Voices from the Past Part 26

How I long for home and my servants, fish as Exekias can prepare it, onions in Chian wine, olives from Patmos. It helps to list the good things. Surely they are not lost.

How wretched to cheat myself to keep alive, to cheat the face, the mooning eyes, the stupid mouth, the odor of flagrancy, the disbelief...chattel, cringe, lie still, perform.

Copying those lines I remembered things I have never recorded, our filthy clothes, windowless room, flies, thirst, sickness...Alcaeus in jail... I was fined...authorities jeered at us...no sympathy, no luck until Aesop, his fox, raven and rooster.

I never thought him brilliant but he was always entertaining, agreeable about the smallest problem.

Nuances come to me, as he told of a turtle that ferried a small turtle and then, at the end of the pleasant ride, said:

"Little turtle, you must pay."

"How can I pay?" asked the little turtle.

"By doing me a favor."

"Well, what can I do?"

"Hump along the beach and s.n.a.t.c.h me a fly."

"I'll do my best," said the little turtle.

After humping and snapping till almost noon, the little turtle brought a fly to the big turtle. Finding the big fellow asleep, the little one had to cuff him.

"Here," said the turtle, between closed lips.

"Ah," exclaimed the big turtle, swallowing the fly, tasting it with care. "Umm, that's the first fly I ever ate! You see a little fellow like you can do things a big fellow can't."

During the night an earthquake woke me and I wandered through the bedrooms, to see about my girls. Atthis needed covering and as I arranged her covers she murmured, "Mama, mama." Before I could slip away, she grasped my hand.

"Are you homesick, darling?"

When I kissed her, I found her face wet with tears.

"Why don't you go home for a few weeks?" I whispered.

"You were calling your mama in your sleep. If you're homesick, you must go home. Let's talk about it tomorrow.

Do you want me to sleep with you?"

So we cuddled together and almost at once she relaxed and, after a few endearments, slept with her head on my shoulder, her violet fragrance around me. I held her fingers a long time. Drowsily, I asked: where do we go...why can't we remain young...happy? The last thing I recalled was the sweetness of her perfume.

The earthquake had been forgotten.

Alcaeus sat on his leather stool, his dog at his feet, sunlight behind him; elbows on his knees, he said:

"...I prefer that hymn. There's really no finer. In spite of time it's full of force, spring's arrival, the brevity of summer, the dying year. It has the shepherd's power, the forest's-pa.s.sion tamed and sanctified. Another one I like is...

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall...

Libus, sitting near Alcaeus, quoted his favorite, huddling in his robe, his face averted:

Alone, in sea-circled Delos, while round on beach and cove,

before the piping sea wind the dark blue storm waves drove...

"Why do you break off?" I asked.

He did not answer but said:

"They knew, those ancients, how to supplicate the lowliest...they preferred the virginal...snowy peaks...whispering groves...the hunting cry..."

Warming my feet on a warming stone, I said I preferred the golden hymn and repeated fragments...

Long are their ways of living, honey in their bread,

and in their dances their footsteps twirl, twirling light...

Fragment of talk:

"We can't marry, unless we have a child...you'll be twenty-three soon...it must be like that...my house is a house of women..."

I thought of those words as I pa.s.sed Phaon's house, beyond the wharf, isolated. As I pa.s.sed, waves climbed its base, licking at boulders. Its walls are thicker than most, cracked and mottled. I used to be afraid of that house as a girl and as I pa.s.sed these thoughts brought back some of that apprehension. I glanced at the seaward balcony, tottering on wasted beams, painted years ago.

Seagulls squatted on the flat roof, as they have day in and day out. There are five rooms underneath those tiles and his mother and uncle lived and died there, a harsh struggle in rooms of simple furnishings, coils of rope, nets, bra.s.s fittings and bronze anchors.

Phaon lives there with two men, their servants and a hanger-on. Kleis visits occasionally. A parrot, some say nearly two hundred years old, gabbles sayings and fills the sea-sopped silences.

Yes, his house troubles me-its darkness, its evocation of poverty and my own exile.

While I was ill, Libus cared for me, the mastery of his hands relieving pain. By my bed, talking soothing talk, he brought gradual relief, just as two years ago. His hands are more than hands, it seems. Magical ma.s.seur, he explores yet never gropes: his fingers, padded at the tips, press, release, wait. Our friendship, with all its confidences, in spite of differences, weathers the years and is stronger at such a time, under his mastery. As he obliterates pain, he blinks absently or smiles his pale smile, withdrawn yet a.s.suring. He learned his art from a young Alexandrian, a man he met while studying in Athens, who spoke many desert languages.

"I'd like to see him again. I've learned something through my own experiments; we would share. Of course, he's a great man."

And when I asked Libus about my illness, he said: