“The Stranger” — Joseph McElroy
Chapter 1 of a novel set in 5th-century-BC Greece
Two things, she could certainly talk and she did not seem to have a father. This was in the girl’s mind, for a stranger was about to speak to her she was sure as she walked the road with the others in the procession. No warriors in sight to the east, Peloponnesian heroes or hotheads or grossly burdened hoplite foot soldiers—she could see things far away, and minute as an eye, fingers at work in a field. Olive trees sinewy-branched along a leaning hill. A still-green field of winter barley beginning to turn brown. The day filled with this light, no other; she could hear it, the day told the truth close by and alone. How? For it was something the girl could tell was new.
The procession treading the road that she was part of was not really part of her it came to her, and she heard distinctly each of the two horses behind her and smelled up ahead tart ram and grassy, tender heifer led to events that lay ahead that were also them. The girl smelt the horses acid-sweet from inside out behind her, huge, their heads nodding as they walked, ears cocked, dust on their gleaming flanks she did not need to see, wary of horses. In the field out there a tall boy stood up and looked at the procession; at her herself, she hoped, here in the middle of the line of marchers, at the horses close behind her; at the priestess up ahead, her headdress, and a maiden who carried the great key.
Until she will remember this moment. Her long legs could fly, she was tall, so said her elders, and over her long cloak her chiton dyed by her mother a blue like no other tunic—it went with her. For this procession? Yet all this isn’t how it is, it came to her, who had swept temple steps with laurel. So many things were said.
So she saw the man with bright hair, a stranger more than others in the procession, why did she think unlikely a Hellene? He was going to speak; he had come up beside her, a scent of fennel, something else, lavender was it? yet then medical in sequence precipitated in her mouth bitter toadflax used for she could not think what, jaundice, skin?, he has found a moment to walk in step with her in the procession, she could swear he’d said softly, You can fly. Are you a huntress? She knew his nearness. He was not all that old but he was a man. He said, The gods favor you but what is that to you? Smooth but curt he was. The skin of his cheeks weathered but aglow, but a thing. I am here, sir, she said; it’s the festival. Life and death, she thought he said. Her mother’s cousin looked back at her, a gathering of herbs in her hand: Areté, what are you thinking? her look said. What people expected of her. They gardened together.
The man’s voice, his accent struck that Doric note but not a warrior; a word sounded for a moment like another word—life, your zoe that may leave you, or your psuché (or the girl’s) that may leave but may return, like Sarpedon’s breathed back into him when the spear is pulled out of his wound—how did the two words sound alike?—and if in the stranger’s speech an adopted Spartan inflection, not from around here. It was improper, he to begin with, but she would not not answer. You are here, he said, he was taller than Areté, though might not always be, and did not wear a beard; and strong, she could see, his left shoulder and arm bare, his skin freckled, his bright hair almost to his shoulders, his head good-sized. Who is that woman? she is not your mother. She is my mother’s cousin. What is that stream? he asked, for she had looked past him and off to the east where the farm boy was working. Why had she looked past the stranger? A stream, she said. Something else she must say but did not, yet would. What was he?
He was a stranger more than she knew. He was too quick. He came not from here or Argos either; or Attica, she imagined, though he was confident and contentious. He had almost an accent—that embroidered tunic and the long hair—but a knot of hair fastened with a tie of golden cicadas, he’s too young for that, and is he Athenian? And now, some intimate idiom or accent. He thought he knew her name, he said, if she would tell him again. Again? But she had not told him to begin with. Areté, she said. Areté, he said, he said her name. You are old for your age, the man walking beside her said; young for your name. The horses breathed behind her, snorted and stepped. These people of her region were glad to be here, her legs could feel it like wings.
