Voices from the Past Part 14

I keep hoping and waiting someone else will come to inquire, will bring a message. Since he never looks for me, I must not look for him.

I will walk by the sea until I am too tired to move.

My pretty Gyrinno is sick with too much sun and too much swimming so I go about pampering her and nothing pleases her more.

It has been some time since I brought her a tray, one I fixed especially for her. I combed her hair tonight, cooled her skin with ointment, and teased her till she made me promise a gift, a silver mirror from Serfo's shop, one with suitably naughty figures on the back and handle: "the convivialists," Serfo has named it.

To help pamper Gyrinno, we had musicians in the courtyard. The air was so warm, so languid, n.o.body wished to go to sleep. These were wandering musicians, from neighboring islands, and their songs were mostly new to us. They repeated the ones we liked best, tender mountain airs.

Kleis, who has a phenomenal memory, was able to join them the second or third time, harpist and flutist accompany. It was an intimate evening, ending with a tale by one of the wanderers, of Pegasus winging over the ocean on an errand of mercy for a lost lover.

Toward dawn, I woke to find Atthis with me, her cheek against mine. More aware of my inner needs than others, she had come to comfort me, alleviate my longing. Her perfume, kisses and caresses were not the crude, male love I wanted. However, I was half in my dreams and I remembered the music and the tale and the moonlight, our songs and voices, and everything blended into a pattern of peace and goodness.

There are times when our hearts are particularly open to beauty: this was one of those times. Everything, at this moment, a.s.sumed perfection. And because we recognize its illusory quality it is the more precious.

Out of the night comes the word someone has tried to communicate, that we are plural, not single...not forgotten. Here, in this comparison, are strength and courage.

Yes, there are times when our hearts open.

There is more to life than wandering over an island.

There is more to life than happiness. There is more to life than work. There is more to life than hope. What is it?

Under a cypress, above the sea, facing the sea, I asked myself this question and found this answer:

Certainly, the living is all: there is no life after death: and since there is no other chance than this chance, it must be enough to have beauty and kindness and time to enjoy them.

Here, on this slope, earth's form a.s.sures me this is true. And at home, among my girls, I can find it so, each girl an affirmation.

Why is Kleis involved in spats with Gyrinno, Helen, Myra? Why are the girls put out with her? Why can't they agree to do the same thing at the same time?

Why is there so much unrest and dissatisfaction everywhere? Corinth, Sparta, Argos, Sicyon...the news reaches us by boat.

Why is Phaon far at sea, headed for Byzantium?

It seems to be a world of questions.

When I think how many G.o.ds exist, I am shocked by man's confusion and gullibility.

"Man is like a cricket. He sees the cricket's limitations but not his own. The cricket can't read or write or think scientifically. He can't sail a boat or build a house. He potters away in his clod or field. What can a cricket know about G.o.d?"

That's what man says, unable to see beyond his own clod. He scoffs and sneers but what is he but a two- legged cricket, brown, yellow or black? I'm sure the cricket has his illusions, some of them as pat as ours.

Charaxos has returned to Mytilene.

Our meeting was unavoidable, of course. He had on the commonplace mask of the man in the street and talked about his trip, the grinding poverty in Egypt, the bad state of our mercenaries there...

No mention of settling his debts! Not a word about Rhodopis! Evidently Kleis does not exist.

"All of us are well, thank you," I said. "Nothing has changed for us here."

What is there between us? It is something deeper than ourselves. When I walked away, my eyes burned and my cheeks felt hot.

Here is a pa.s.sage from my first journal, written in childish hand:

Today is my birthday and mother gave me earrings and papa gave me a brooch with a carnelian stone. We had a party on the beach and papa burnt his fingers in the fire as we cooked the mutton meat. I don't like mutton meat. I don't like smoky fires. Papa sings badly. My dog got sick.

I suppose all that was very important to me.

Is our life important to anyone else?

No word from Aesop.

Sometimes I have to get away from everything and everyone, myself as well.

I went to a nearby fis.h.i.+ng village. Necessity can be ingenious. The fishermen have managed to build good boats out of the battered wrecks that littered our sh.o.r.es. They tell me that the exporting of sponges has become extensive.

I wish I could sail with a sponge crew. I went with a crew once. Glued inside my decorum, I can't believe I was free...wild...bold...headstrong...long ago.

Yes, I would like to cruise into deep blue water and stare down, then to the sponge shallows and swim down, down.

My new book is ready.

It was interesting to visit the Kamen house and check the copies.

I stopped for a moment in the alley to gaze at the sun symbol painted over the house door. More and more, geometric designs are giving way to more plastic ideas in decorating. Polychrome painting seems to grow more imaginative. Our ceramics are becoming more forceful. I thought of these things as I looked at the sun symbol, done in blue and gold.

The Kamen brothers were, as always, mysterious, stiff, like Egyptian clay long dried by the sun. It is too bad they can't apply some of their art to themselves. They are such emaciated creatures, I wonder what they eat?