guest-friend,” he said to her, “for we shared a feast and six hundred stadia of open water that too nearly turned into the River Styx.”

Sappho gave him her most charming smile; she had intended that he ask. It would give her time to find a suitable villa. Her people were busy storing chests in the small boat, and she herself carried a wrapped bundle.

“May I?” Kerkolas asked, offering to take it from her.

“No.” It was said abruptly, with no charm at all. Then, relenting, “They are vine slips. I know there are no lack of vineyards in this land, but these come with me into exile. They are from home.”

“Gentle Sappho,” he murmured, “are you really a threat to great Pittakos?”

She decided that, when dry, he was quite handsome. It was an observation only, devoid of interest, except that she liked handsome people and things in preference to plain ones.

On the thronged mole she heard for the first time the tongue of Barbarians, as well as Attic speech. The town faced a lazy southern sea. Awnings of many colors stretched across the main thoroughfare to shield passersby from the summer sun.

“The patron goddesses of leisure reign here,” Kerkolas told her, “and of them all Cotytto is foremost.”

Sappho said nothing; she was taking it all in. Cotytto was goddess of sensuality, and this was indeed her city. In Mitylene the statues were mostly draped, but here young Apollos were free-standing, naked and sexed. Dionysos leered, as did accompanying satyrs with pointed ears, from a frieze in which ungarbed women playfully retreated. Male organs fashioned in terra-cotta were sold as ornaments and as charms. Men with the hindquarters of horses gazed at her from colonnades and as small votive images in bronze. The marble flesh surrounding her seemed more alive than her own.

Women went about accompanied by slaves, but in fashions more extreme than she was acquainted with. She gaped at the eupygia, false buttocks—for certainly Nature had not so fully endowed this area of the female anatomy. She saw Amokgina made clothes seemingly woven of air. Ladies draped themselves in silk from Assyria and Kos, and wore Tarentine veils of coan. The peplos was damp-pleated, clinging to the body from one shoulder, revealing the breast fully.

“They are called wet-garments,” Kerkolas said, following her eyes, “and the ladies wearing them are quite respectable. The prostitutes you will know by the Thessalian gold trim embroidered with flowers. It is their mark.”

Sappho was startled to see apes led through the streets by ribbons, and a dwarf with bells on his cap who capered about doing odd little dance steps. Thin, long-legged hounds were held by chains. “They come,” Kerkolas told her, “from the island of Ibiza and are found as far away as Egypt where the Pharaohs are so fond of them they have them carved on their tombs.”

In Lesbos they had neither the Egyptian vault nor the Babylonian arch; here, she passed under both. She saw again the columns she had seen at Apollo's shrine. “How are they called?”

“Doric.” And he went on to explain the ratio between the height and the space between the axes. The leaf design was as on Leucas, chiseled into the capitals.

In the stalls of the stoa, wreath makers with dextrous fingers wove lovely ferns and flowers. Across the way palm oil was for sale, while in the next booth were displayed softest plumes of exotic African birds. She paused before Persian sapphires and Egyptian emeralds, wanting to linger, but Kerkolas signaled a cart pulled by matched Arabians.

“It is hot and you will be wanting your bath,” Kerkolas said.

She agreed, hoping she had not seemed too provincial, but the wide-wayed city of Syracuse was overwhelming. For art, for wealth, for the exotic population that inhabited its streets and squares, there was nothing that compared with it. Mitylene seemed a village. She was glad she had come here. A poet needed to know all that was in the world. And if it was not in Syracuse, she was sure it was nowhere.

Kerkolas's villa was on the sand shore. The structure of the far-flung house was of harmonious proportions, being quarried from rock and in some sections two-storied. The approach to the estate was hung, as she had seen in the city, with gaily festooned awnings. Three-tiered walls of limestone dazzling with mica enclosed the main edifice, from which gardens blossomed on all sides, except where it lay open to the sea. Pomegranates, apple trees, and a flowering pear scented the air, as did deep beds of cultivated flowers. She met Apollo the archer again standing beside a splashing fountain, and Artemis faced him on her pedestal.

“I am fortunate to be the guest-friend in such a home as this,” Sappho said as they stepped inside.

“It is I who am fortunate to have captured the legend of Lesbos. Today you rest, tomorrow a feast of hospitality.”

“And then I must set about finding a place of my own. Not like this, of course, a small house will suit my needs, but I would like it to be by the sand shore, for I was born in Eresos.”

“Eresos? I know it well. It lies on the west coast of Lesbos.”

“Yes, west even of the islet of Hera.”

Kerkolas nodded. “I am from nearby Andros. It was in those waters that I learned to sail.”

“But this is now your home?”

“Once one has discovered Syracuse, it is hard to live anywhere else.”

Sappho admired the marvelously woven wall hangings that gave warmth to the spacious rooms and stopped in wonder before a harp. It was the first of that size she had ever seen.

“I brought it back with me my last trip to Egypt,” Kerkolas said.

