Buch lesen: «Jocasta: Wife and Mother»

1

The flowers on the hillside were dying in the August heat. They crunched under Jocasta’s naked tread, spines of Skylokremida, crisp remains of Agriolitsa. Lizards scuttled away from her feet. It was said in the city that where the queen trod, clumps of yellow amaranth sprang up.

Jocasta wore a soft skin skirt and a sleeveless leather blouse which hung loose in part and in part adhered to the moist flesh of her upper body. Her thick black hair, flecked with white, hung down her back in a knotted rope. Her body was developing a certain heaviness: yet she strode so easily up the hill that her guard panted to keep up. She was the Queen of Thebes, lovely of lip, beauteous of bosom.

She had caught a hare among the rocks in the valley. Its body was slung across the small hummocks of her spine, with a sharp twig piercing the tendons of its legs. The jog of her movements caused blood to run like tears from the dead creature’s nose; the tears dripped down Jocasta’s back, staining the tendons of her legs as she walked.

The stone walls of Thebes were lit by the lowering sun. She went in through the south-east gate, under the eye of a lounging sentry who brought his staff to the vertical in salute, himself with it. The palace was a low building, distinguished from its neighbours by its spaciousness and the four-pillared portico adorning its facade. Jocasta avoided the front entrance, trotting round to the rear over weedy wasteland.

She passed her grandmother’s altar stone, on which something still smouldered among ashes. Most likely it was the remains of a snake, old Semele’s favoured offering to her dark gods. On the ground in front of the stone, human ordure had been part-covered by sprinkled soil. Jocasta clapped her forehead in instinctive obeisance as she passed by.

As if from a magician’s cupboard, Jocasta’s old handmaid, Hezikiee, came trundling forth, arms raised in hopes to embrace her mistress.

‘O Queen Jocasta, my pet! And you’ve been out hunting again. How I feared you were killed.’

‘Nonsense, Hezikiee, I merely chased a hare.’

‘Oh, but the wild beasts—’

‘Round Thebes? Nonsense. Let me pass.’

‘Please tell me you’re not killed. It bleeds, your poor leg! You will soon be dead.’

‘Stop it, will you, my Hezikiee? It’s the blood of the hare I killed, and nothing more.’ She pushed past the trembling, devoted old creature, who still mumbled to herself in an apotropaic fashion.

As the queen entered the kitchen, she heard the voice of her husband Oedipus roaring in the front chamber. He was holding an audience with a delegation of local people.

‘You farmers, you’re so fond of complaining instead of tending your land! Small wonder it fails. What can you want of me now? Can you not leave me in peace?’

And an old man’s voice answered with a whine in his throat. ‘Great Oedipus, the plague is here. You see it is not only the old who come before you, but the young chicks among us too. For the curse upon Thebes afflicts young and old alike. Everywhere there is affliction.’

‘Affliction is the common lot of man,’ said Oedipus, more calmly.

His wife, standing with the hare in one hand and a knife in the other, said, aloud but softly, ‘And of women, too!’

Passing the dead animal and the knife to one of her slaves, she went to lave her hands in a bowl of scented water which Hezikiee held, murmuring her happiness to have her mistress safe. Jocasta took little notice; her mind was clouded by other matters. As she washed her arms and hands and bathed her face, grateful for the liquid coolness of the water, animal cries of dispute came to her from outside.

‘Oh, dearie me, it’s that awful thing again,’ said Hezikiee. ‘And in an egg-laying mood, without anything to provoke birth with the usual you-know-what business first.’

Promptly, but without haste, Jocasta left the palace and went to cross the square towards the building where her grandmother lived. It was not the Sphinx causing the commotion, as the old slave woman had supposed.

Semele was outside her dwelling with a broom, trying to beat off three large flying creatures of grotesque appearance which were hovering above her porch. Rising just out of reach of the bristles, the creatures were singing raspingly to the beat of their leathery wings:

This is the house with no luck at all.

A shadow lies over it, over it.

This is the house that’s bound to fall.

