Memoirs of a Bitch (21 page)

Two days later it started raining. I scarcely felt the first drop on the skin of my right shoulder. When I looked up the sky was a lake of milk crossed by ragged clouds like dirty lambs. Then came the second and third drops and I held out my arms. Then the occasional drops became an incessant hammering and finally a waterfall, making my hair and clothes grow heavy and stick to my body, until it seemed my very skin had been impregnated, and become smoother and harder. The sky turned gray and then black, and it was not until nightfall that Callira managed to get me to come in. I curled up on my bed like a child and waited, my eyes open to the red light from the brazier. Soon the animal beneath my skin would wake.

From a distance we had watched the flames from the
pyre of Achilles, listened to the mourning of the Greeks and been aware of their funeral games. We heard the noisy lamentations of the Myrmidons as they marched naked across the plain in salute to their leader, their heads strewn with dust, beating their spears on their shields and shouting their war cry until they were hoarse.

I watched them and envied them. I had the blood of Achilles on my hands and carried the memory of Hector behind my eyes, but I could not cry out or weep. For hours I gazed at the sky, listening all night to the rain on the roof, as the drops beat down in the same rhythm as my exhausted heart. A soft rhythm, because it had no energy left. Rather, a dull pain was biting my vitals, dull because there had been too much pain, always too much of it, and by now there was nothing left in me for it to seize and devour.

When next morning Callira came to draw back the curtains on a world still gray with rain, I did not move. She spoke but I hardly listened; I could hear the slow cadenced rhythm of her voice but could not distinguish words. It was only when that subdued music stopped that I opened my mouth. My voice was harsh, as though it had not been used for centuries: “Why have you never gone away?”

“Because you are all I have, Helen.”

*

Then I must have fallen asleep without realizing it, because I was woken by hammering on the door. Callira's voice rose above the insistent drumming. “She's asleep! Leave her in peace!”

“Out of my way, slave!”

A blow and a cry. I sat up, not a conscious gesture but a reflex, and by the time Paris broke the door open I was already on my feet. The door struck the wall and bounced back. Through the doorway I could see Callira's legs stretched out on the floor. They were moving, but feebly, and ignoring Paris I rushed toward her. But he grabbed me by the shoulders and pushed me back.

“Not so fast.” He smelt of wine.

I faced him, my previous indifference replaced by calm fury. “Let me past.”

“No. Your whoring days are over.” He spoke firmly despite the drink.

“You don't know what you're talking about.”

“Your lover's been cremated on his pyre. You'll never see him again.”

“Not true. All I need is to die.”

He gave a mirthless laugh. “Of course. Hector the hero. The fearless general, the just man. No better than me, when it came to it. He too deceived his wife with the first woman who walked past.”

“Don't talk about things you don't know about and will never understand.”

“It's not worth playing games with me, Helen. I know you too well …”

I looked at his face; the face of a stranger, with savage hatred carved into the corners of his mouth. A man I had loved and followed. And now that man didn't exist anymore.

“You've never known me, Paris. Lust isn't love. I came here for your sake, and when you grew tired of me, I learned how to live on my own. You have no right to reproach me.”

“No right? What right are you talking about, woman?” He angrily grabbed the table by the wall and overturned it. The pitcher of water was smashed to pieces, and bracelets fell into the widening pool of liquid.

I smiled, scornfully. “Menelaus never rejected me. But to you I was never anything more than a tart.”

“Not true!” He moved the upset table out of his way and advanced on me, glaring. I held my ground and looked back at him.

“I'm not afraid of you,” I said coldly. “I've seen worse things than drunk cowards.”

A violent slap caught me on the cheek, knocking me against the edge of the bed. I pulled myself out of his reach, laughing. “What a pity you didn't put all that
manly strength into fighting the Greeks, my dear Trojan prince.”

“Shut up. Silence. How dare you mock me!”

He grabbed my wrist and dragged me along the floor.

“Go on, hit me, don't be afraid.” I was light-headed. What did I care? I was beyond fear. “I'm only a pathetic unarmed woman, go on.”

He hesitated, staring at me.

