Voices from the Past Part 25

"Now, I know," I say to him.

"You know what?"

"That you schemed with Pittakos, to have me exiled, with Alcaeus."

"What?"

"After all these years I've found out. Stop lying. You tried to get our home, that's why you wanted me exiled.

What a brother you've been! What a fool I've been!"

For once he shut his mouth.

"During the war years you made many trips, to sell your wines...refusing to help me financially...yours is a debt you won't pay...and you don't care. I've dedicated my life to writing...I live no lie. I work to make life significant.

"And now, why have I come? To quarrel? No, to tell you the truth. I've nothing more to say. I want you to know that I know. It's a satisfaction..."

I could have talked on, but I left, snapping open my parasol, clutching Ezekias' arm, walking swiftly, curbing my pulse, hearing a seagull, the wind icy at the corners of the town, dogs sleeping in the sun, carts pa.s.sing.

I tried to believe something was settled, that life was worth more for having told the truth. Yet, I wanted to return to Charaxos, demand apologies and rest.i.tution, apologies for impertinent, biased criticisms, as if apology, like a brand, could stamp out wrong, as if there were rest.i.tution for my cheated years.

Somehow, as I walked, as Ezekias chattered, Aesop commiserated: his hunchback shoulders squared my shoulders: his doll had the dignity of a scepter to prod my spirit.

A tow-headed youth greeted us and I thought: I wish I could have a son. Yes, to give birth again. That glory cancels many defeats.

In Libus' house, I turned to him and said:

"I told Charaxos what you told me weeks ago."

"But I shouldn't have told you, Sappho."

"It was time I knew the truth."

"And now you have an enemy," he said.

"He has been my enemy all the time, Libus."

We sat on his veranda, an agnus-castus sheltering us from the wind. His boy brought us drinks.

"Are we better friends?" he asked.

"I trust you more."

Tree shadows moved across his mouth and chin.

"Trust is not always friends.h.i.+p. I shouldn't have informed. How shallow we are, the best of us. We bungle.

Friends.h.i.+p, yours and mine, it's hard to measure, perhaps we shouldn't try: isn't it better left alone? Friends.h.i.+p, that's what we've had all these years...I overstepped propriety."

How pale Libus was, in his grey robe, shadows ridging the fabric, chalking his face, thickening his lips, greying his hair. His sandals moved nervously yet he never moved his hands: they remained weighted to his lap.

I ate supper there, lingering with the ancientness of his rooms, dark mosaics, the crowning of a king behind him, Libus' chair of white leather, the king in the mosaic studying his crown, his jewels flas.h.i.+ng red, a hint of Corinth and a hint of Crete.

Remembering my shepherd visit, I wrote this:

EVENING STAR

Hesperus, you bring

Homeward all that

Dawn's light disperses,

Bring home sheep,

Bring home goats,

Bring children home

To their mothers.

What is it urges the mind to seek beauty? What is the challenge? Why go where there are no charts?

Beauty says it is a kind of love.

So, I make love, in my quiet room, the word symbolic of man, life's continuity, my paper taken from reeds and trees. I write of birth, love, marriage and death, sensing that the unrecorded is vaster than the recorded.

I sense the stumbling: the past could be a gigantic storm, fog obliterating at moment of revelation, fog fumbling from man to man, saying come, saying stop. The past is a wave through which no swimmer pa.s.ses. As surf it inundates, then vanishes. On windy nights, it moans at my window, beautiful and hideous. I struggle on.

I quote from my journal kept in exile:

For three days we have had little to eat, days of quarrels, bitterness and savagery.

I gave myself to a merchant and he has returned the favor by feeding Alcaeus and me.

We ate in the kitchen, glad to find considerate slaves. We can remain long enough to recover our strength, if not our hopes.