Innocence lost –

Terrible cost –

You’ll not recover it!

‘I’ll give you recover!’ shrieked Semele. ‘You’ll not recover when I swat you lot, you flying bitches!’

Jocasta ran forward, crying to Semele to stop. She seized the old woman’s skinny arm, and bid her be silent. These flying creatures were the Furies, the Kindly Ones, who must be appeased.

‘Fetch milk and wine for them. Bow to them. Make every attempt to flatter them – if it’s not too late.’

‘Not me, Jocasta girl. I’ll have nothing to do with them.’ With that she flung down the broom and ran into the darkness of her house.

Jocasta raised her pale arms above her, calling to the snarling creatures which fluttered close to her head. ‘We’re sorry, we intended you no harm. My grandmother is old and mad. I am your friend. Welcome, thrice welcome! Why are you visiting us?’

The dreadful creatures wore distorted imitations of female faces, emaciated baby bodies and disproportionately large dugs, with tiny bulging bellies and whiplike tails. They flew on wings resembling those of large bats, while the flanges of their over-developed ears, trained to pick up any whisper of human hubris, met in the middle of their foreheads, pipistrelle fashion. Taking up Jocasta’s words, they chanted:

Too late! Too late!

Too late by far!

We’ve come today

Only to say

You and your mate

Must face your fate!

Har har har!

Spitting and shrieking with horrid laughter, they rose higher, their bat wings drumming against the air.

It’s as I thought, you vile pests, said Jocasta to herself but, as had become her custom, what she said aloud was in different vein.

‘Oh, how melodious are your voices! But please don’t say that, dear ladies! Come and stay with us and you shall have wine, and milk served with honey. Tell us what we have done. And what the remedy is …’

But the evil creatures rose above the tiles of the roof, striking into the pure air, and were away, their unwholesome figures dwindling with distance.

‘Oh, Zeus!’ exclaimed Jocasta, clutching her head. ‘As if I do not know what this ghastly visit forebodes!’

‘You don’t believe that old nonsense, do you?’ said Semele, poking her head out through her door. Her laughter was almost as shrill as that of the so-called Kindly Ones. ‘Those ancient harridans need a covering by bulls, that’s what!’

The skirmish roused a beast within the hut. From the grandmother’s suite burst forth the Sphinx, terrifying in height, miscellaneous in form, grand in colour. Flapping her wings as soon as she gained the open, rising no more than a metre above the thyme with which the square was bedded, she squawked in indignation as she went. A griffin came chasing after her. The griffin saw Jocasta, turned tail, and darted back into Semele’s quarters.

As he did so, Semele’s venerable prune of a face reappeared, screaming, ‘I won’t have that Sphinx-thing in here. It keeps going invisible – just to annoy me! Lock the damned thing up, will you?’

Jocasta stood back as the monster approached, still squawking. She loomed above the queen, who saw that her hindquarters were still not entirely visible. The Sphinx was a considerable riddle of a beast, her lion’s body, eagle’s wings and serpent’s tail, emblems of the three seasons, not consorting well together. Clumsy she certainly was, yet impressive. Her woman’s face with its cat’s whiskers was distorted by irritation.

Landing in a flutter of feathers, the creature demanded of Jocasta, in her fluting voice, ‘Is Oedipus surrounded by those moaning mouths again?’

‘Is this another of your riddles?’ Jocasta asked. She placed a hand over the generous contour of her left breast, to calm a heart still beating from the encounter with the Furies. ‘Must you always be in such a flutter, dear Sphinx?’

‘Why should I not flutter? I should live among the stars … Am I not a captive?’

We are all captives of something, said Jocasta to herself. Aloud she replied, ‘You are free to come and go within the palace grounds. They are more comfortable than the stars. Try to be happy with that.’

The great creature loomed over her before sitting and scratching herself with a back leg, in a show of nonchalance.

‘You are never at ease with me,’ she said. ‘What is the reason? Let us be frank with one another – I have never been Oedipus’ mother.’

Jocasta tried to laugh. ‘Then why act like it?’

