The Life of Polycrates and Other Stories for Antiquated Children (8 page)

At that time, Polycrates was in need of money. To keep a navy and large body of mercenaries, to keep so many artists and poets about his court, was no small expense—not to mention his own personal needs; and he was still ambitious for conquests.

“
I would take him up on his offer, if I knew it was genuine, if I knew he had the gold.”

“
Let me then go to Oroetes,” said Maeandrius, “and inspect the situation.”

So the secretary went to Sardis and when he returned informed Polycrates that the satrap had shown him six chests full of bright lion-headed staters and two full of ingots of pale gold. “Oroetes is sincere in his offer,” he said.

“
And I am sincere in my desire to relieve him of his treasure,” Polycrates said.

Tellias the Elean soothsayer sacrificed victims, but the livers of each were covered with hair. When he tried his hand at ovomancy, the egg white was in the shape of a hammer. He undertook divination by figs, by driftwood and by the coagulation of cheese, but each time with equally unpromising results. Yet, for all this, Polycrates in no way changed his plans and had his red-cheeked pentecoster readied for the voyage.

The day of his departure was absolutely cloudless; and the sea was so calm that it seemed almost asleep. Eriphyle ran to the harbour in distress.

“
Oroetes is a liar,” she said to her father.

“
And Maeandrius, son of Maeandrius?”

“
A fool.”

“
And me?”

“
My father.”

“
Go home, or I will have you married to dwarf Heracles!”

“
At least he will not go bald as many other men do,” Eriphyle jested and then smiled sadly.

Polycrates kissed her on the forehead and boarded the ship. His party consisted of a bodyguard of fifty picked men, Democedes the physician and Tellias the soothsayer who, as the boat glided over the sea, claimed that he saw in the formations of certain schools of fish inauspicious signs—but Polycrates, distracted by thoughts of fresh treasure, impelled by the will of the gods, still did not regard his words. The ship docked in Phocaea, and the party then made its way overland toward Sardis. On the way, however, they were ambushed by Oroetes and that man’s one-thousand Persian bodyguards. Polycrates was bound, spit upon and taken to Colophon where he was tied to the tail-end of a cart and whipped all the way to Priene. Then he was dragged up to the summit of Mt. Mycale, to an open and conspicuous spot; raised up on a cross of pine, crucified with his front facing Samos, which he could actually see. Though exhausted and suffering great pain, he conducted himself with fortitude, even when the stakes were driven through his hands and feet, and joked in a feeble voice that he thought it a shame that he would now no longer be able to play the magdis to his Lacedaemonian hound; with rain he was washed by Zeus and, when the dew of agony came upon his skin, anointed by the fingers of the sun.

Eriphyle came to plead for her father. She offered ransom, not of mere money, but of whole islands and districts rich and fertile, but cruel Oroetes, drunk with fleeting power and advised to ruthless acts by Maeandrius, would not listen. In front of her he had Polycrates’ intestines torn out and burned before the man’s eyes; and she screamed in horror while her father was dumbfounded by agony, his soul, that self-moving number, seeping into the underworld. Oroetes had the young woman seized, personally robbed her of her virginity, then prostituted her in the public roads; and later, when she had been steeped in humiliation, he had her tortured, slivers of glass thrust under the nails of her fingers, and then put to death in a horrible way. The thighbones of both father and daughter he had made into handles for his cutlery, but the rest were pounded in a mortar together with their dried flesh, and this was distributed to the Samian mills where it was mixed in with the flour, so the population was made to eat it in their loaves of wheat.

After the death of Polycrates, Maeandrius became tyrant. At first he advertised himself as a liberator of the people and claimed to support an isonomous form of government. He had jars of wine opened in the streets and festoons of flowers placed over the gateways of the city; then built an altar to Zeus, Defender of Freedom, of whom he claimed himself to be the ambassador-priest; and at the Heraion he offered up all the sumptuous furniture of Polycrates’ palace. However, he soon revealed his true character, refused to renounce the power he had gained and began to oppress the islanders, proscribing those citizens who had previously been most prominent at court, putting them to death in ignominious ways, quartering Telesarchus, impaling Polydor. He railed against Polycrates, soiled his memory with foul words, but neither he nor his words pleased the Samians who remembered their former ruler with fondness, because he had enriched them, and brought great things and glory to the island.

And so it was that when the Persians, with an army led by Otanes, arrived and attacked Samos, hardly a single one of the citizens, dispirited as they were and hating Maeandrius, would take up arms in its defence. . . . . . . And the Persians committed many outrages, looted and then fired the Heraion, slaughtered great numbers . . . . . . defeated Maeandrius, who escaped with much treasure [
to wander Greece with his impoverished name
], replaced him on the throne with Syloson; and while that brother of the dead Polycrates feasted himself on endored heads of kids and salted hearts of ibex, while he communicated obscenities in languid tones to Pison, the temples fell into disrepair; the island became depopulated through his mismanagement; so the saying: “By the resolve of Syloson there is plenty of room.”

Collapsing Claude

I.

The sun had already gone down; the lake was a dark, glassy sheet; the branches of the tree by which he stood dripped down into the water and a few pieces of driftwood and trash floated near the bank. Claude was still; he inhaled the breath of the flowers in the gardens behind him; watched the lights appear on the opposite shore; and things sank into night. He lit a cigarette and walked along the path, with the lake to his right. Twelve years of his life of twenty-nine he had spent endeavouring to put himself in certain situations; behind closed doors; in scented or filthy chambers; to experience the snorting adventures of a hog. He worked in a bank, and though not rich, certainly made a decent living.

