Voices from the Past Part 19

My girls realize I am lost-wandering. I can't look into their eyes for long.

When I see Kleis cross the room a trickle of ice slips down my back.

What if he finds me too old, what if my love doesn't please him...if he mocks me, or stands in awe, or wants to amuse himself?

Phaon...

I see you against every wall, against the sky, in the dark, in the sun under the trees. My flesh aches, my arms melt. Never has pa.s.sion fermented so strongly in me.

Yet no messenger comes.

I can't bear the nights, to lie alone, to feel my breath on my pillow, feel the cool sheet.

In the morning, I ask Exekias questions, just to hear her voice, not listening, for how can she know whether he has forgotten me or is afraid or sick?

He is busy with his boat and port affairs. He has gone to visit his sister, with no thought of returning soon. He has sailed. He talks with his men-coa.r.s.e talks. He eats, drinks, works, sleeps, snores.

No-he is fixing our boat for our trip.

No, he has many sweethearts, dark, tall, frivolous, l.u.s.ty, daring-all young.

Why do I punish myself?

I hurt with weariness and desire. I will simply face the bedroom wall and shut out the light. No, I will concentrate on my work. What shall I write about?

Where is the sea that we sailed?

Was it a long trip?

Was our sail grey or brown?

Was the water rough?

The answers mean so little. Born of the sea, where is love more beautiful than on the sea? Like water, light, warm, swaying, the indispensable ingredient, the transformations, the necessities, the luxury, with the whites of the waves whiter than salt, with gulls flas.h.i.+ng in the sun, with the bow of the boat swing- ing.

We swam, dove, played, laughed. There was bread soaked in honey and nuts dipped in wine and fruit, whose peelings we tossed to the birds. There was the creaking of the sail for our silences, the long brown tiller arm reaching to the sun, his hands on my shoulders.

He padded the bottom of the boat and we lay there, the wind heeling us briefly, the water sucking and his mouth sucking mine and the hunger of his body-the hunger I knew no sea could satisfy. Cradled, we talked softly:

"Was your trip good?"

"We had good weather for several days, then storms... It's like that, you know, most every trip. I try to keep far away from the coast, to avoid s.h.i.+fting winds. I keep farther away than most sailors. It shortens the trip..."

"You're not afraid?"

"No."

"When will you be leaving?"

"I have no cargo."

"Stay...Phaon..."

We had supper and I hated the food that kept us from our love-making.

A sponge lay on the floor and he dipped water over me as the sun washed over us, sinking rapidly. Why couldn't it stay for us? I saw him as Cretan, as Babylonian, as Persian, inventing his lineage. His atavistic hands moved certainly, oarsman's hands, netman's hands, the sea's...mine.

Nothing's more rhythmic than love with waves for bed, rocking, sucking, soothing. I lay there in his arms, thinking of the plants below, the gla.s.sy window of the water, the fish, coral, ruined cities...the lovers of other days, the mother of us all, love, pulsing in the rigging, in the pull of his legs, the hasp of his fingers.

The rollers were kind to us, never too violent yet tingling the blood. The backs of waves looked at us. The spray spilled salt on our skin, gulls screaming.

We made love again, better than before, this time under the moon, our bod- ies wet from swimming, the summer night blowing over us, bringing us closer to sh.o.r.e where the surf boomed. Moonlight ignited inside the water and phospho- rescence added to the brilliance. Flying fish sprang free. His body was so dark, mine so white...la, the rough of him!

Were any other lovers as happy that day?

As we stretched side by side, he said, with sleepy tongue:

"I remember an evening like this, a night of phosph.o.r.escence. I was lying on the deck, almost asleep. A flash tore the sky, silver light...it came streaking nearer and nearer. I woke some of my sailors. My helmsman shouted. We pointed and argued. The light hit the water and sent up boiling steam. We smelled something.

Stripping, I swam where the light had hit the water. We were becalmed and I thought I had seen something white but found only dead fish, their bellies s.h.i.+n- ing. The largest one filled my arms and I swam back to the boat and hauled it aboard. It had a brand across one side. We argued, and threw it back."

"What was it that fell?" I asked.

"Some said it was a star," he said.

"I was born in Pyrgos," Phaon tells me, his head on my lap. "I was born in a terrible thunderstorm, in my father's hut. He was a very clever fisherman but there were times when we got very hungry and on one of those times we waded out to sea, he and I, to throw a net...we were hungry. I wasn't helping much but I was there, small, perhaps learning something. Ah, that little island was barren and poor. And there I was in the water, the sun coming out of the sea, blinding me. And then my father screamed and I saw him fall. I tried to reach him. I splashed. I ran. I fell. I shouted. We were alone, we two. My father was thras.h.i.+ng about. It seems he had fallen into a pool, a rock pool, you know what they are.

Maybe he forgot it was there, or didn't know. I can't say. But he had been hit by a shark and was bleeding. So I helped him, as best I could, both of us splas.h.i.+ng, falling, the surf rising around us, big. He fell on the beach and I ran for help but before I could find help and come to him he had bled to death, on the sand, his hands on his wound, the wound from the shark."

We went up the mountain, to the outcrop and the temple, spent all day alone, the sheep tinkling their bells, the heat steady. He knew of a spring unknown to me and a hollow olive where bees had a hive. Only deep in the olive grove was it cooler and we buried ourselves under the trees.

The watery brown of his body was mine. I found his voice deeper than I had thought. I found his mouth. Discoveries went on, nothing repet.i.tive, the wind, no, the olive shade, or the moss and mushrooms. Crus.h.i.+ng a mushroom he rubbed it against his thighs. The smell of mushroom in the cool, dark place! His smell and mine; the smell of earth: life was a vortex of fragrances, peace on the fringes, then a shepherd's bell!

"I've wanted to be a shepherd," I said.

"It would be too lonely for me," he said. "It's lonely enough at sea. I look for a sign of land, a strip of floating bark, land bird or turtle. I look...there at the bow I'm always looking...now it will be you, ahead, in the sea. At sea I have my crew...no, I couldn't be a shepherd. But you?"

"For me, I'd have more time to think, to write, to gather the world of still- ness. I could weave it into a pattern we'd recognize as important: succor, inspi- ration, hope. There is a cliff...you know it... the Leucadian cliff... I'd go there with my flock and dream as they fed about me, the sea below us, the murmur of antiquity around us.

It wasn't easy to visit Alcaeus and hear him talk, as he reclined at supper, his hands close to a lighted lamp, restless fingers, perturbed in a blunted way: the tensility of the battlefield gone from them: moving, they move in on themselves.

"Sometimes, I want to see a face...your face, Sappho. I want to see many faces, the faces of my men. I'd like to see a helmet and plume, the scarlet horse- hair plume...color...what a great thing...

"My house has no window or door. Who wants a house that way?