“What's the matter?” I taunted him, my cheek throbbing. “Don't you still find me beautiful, Paris? Surely I'm still the stunning luxury slave girl you got bored with after little more than a year? Worth a war, eh, Paris?”

“For you. To think I did all this for you,” he hissed. “My people have died for you. My country has been ruined for your sake!”

“For me?” I echoed, unable to believe my ears. “Oh no. All to suit your own whims, Paris. You stupid, vicious, spoiled child.”

“How dare you!” A second blow thudded into my temple, and I would have been knocked flat if he hadn't been holding me up by the arm. Everything became confused and a terrible pain throbbed in the empty spaces of my head. But Paris was not satisfied.

“You made a laughing stock of me. You and the heir to the throne, the favorite son, the matchless brother
… But now your lover's dead, so you're quite right, you're nothing but my tart …”

He let go of my arm, but before I had time to pull myself together and get up he was on me, forcing me to my knees, my reflexes too slow, my arms too weak to free myself. When I screamed, it was his turn to laugh.

“Yes …” he panted, forcing my thighs apart. “My tart.”

My cries became a single continuous scream and I pummeled his back, but the bestial grunting in my ears went on until the black outline of another man appeared at the edge of my field of vision. The weight of Paris instantly slipped off me and I lay still.

“You animal! You cowardly beast, get to your feet!”

It was the voice of Aeneas. I forced myself to open my eyes and saw his face twisted with rage. Paris seemed to shrink under the furious glare of Aeneas. His lip was already split, and now Aeneas struck him again without meeting any resistance. His eyes blank, huddled on the floor with his undone clothes hanging off him like rags, Paris began to weep.

Disgusted, Aeneas clenched his fists, ready to strike again.

“Please stop, Aeneas. Let him go,” I whispered with what little voice I still had left. I thought he had not heard, but he hesitated and looked at me. “It's not worth it,” I breathed, feebly trying to readjust my tunic, but
Aeneas was too quick for me. He knelt down and wrapped me in my shawl, which had been lying on a chair.

“I'll take you to Cassandra,” he murmured, lifting me in his arms. As we turned to go he stopped beside the heap on the floor that was Paris. “Out of here before I get back.”

Over Aeneas's shoulder I could see a lost expression on Paris's face as he raised his head; he was a child again, a little boy drunk with wine and beaten too hard. But I had no strength left to pity him. I rested my head on Aeneas's shoulder and closed my eyes.

Callira hurried up before we went outside.

“You were right to call me,” Aeneas reassured her. “She's all right now. Please tidy up. I'm taking her to Princess Cassandra.”

I would have liked to open my eyes to smile at Callira but I hadn't the strength. Her deft hands pulled my shawl over my head, then I was outside in the rain with Aeneas.

“He loved you.” The voice of that brusque and taciturn man was cracked, like a plain parched by a long drought. “Don't listen to Paris. He loved you. He was my brother, and you will always be my sister.”

Suddenly my tears came, brought on by the rough loyalty of Aeneas. They overflowed and mingled with the rain. Long soft sobs from my throat made my whole body tremble. The past. The past. The past. It would never
again be the present, always the past, until I rejoined him beyond time. The past, the past, the past. Hector, Achilles. Between them and me the shadow of death under this gentle rain. Realizing I was weeping Aeneas stopped, got down on the ground in the rain and laid me beside him. With my eyes closed I hugged him, burying my face in the folds of clothing around his neck. He held me close with furious desperation; I could feel his face pressed against me; though unlike mine his body was not trembling, his heart was beating to a sorrowful rhythm. We lay in the rain on the empty road without moving until we had both finished weeping, and only then did he get to his feet again. I looked at him. My brother indeed. My twin in pain. He offered me his hand to help me up, and when I was back on my feet we walked on up the hill side by side, his arm around my waist so I should not fall, my head on his shoulder.

Cassandra was waiting for us at the top of the steps. My brother and my sister. The rain must have washed away the blood. I was not alone in my grief.