He walked slowly, erect, stiffly. A nebulous patch, an obvious quantity of female, rose up from a park bench to one side. He stopped. The creature moved on in front of him. Claude proceeded, automatically to tail, now truly savouring that flavour of smoke in which he bathed his tongue. The serpent looked back (only the slightest exposure of facial flesh); then turned, some scarf over head; throat and mouth sheltered, shadow of trees and black blankness of night.

“
Are you following me?”

“
Yes.”

A pause.

“
Who are you?”

“
A man named Claude.”

Another pause.

“
OK then. . . . A woman named Mirta.”

“
Do we need to know anything else?”

“
Negative.”

II.

And black turns piquant, red, that to the yolk-coloured light of a little bedside lamp. He made an involuntary movement back, in surprise; shuddered; his feet touched the floor.

Her breasts were distorted and flagging mounds of flesh; her skin-tone an overfed pink, like that of a sow. A hunched up beast reminiscent of an overgrown worm. With eyes that flashed hunger she scanned him, parted lips and laughed, revealing a wide pit of a mouth, spitting out coarse and guttural accents of amusement. And then she stopped; showed a tongue, like a piece of raw liver; rubbed one cheek against one of her shoulders.

“
Do you like what you see?” she asked.

“
You are disgusting,” Claude replied; securing the buckle of his belt.

III.

He had spent a good portion of the afternoon at the Caffé Federale on the Piazza Riforma; a tall beer was in front of him, a cigarette sat perched in the ashtray, a slender wisp of smoke curling from it. Many beautiful women walked by, lithe and fashionable blondes from Germany, dark, full-breasted beauties from Italy, petite and full-lipped lispers of France, and other packages of flesh mortal.

But while his eyes saw, it was not of the beauties he thought. His mind was continually pulled back to the night previous, to the repulsive creature he had encountered, who had dealt with him with such unparalleled skill.

Her little apartment, he could find his way there.

IV.

She fried sausages and served them with a cheap Barbera. He watched her as she ate, stuffed the great gash in her face, guzzled glasses of the purple liquid, a few drops running from her lips like drops of blood. And then she would grab his head between her hands, a foul gust of air issuing from her mouth as she pressed it to his, sinking a thick and hot muscle down his own eager throat.

He was intoxicated by this horrible being; thrilled when she snatched and dragged him down to the unswept terra cotta floor, undulated her coils and let him roll on her belly, sink in the suet of her body; when he felt her dull teeth sink into the sinews of his neck.

She would murmur unheard of obscenities; and her avid words exhilarated Claude like a most pleasant electrical shock; his jaw would tremble, a thick and solitary tear, like hot wax, slip from one eye. Every evening spent with her aged him a year; small folds and lines appeared in the skin around his two eyes, which themselves had taken on the dull lustre of that black mineral called coal, decomposed bodies of prehistoric beasts and plants. His pectorals, which had been firm as iron, began to sag and take on the appearance of unattractive female breasts, and when he shaved, he now always seemed to miss a spot here or there so he was never without a little stray bit of beard sprouting from some angle of his chin.

“
Move in with me; I will treat you well, buy you nice silk nighties!”

“
You already supply me with enough see-through things.”

V.

The offer of his own perverse heart on a salver constructed from his own suffused pelvic bones mere refreshment for her so fierce even often cruel with the flat of hand juggling of sharp and blunt words and curses and then letting him kiss her dewlaps as a thick semi-fluid substance oozed from her mouth. Distracted, restless during each day, he only wishing to spill himself into the night glory of letting her gnaw the lips from his face.

“
No, don’t come tonight. I have to go to Torino.”

“
Torino?”

What did she have to do in Torino?

He spent a nearly sleepless night perspiring solitary beneath his sheets. The next day, Sunday, he smoked countless cigarettes, toured the bars, sampled all the second-rate wines the city had to offer, seeing in the depth of each glass the burning
labbra
of Mirta; and he craved to feel the air of her flaring nostrils, hot as a desert wind, against his stomach and thighs.

Darkness; and standing beneath her window; but if she were there, in bed, there would probably be no light anyhow. He listened attentively, thinking he might hear some voice, or groan, from the story above him, through the glass or thick walls. There was a car engine in the distance; it faded; then silence. So he walked away, wandered along streets, the Corso Elvezia, the Via Serafino Balestra, then found himself circling, back around to the Via Luigi Lavizzari, spying on her dwelling. He stood in an alcove, for several hours, and then finally, around four in the morning, made his way home, exhausted, thoroughly depressed.

The next day at work his face was pale and his eyes looked like raw sores. For lunch he had four rolls of shredded tobacco enclosed in thin paper and ignited and then, after work, drank several purple glasses followed by a grappino. He knew very well that Mirta was far from being honourable; she would not hesitate to lie, to him or anyone else; in his guts he felt that she had never gone out of town, but simply wanted to get rid of him; to have her pleasures in some other way. He slunk out onto the street; it was summer and still light; warm, and he wished for the sky to be black.

VI.

He stood again beneath her window and listened attentively to the ringing in his own ears; then crossed the street and took up his position in the alcove. He chewed on his bottom lip and then his tongue. The distant church bells sounded the hours, first three, then four, then five, then six.

“
What’s the use,” he told himself morosely.

A hulkingly masculine figure came out the door and proceeded to walk down the street; the gait of an ape, a large and tailless monkey, with tight jeans and absurdly broad shoulders. Claude followed him. The man turned the corner and so did Claude. Then they were eye to eye. The man was there opening the door of a car.

“
What do you want?”

“
I’m Claude.”

“
So what? Do you think you deserve some kind of prize for it? Do I owe you money?”

“
Mirta. . . . She’s my girl.”

The man laughed. “Get away from me or I’ll break your nose,” he said.