Sappho (17 page)

It was for no fault! For no fault!
She remembered her mother's premonition. What if something should happen? She prayed to Demeter that her mother would clasp her in her arms again. Aloud she spoke to Kleis: “Mother, I know I have been a difficult daughter, stubborn, willful, and unwed. But the gods will reunite us. They will. They must!”

The outburst over, she retrieved her tool and tamped down the earth firmly, her dainty nails that her women worked over grimy and black. Surveying her planting, she was satisfied. Now the small Aeolic island would be part of her, she would stand here as her vines grew, looking across the sea toward Lesbos, remembering how it lay in the crook of the lonian coast, remembering the five cities, remembering …

Once the whole family made a journey traveling north to the hot medicinal springs of Thermae under the patronage of Artemis. She had romped with her brothers, splashing, swimming, diving. And there had been a pretty festival of animals—so long ago, so lost.

*   *   *

Gifts kept arriving—from Kerkolas, the magnificent Egyptian harp. She set it in a place of honor and worked an hour tuning its strings until the pitch pleased her. The Archon sent furniture, a bed, chairs, an Arabian ottoman worked in leather. There were silk hangings and Meletus wool for her women to spin. Carian honey was brought by black slaves, sponges from Rhodes for her bath, saffron too, sweet oils, scent of musk, Corinthian pottery, figs, raisins, an assortment of berries. Large and small, all were tributes to her singing at Kerkolas's party.

Her favorite gift was the little Maltese dog she had played with on the sand shore. Yet in a way it disturbed her. Eyes were always on her; she was forever observed and her actions reported, her preference in scent, her pleasure in the puppy.

She knew it was meant kindly, and the presents were princely. I am fortunate beyond women, she told herself. But she was conscious of a curious resentment. She felt keenly the loss of privacy. Another irritant was the isolation from her sex.

In Syracuse the ladies did not dine with the men. They were kept secluded, as in Asia and Athens. Sappho was in an odd position. Though a lady born, and of a family and breeding equal to any, she was as segregated from wives and daughters as the naked oboe player. Had she lowered herself by entertaining? Was she considered no better than a courtesan, a wandering bard? Did they not know whose daughter she was, Skamandronymos's, of the house of Orestes? She was being put on a par with successful gladiators—idolized, lionized, but not invited into homes unless the women were first shut in their quarters, well away from where the men caroused and played backgammon or Cottalos. In this game the contestants threw the dregs of their wine at a target, pronouncing the name of the one they wanted to sleep with that night. “I throw for…” was the cry. And the one who made the bull's-eye got his wish, either youth or courtesan according to his pleasure.

Another favorite pastime was to heat a small area of the floor by brazier and push naked slaves onto the spot, fastening them with ankle chains. At first they hopped and jumped about, then they brought each other down, the stronger lying on the body of the weaker. Strenuous copulations took place as the one whose buttocks burned strove to fling off the form pinning her. Sappho recalled the tears of merriment in the eyes of the spectators.

When she complained to her friend Kerkolas that she was invited to such spectacles, he replied solemnly, “I suppose, Sappho, that you are considered too brilliant, too famous, too unique, to be respectable.”

“But I am respectable. There is no blot against my name, and my lineage is as old as any. I find the constant company of men coarse and their amusements revolting. I long for the gentler companionship of my own sex. What must I do to be accepted by them, Kerkolas? I ask you to advise me.”

He gave the matter thought. “Well then,” he said slowly, “do not go about unaccompanied. Make sure always to have your eunuch with you, and a slave or two. And accept no invitation at which Cottalos is played. I will inquire and tell you which functions you may attend. Even so, you will be the only woman. That in itself is cause for talk.”

“Kerkolas, the first time that I ever saw Cottalos played was in your home.”

“I was at fault,” he acknowledged.

She shook her head. “It doesn't matter. There is no way that I see. I am marooned from my own sex and may not even talk with them, or watch them twine flowers in their hair or hear their pretty laughter. I feel at times no better than one of your apes on display.”