The rain slowly measured out the time of truce, and my pain vibrated in time with it. I went about wrapped in spirals of pain as if in a warm woolen shawl, and all was silent; heavy veils covered everything, and no one spoke. Our footsteps on the streets made no noise, and Cassandra bent silent over her altars. Aeneas was silent too, his hands swinging gently at his sides, in his eyes a strange calm. Nothing happened beyond the walls while we waited, trapped in a time warp; not even earthquakes came to disturb us. Everything had been said, the champions were dead, and no one else would ever come to save us.

Andromache had not gone back to her native land; she had stayed with us in Troy, a black veil around her head as a formal symbol of mourning. Paris left me alone,
dragging himself like an exhausted cat from room to room and hardly speaking. Priam had gone mad. He sat on his rich throne gazing into space, a shell of a man. Rumors reached us from the Greek camp that Ajax, son of Telamon, a cousin of Achilles, had killed himself. I was not surprised. Death was the whispered theme of our gentle rain, though it was in no hurry; it was waiting patiently and silently for us to come one by one. I was unafraid but not anxious to seek death out; one evening it would come to me with a smile, and would lead me with its cold hand to silent lands far beyond the night, where Hector would be waiting on the shores of the ocean. That would be my death, and that was how it would happen, I thought. Our ghosts were walking with us beneath the porticoes and in the rain-drenched courtyards, as we waited with quiet confidence.

But one morning I woke and found myself full of life. A pale sunbeam from beyond the curtain was resting on my face, and no ships were to be seen anymore on the sea or the shore. Not even the few that had escaped the fire. All that was left, on the ravaged earth, were the abandoned huts of the Greeks, like empty shells washed ashore by the waves.

We emerged into the sun with the stunned caution of hunted animals after the long lethargic sleep of the sodden earth. The Scaean Gates were beginning to dry out in the pale light, and as we looked up at the sickly sun, we felt a sort of disheartened exhaustion. It couldn't last. We crossed the plain, both old and young from the court of Troy, Callira and I the only women. She supported me with her strong pale arms; and I leaned against her familiar body as though no longer capable of walking, as if compelled to go on living in a world no longer my own.

Then I heard a light rustle beside me, and Cassandra slipped her arm through mine. I gave her a distant smile as we walked together as far as the Greek wall, stopping only just out of range of the archers. But there seemed
to be no one behind the fortifications and no arrow cleft the air; only the Greek gates themselves barred our path, still damaged from the time Hector had smashed his way through them.

We waited. Finally, Aeneas, shield on arm, grasped his spear and advanced, hurling it over the wall. It whistled through the air, but no cries responded from the other side. All we heard was a soft thud, as though it had landed on nothing but wet earth. Aeneas had lost his indecisiveness somewhere during that long period of exhaustion, and now he signaled to two men to go back into Troy for engineers. The gates were unbarred without anyone raising a finger to defend them. Once flung open like silent mouths, all they revealed was desolation and emptiness. The streets and pathways of the Greek encampment were deserted, not a dog or a tree to be seen. Not so much as a forgotten rag to be found in the huts when the Trojan soldiers scattered and went in to check. The only thing in the largest open space was a black horse made of wood and covered with pitch, with a thick neck and shapeless muzzle, and mounted on wheels. At its feet were offerings for the gods of wind and sea. We looked at it, its eyeless face just a little higher than a man's head, and all we could hear was the swish of the sea beyond the last row of huts. As we looked at the horse we might have been petrified there, turned to stone
by the contagious enchantment of our own melancholy, but the world was not yet so sick, proved when a gull skimmed over the buildings, emitting its graceless cry. As if waking with a start, Aeneas went forward to pull his spear out of the ground and walked around the horse, striking its sides and muzzle. It sounded solid, as if there could be no trick hidden in its great round belly. It was obviously just what it looked like, an offering to the god of the sea to ensure the Greeks a safe journey home.

No one said anything; a murmur rose like a sigh in our throats, but we did not dare to speak. Aeneas strode on with knitted brows and disappeared behind the nearest hut; for a moment he seemed to have slipped between the folds of time into some distant other world. Then his cry rose above the silence of the sea. “You're free to go!” He came running back toward us. “You're free to go,” he repeated. “They're not here anymore.”