Your mother is not here this time. No, not this time, Areté said. She didn’t ask him where he was from: it wasn’t appropriate. Many places at once comes to her, a respectable girl. Yet forthright to a fault. He expresses an interest in her parents. She can give him her name. Areté, he said it to himself; and Of Mantineia. He must have seen her join the procession there, though she had not noticed him and thought to herself, He was not there. Areté of Mantineia, he said, for that was almost where the procession had commenced. Not of, she said; we do not speak so of maidens. If you are not Areté of Mantineia, who might your father be? this man with bright hair spoke so low, a purring force of care, as to be something new in her reckoning, and not so good. What kind of man? So she could avoid replying to what really he had said not asked. What was that, a question not a question? A moment came: he was gentle in his shoulders, not quite his hands, soft of speech like the doctor she had seen clean a slave’s wound with warm water, but abrupt: how was that? she must ask him, but how to say it? You question the gods, I can smail it in your blood, he said, low in her ear; so even she could barely hear.
Smell? she asks in this moment disquieting for her as the swoop of a sparrowhawk up ahead near the heifer and ram, ram and heifer to be sacrificed. What is that smell, sir? she asks, for he will not answer. He was probably wrong in his own mind as to the gods and her, his own entrails, it came to her: yet did she believe him wrong? Question the gods? she almost laughed; if one came to me, he would do the questioning, she said. They question each other, said the stranger.
Her legs were wings sometimes, not now; in the heat of the day, though the season changing, walking with others her thighs were moist. Her cloak gave freedom beneath its folds. The stranger bumped her as they walked shoulder to shoulder. She was fifteen. Can you smell yourself? Sometimes, she thought.
The river stream glittered once, twice, far off, where a bend came into view and vanished as if it were moving. How did she even see it, and that it or the water was hungry? The stranger asked how she knew the river’s name and if she had traveled on it. Not much of a river, she said, though yes she would like to make a boat, she said—she knew a man from Kerkyra who would help her if he had not left to go home to help his family defend themselves, he had told her how to lay it out with stakes in the ground. She had not named the river it occurred to her.
Go to Kerkyra, the man said, the k sound so close and confiding to her ear as nearly to touch it like something about to happen. Where the women threw tiles off the roofs at the invaders? she retorted, the stranger keeping up with her. He said, And only ships from Athens kept Kerkyra from being taken by the Peloponnesians. Corinth has slaves of theirs, she said. Sickness and health, the thought came to her. Something comes to me, she said. Ah, said the man. He could have been from an island, she thought. She would like to visit an island. It was a thought she had and not to be shared.
Go beyond Kerkyra; no, I think not Kerkyra, said the man; go to where your boatman finds himself. I foresee him meeting you halfway, said the man. You? she said, thinking him deceitful, ignorant, knowing. In Egypt they make better boats, she said; she looked him in the eye next to her, the dark blue in the center of his eyes swelled, she could see, she had never observed that in a healthy human eye and a gray vein hard to make out. The stranger said he would teach her, his voice low. You? She looked beyond him to the river, its reach, its bend, but she had not named the river; she looked to the barley field and the boy who happened to be her friend working, whom she wanted to speak of but could not to the man. He had changed the river for her. How? Teach her to build the boat, he added: if, that is, she knew what she was talking about. She nearly laughed, and his thought passed. The boy in the field? he said; someone she knew, he said. Your birthright, she thought he said.
The road was dusty, but more. She could not find it in herself to reply when the stranger questioned her about boats and then her family, this and that, as if her silence did not matter to him. Your people are everything, he said. It occurred to her that this was not true. She had said enough to a stranger. There be talkers and talkers. She couldn’t leave him behind, his bright hair, one long, darker lock, his eyes, the freckled skin of his neck, his voice. The thought she had not shared she held to with her heart and breathing, legs and sandaled feet. And where did the stones come from. Below? Slowly? How?
