The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March Read online

  But her arms fell to her side. The world seemed empty. The sun went down. The sea and sky became suddenly remote and she was left with only the tears in her eyes and the longing in her heart. She closed her lips and turned her head aside. ‘I suppose there is no god,’ she whispered. ‘We must do these things ourselves. We must drag ourselves through life as best we can.’

  Chrysis had made the mistake of accustoming the members of her household to her invariable presence and now while she slept they became increasingly indignant at the length of her absence. In twos and threes they hovered about the door peering to the right and to the left with mingled scorn and alarm.

  ‘When she comes in, see that no one says a word to her,’ directed Apraxine, a tall lame woman whom Chrysis had found beaten and left for dead at the edge of the desert below the terraces of Alexandria.

  ‘Pretend you don’t see her.’

  ‘. . . to go sallying off a whole day without a word to a soul.’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t wish to stay in a house where I count for nothing.’

  ‘. . . less than nothing, it seems.’

  Presently however something happened that distracted their minds from their resentment. A new sheep arrived at the fold.

  Simo’s frank had carried to Andros the money that Chrysis intended for the support of the stricken sea-captain. But Philocles’s guardians had long since tired of their charge and become discontented with the intermittent payments. They decided to take advantage of this sum of money to ship him off to Brynos. It was necessary for this purpose to wait for a lucid interval in the patient’s condition. Such a moment finally arrived; they hurriedly made up his bundle, brushed his hair, and led him down to the waterfront, where they found the captain of a boat sailing between the Cyclades who was willing to undertake the commission. And thus it was that on the afternoon of Chrysis’s retreat to solitude Philocles arrived on Brynos. A boy who attended at one of the wine-shops in the town was directed to escort him to her house, and suddenly the childlike sea-captain was thrust into the courtyard among the conspiring pensioners.

  Ten years before Philocles had been the greatest navigator on the Mediterranean, first in skill and experience and first in fame. He had been many times to Sicily and to Carthage; he had passed through the Gates of Hercules and visited the Tyrian mines in Britain. He had sailed westward for months across the great shelf of water, seeking new islands, and had been forced to turn back by the visible anger of the gods. In the present age men were captains or merchants or farmers, but in the great age men had been first Athenians or Greeks, and the islanders regarded Philocles as of that order, a belated giant. He was already in middle life when Chrysis first knew him – she had been a passenger on one of his trips to Egypt – and it astonished her to find someone laconic in a chattering world and with quiet hands in a gesturing civilisation. He was blackened and cured by all weathers. He stood in the squares of the various ports of call, his feet apart as though they were forever planted on a shifting deck. He seemed to be too large for daily life; his very eyes were strange – unaccustomed to the shorter range, too used to seizing the appearances of a constellation between a cloud and a cloud, and the outlines of a headland in rain. Wind, salt and starvation had moulded his head, and his mind had been rendered, not buoyant, but rich and concentrated by the enforced asceticisms of a prolonged duty and of long sea voyages. He had been one of the persons whom Chrysis had most loved in all her life and it was she who had discovered his secret, the secret that it was neither adventure nor gain that drove him along his adventurous life. He was passing the time and filling the hours in anticipation of release from a life that had lost its savour with the death of his daughter. These two saw in one another’s eyes the thing they had in common, the fact that they had both died to themselves. They lived at one remove from that self that supports the generality of men, the self that is a bundle of self-assertions, of greeds, of vanities and of easily offended pride. Three years before, Philocles had been forced to captain some ships of a city at war. He had been captured and mutilated and what was left of so kingly a person was a timorous child.

  The sheep examined the newcomer who had been thrust so abruptly into their midst. They questioned him and amused themselves with his answers. Then they gave him a bench in the sunlight where he might whisper to his heart’s content.

  The sun set and soon after Chrysis came stumbling through the door, laughing apologetically and pushing back her hair. ‘Forgive me, O my dear friends, forgive me. I fell asleep on the sand and I’m very sorry I’m so late.’ (The men and women raised their eyebrows cynically and went on with their work.) ‘Apraxine, has anything happened?’ (Apraxine cleared her throat with Alexandrian hauteur and became absorbed in looking for a thread on the ground.) ‘Now we must find something particularly rare for supper.’

