Memoirs of a Bitch (20 page)

When his hand stroked my cheek, I was lost. The night seemed infinite under the mantle of its dark goddess, and I knew no more; I had even forgotten my own name
in the cold air. I don't remember falling asleep, only his body pressed against mine; and when I woke again the light had turned gray and he had already gone.

Hector died on a sunless day. He died alone, because none of those who loved him were there to help him fasten his armor or pass him his shield. No one stood at the gate to watch him set out, no one took him his horse. Perhaps he looked back for the last time at the palace that had been the home of his ancestors, of his family, of his race, his son and me. Perhaps he was thinking about us all when he turned away for the last time, or perhaps he was thinking of nothing, with his mind as empty as the white sky. Empty because everything was ready now, all finished and arranged, now all that remained for him was to take his horse and go one last time down the road.

I know he will have walked with a calm step. I know he will have looked at Troy spread out before him, half-destroyed by the earthquake but still beautiful. His own Troy.
My mother
. That's what Hector called the city. My mother. The stones were her bones. When he reached the Scaean Gates he won't have hesitated. He will have ordered them to be opened. The guards would not have dared disobey him: he was their commander and their prince. He waited in silence with unseeing eyes for the
gates to be opened, not looking back or up at the sky, because that was not where his gods lived; they lived in the forest, in water, earth, and stone, and when they spoke it was like the whistling of the wind, they needed no prayers. Hector's gods sang in the Scamander and the Simoeis on either side of the plain, and in the rustle of leaves in the woods of Ida; they sang while the powerful reflection of the sands beyond the gates spread before his eyes, while he slowly lowered the helm to cover his powerful features and serene expression.

The sentries saw him go out alone, his horse moving with a calm, light step as though it already knew where it had to go.

Achilles was ready, still and silent, bronze against the stained bronze of the sand. He was waiting in his chariot for Hector, in full panoply even before the sun rose. Later the guards reported that Hector had stopped twenty paces from his adversary, and that for a moment they had looked at each other, he and Achilles, without speaking because they had no need of words. Rising above the war, they fixed themselves forever in the memory of humankind. Two champions; the best warrior from each side, and if kings had backed them up, the war could have ended then and there. But loyalty was not something Achilles understood and Hector thought only of redeeming his guilt, his responsibility for shedding the
blood of an innocent; and he was right—the life of Patroclus carried a price branded on our skin in letters of fire.

The two men looked at each other, and recognized in each other's eyes the black features of the Fate that had always pursued them. Hector dismounted from his horse and took up his spear. Achilles got down from his chariot and unsheathed his sword. I'm a woman and I've never fought. I don't understand about duels, and would have understood nothing of this one even if I'd been there to see it. But in the eyes of those who told the tale afterward, there was a kind of sacred dread.

“They were two gods, lady,” the simple soldiers said, shaking their heads.

If they had been gods, in that perfect moment they would have fought forever. But they were men, one looking for revenge and the other for expiation. Hector fell to the ground. Achilles turned his horses, and left him on the sand of the plain.

I remember Hector's body. A single wound, the point of the spear inserted between neck and shoulder where the skin is soft and death quick and painless. I remember I washed him and dressed him, plaiting for the last time his thick locks of dark hair. I remember his amber-colored skin lightening as the blood drained away, his features becoming fixed in the eternal rigidity of death. His body was so beautiful, even in death. Everything was beautiful about him, my last, lost love. I remember the subdued weeping of Andromache beside me, and the terrible eyes of Cassandra resting for the last time on her favorite brother. I remember all this, but I can't remember myself; the guards say the Greek bitch ran through the streets and out of the still open Scaean
Gates, and threw herself down in the sand of the plain beside Hector as he lay dying.

Instead I have an incurable scar on my heart, the memory of his deep dark eyes still gleaming in that weak light, the touch of his hand that could no longer grasp mine, the taste of blood on his lips when I bent to kiss him for the last time.