She knew little, she said. About boats? about the river? said the stranger—the War and Kerkyra? What was it that she did not know? he said. Love? he chafed her; the water that she could travel on?—or bathe her body in? he said. Had she not these things already known when she arrived? said the man; they shared a riddle, he seemed to say. This personage, she thought. Arrived? she said. Into the world, said the man. Some say so, she said. A little can sound like a lot, she thought of the man. She had heard things like this. In her mother’s presence and those who came to her mother. That she was born knowing. I do not think so, she said. She liked the stranger, and did not like him. He seemed to know what would happen but not what to do with it. Was it her shoulder he touched? Her ear to make her breathe faster? A scent about him, it came and went, fennel and muck. A merchant came to us once from across the sea and told of a healer in Crotone who cut into a man’s eye. Ah there you are: Crotone is right across the Ionian sea from Kerkyra, if you have the chance, said the stranger. You have a gift all your own.
And where did she come from? the man with bright hair asked as if he already knew but he didn’t. I will not talk about what I do not know, she said. Your not is many, said the man. You are not that humble, he said. How about Egyptian boats? the man said. Well, a merchant from the land of Lu passed by when she was a child and told of an evergreen soft of wood that grew harder when made into ladders and window frames. Ah yes, hemlock, said the man; it will not grow here.
She had never seen an acacia tree, Areté now told the man, but the Egyptian boats were made of it with three-foot lengths held together with dowels and the cross-planks which are fine wood and the rest are caulked with papyrus. Which was interesting when you think of it, she said, for a moment leaning toward him. Of what? said the stranger almost with feeling. Papyrus, that is written on, said Areté.
Strips to wrap mummies with, the stranger speaks gruffly; yet they have a god there who tried to convince the king, who was another god—I do not believe this talk, sir, Areté interrupted—persuade the king, an ancient king, on the device of letters to write things down in—I, said Areté, try to remember what I’ve been told and shown—about boatbuilding, wood, horses, herbs—You interrupt, said the bright-haired one… Now, marble from Egypt! he said… He knew everything yet not at all, she thought, but knew she was wrong. And who was he to ask her what he already knew?
Several paces ahead a friend of her mother’s with a handful of herbs from the shared garden, looked back at Areté with the improper stranger. It was not Egyptian priests she had talked to, the stranger observed. Oh, she had read this in a book. Yes, he knew that book. She believed him though she had not named it. And more than a book; growing things, the girl said seriously. But she thought, Which book though? (She felt the weight of it, a thing, a tablet.) And despite what the stranger said, she had not named the river. Ah, and her family? said the man—family is everything. But acacia gum for ink I have used, the girl said.
Who was her father to let a girl walk to Argos all by herself? this man wanted to know, who asked question after question; had she bread in her bag? We are not going to Argos, she said. Had he his own map or seemed clairvoyant or foreseeing but did he not understand the strange distances between places? Yet a truth or two in what he said in all fairness. It was too bold of the stranger; unless it was not, or he was out of touch, or knew something. And she was not quite all by herself. A dispute but not principally with him. You have been here before, he said. (A festival he must mean, not this road wending down from Mantineia, once five villages, now a considerable town.) At thirteen I led the procession (why did she tell him this?). With your mother the priestess, he said. That was then, she said. Your handsome face all made-up white? the stranger went on. It was true. Her forehead had prickled into pieces it felt like. Who needs the paint? said the man; get rid of it. They had drugged the bull with toxic honey, she told him, before they sacrificed him. The man with bright hair glanced away to the barley field; it was falling behind them now, the boy squatting there. Is this what happens if, as she’d been told, you think for yourself? I foresaw you a moon ago, your eyes, how tall you’ve grown, a heifer and a procession, and knew you would come here.