  The sheep exchanged pitying glances over all this tawdry artifice and when Chrysis passed into the house they burst into laughter. The laughter was condescending, but the soul had returned to the community. Finally at a signal from Apraxine, Glycerium went to the door and announced to Chrysis that Philocles had arrived from Andros. He had seen her pass and some twinge of memory had set him trembling. He rose and walked unsteadily to the middle of the court. She saw him standing before her, haggard, with hollow puzzled eyes and with untrimmed beard.

  She went forward repeating, ‘My dear friend, my friend!’ but as she embraced him a loud voice within her seemed to say: ‘Something is going to happen. The threads of my life are drawing together.’

  That night Chrysis was awakened from a light and feverish sleep by the instinctive knowledge that someone was near her. She raised herself on one elbow and peered toward the faint glimmer of the door.

  ‘Who is it? Who is there?’ she said.

  A figure seemed suddenly to rise from the threshold. ‘It’s I, Chrysis. It’s Glycerium.’

  ‘Is something the matter? Is someone ill?’

  ‘No . . . it’s only . . .’

  ‘Light a lamp, my child. What do you want?’

  ‘Chrysis, are you angry with me for waking you up? I couldn’t sleep, Chrysis, and I had to come into your room.’

  ‘But why are you crying, my dear, my dove? Come now and sit on the edge of the bed. Of course I’m not angry with you.’ Glycerium sank upon the floor beside her. ‘No, no, – the floor is cold. Come sit up here. Your hair is wet! Tell me now, what is making you unhappy?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What? Then you have something to tell me?’

  ‘No . . . I don’t know what . . . I just want you to talk to me.’

  ‘Well, I have something to tell you.’ Chrysis was stroking Glycerium’s hair, delicately following with her fingertips the strands as they passed above and behind the ear, when suddenly Glycerium threw her arms about her sister’s neck and sobbed uncontrollably. Chrysis continued gravely with her caress, thinking that she was merely dealing with one of the meaningless accesses of despair that descend upon adolescence when the slow ache of existence is first apprehended by the growing mind. ‘There!’ she murmured in a rhythmic undertone, ‘Sh . . . sh . . . sh . . . sh. . . . We love you. We all love you in this house. Our beautiful Glycerium, our gentle, our very beautiful Glycerium . . . sh . . . sh . . . there! Are you comfortable now? I have some good news for you. (No, no, there is plenty of room.) This is it: Beginning tomorrow you are going to lead an altogether different life. I am going to let you wander all over the island alone. And when Mysis and I go to market you can go with us. You may climb the hills if you like, and you may explore along the water’s edge, – I shall even show you the secret of the secrets of my heart, – a beautiful hidden shelter by the sea where one can be perfectly alone. . . . Well? are you pleased? Doesn’t this news make you happy?’

  ‘Yes, Chrysis.’

  ‘Now! I thought it would make you very happy and all you say is: Yes, Chrysis!’

  ‘Chrysis, tell me: what will become of me?’

&n
bsp; Chrysis changed her position and in the dark shut her eyes a moment. ‘Oh, my dear, my dear . . . that’s what everyone asks, everyone on earth. Well, first you tell me: what do you want to become?’

  ‘I want to marry someone and . . . and be in his home. Chrysis, tell me: can I marry someone? Without a father and a mother and without anything, is it possible that I can marry someone?’

  ‘My dear, there is always . . .’

  ‘Chrysis, I’m grown-up now. I’m fifteen. Please tell me the truth. I must know. Don’t say something merely to quiet me. I must know the truth. Can a man ever ask me to marry him? Why are you waiting so long to answer me?’

  ‘I have been planning to have a long talk with you about all these things. But not now. Wait a short time; wait until you have had a week, two weeks, of this new life when you will be free to wander all over the island. Then you will be able to understand better what I have to say.’