‘I shall be a mother.’ The creature gave a great squawk before rushing on with her discourse.

‘Your grandmother tells me that we have to process to the coast. Will Oedipus lead me on that golden chain I hate so much? Will I have to walk? Could I not fly? How wretched is my state. Doesn’t Oedipus know I am expecting to lay an egg at any time, and cannot travel? Has he no compassion?’ Her voice was high with maternal indignation. She shook her scanty mane. As the feathers floated to the ground, they became invisible.

‘Of course he has compassion. Didn’t he save you from death, dear Sphinx? He has much on his mind, with Thebes suffering from famine.’

The creature stretched herself out on the ground with her hindquarters towards Jocasta. She spoke without looking at her. ‘Why must the tyrant travel at all?’

‘We leave for Paralia Avidos in the morning. It’s ritual. We shall worship at the shrine of Apollo, in order to lift the weight of misery from the shoulders of Thebes. If you’re going to cause trouble, Sphinx, I’ll have to lock you up in your cage.’

At this threat, the Sphinx turned her head to gaze piteously at Jocasta.

Jocasta looked straight into the creature’s great hazel eyes, wherein lived something both animal and human. It prompted her to pat the feathery flank and say, ‘I love you, dear Sphinx, but you’re such a trouble.’

‘By the great broken blue eggshells of Cithaeron Hollow, what have I done to offend you, O Jocasta?’ The voice rose shriller still, sinking to a faint warble to ask, ‘What about ancient Semele’s griffins? They possess neither sense nor sensibility. How about locking up those wretched little animals?’

So saying, the creature bounded over Jocasta’s head and squeezed herself into the entrance of the palace in quest of Oedipus. Jocasta stood watching a stray feather float to earth and disappear. She inhaled the fragrance of the herbs underfoot. Then with a shrug of her shoulders she went to look in on her old grandmother.

‘Shit!’ exclaimed Semele, pulling irritably at a braid of her tangled grey hair. ‘That wretched Sphinx! So cunning. Its shit’s invisible. Only turns visible after a while, when the damned thing’s gone.’ The old woman was either addressing her great-grandson, Polynices, or talking to herself. Certainly the half-naked boy gave no response.

‘Why it can’t drop a decent visible turd like everyone else I don’t know. Even the steam off it is invisible, and that’s odd … I’m sure there was nothing like this when I was young. People seem to be eating more these days, so I suppose they’re shitting more. Adonis had an idea that you could shove the shit back up your arsehole and then you wouldn’t need to eat.’

‘Don’t talk in that manner, Grandmother,’ said Jocasta. ‘It’s so crude. These are days of greater civility than used to be.’

‘Did Adonis manage it?’ asked young Polynices, without curiosity. He lay sprawling on a rug, regarding the ceiling where a bluebottle buzzed furiously in the entanglements of a spider’s web. A small spider rushed in for the kill.

‘Not really,’ said the old harridan. ‘It was just another theory that didn’t work.’ She shot a glance under wrinkled brows at her granddaughter. ‘What does my little mischief want?’

Jocasta stood in the doorway, where some fresh air could still be detected.

‘There’s such a stink in here,’ she said, fanning a well-manicured hand in front of her face. ‘Can’t you clear this pile of excrement away, Grandmother? Must we have such filth within these four walls? We don’t put up with such things, as you used to do in your day.’

‘When it hardens I’ll pick it up and throw it away,’ the old woman said soothingly. ‘And my days were better days, more carefree. Why, I never wore a dress until I was sixteen.’

The old lady lived in the half-dark, complaining of her eyesight. Her two griffins lay at the back of the chamber, growling quietly at the entry of an intruder. They were house-trained animals. They had never thought up a riddle in their lives.

The buzzing on the ceiling ceased.

‘Poly, can’t you do something about it?’ asked Jocasta. ‘You know this dirt just attracts flies.’ But then she added, ‘Oh, as if I care. Live the way you must!’

Polynices waved a hand without stirring from the horizontal position.