The future is nothing yet, Areté said. You will go to Athens, it is in your blood, your hands, the man said. Maybe we will meet there, he said. It was too bold. This man of changes. She stopped, stood still for a moment. I am not there yet, she said. Two men known to her, passing, turned to look. In their faces a shying back, necks taut, in the eyes a look new to her, yet no, startled, of disapproval and fear, were they the same thing? What will you do there? asked the stranger. She was walking again. Learn to be a healer if I can, she had sometimes only thought but now said. I will go anywhere to learn. You could die of plague, the man smiled; it struck the physicians first. A question in her to find words, her question in her chest, her heartbeat, her feet, her hope unspoken: Who will heal the healer? she thought. Comes the reply—to what?—his scent again. Athens, he said. You will get a whiff of bodies burning on the hill of the Pnyx and in the street. It is of the body, said the girl, it is to be known. Bay trees near the Agora, said the man, beautiful shade from the afternoon sun, oaks, olives down the street, the man smiled—she heard an argument in the voice. You have not seen a tragedy put on. Not in Athens, said Areté. You do not know what that is, said the man. I know the stories, Areté said. That is not the same as the actors speaking, the roar of the dithyramb, said the stranger, who had fallen curiously behind her now. She could leave him behind. We have a theater in Mantineia, she said over her shoulder; it is hard by the Agora. And? said the man. My mother could have sung The Eumen— Ah, interrupted the man, The Furies—Eumenides, Areté continued. Not in the sacred place surely, the stranger objects; not even in Mantineia surely. But then, differently, Ah yes, when she came back from Athens it was an exception offered and allowed her—wise she was—even expected? I do not go now, said Areté. Why not? said the man with bright hair. It frightens me to no good end. And the masks are false. Like the gods? said the man, an edge in his voice.
A deep, shrill urge of horses behind Areté. She felt it in the small of her back, the nape of her neck.
It was upsetting.
What was?
But I know the stories, Areté raised her voice as if the man were gone. And in Argos, she added, where they do not love Sparta, they have a theater, I have heard. What has Sparta to do with it? said the man. They are always ready for war, said Areté. You confuse me, said the man, his husky voice half left with her (how was that?). And your family? You will not speak of them always? said the man.
She had not said that—and his always was foreign or deceiving to her ear, it confused things, she felt his sidelong eyes, what did her look tell him? Your people are everything and nothing, said the stranger. Mantineia, you have the Temple of Poseidon, the hills, a mountain—Two, she said—The man laughed, I couldn’t fool you; the forest … —Why would you?—the forest where you hunt. His knowledge sounding in her curious ears fostering mixed feelings and times; she retorted as his equal, And what I once left unburied, she said unexpectedly, as they walked..
Your kill? the stranger again, an unwanted equal. Not mine. A man’s head we found, said Areté. The stranger seemed to laugh, Aha! The war. And the body? We did not find the body, she heard her pride against the stranger. Maybe I will go back and bury the head, she said but not in apology to this man, as they walked.
Had it a face? It is right to do, I understand, he said; vengeance or a soldier—both. It is in your hands always, you know—he touched her fingers lightly as she replied at the same time by offering them. Yet then, that always of his sounding unclear in her ears, what Areté had dreaded, but now did not: Who is your father? he said.
I do not know him, she said. Words gone as soon as said, she put him in his place she thought not with rudeness or refutal, with a glimpse of the future as she now saw it but had not said it, which for a moment between them, she, only a girl, observing him, his face, silenced him. Scandalous, the man said then, smiling at her mouth—how a word pretends to say a lot, she thought. You know him, but you don’t, he said from some cutting eminence still gentle. It brought dread again of sacrifice, she realized, or loss or some killing prayer, as they made their way onward.
My mother has not told me, she said, hearing in her fact the question, her voice plucky contempt for whom?
Does she not know?—the man as if he did. Ready somehow for this improper thing she a mere girl has been asked, what Areté must say, she did not yet. Your mother of course a sometime priestess I believe…(false, the I believe; half-false, his next word)…legendary, he said. Who is she then? (a question deceptive at the least)
You ask? I would not say her name in public. Who is she to me, you—? You are right; a good girl, said the man, not quite the same stranger now, as they walked in the procession and spoke softly if not according to custom. What do you call her then? he said for some reason.
Nothing.
Or mother?
Or her name once or twice, I think, she told this man now. Was it not hers to confide? He seems to know things already that he will still ask. I will do what I will do, said Areté. You? said the man. Are you your mother’s daughter? he said. I? she said, understanding a friendly forwardness he meant; maybe not, she said then. I knew her and think I do still, he said; so that Areté thought he did. One of the few, he said. What other woman would be talked of so? said the man.