Kerkolas pondered what she said, but did not answer her. Several days later he addressed the issue, adopting an offhand manner. “There is a way,” he said casually, “by which you can gain acceptability among female society, and that, of course, is to get married.”

“Married! You would have me bind myself to free myself?”

Kerkolas's languor deserted him; he seized both her hands and spoke quickly, as though afraid she would not hear him out. “I have loved you, Sappho, since the day that Sea and Sky contended and you stood in the waist of my ship, your hair streaked and plastered against your face, sea and rain hurled against you. And a look about you I can neither describe nor forget. It wasn't defiance of the elements, but more a joining with them. Your eyes mirrored their fierceness, your lips spread to them as to a lover.

“I have not mentioned marriage for fear it would cost me your friendship. But as my wife, you could have the life you want. You would no longer be an outsider.”

His voice dropped softly, persuasively. “And I would cherish you as though a goddess had agreed to mate with me.” He did not relinquish her hand but drew her close to him.

She listened to all he said, rehearsing her reply in her mind before she spoke. “I do not know how to answer you, for I have not had your thoughts, Kerkolas. But I will think on what you have said and consult my Muses. Until you have my answer, you have my thanks for the honor you have done me.”

“How well you speak,” he said somewhat ruefully, “like a young sage. It is for me to thank you. And I do, Sappho, that you consider being my wife.” He left quickly and gracefully.

He was a man of breeding and culture. Yet her heart felt nothing and her mind was not troubled over him as it had been over Leto. She liked looking at him. He had the body of an athlete and the easy assurance of position and wealth. He was, she knew, much handsomer than she. His eyes were a dark blue and well spaced. But it was not of his eyes she thought. Rather she continued to brood, feeling keenly her removal from other women; she missed the dulcimer sound of their softer voices, the gaiety and the lighthearted confidences that passed between them.

She revolved Kerkolas's proposal from every angle. It seemed odd to her that freedom should go hand in hand with slavery. Yet, unless one bound oneself to a man, one was regarded with suspicion. With no protector, one's name could be bandied about with impunity. To be a wife among other young wives seemed good to her. She decided to regularize her position. It would be a challenge to discover if a man could rouse her. Until now she had channeled her needs and longings into art. But she knew herself to be unfulfilled and restless.

As Kerkolas's wife, all doors would open, and her own she intended to fling wide. She would make their home a gathering place for poets and philosophers. Artists of all description would be welcomed as guest-friends. On thinking it through, it seemed to her the best life she could attain, with maximum freedom, was as a married woman.

When she saw Kerkolas next, it completely slipped her mind that she had neglected to inform him of her decision. He spoke to her of the arts of navigation and astronomy, then, without sequence, lectured on Samian marble carving. “It is the finest ever seen, the statues are turned on lathes like column bases … Sappho!” He fell on his knees before her and buried his face in the folds of her robe.

She looked at him, stunned, then she recalled. “Oh, the marriage. Do get up, Kerkolas, how can you prepare for it in this ridiculous position?”

He bounded up, his arms enfolding her.

“Gently,” Sappho said, pushing him away. She smelled him under the scent; it was the smell she had recoiled uneasily from when the tattered Lesbian troops came off the first boats to take possession of their homes, their goods, their cattle, and their wives—it was the strong smell of the male.

She thought she should explain herself to him. “I will not be called ‘wife of Kerkolas' as the custom is here. I must preserve myself. You understand that I am Sappho of Lesbos. You do understand this, Kerkolas?”

“You are unique and precious. If I had a diamond, would I call it ‘stone of Kerkolas'? I would say diamond.”

But she was not satisfied; his strong embrace had unsettled her. “I am twenty-one years old. And I have prized my virginity, although it is perhaps a peculiar virginity.”

“Peculiar?” He stepped back from her.

“No man has violated it,” she assured him. “Yet from the time I was a child, slaves massaged the mound of Aphrodite if I cried or was out of sorts. There is no part of me that has not been stroked with sweet oil.”

“Is this your confession?” He laughed. “Do you think it is different in Andros? We Aeolians are half Asiatic.”

“How can you say that?”