‘He likes flies,’ said Semele, faking a yawn. ‘What do you want, dear? It’s time for my snooze.’

Jocasta stood, stately, looking down haughtily at her grandmother who sat in a tangle of bony legs and arms amid cushions on the floor.

‘Oedipus and I are faring to the coast tomorrow. We shall take the children, of course. But you can stay here and look after the slaves and animals, if you like.’

‘So you don’t want me with you?’ Semele said, with a look of cunning as she narrowed her little eyes. Regarding her, Jocasta thought that as she saw something human in the Sphinx, so she detected something animal in her grandmother. This disconcerting reflection she hurriedly put away.

‘I’ll lock the Sphinx in her cage,’ she promised, ‘so she won’t bother you.’

‘I shall be lonely. No one cares how lonely I am. Antigone must stay here with me.’

‘Our journey is ritual. Antigone must come with us.’

‘Ritual, my arse! The girl’s about to have an affair of some sort with Sersex.’

‘What, that slave? That stable hand? More reason why she must come with us.’ Jocasta knew Sersex, a handsome and willowy young man, only recently employed at the palace.

‘It’s time Antigone matured,’ said the old woman. ‘Let her be. Don’t interfere. You’re always interfering. She is twelve years old. She’s got hair round it.’

‘She must come with us, Grandmother. It’s ritual. You’ll stay here. You can have an affair with Sersex.’

Semele gave a high-pitched shriek of laughter. ‘Sersex? You’re mad!’

‘I was only joking.’ Jocasta sighed. ‘Why do you never understand jokes?’

‘Don’t sulk! It’s a bad habit. We’ve all noticed how you are becoming rather sulky.’

They heard the voice of Oedipus, calling his daughter Antigone. No longer was his voice grating, as it had been when he addressed his subjects. It took on a gentle note of coaxing, more dovelike. Semele raised an eyebrow in scorn.

‘Always Antigone. Never Ismene. You had better watch your husband, my girl.’

Oedipus had put on a white robe for his hour of audience with his subjects. He wore the crown of the King of Thebes, though it was no more than a modest ring of gold, pressed down into his mop of dark hair. With the audience concluded, he tossed the crown aside. It was caught by his attendant slave who rarely missed a catch, knowing the punishment that missing entailed.

Entering the courtyard, Oedipus sank down on a couch which had been positioned in the shade. Kicking off his sandals, he put his feet up, calling again for his favourite daughter. ‘Antigone!’

Antigone came running, barefoot. She sat by her father’s legs and stroked them, looking up with a sunny smile into his face.

‘Wine is coming, Father.’

He nodded. ‘Our poor Thebans, always complaining, always starving … They have no understanding of hardship.’

Antigone’s hair was of a dark gold, close to sable. It fell straight, without a curl. She had tied it with a golden ribbon so that it hung neatly down over her right breast. Her dress was of muslin, through which the dark aureoles of her breasts could be glimpsed. Her eyes were blue, and though her nose straight and long gave her a stern look, the soft bow of her lips denied it.

‘With what were the tiresome creatures plaguing you today, Papa? Not the water shortage again!’

Oedipus did not answer immediately, or directly. He rested a hand lightly on his daughter’s head as he spoke, and stroked her hair.

‘I know that it seems as if a curse is upon Thebes, just as the superstitious old ones declare. I don’t need telling. I cannot change what is the will of the gods. If it is decreed, it is decreed.’

‘A decree, Father – is there no way round it?’

When he did not answer, his daughter spoke again.

‘And is it decreed that you should suffer their complaints, Father? Does not a king have absolute rights over his subjects?’

With a hint of impatience, he said, ‘My subjects fear that plague will descend on Thebes. Tomorrow we must journey to the coast, to Paralia Avidos, and there offer up sacrifices, that matters will become well again and the crops revive.’

A female slave came forward with a jug of wine, followed by the Sphinx, who loomed over the slave like a grotesque shadow. She arrived with a catlike and slinky walk, wings folded, befitting her approach to her captor.

‘What is one, master, yet is lost if it becomes not two?’ she asked.