Some priestesses remain chaste; of others it is not required, said Areté. Though sidelong as they walked she met the man’s look, whatever he was. Areté looked him in the eye for a moment: Many know her, she said.
He seemed to search her face. You will be something, a healer, yet something else. She shrugged. She would not ask the stranger’s name. He said, In Athens they said that foreseeing the plague she delayed its coming.
How could that be? said Areté.
Some sacrifice she made—Of what? said the girl, surprised at herself—years before the plague on a hill near Piraeus, said the man.
But of her own pregnancy, said Areté, she said against Zeus that one’s own child is nothing to the soul’s carry. Both could be true, said the man with bright hair. What could he mean?—Areté had a thought about the stranger she would keep to herself. He looked ahead. She does not tread on air, said Areté.
Areté, the stranger said the girl’s name, she is something, your mother. She knows what should be. She has her story. And she is not here. Be a woman who is least talked of, Pericles said, said Areté, I remember the traveler’s words when he stopped one night with us. He read from his writing scroll, events of war, said Areté. It is a time of war and sickness, travelers tell what they have seen, said the man with bright hair. He stopped the night with us—Yes, said the man—he read to us—Yes, said the man—of new sea battles and the walls of a city built hastily with stones of many kinds, said Areté, one event, then another, the starving of criminals and summer fields of ripe corn, draining a canal into another channel to leave enemy ships high and dry—and he cited the truthful words of Pericles. He—our visitor—read what he had written on his scroll.
Ah, he carries papyrus with him like an Alexandria merchant, I may have been one myself, the stranger seemed to laugh or change the subject. Rolls of papyrus, Areté said. And a speech for the dead. He knew my mother well, I think—I think he’d visited once before? (why tilted she her voice as if in question?)—and understands the war—Foresees, said the stranger—and …—Areté’s thought returned about the stranger, that he had sought out her mother once. Pericles was right, said the man. You will have important friends, I see.
Why confiding was she in the man? To know not him but what he knew, she thought. And to ask what he knew already. Who did that? (And what was it he thought Pericles was right about?) Well, like the man who had read to them one night, who revered her mother, the man with bright hair was no one thing. His smell, which was of need and breath; his probing, his foreign presence. Vulgarly predicting the future. His eyes she observed changing. In his prime yet with a used flush across his face. Not entirely here? A man though. A face of faces. Loved, unloved. A face to question. Handsome? Ruddy but not from work. What work? From knowing one thing to knowing a better? it came to her, were there no steps in his finding his way to remember?
The stranger let her walk ahead. He said, You don’t know him yet. Riddling, he meant her father. You are wise. You have stood by the ramp at the Temple of Poseidon. You recite the poets. Things will be said of you.
No, I am not wise at all. People say things but not always what I want to know. They change the subject. I have heard that Poseidon is tired of the sea.
You talk, said the man. You don’t do things by halves.
How would you know? said Areté. Again a touch, a strength in the small of her back, a warmth in the nape of her neck.
You are used to speaking. Your mother takes pride in you. She wants you free, but what is that? You have heard the talk in your Agora, which is nothing next to the Athens. Great statues of horsemen and the marble herms kouros statuettes of … You hear yourself. You learn by yourself. No, I learn from my mother, said Areté; she knows people far and wide. But it takes something to speak, said the man. It will take you there.
Where?
Megara, the wild camping; the woods. You will go through Corinth, I see it—Not today, not tomorrow, she broke in—because you know what is there, said the stranger; or will be—The isthmus, she said, interrupting a man, yet he had asked her, maybe even to show she knew. He had made her talk; talk is gossip, yet talk is ask; ask what? The isthmus asks for a canal, she said, and he interrupting her to say, And you will build one; I will see to it. And laughed too close with his scent of fennel or of seashore or a busy port (his hair or full-blown force like an orchid), yet almost as if he had done with her. Aren’t you part orphan like me? he said, being droll; the horses nervous with each other. No one can teach you, Areté. Did he mean no one will? His voice gave a twist to her gut. Geometry? she said; the art of fishing? medicine? anatomy? Only you, said the man. You can receive messages, I believe; but from where?
