Elektra(69)
A funeral for her father is the only thing I can give to Elektra.
29
Elektra
I scream until my voice is exhausted, until there’s nothing left in me at all, until I’m curled into myself on the floor, drained and numb. That’s when I hear the shouting, the swell of panicked voices, and, cutting clearly through it all, the words that I dreaded. The king is dead, the king is dead. It echoes back and forth along the corridors; hurrying footsteps and slamming doors, and then a terrible quiet. I lie there, unmoving, until long after they’re gone, long after he’s lost to me forever, and the realisation starts to settle into my bones: the single glimpse of him that I got was all I have, and all that I will ever have.
When they finally come to unbolt the door, the palace is still eerily hushed. The slaves cast their eyes down when I walk past them, and the old men turn away. Only Aegisthus’ guards stand tall. Only they look me in the face: insolent, defiant, forgetting that I am a princess, and it is they who are the interlopers.
Shadows flicker on the walls, cast by the fires burning in shallow bowls. The door to Orestes’ chamber is open, and as I drift past, I notice it is empty. I know that I need to care about that, but I cannot force it to the forefront of my mind.
There are guards posted everywhere, more than I have ever seen before, but none make a move to stop me from walking out. Has she instructed them to leave me unmolested? I wonder if she would bother, if the thought of me has crossed her mind since she had me locked away.
My steps take me out beyond the walls of the citadel. I have never been out here alone so late before, but no one materialises from the quiet dark to seize me and drag me back. I can hear my footsteps on the path, and the distant hooting of an owl. How far could I walk before they found me? A breeze whispers around me, and the thin light of the moon barely illuminates the ground in front. If it were not for the torches burning ahead, I would be swallowed up by blackness, but I keep my eyes on the soft orange glow and do not let the fear skirting at the edges of my mind take hold.
Someone has left these torches burning to light the way to the towering entrance to the tomb, which is cut into the mighty rock of the hillside itself. I know that it is visible from the throne room of the palace, and I cast a glance back towards the citadel. I wonder if she looks out across the plain, watching for me.
The great opening of ornately carved and painted stone dwarfs me. Within, the long tunnel leads to the dim interior, the smooth walls of stone built inside a hill, giving way to a cavernous dome in which I feel so small. This is where they have left him.
I stand back, not wanting to take another step further into the chamber. Other hands have done this; they have dressed him in finery and assembled riches on the floor all around him: jewels that glitter in the firelight, great vases, a gleaming sword. I turn my head, a wave of dizziness swamping me for a moment. If I drew closer, I would see his face, see if they had laid a gold coin on his mouth, but I am too afraid to look. I do not know what she inflicted upon him. I last saw his face when I was a child, before he left for Aulis, set upon a war that would make him the greatest of all the Greeks. I wish I could muster the courage to look upon his face again, but a crawling dread in my stomach holds me back.
I cannot bring myself to come closer, to lay a lock of my hair beside him, to weep over his corpse. All of these years, most of my life that I can remember, I have imagined his homecoming. His face alight with triumph. His arms open to embrace me.
I turn away, abruptly. There is nothing in here for me, no comfort to be found, whatever the misguided fools who brought him here might have thought. The women who dressed his body and laid him here to be mourned must have felt this travesty, that Clytemnestra allows him to be buried with honour as though she is a grieving wife. I wish that he had known what she was, that he could have known to choke the life from her the moment he saw her again. I wish I could tell him to cast her body out into the hills. I wonder if she thought she might buy herself some shred of respectability, too late, in placing him here.
But I will not let her paint her filthy act of cowardice as something grand and heroic. I will not let her fool anyone into thinking her magnanimous by giving him the funeral rites owing to the king, as though she could atone for what she has done. What I know is that there is nothing in this great domed tomb for me: nothing but a body, insensible to feeling; a body that strode the Trojan plains and conquered the city, but now lies still and silent; a body that would not stir to my touch if I could bring myself to venture closer. So why would I stay and grieve beside it? This tomb is like everywhere I have known for ten years: devoid of my father, bereft of solace.
Out in the night air again, I look at my home. The moon has slunk out from behind the clouds, casting its silver glow across the acropolis. In the other direction, there is nothing but featureless darkness, stretching on forever. If I had been born a son to my father, I could walk in his footsteps. I could avenge him, as he avenged his father before him. I could give him what he is due. For a moment, I think of taking up the burning torches, tumbling them throughout the palace, letting them swallow up the tapestries and roar through the wood in ravenous flames, closing in on the murderers in a furious inferno.
If I could summon the courage to do it, I would turn away from the burning city and walk into the blackness beyond. Could I scratch out some kind of existence on the mountainside? Eat berries and burn twigs for warmth? I see myself for a moment, walking on until my feet blister and the skin peels away from the bone, until my body wastes away to nothing but the grey wraith I feel I am. But as much as I long to walk away, I fear the teeth and the claws that might be lurking on those hillsides; the ravenous beasts or desperate men who might be waiting for easy prey like me to wander their way. I shudder at the kind of fate I could meet out there, all alone in the void, and I know I cannot do it.