‘Please, dear Sphinx, no riddles now. I am fatigued,’ said Oedipus, waving a hand dismissively.

The Sphinx sat down and licked a rear paw.

Antigone picked up one of her father’s sandals and flung it at the bird-lion. The Sphinx squawked terribly, turned and galloped off.

‘Father, I cannot abide that absurd thing with its absurd riddles!’ Antigone declared, taking the jug from the slave to pour her father a generous libation into a bronze cup. The slave bowed and backed away, her face without expression. ‘Can’t we let it loose?’

‘Let your indignation rest, my precious,’ said Oedipus soothingly. ‘It was decreed that I, having answered the riddle of the Sphinx, should become King of Thebes. So I acquired the animal, and must keep her by me if I am to remain king. She is wonderful. I cannot help loving her. If the Sphinx goes, then my days of power are numbered. It is decreed.’

‘Another decree!’ exclaimed Antigone.

Oedipus drank of the cool wine without commenting. Over the rim of the cup, he viewed his favourite daughter with affection and amusement. Meanwhile, the Sphinx came creeping back to Oedipus’ presence, belly to the ground, feline.

‘Mother doesn’t like the Sphinx,’ Antigone pouted. ‘She says she does but I know she doesn’t. Why can we not live out our own lives, without the constant interference of the gods? That’s another thing I don’t like.’

He patted her behind. ‘What we like or don’t like is a mere puff of breeze in the mighty gale of the will of the gods. Be content with things as they are, lest they become worse.’

His daughter made no response. She could not bring herself to confess to her father that unease and fear invaded her heart.

‘If only the silly creature would not make her messes in corners,’ she said. She put her tongue out at the Sphinx. The animal got up and walked slowly away again, hanging her head.

Jocasta, meanwhile, had retreated to her private shrine in her private bedchamber. Dismissing Hezikiee, she crouched down before it. The corner was decorated with fresh rosemary.

For a while she said nothing. At length, however, her thoughts burst into speech.

‘Great goddess, we know there are things that are eternal. Yet we are surrounded by trivial things, domestic things with which we must deal …

‘Yet in between these two contrasting matters is another thing … Oh, my heart is heavy! I mean the thing that can’t be spoken. I can’t speak it. Yet it’s real enough – an unyielding lump which blocks my throat.

‘I must remain silent. When he first appeared to me as a young man, I rejoiced. I loved him purely. A burden was lifted from my conscience. Now there is an even heavier burden. I cannot say it, even to you, great goddess …’

From the troubled ocean of her thoughts rose the idea of a golden child, the extension of the mother’s flesh that would be and become what the mother had failed to become – a fulfilled and perfect person. That link between the two, that identification, could scarcely be broken. In her intense if temporary sorrow, she recognised that she had not attempted to permit the child its freedom.

‘I know I have been a lustful woman. I know it, I admit it … How I have adored the ultimate embraces – particularly when forbidden! There are two kinds of love. Why doesn’t the world acknowledge as much? There’s the time-honoured love, honourable, to which all pay tribute. And there is the love time-detested, which all despise, or affect to. In me, those two loves combined, I cannot tell how …

‘This is the dreadful secret of my life … I am a good woman, or so I seem to be, and so I pretend to be. Yet if the world knew, it would condemn me as evil.

‘This pretence … It steals my sense of reality. Who am I? What am I?’

She struggled mutely with the confusion between her inner and outward realities.

‘And yet and yet … Oh, the misery of it! For if I had my chances over again, I would surely behave as before. Great goddess, since what is done cannot be undone, grant me the strength to contain my secret, to withhold it from the world. Come to my aid … Come to my aid, if not here in Thebes where I am in sin, then in Paralia Avidos, by the limitless seas. For I am sick at heart …’

She thought the goddess answered, ‘You are sick at heart because you know you do wrong, yet make no effort to mend your ways …’

She continued to crouch before her altar, where she had set a small light, repeating to herself ‘For I am sick at heart’, until she felt comforted by it.

She rose, smiling, and went to her husband.