Crazy girl, do not boast about a ring!
—SAPPHO OR ALCAEUS
I WAS ON MY way back to Eresus in the frigid wind to see about my students and my poacher in the henhouse. What to do with Phaon? Kick him out summarily? Pretend I didn’t know and let him stew for a while? My revenge would be all the sweeter for my delaying it. The boy had gone too far. Seducing Artemisia was one thing. (She had probably seduced him!) Anyway, that could be handled discreetly—though Rhodopis had by now trumpeted it all over Lesbos. But seducing green girls who could get pregnant? What a reckless cock of the walk Phaon was! I had been right to be suspicious of him. He was a trickster and a lowlife. He had never really fooled me—except in bed. No wonder the wisest philosophers considered love a sort of derangement. When the loins grew hot, the brain grew fuzzy, and when the delta yearned, the intellect took a leave.
Phaon had, of course, told me the whole incredible and absurd story of having met Aphrodite and having had her gift of irresistibility bestowed upon him.
“Sappho,” he had said, “I met someone who appeared to be a wizened old crone and I ferried her to the mainland and refused to charge her. After we stopped on the coast of Lydia—she was bound for Ephesus, I think—she gave me a magic alabastron full of magic salve. Ever since then, women young and old have looked with favor upon me. But I never wanted any of them till you.”
“A likely story,” I had said.
“It’s true,” he had protested. “She was Aphrodite in an old woman’s disguise. I know it. Her eyes were young and beautiful—like yours.”
I faced him down. “A boy like you! Why, you’ve been taking women and boys since you were twelve. And getting paid for it too, I’ll wager.”
“Not true! You hurt my heart by saying that. I always saved myself for you. I knew someday I’d meet the love of my life.”
I should have known then what a liar he was! I was the idiot for taking him into my bed. And yet. And yet. He was a sweet distraction after my mother died. And he was a good ferryman. Where was he now when I needed him? Or had I sent him back to Eresus to further raid the henhouse? Idiot! We both were idiots! Aphrodite had maddened us—both of us. Love is a sort of madness, as all singers know. It is a bitter madness that inspires sweet song!
Back to Eresus. There was work to do.
The wind was fierce. The boat I had hired had a far less skillful helmsman than Phaon. I half expected to be blown away. That would be too easy. Odd how much more precious life grows when you are old. In youth we’d throw it all away for a pretty boy or ripe girl. In old age, we long to live if only to see how it all turns out.
Circles are completed. The innocent are rewarded and the guilty are punished. Sometimes the innocent are punished and the guilty rewarded. It’s all up to the gods. But you want to be there to see it all. And laugh!
No, having survived so many shipwrecks in my youth, I did not want to die now in the waters of my native isle. I would confront this wind—and Phaon! I would confront Rhodopis and Artemisia and all of them. I knew who mattered to me. My daughter. My grandson. Alcaeus. Praxinoa. Aesop. My students. Aphrodite. All the rest could fall into the sea, as far as I was concerned. Phaon could jump off a cliff! Let him kill himself when I unmasked him. Yes—that would be a just revenge. But maybe there was one more service he could do me before he died. I would pray to Aphrodite and offer up a fine white heifer when I returned to my grandparents’ house in Eresus.
And that is what I did. Before I even bade hello to my students or unmasked the tricky Phaon, I went to the apple grove outside. In the little temple to Aphrodite I myself had built, I sacrificed a fine white heifer—the very best and fattest on my property.
My farm slaves helped me with the sacrifice. I sprinkled barley over the heifer’s lovely head while she lowed mournfully and bowed her head as if she knew her fate. Then my farmhand, Cleon, swiftly slit her throat so the bright blood pulsed below the altar. We caught it in a golden bowl. Cleon and another farm slave, Castor, butchered the beautiful heifer, then built a blazing fire on the altar. We reserved the fat thighbones for Aphrodite. We burned them heavenward with this prayer:
Hither to me from Crete
To this holy shrine,
In this encircling grove of apple trees,
Bare now, but soon to bloom again
Despite this whipping wind,
Come, Cypris, daughter of Zeus,
Born of the waves,
Of the soft sea foam
Gods secrete in their sacred loins.
Descend from heaven,
Beloved Aphrodite
To help me and all those I love!
APHRODITE: She calls!
ZEUS: Let her call again!
APHRODITE: She needs me!
ZEUS: Silly girl! Are you really my daughter, or are you the daughter of Uranus? You are Jar too attentive to the mortals! Gods should be above all that. Let the mortals stumble on their stupid way while we delight ourselves above! They are the creatures of an hour, a day, a week! Their lives hardly matter! We are the ones who matter!
