Elektra(29)

I remember pouring wine on to the earth, honey and milk and water, too, as the sky darkened. I held a lock of hair in my hand, my hair, and I placed it under her hands, which were folded together over her chest. I know the sunset was magnifi-cent, a burning flame sinking into the sea, setting the clouds on fire with pink and gold. I remember the crackling of the flames as the pyre was lit, and how I dug my fingernails into my palms until the skin bled, to stop myself from plunging into that fire and pulling her body out. I don’t know how I let it be consumed, her face that I had kissed, her hair that I had combed, all blackened and charred to crumbled ash.

My children came from my body; their flesh was born of mine. Their arms reached out for me first, they called for me in the night and I scooped them into my embrace and breathed in the sweet scent of their little bald heads. As they grew, I felt the echo always of their infant selves. My body could not know what my mind did; it ached with her absence.

I had feared to send her to wifehood, to become a mother herself one day. That separation was hard enough. I watched the fire spark into the night sky and wondered where she could be. Making her way down that dank, twisting path to the Underworld alone? I had gone everywhere before her; trodden the paths I sent her down to make sure they were safe before I let her go. How could I let her go now, to where I did not know, without me at her side?

But if I followed her there, how could I avenge her? The thought was cold and clear in my mind amidst the chaos of grief and pain as I kept my vigil through the night. That pain that clawed me apart from within, tearing away at my flesh and stripping me down to nothing. Nothing but this. The hard certainty at my very core; the cold taste of iron and blood in my centre that said: He will feel this too, and worse.

It was not the baby I still carried in my body that propelled me from the sand long after the fire consumed my daughter and left nothing but bitter ash behind. In the light of the rising sun, I prayed that my husband would survive this war and come home safe to me. I wanted no Trojan soldier to take what was mine; no glory-seeking warrior to seize his chance of fame by plunging his sword into Agamemnon’s heart. Let him come back, I hissed into the empty sky. Let him come back so that I can see his eyes as the light drains from them. Let him come back and die at the hands of his bitterest enemy. Let him come back so that I can watch him suffer. And let me make it slow.





Part II





10


Elektra

When Clytemnestra came back from Aulis without Iphigenia, her face was streaked and puffy, and her hair hung in tangled ropes. Chrysothemis had brought me out to greet the returning wagon, but when we saw this woman who barely even resembled our mother, I turned and hid my face in the drapes of my sister’s skirt. Even her voice was different – hoarse and ragged and guttural as she spat out her words like poison dripping all over us.

Once, Chrysothemis had taken me to the harbour, and I had seen the fishermen hauling great barrels of sea snails, their spined shells rattling together. When I asked her what they were for, she told me how they would be crushed and the purple dye squeezed from the pulpy fragments of their bodies. ‘It’s how we get such pretty clothes,’ she said teasingly, flicking the deep colour that edged my dress. Suddenly, the trimmings I had taken such pride in before struck me as revolting. The deep reddish-purple hue that spoke of luxury and wealth all at once seemed to me to look more like bloodstains, and I could not push away the image of those slimy bodies squashed until the thick, dark mucus spurted from them. Where I had felt beautiful and dainty, I now felt stained and spoiled. That was what my mother’s words made me think of then. Like toxic venom, sour bile, heaved from her guts and showered over us.

Iphigenia was dead. I tried to understand it, what it really meant. She hadn’t come back; she was not going to return. I wouldn’t hear the light patter of her footsteps; she wouldn’t be there to sit and play dolls with me. I would never again be allowed to climb on to a stool so that I could crown her with the flowers I liked to pick from the gardens and twist together.

And Mother was telling us that Father had done it. That made no sense at all.

I looked up at Chrysothemis. Did she know why? Her face was pale, her eyes wide as she listened. I tightened my grip on her hand, trying to make her look at me. No one seemed like themselves and I was scared.

‘It was a trick,’ Mother said. ‘No wedding. He slit her throat for a fair wind.’ Her face crumpled as though she was about to cry. I reached my arms out to her, not understanding what she meant, but afraid to see her so broken, so strange. But she just stared for a long moment as though she didn’t recognise me. And then she walked away, leaving us there.

It was Chrysothemis who wrapped her arms around me. Even though she was only a few years older than me, she was the one to comfort me, to explain it as best she could. ‘Artemis demanded it,’ she told me later, her voice scratchy with sobs. ‘Father had to give up something he loved, to prove how brave he is.’

I nodded slowly. If the gods told you that you must do something, you had no choice. That was something I knew. Something I could understand.

‘It had to be him – not another soldier,’ she went on. ‘He’s the leader of the army, so he had to be the one.’

‘It isn’t his fault,’ I whispered. Breathing out the words made me feel lighter: the crushing weight our mother had deposited on us lifted all at once with the revelation, with the truth of it. Artemis had spoken and so Iphigenia was dead.