A twist in her belly, an ache of blood, a drawing inward of a belly muscle or somewhere she took as a message as her mother had told her, yet now another’s for a moment sounds she must know, aching words were they? They don’t tell you what you know you need to know, said the man, but people around you will tell you what to think. What messages? she burst out at him; and Our Agora boasts a theater and a temple. Ah yes, you frequent the Agora? said the man. The Agora is not for women, said Areté but it is better than only a King speaking. Is there a king? said the man like a strange foreigner. Do women make laws? said this alien man answering was it soundings inside her. What do healers do? said the girl, if that was what she was going to be.
Even in step with her, the man’s walk was different from hers. She did not trust him. Live your life, he muttered. I have things to do here before I go anywhere, she said. Yes, but what? the man asked, and touched the bag slung over her shoulder. Did he know the answer to his question?
She thought what was happening, it was like fear though not for her life; was she then to be a priestess one day? This man would pretend to know. He turned away now where? He was like the horses, who were not being butchered today. From far away—many places almost at once, she liked to think—or more years than he himself could have had; a new reserve from him, even a dignity with slight embarrassment which quickly passed in him, as if now (did he think) she would take care of things, he having clumsily prayed her to00a pride unspeakably too much.
Why had he said she’d named the stream, which was not true? she’d turned to ask but hadn’t. Some riddle to entertain a girl? The stranger, acting upon the moment like an opportunity he had made, had reached the first of the two horses as it reared its massive chest and shoulders, built dark and shining, nearly tipping the cart behind, and Areté heard the man’s afterthought said not quite to her: Even a huntress, a girl without father or mother or brothers travel to Argos by herself where women and girls would never be seen, to say nothing of performing in a Chorus, to say nothing of the Corinth Games (which weren’t on now, granted, but)—you have friends, but where are they today?
But she had told him they were not at all bound for Argos today—much less Corinth! I am not without mother, she called out, she would not give him more. Shewished for her friend Clea. They would read together and retell the stories each to each and read so deeply and know word for word the island poet who had three brothers, and the poet of another isle nearer they secretly thrilled to though disapproved, too, or would help if they could, his Willing Woman—Wild fig tree of the rocks—the stranger’s delight who Loves-them-all—his raging iambics and battered heart.* An orchid at the seashore once Areté had almost picked.
The bay horse in the traces of a cart, the other stepping crisply now coming up alongside with a boy up, bare legs tight to the dappled flanks, and now this second horse made the trouble, its power in its beautiful nerves. The stranger laughed, He has bitten her. Everything at once, Areté was sure he had said. The mare yanking the cart lurched into a canter, halted—her angry eyes, the black blaze down her forehead—and made the sound, the whinny but with what meaning? Rage? Interest? Hurt? And, shying, as if not of the procession, reared to stagger backward to go over almost but tipped upward at the top seeing her, she’s sure, and did not fall, as the other behind her reared like a wild horse to be trained for chariots.
There are no interruptions, did she hear the man somewhere say? It was a thought but not hers. Areté does not hold with talk like that, she realizes. The mare almost overturning the cart to try to bite the stallion turned and was almost behind the cart; then both kicking their forelegs up to hoof anything in their way but was it horselike when they were not killers?—a question she realized for she had been afraid of horses, their size and utter godlike grace and delicate nerves… The procession had stopped yet started again—both—the cart containing two women she knew bedecked for the festival, though why should they not be walking? Were they ill? and two small children hanging on and to each other, the dust from the country road rising so near it came between her and the mountains. Not everything at once.
His words I will take you to Egypt so remembered when surely he hadn’t said them. And show you one of the great Nubian donkeys near the first cataract fathering the most generous mules. But he was gone. Where did he go? she said, how will he take me?