APHRODITE: Sappho’s life matters! She is not just another mortal. Her body may be dust. But her voice is divine. Someday she will be called the “tenth muse” by a great philosopher, not yet born, named Plato.
ZEUS: Plato, schmato! These mortals are no more than dust!
APHRODITE: I tell you, it is her voice that is divine!
ZEUS: Because it is your voice, my girl, but it issues through her mouth! And you love the sound of your own voice!
The sweet smells of the sacrifice brought two of the students to the altar.
Atthis and Dica arrived, knelt down, and blessed Aphrodite as I had taught them to.
“Sappho! Thank the gods you are back!” said Dica.
“Shhhhhh!” said Atthis. “Sappho is sacrificing!”
I repeated my prayer. Now the two girls joined in.
Come, Cypris, born of the soft sea foam! sang Dica.
Come, Cypris! sang Atthis. Daughter of Zeus!
I repeated my prayer as the aroma of meat curled skyward with the soul of my beautiful heifer.
The pungent aroma filled the sky and drifted into the apple grove, where I now saw Phaon working, collecting fallen applewood branches for our fires.
Now Phaon joined us, carrying an apple log, which he added to the fire. The fire sputtered and hissed from the dew on the log. In a few minutes, the lovely smell of applewood was released into the brisk air.
I glared at Phaon. Dica stared at him with big eyes as if she had never seen a man before! Then it was true that he had bedded her and stolen her virginity! But Atthis was wholly indifferent to him. She was concentrating. on the sacrifice. He had not yet poached on her. Was it only a matter of time?
I saw that Dica wore a new gold ring on her finger. It had a central stone that was blue as the skies.
We continued to sacrifice to Aphrodite. Now Phaon sang a song of Mimnermus, which I’m sure he wanted Dica to think was his own composition:
What life, what pleasure is there
Without golden Aphrodite?
When I no longer care for her gifts
Let me die!
Clandestine love,
Persuasive presents,
A scented bed
Are the blooms of youth!
When a man grows old,
These gifts are fled!
He takes no pleasure
From the radiance of the sun!
“But you will never grow old, Phaon. Aphrodite has seen to that!” I said coldly.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You know perfectly well,” I said. “Phaon—you and I must talk.”
“With joy, my lady!”
“Don’t my lady me! Come to me later in my library, after the midday meal.”
“With greatest pleasure, my lady Sappho.”
He betook himself in all his beauty back to the apple grove to continue gathering wood.
Dica and Atthis stayed with me on bended knee. I caught Dica gazing after Phaon dreamily. Then she looked down and twisted the new gold ring on her finger.
We finished the sacrifice, bade Cleon and Castor tend the fire and roast the meat for our meal later that day. I put my arm around Dica and walked with her into the house. Atthis returned to her chamber in the gynaikeion.
In my library, beside another applewood fire, I questioned the shy Dica.
“My girl, what is that ring?”
“Sappho—I am so glad you asked! Phaon loves me! We are to be married!”
I looked at silly Dica with love and pity. “And how do you know this?”
“He told me! He plighted his troth to me. He says he loves me above all mortal women. He says that only Aphrodite is more beautiful.”
I looked at Dica, with her lovely curly reddish hair, bound in a gold-embroidered ribbon from Sardis. I saw her round, swelling breasts, the blush that rose on her cheeks when she spoke of love. The tenderness with which she pronounced the name Phaon. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Poor darling! Poor sweet girl! I saw myself when I first fell for Alcaeus. I saw the whole tribe of maidens back to Hera. Back to Helen. Back to Leto, mother of Apollo. I saw Europa mastered by the bull and Leda seduced by the swan. I wanted to hold her and kiss her and at the same time slap her!
“Dica, Dica, Dica,” I said.
“What is the matter, Sappho?”
“What is the matter? What is the matter? The matter is Aphrodite. The matter is love and madness. The matter is Eros with his poisoned arrows. The matter is youth. The matter is fire in the blood.”
“I don’t understand, my teacher, my mother, my beloved singer.”
“Of course you don’t. It will take another twenty years before you even begin to.”
“Sappho, I am scared. Doesn’t he love me? He gave me this ring. It is pure gold.”
“And did you ask him where he got the ring?”
“Why should I ask? That would be ungrateful.”
“Give me the ring,” I said.
“I swore never to take it off,” said Dica. “It is bad luck ever to remove it, Phaon says.”