I know he looked back at me for a few moments from the threshold of death; he knew I was there but perhaps he thought I was a dream, or maybe death's final messenger. I remember the slow uneven rattle of his last breath like surf on the shores of a distant sea, a gray veil descending over his eyes, and a hand that must have been mine closing them. I know all this, and I remember the sudden deafening silence of the sky curving over the Trojan plain and the black wall of trees that was backdrop to the end of my dreams; I see again the cloud of dust swallowing the chariot of Achilles who never looked back. I know all this, but I can't see myself, because my memory contains nothing of myself but a motionless empty blackness. As if looking on from a great distance I can just see a woman dressed in white kneeling in the dust beside a dead body, her face as distant as the faces of the gods; I see her throw back her head and tense her throat, and hear again her desperate heart-rending scream.

*

Starting at the base, the flames wrapped the pyre in spirals of fire.

Aeneas had come to fetch me, raising me from the sand of the plain and using his cloak to wipe my bloodstained hands, and to spread the news, ask for a truce, and give orders for wood to be collected in the courtyard for the pyre. It was Aeneas who carried the torch, a long arc of red fire in the cold transparent air, to the base of the bed of wood impregnated with oil.

The Trojan court was drawn up in order, motionless. Cassandra stood straight and slender, her hair made fiery by the light from the flames. Andromache, no longer veiled but barely conscious, was as pale as foam. The face of Aeneas was dark with fury under his helm. My veins no longer ran with blood, but liquid steel. The Kindly Ones were screaming inside me with Nemesis on my shoulder, knife ready in her claw-like fingers, as I watched my last love burn.

When I left the city the moon was high, fuller now than two nights before, a sinister convex moon for the night of my revenge. My feet made no noise on the sand, and I was sustained by the conviction of a duty properly performed. The pyre had burned itself out many hours before, and the ashes and bones had been collected in a golden urn. I went with Aeneas to bury it in the forest,
the urn in my hands, my fingers giving a last caress when Aeneas delicately took it from me and settled it in the black earth of his childhood where it was hidden by ivy and leaves, leaving no sign of his grave. Priam, howling mad as he staggered from room to room, had raised no objection, and silver coins had been mixed with Hector's ashes to pay for his passage to the underworld and make sure the ferryman would not leave him behind.

On the way back, my footsteps and those of Aeneas echoed like funeral drums. He went to Cassandra and I to Callira. I sat for long hours on the edge of my bed with my hands in my lap, useless woman's hands that no one had ever taught to kill. White palms and slender fingers; the soft skin of a woman who had never had to work the earth or lift a sword. Hands too weak, perhaps, for a man but strong enough for me. Deaf to Callira calling me I waited for night, then, throwing a cloak around my shoulders, I left the city by the secret door I had used that afternoon with Aeneas. With death walking at my side, I followed the river as far as the plain; whether my death or another's it was not my privilege to know. But on the sandy soil that night my shadow was darker than usual. The moonlight had raised a light mist from the Scamander, like an irregular stain on the water among the reed beds and on the fords, which lay like
half-submerged marine monsters near the surface of the water. I approached the Greek defenses, ready, if necessary, to swim the river to get past them. With a dagger in my belt and an unfeeling heart, I went forward with death in my wake and my head held high. It was when I heard an irregular spasmodic thrashing of water like an animal in the final spasms of its death agony, that I saw him. The moon was casting a silver light on the back of Achilles.

He called me by name: Helen. Then, with water up to his waist, he came closer to the bank and watched me. I wanted to hate him, but could not. I looked at his face, and he was as close to me as he had ever been. “You haven't changed.”

“Nor you.” But in fact he had changed; he looked crueler, his handsome face more crafty.

“You're alone,” I said.

“With Hector dead, I have no more enemies.”

“Then what are you here for?”

He fixed his eyes on me. “For what you have brought me.” When I stepped back, he smiled. “You haven't even tried to hide your dagger.”

I looked down; the slender blade was reflecting the
light from a now cloudless sky. “Maybe I was expecting you to kill me.”

“Then you're out of luck, Helen. My time for killing is past; all that is left for me is to accept my own death.”

He pulled himself up on the bank with water running off his body, painfully similar to a forgotten ghost of long ago. His beauty hurt me because it reminded me how much I had left behind.