“We share with the Asian their sensuality. It could not be otherwise. We know their headlands and shores as well as the fingers of our hands. Standing on any Lesbian hill, one can see the Lydian coast.”

“It is so.” A sudden wave of nostalgia made her feel very close to this man from her part of the world.

*   *   *

The almighty gods look down and for entertainment watch the human spectacle below. It was not an Olympic or a Pythian year, but it was the year Sappho, she of Lesbos, took a husband, Kerkolas the Andrian, whose single vessel brought him 1,640 talents annually, and he owned a fleet of twenty.

The citizens of Syracuse made the wedding an excuse to outdo their neighbors, the Sybarites. That famed Achaean colony on the Gulf of Tarentum had never been festooned with such exotic flowers as now Syracuse was. Bowers stretched across the arcades, doors, and archways in honor of the wedding.

Sappho was concerned to send a missive to her mother. She busied herself with a wax tablet which she impressed onto papyri transparent as silk, and this she sent to Mitylene by one of Kerkolas's sleek ships. It pleased her to think how happy the news would make her mother. To marry into a princely house was her mother's dearest wish for her, and one poor Kleis had often despaired of.

When the appointed day arrived, Sappho was as ice. She sat statue-still while Niobe twisted her hair into long ringlets using heated irons. Even as Athene is armed for battle, so Niobe arms me, she thought, looking at herself in her glass. Immediately she wondered why such a simile occurred to her. Can it be that I still desire my maidenhood? But she could not remain virgin forever. The vow made in high Pyrrha was unrealistic. At twenty-one she was as close to the age of many widows as to most brides.

It was her wedding day, and her thoughts returned to her mother. If only Kleis could be here for the ceremony, could see her house ablaze with flowers of every hue. Sappho herself had attended to their arrangement.

… the hyacinth's brightness blinding to the eyes

She loved to handle flowers, bury her face in their sweetness, touch the fragile petals, place them where each showed to advantage, so that your heart caught in your throat at their perfection.

Kerkolas's much larger and grander house, she was confident, would not match these garlands of hers. One has to know and love flowers before they respond to you. She tried to keep her thoughts on the preparations, on the beautiful epithalamion she had composed, the lovely aubade to be sung by the chorus of girls.

She would not let herself think of what must follow. She called for the wine pourers a final time, instructing them again how much water should be in the mixing bowls. The wedding guests would remain sober, at least at her house. And at Kerkolas's villa there was to be no vulgar nonsense of waving her bloodied undergarment at intoxicated revelers. Kerkolas had agreed that crushed berries should be placed in the bridal chamber. He could dip into that as much as he pleased.

She captured her thoughts once more, pulling them into the present, but they would not stay there. She felt much as she had when Leto married. Except now,
she,
Sappho, was to be the sacrificial lamb.

It was a ridiculous comparison, and she knew it. Why did her thoughts keep sliding beyond her control? The way of her people was to seek the mean, the middle path, especially where the emotions were concerned. This ideal was needed by a passionate race, who, like Thales, wanted to think all the thoughts in the world—and, like herself, invent new ways of saying them. She prayed to the gods to steady her:

O Hecate, gold-glittering

handmaiden of Aphrodite

But she could not keep on with it. Her thoughts tended to scatter like startled birds, taking a dozen directions. Yes, the epithalamion was a pearl. It was worth getting married to have written it. She began to hum it under her breath, then remembered that was bad luck and stopped in dismay. She recalled an early poem that was so much part of her:

I long and I yearn

Was it for this day she yearned? Her heart fluttered with some secret knowledge it did not impart to her. Had Leto felt like this before the wedding feast? Had they all? All the small white faces to whom she had sung? Were they frightened and alone, separated from their childhood companions at the spinning wheel and washing springs, from their friends of the lute and the dance, from their garland-weaving playmates?

She reminded herself that she was making a new life with Kerkolas, her friend. It had all been thought out with utmost care. Her reasons for this marriage were sound. She was no flighty girl, but a woman who, facing the inequities that bound her sex, traded freedom for freedom.