Elektra(76)

I look out at Agamemnon’s tomb, grotesque in its opulence. He deserved to die, a hundred times over. But Iphigenia is still dead. And the thought torments me that, in avenging her death, I have brought only more suffering down upon my living children’s heads. In all my years lost to sorrow, I am coming to realise how much of their lives I have lost as well.

Somehow, I have to make preparations for Elektra’s wedding. I don’t know how. Will we celebrate it? Feast in honour of such an odd match? Iphigenia’s saffron dress flutters in my memory. Her eyes, wide and serious in the dim light before dawn.

I shake my head to clear the vision away. Elektra will want nothing from me anyway. I feel quite certain she will exult in the most meagre wedding imaginable. But after it is done, however it is done, I must seek out Orestes. I cannot leave this in the hands of watchmen, of anyone whose loyalty could be bribed or beaten from them. I will have to go in search of him myself – and the first place I can think he might be is my childhood home, where Agamemnon’s brother has returned so triumphantly with his recaptured bride. I will have to go to Sparta.





Part IV





32


Elektra

I don’t think about Georgios on our wedding day. When I walk towards him, it’s my mother’s face that I can see in front of me, even if I studiously look away from her. I want her to be so very disappointed. I hope the humiliation of it burns her from within. My own humiliation never occurs to me. Georgios is a better man than Aegisthus; however lowly and poor he might be, I have chosen a husband superior to hers in every way that matters.

With Georgios, I will appear powerless and weak, unable to gather allies to take my revenge, and so Aegisthus will let me live within sight of the palace, where I can watch them every day. Where we’ll be ready when the time comes.

And he’s my friend. He’s loyal to my father. With Georgios, I can keep Agamemnon’s memory alive, and one day I’ll bring our family back to greatness.

But I don’t know if there is any capacity for love in me any more. I feel so much older than my years, hollowed out by loss. I don’t think I could put one foot in front of the other if it wasn’t for my hatred. It fuels me, it drives me forward, it roars inside me, obliterating anything else that ever was or could be.

After the wedding, we go to Agamemnon’s tomb together. We stand outside, underneath the stars.

‘He was the bravest of all the fighters,’ Georgios says solemnly. ‘Aegisthus can spread all the lies about him that he likes, but in Mycenae we know. We remember.’

Georgios doesn’t remember him, though; no better than I do. He barely ever saw my father. He’s parroting the kind of thing his own father used to say. Still, I’m grateful for it. I hunger for any words of praise for Agamemnon, from anyone who dares to remember the true king fondly. There are many of them, Georgios assures me; they lie low whilst Aegisthus reigns, but all of them long for Agamemnon’s son on the throne. I make him tell me it, over and over again.

At Chrysothemis’ wedding, there was feasting and celebration. Every smile, every note of music and every happy word grated on me then, made me flinch. How could our family pretend at happiness, at joy or love? I prefer this silence and solitude. Iphigenia’s supposed wedding day flickers in my mind. My sister, just a blurry recollection to me, a hazy impression of dark swinging hair and a dimpled smile. She ended that day in the dark, in a quiet and empty place. In peace. I think she might have been the most fortunate of us all.

I shiver slightly in the cold air and Georgios moves to put his arm around me. I stare at the entrance to my father’s tomb.



In the months after my marriage, I do try. I’m grateful not to have to set foot inside my old bedchamber, never to have to look out again on the place where my father walked to his death. When I wake up, screaming for him to stop, to turn away, not to step across those tapestries she laid out, Georgios is there to offer what comfort he can.

We can see the palace from our home. It gleams and shimmers in the sunlight. To my shame, there are days when I can’t stop myself from remembering the cool shade of the courtyard in summer, the vivid painted walls, the fragrance of roasting meat and the sweetness of honey dissolving into wine.

When I thought of poverty before, I thought it was preferable to the sight of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. I thought that not seeing their smug and smirking faces would make living here a luxurious delight in comparison. I thought that leaving would buy me my dignity. But there is no dignity in being poor. It is a grinding, exhausting existence, and every morning I wake and stare at the dry, plain walls, which seem to shrink closer around me every day.

Of course, I am hopelessly incompetent at everything I attempt, and Georgios’ indulgent smiles have given way to quiet dismay as I burn bread, forget to fetch water, and let families of spiders festoon every corner of our home with cobwebs. He works endless, exhausting days out in the fields, and when he comes home so tired and finds me still mired in my despair, the easy conversations of our past friendship seem impossibly out of reach. I worry that he regrets tying himself to me and my misery, though he tells me it isn’t so.

She doesn’t come here any more. She tried, a few times, ridiculous in her sleek finery, with her unshakeable composure, in the doorway of my hovel. She tried to give me things – jewels, gold, precious trinkets. All belonging to her. Nothing of my father’s.