  Glycerium paused a moment. ‘I know, I know,’ she said, her face against Chrysis’s shoulder. ‘That means that no one will ever be able to marry me.’

  ‘No, no, I don’t say that. . . .’

  Glycerium rose and stood in the middle of the room. ‘I understand,’ she said in the darkness.

  Chrysis raised herself again on one elbow and said slowly: ‘We are not Greek citizens. We are not people with homes. We are considered strange, only a little above the slaves. All those others live in homes and everyone knows their fathers and their mothers; they marry one another. They think we would never fit into their life. Although all that is true, –’

  ‘But there are stories,’ said Glycerium, ‘of men who even married girls that had been slaves.’

  ‘Yes, if a young man should fall in love with you, it is possible that he would take you into his home. That is why I have tried to take such care of you and why I have kept you hidden here in the house. Through the young men who come to the banquets, the island knows that you are here and that you have been carefully protected. And now that you are to walk about the island freely you must be a hundred times more careful than other girls. You are beautiful and you are good, and before all their unfriendly eyes you must show them your modesty and your goodness. That is all there is to say and to hope, my child.’

  ‘Perhaps, Chrysis . . . it is best that I do not go about the island freely, after all.’

  ‘No, no. You will feel like going out. It will come gradually. But now you must go to bed and to sleep, my darling. All these things will solve themselves as best they can. All you can do for the present is to be yourself, your very self, my Glycerium.’

  Glycerium moved unsteadily towards the bed: ‘Chrysis, I must tell you something.’

  ‘Yes? . . .’

  ‘You will be angry with me, Chrysis.’

  ‘Why . . .’

  ‘May the gods protect me, I . . . I have been talking with Mysis and now I know that I am going to be the mother of a child.’

  There was silence for a moment followed by the sound of Chrysis putting her feet upon the floor. ‘Where is Mysis? Let me get up.’

  ‘It is true, Chrysis. I broke my promise the times when you were away. I used to go out over the hills.’

  ‘Oh, my child, my child!’

  ‘But he loves me. He will marry me. He loves me, I know.’

  ‘Who is it? What is his name?’

  ‘It is Pamphilus, son of Simo.’

  Chrysis grew rigid in the darkness. Then she slowly put her feet back into the bed. Glycerium continued wildly: ‘He loves me. He will take care of me. He has told me so a hundred times. Chrysis, what shall I do? What shall I do? I am afraid.’

  A low moan at the door revealed the fact that Mysis had accompanied her younger mistress to this interview and was kneeling outside the door without the courage to enter.

  After a moment Chrysis said in a light impersonal voice: ‘Well, you . . . go off to bed now and go to sleep. Yes. We’ll both be catching cold here. It’s late. I think it must be almost morning.’

  ‘I cannot sleep.’

  ‘Everything will be all right, Glycerium. I can’t talk any more now. I’m not well. We’ll talk about it in the morning.’

  Glycerium left the room, trembling.

  In her darker hours Chrysis carried on what she called a ‘dialogue with Fate.’ And now as she turned to the wall she said: ‘I hear you. You have won again.’

  Before long the pain in her side became fixed and unremitting, and Chrysis knew that her life was drawing to a close. She took to her bed and her thoughts no longer clung to the world about her. Now when her courage was being undermined by her pain she dared not ask herself if she had lived and if she were dying, unloved, in disorder, without meaning. From time to time she peered into her mind to ascertain what her beliefs were in regard to a life after death, its judgments or its felicities; but the most exhausting of all our adventures is that journey down the long corridors of the mind to the last halls where belief is enthroned. She resigned herself to the memory of certain moments when intuition had comforted her and she quieted her heart with Andrian cradle-songs and with fragments from the tragic poets. She saved her strength to fulfill a last desire, one that may perhaps seem unworthy to persons of a later age. Her mind had been moulded by formal literature, by epics and odes, by tragedies and by heroic biography, and from this reading she had been imbued with the superstition that one should die in a noble manner, and in this high decorum even the maintenance of her beauty played a part. The only terror left in the world was the fear that she might leave it with cries of pain, with a torn mind, and with discomposed features.