“So it's death you want?”

He inclined his head; his lips still curved in that strange smile. “You've been listening to too many stories, Helen, all that stuff about the wrath of Achilles burning up Asia Minor. Last night I was so angry I wanted to tear Hector to pieces with my teeth and eat his heart, and pierce his heels so I could pull him through the dust behind my chariot. But this morning when he came from Troy I knew he was just like me, another lonely man crushed beneath the overwhelming weight of a stupid destiny. So I left him to you. I've lost too much, Helen. I thought I could find oblivion in water, but there is too much blood on my hands, it won't wash off.”

“Did you love Patroclus so much?”

“I loved him as a brother and as a friend. As a lover, as a master, and as the son I've never had.”

“But you do have a child, Achilles.” Stupid, obvious, forgotten words. My anger was dispersing to the far
corners of my heart, washed away by the waters of the Scamander as I stood before a man who remembered me from other times. Deep in his eyes, I could see myself again. He looked puzzled for a moment; then understood.

“Hermione?”

I nodded.

He shook his head. “You should have come away with me, Helen of Troy.” No longer of Sparta, no longer of Greece. Of Troy.

“I know. But it's too late now.”

“It's never too late.”

He moved a step nearer, and suddenly I was afraid. I took out the knife and pointed it at him. He did not stop, but came forward until its slender, almost invisible point just touched his skin, but when I tried to step back he smiled and grabbed my wrist.

“You'd not be much good as a soldier, Helen. When your enemy's near you have to stick your knife in, you can't draw back. You came for revenge, remember; have you already forgotten that Hector died this morning?”

Of course I remembered, and I felt I could never stop seeing his lifeless open eyes. But Achilles was before me and my hand was shaking.

“Lighten the earth for me, Helen of Troy, spirit of fire. Make it lighter for me.”

His lips touched mine and he pulled me close with his left arm around my back; his other hand, still gripping my wrist, lifted and twisted, plunging the blade into his naked flesh as if it had been nothing more than sand. I opened my eyes wide, trying to release the knife, but his arm held me tightly, until his strength ran out and he collapsed on the sand at my feet.

He could hardly breathe but was still smiling.

“Why?”

“Because I don't want to feel any more pain.”

“Then you're a coward, Achilles of Phthia.”

He laughed, and grimaced with pain.

“I haven't much time. Tell me you loved me, Helen.”

I stroked his face and a lock of wet, heavy hair. His hands were lying useless by his sides, hands that a few hours earlier had taken Hector's life. But no grief was crying out inside me, and my heart was calm. The Kindly Ones had been placated; I remembered Hector's smile:
It's him or me, Helen my love, him or me, and in any case he'll soon be joining me. In another world we would have been friends.

“I believe you,” I murmured to the night, and bent over Achilles, my lips touching his. “I love you,” I whispered, and it was true. With his death I was burying myself: Helen of Sparta, Helen of Troy, Helen the Foreign Bitch; the world was leaving me, as it left Hector the day before
he died. Saying farewell. The pain was a dull useless pulse, and in any case only mine.

Achilles smiled. “With Patroclus, then, there have been two of you. A lot for one man … perhaps too much. We'll meet again, Helen of Troy.”

“On the far side of the Styx?”

His smile widened. “There's no Styx or Acheron, don't believe fairy tales, my sweet darling, my strong spirit of fire.”

He gave a start, squeezed my hand hard and shuddered.

I whispered in his ear, “Hermione has your eyes.”

When I lifted my head, he was dead. But there was still the shadow of a smile on his lips.

I got up. I had neither the strength nor the inclination to pull out the dagger. I was weightless, as if even the inconstant light of the moon could be enough to carry me off. Next morning when I woke, grief would seize me and rip me to pieces like a wild animal. But not now. I looked toward Troy: the city was dark, enclosed in its own mourning, motionless and proud against a sky whitened by the moon. I began to walk, my shadow stretching obliquely behind me. Now I really was alone. When I reached the loop of the river I looked back. There lay Achilles, stretched on the ground, his arms loose, on his lips that secret smile. In the silver light of the moon he looked like a sleeping god.