He called, and a servant woman led Sappho to the women's side of the house. This was a novelty she did not care for. In the home at Mitylene rooms belonged to all alike. The suite assigned her looked toward the sea and off it opened a smaller room containing a terracotta bath around whose sides nymphs and goddesses cavorted. She dropped her cloak and pleated chiton to the floor, where they were retrieved by Niobe. Then the dainty Lydian shoes of which she was proud were lifted from her feet. She had seen all manner of fine dress, but another pair of Lydian shoes she had not seen.

She slipped into hot scented water that gathered an azure hue from inset turquoise stones. It was good to stretch and soak off the weariness of travel. How far she had journeyed! Was she to live her life among strangers? Her mother's presentiment weighed on her. Suppose Kleis were to die—she might not even hear of it in this land—or Khar, trading wine for gold and slaves, that their house might prosper and she be kept, though an exile, in a way befitting her? Eurygyos had spoken of returning to Eresos, replanting and harvesting the vineyards and pressing the grape. Only young Larichos would remain at home. She recalled his diminishing figure as he stood and waved. Would she see him again? And Alkaios? What trouble was he in now? Had he stayed with Khar? Wherever he was, Alkaios would be playing his songs somewhere to a lad with sloe eyes—while his comrade, the Little Pebble, was washed up on an unknown shore.

A eunuch was sent her, an enormous black. She was afraid of such large hands, but they kneaded her indifferently. She felt she was being deboned like a fish. Essences she had never smelled were rubbed into her skin until she glistened and her limbs were jelly. A bed was brought and swift sleep descended, dreamless.

If it is possible to sleep hard, as they say one exercises, that is how she slept. When at last her eyes opened, Helios had been chased to the exact position he'd held when her eyes had closed. She lay without movement, taking in the rich chamber. Furs were scattered on the floor, thick, luxuriant; a tapestry depicted Athene of the flashing gray eyes commanding Hermes, guide of the dead, messenger of the gods. Sappho's clothes had been laid with care on an ivory clothes stool, and a high-backed chair inlaid with mother-of-pearl set near. Through the archway the sea rolled gently without making an advance. Heavy hangings had been tied back to bring this vista into view. How perfect the moment—to lie like a goddess, every wish attended to before she thought of it herself.

She got up quietly so as not to bring a servant to her side, slipped into her chiton and walked past the marble portico toward the sand, to touch with a toe Aphrodite's foam. A small Maltese puppy chased after her and she found a stick to throw for it. The tiny creature brought it back obediently, tail wagging. “I like you better than those lean Ibiza hounds,” she said, picking it up. It was soft and well-tended—like everything here, she thought.

She set the little dog down and waded into the warm water. It washed so delightfully around her ankles that she decided on a swim. Leaving her chiton on the shore, she raced into the sea and stroked toward the jetty on her right. She swam with a school of small yellow-banded fish. A transparent organism trailed by, propelling itself with the opening and closing of an attached parasol. It, too, was not larger than her hand. She turned and floated, kicking her feet lazily, to rest before making the swim across to the far side of the jetty. She was enjoying the rhythmic motions of her body when she was attracted by a commotion on the pier; people seemed to be signaling her. She swam closer and could see that she was being waved back.

Then she realized—she had left the women's side, that part of the sand and sea, those rooms and baths reserved for women. She had trespassed. She was not free to swim where she chose, or wander as she wished. This knowledge came as an unpleasant shock. Even in Pyrrha she had come and gone freely, finding her own spots for solitude in which to work at her songs. Periander of Corinth had called her the songbird of Lesbos, but here in Syracuse her wings were clipped. She had failed to understand that the women were jailed in their side of the house. This was untenable.

Treading water a minute longer, she decided not to understand the signaling from shore but continue her swim. She passed wide of the jetty and the comic figures jumping up and down. What a scene she had raised by infringing on the men's beach. She deliberately struck toward this shore that was off-limits to her, coming in naked.

Kerkolas himself had been summoned. He stood with his servants, one of whom stepped forward with a cloak in which she could both dry and cover herself.

She approached Kerkolas and smiled fully into his face.

He did not smile back.

“What a delightful swim.” She found she panted slightly.

Kerkolas motioned the servants out of earshot. “Sappho,” he began, and began again: “Sappho, are you sea nymph or woman?”

She laughed, shaking water from her dark hair.

“Sappho,” he began for the third time.

He is uncomfortable about saying it, she thought; good.

“Did you notice the women in the streets of the city had slaves at their side? In Syracuse women, even married women, do not go abroad unaccompanied.”

“Very picturesque. I am fascinated by quaint customs.”

“I think, Sappho,” Kerkolas was gently reproving, “that you misunderstand me on purpose.”

“Oh? You mean this in some way applies to me? But surely not. I am a visitor.”

“You left the women's section in your adventurous swim and have landed yourself on the men's beach. Something, I might add, that has never happened before.”

“And what is my punishment for this social blunder? My head on a platter?”

“It is, Lady, with your permission, that this evening at a small party I am giving in your honor, you play some of your compositions. I was never so enchanted as the night you sang in the house of Periander, which I have visited many times before and found quite unexceptional.”

“I will sing in your house tonight. And now swim back with me.”

He smiled. “I cannot. You see, I know the rules. I am not a visitor.”

“But it is your house!”

“I'll swim straight out with you. Then you will go to your side and I to mine.”