“Don’t worry. The spell cannot so easily be broken.”
Reluctantly, she gave the ring to me. I looked inside it. Engraved in tiny letters was this sentence: “Panaenus made me for the great Artemisia who plights her troth to beautiful Phaon beloved of Aphrodite.”
“Dica, did you read what it says inside?”
“That would be bad luck!”
“That would be smart! Let me read it to you.” And I slowly read the awful inscription aloud. Dica looked confused. Then she looked stunned. Then she began to cry. She blubbered, “But it can’t be true! He now loves me!”
“Then why did he give you the ring Artemisia gave him without even bothering to have her inscription scratched out? Surely that would have been an easy enough thing to do.”
“Then he doesn’t love me?”
“I’m afraid he loves no one but himself.”
“Sappho—I may be pregnant. What shall I do?”
I took the girl in my arms while she sobbed and rocked her as if she were a small child.
“We will worry about the baby soon enough. First you must weep out all the tears you have inside you.”
“That will take years! I will never stop weeping!”
“You think that now, but the truth is you will stop weeping. I promise you, you will even laugh about this one day. Love is not a fatal disease but a powerful lesson. It will never stop teaching you about yourself.”
“I will never stop weeping.”
“You most certainly will—and sooner than you know. You will stop weeping and start laughing. Love is tragic at first, but in time it becomes comic. All you have to do is wait.”
“My father will kill me if I come home pregnant!”
“Then you will not come home pregnant!”
“What will I do? I cannot kill his baby, I love him!”
“It’s yours to do with as you will. It hardly belongs to Phaon. If you have it, you will never regret it. If you lose it, it’s the will of the gods. All in good time, all in good time we will understand what the future has in store.”
“How can you be so calm?”
“Because I am old. I have lived through many shipwrecks. I know what I know. You will too, someday. Let me tell you a story. When I was just the age that you are now, I also fell in love with a beautiful young man.”
“Who was it?”
“He was a great poet and a great warrior—Alcaeus of Lesbos.”
“The one who wrote the legendary songs?”
“The very same.”
“What happened?”
“I fell in love—precipitously, disastrously, completely.”
“And then what happened?” Dica had stopped crying. Now she was curious about my story.
“Ah, Dica—I will tell you the whole story if you will dry those pretty eyes. I will tell all—but not just now.”
“When, Sappho, when?”
“I will tell you all after I have attended to some other business. Go and be calm. Trust in the power of Aphrodite. I will come to you soon and tell all.”
Dica ran off to the women’s quarters with dry eyes.
After our midday meal of heifer, rice, olives, all washed down with wine from our family vineyards, I met with Phaon as I had promised. He came into my library, looking as beautiful as ever.
“You called, my lady Sappho?”
“I think you know why,” I said.
Phaon opened his big eyes at me as if he knew nothing. Innocence. His look was pure innocence.
“What life, what pleasure is there without golden Aphrodite?” I said, quoting him, quoting Mimnermus.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the boy lied. “I worship you, my lady, above all other women.”
“Come, Phaon, truth is the only love we owe each other. We have shared the pleasure of the bed—one of Aphrodite’s greatest gifts. Let us not insult each other with lies after such intimacy.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Phaon, fluttering his long black lashes.
I gave the boy a swift slap on the cheek. “Do you remember now?” I asked.
There was a red mark where I had struck him. Now he began to cry great round tears, which only made his eyes look more beautiful. He sobbed more than Dica. Oh, it was an awful sight, to see this grown man cry!
“It’s not your fault, Phaon. Aphrodite decreed all this. She is the queen of madness and lust, of aching loins and throbbing deltas. She makes the phallus stand and the mind relax into submission. I cannot blame you entirely. But I can exact payment. I can demand justice.”
“What sort of justice, my lady?”
“You will never see Dica again, or me, or Artemisia. You will leave this place, but you will be bound by my wishes until I release you.”
Phaon looked frightened. Was I about to enslave him? In my own way, yes.
“You will go to Mytilene and seduce my daughter Cleis. You will stay with her until she bears a beautiful daughter. Then you will bring her and the baby and my grandson to me and disappear forever!”
“Never to see you again? I cannot bear it!”
“You’ll manage—with Aphrodite’s help!”
“What shall I do with all the papyri I have transcribed?”
“Leave them with me! They are the least you owe me.”
“But I love you. I love you with all my heart.”
“Then show your love with your obedience to me.”
Phaon knew now he had no choice. He took his boat, and before sundown was bound for Mytilene in the frigid wind.