Voices from the Past Part 36

I hear the surf...

Below us, the ocean eats at its rocks, above us lie the hills, around us stir the branches of the olives.

Peace: sacred grove, we dedicate these two: give them luck: a light will fall: the chorus will resume: a wreath will be hung.

Shall I play my harp?

Who is the G.o.d of illusion? Love? How is he to be kept alive through many years and many disappointments?

I shall try to help. Song has that gift, a gift nothing else has: to give the lost or hold it in suspension.

I feel utterly ridiculous, the greatest hypocrite: that is how it seems as I urge Alcaeus to curb his resentment for Pittakos.

I have tried reason but it isn't reason that moves Alcaeus. When he feels my sympathy, he listens: if he conceives of us as he used to be, his hatred subsides.

Let him feel alone, he thunders, bends toward me, drags his fingers through his beard and sputters:

"To hear you talk, I'd think you were never mistreated by this man!"

"But you know better."

"You're a traitor to yourself!"

"That's not true. You want to have him killed and I say we lose through vio- lence. I'm no traitor to myself-or you. You can be traitor to justice."

"Let's not say anything about justice, when we're fighting tyranny."

I recalled days with Aesop and said:

"I wish he was here, to advise us or hear our problems.

I think I know what he'd say."

"What?"

"There's a way out of slavery... I didn't kill my master."

Slavery-there are all kinds.

It is a kind of slavery to long for Phaon and another kind to remember Aesop and another to hope. Perhaps Aesop would rebuke such thinking and say: Slavery is not in ourselves but in the misused power of others. Surely that is the commoner kind but I find slavery in myself and my girls and my island and my books.

Well, here is a story Phaon told me:

"Years ago, a slave broke into a temple on a deserted island and found lamps burning. On a rug lay a naked man, asleep. He'd been lying there for centuries, guarded by someone, the lamps filled and the wicks new.

"The King of Freedom, were the words on a s.h.i.+eld beside him. His yellow hair streamed across the rug. Above him, a mask, fastened on the wall, spoke:

" 'Shut the temple...let the lamps burn...make no noise...take a hair from his head...go.'

"The slave shut the temple, carefully.

"Years later, in prison, he bent over to examine the golden hair he had kept and it burst into flame and became a torch which he used to light his way to freedom."

His flames and heat are fuel

For seaman's muscles, his sea eyes,

Devil of laughter and devil moods,

His sinking-rising delicacy.

The initial union is relief

Of olives and cypress, b.r.e.a.s.t.s, birds,

Stinging and perspiration's siege,

Roots climbing out of centuries.

Beauty, the wedding is over and I am alone with my lighted lamps and moonlight across the sea, night's indifference.

Beauty, Kleis was happy...many of us were happy.

After the ceremony, Pittakos approached me, shuffling, dressed as I had never seen him dressed, in fine white clothes. His hate was gone, that was something I saw at once: I was seeing another man. Speaking guardedly, hands folding and unfolding his robe, he said:

"...They would have stoned me. What can I say...to make amends? You stopped them from killing me... You...you helped me..."

I grew confused. Remembering Alcaeus' threat, my hatred surged and I thought: Can he expect me to rub out the past because of an accident on my part? Can he ask such a thing?

Do you think that I have changed-that I went out of my way to save you?

My own harshness pained me. I had seen him at a distance, during the ceremony, and had resented his presence; as I played my harp and sang he remained near, boggling his head.

Our sacred grove, filled with people, trees streaked with fog, was still in my mind. I could see Kleis smiling and hear the wedding chorus, the flutists, the barking dogs, the cries of gulls.

Glancing overhead, I noticed them, pa.s.sing, gliding, saying with their grace things I tried to say in my writing.

Pittakos turned away.

I could not say a word but stepped forward.