  The news spread about the island that the Andrian was gravely ill. The young men who had been her guests were confused by the discrepancy between their mothers’ sarcasms and the respect that Chrysis had inspired in themselves, but some brought shy offerings of wine and cheese to her door. For such brief interviews she raised herself on one elbow and sought to recover her light-spoken graciousness. But most of the young men stayed away; it required a maturer mind than they could summon to hold side by side their memories of sensual pleasure and their respect due to the dying.

  Pamphilus had other reasons for staying away. It seemed more and more unlikely that he would ever be permitted to marry Glycerium. But one morning he appeared at Chrysis’s house and asked to see her. He traversed the court, picking his way among her motley and dismayed pensioners, and his eyes fell upon Glycerium. She was seated beside Philocles at her sister’s door, silent and without hope. Pamphilus stopped for a moment on one knee before her and took her hands in his. ‘Do not be afraid,’ he said in a low voice. ‘No harm will come to you.’ She derived no courage from his words; she lifted her eyes and scanned his face. Her mouth trembled, but no words came and her eyes returned to the ground. Pamphilus passed into the room where Chrysis lay; for a moment he could distinguish nothing in the darkness. Presently he became aware of the priest of Aesculapius and Apollo bending over a brazier in the corner, and finally he saw Chrysis smiling at him gravely from the bed. He sat down beside her in silence; each waited for the other to begin.

  ‘We are sorry, all of us are sorry, Chrysis,’ he said at last, ‘to hear that you have been so ill.’

  ‘Thank you, Pamphilus. Thank them all.’

  ‘There . . . there has been so much rain. When the sunlight returns you will feel better at once.’

  ‘Yes, it has always been the sunlight that has done me the most good. You are all well on your farm?’

  ‘Yes, the gods be praised.’

  ‘The gods be praised. I shall never forget a favour your father did for me.’

  Pamphilus was struck with amazement. ‘My father?’

  ‘Oh, forgive me . . . I remember now I promised him not to mention it to you. Oh, my illness has made me forget that. I am ashamed, I am ashamed. But now I had better add that it was a small commission he did for me by one of his boats going to Andros. I would not have him think me unfaithful to my promise. I beg of yo
u earnestly not to tell him that I spoke of it.’

  ‘Indeed, I shall not tell him, Chrysis.’

  There fell another pause between them, while her strengthless hands lightly pressed upon the bed in her self-reproach.

  ‘Yes,’ said Pamphilus. ‘When there is more sunlight you will feel better at once. The sky has been overcast for a long time. I cannot remember when it has been overcast so long.’

  To themselves they both cried: ‘How shall we ever get out of this?’

  ‘We have missed the banquets. I would like to tell you again, Chrysis, what great pleasure they gave me. I have been looking forward to the next one when you promised to read us I forget what play.’

  ‘It was to have been the Ion of Euripides.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This,’ said Chrysis, glancing toward the priest with a smile, ‘this is my Ion.’

  But perhaps the words were ill chosen. She thought she saw the priest frowning as he bent over his work. ‘Forgive me,’ she said to him abruptly, ‘if I have offended you. I did not mean it ill.’

  But the tears were rolling down her cheeks. ‘Life, Pamphilus,’ she said, ‘is full of mistakes, but the wrongs we do to those we love and honour are more than we can endure.’ The priest approached the further side of the bed and adjusted the pillows; he whispered a few words into her ear and went back to his brazier.

  ‘Am I tiring you?’ Pamphilus asked.

  ‘No, no. I am very happy that you have come.’ To herself she thought: ‘Time is passing, and what are we saying! Is there not something heartfelt that I can find to say to him, something to remember, for him and for me?’ But she distrusted the emotion that filled her heart. It was perhaps mere excitement and pain; or a vague and false sentiment. Probably the best thing to do was to be stoic; to be brave and inarticulate; to talk of trivial things. Or was it a greater bravery to surmount this shame and to say whatever obvious words the heart dictated? Which was right?