And Cleon, the elder of the two men earlier who were aghast, looked at Areté, shook his head. The horses, facing opposite directions had collided side to side—she turned to walk on yet turned back, twisting abruptly so she felt it in her ribs, her heart, her knees, her chest and life pulsing with blood, her forehead, her skin prickling like pieces of her face—stallion dropping to his knees, saving himself his knees bent to the very ground—animal noise smoking up around them far more than could come from even this dusty, here and there stone-pocked road where the stranger had been, she well knew, and now he was gone. Into the animal clamor he was gone, into these horses or their smoke.
Who was he to do that? The question gave her pause. Hair more bright than any color. Of what time was he? Nor had she need of this stranger’s name. The way he walked, she saw his body. Balanced, yet what? The stranger gone, maybe strong as flame, a scent of him like ginger or fermented or stale ground-ivy, or red-finger root (for unhappy lungs hope, for throat and tongue truth), again toadflax—for scrofula, and in her ears some mixture like his body mixed lingering like her own cadences of step or breath—what is walking? Is? Ask a woman—and she had not been able to say to him, Blood indeed! an old man she knew had nosebleeds easing imbalances of the brain, must there not be good wounds that bring balance; nor able to say to the stranger, I did not name the river, as you said, so you could not have heard me. Up ahead a ways the stone ramp leading to the Poseidon Temple, its roof held up by four pillars weighed down upon (but secretly equal to it), the mountains behind, and the forests, why would he mention what she knew but was hardly where the festival journeyed today? And who would get his gods mixed up who told her it was nothing to her that they favored her? For how would he know? Who was the stranger to know the cheap rumors of her parentage, spoken among the older ones sometimes, who believed things even of her priestess mother? Yet with him some quick leap from one thing to another to another, each known, she could tell someone. Why? Who? And it was as suddenly true as, immediately upon being true, it was likely not.
A thought. She found a seashore shell in her bag and looked for a child to give it to. With her shell hand she strode ahead and reached to clasp the hand of a girl walking ahead. And I have said too much but not enough, she said out loud, more than she understood. It was a thought. A mixture that was new and liquid or left from liquid to another. The older cousin turned back to answer or to look. Everyone knew something. Your secret in return for what? Areté felt her chest open and spread at the thought of too much yet not enough, as when her mother had told her, it now seemed long ago, how she was changing, which they both knew. Some said menstrual was a sacrifice within, yet she could tell Areté did not think so. Yet her body or parts of it could think it had occurred to Areté like physical strength, like virtue (her name), though how to say this and to her mother, who knew so much and only so much. To have always more than one reason. That her blood appearing from a reservoir inside her to then move fostered days and moments as well as moons. Entrails to see the past as well, she said aloud and her mother’s cousin looked back and smiled, was it at a joke or in irked sympathy for such a girl? Like your mother, she said. No, you heard me, Areté said.
You hear me thinking, her mother had said. Your birth, she said. You have some prophecy in you. The girl did not believe it; if womb blood, then like Cleon’s nose-bleed balances, what womb also could do, she could not say to her mother. Your birth, her mother said. But the girl was sad that morning months ago asking again that this woman everyone knew to be remarkable speak of Areté’s father. Not knowing her father, to not know her life. This priestess who saw the future in a ram’s liver, for Areté had seen the liver quivering that day with her own eyes; and once cooked, the liver her mother would not eat. I have not spoken of him, her mother said. It was better. For who? the girl replied. In return you have been given freedom disproportionate but because you were free already, were you not? No one Areté knew talked like that. Who else? Someone else?—because there must always be a response? She had her life, it came to her.
Chanting ahead—the name of the goddess—the temple some distance. The priestess led the procession and Areté knew the heaviness of the key she herself, a maiden, had carried once to the temple, it was heavy for her then. She did not see herself a priestess and again did not wholly understand her mother.
The stranger could not be gone like that into the rising dust. Behind the horses then? Between them—into what was between them. Could he know why she would go to Athens? How did she? She had two reasons, which only her bosom friend Clea knew. To heal the plague was one and to find her father. What was the difference? Why would he be in Athens? He could be in Egypt or dead in Potidaea. He could be living in Miletus or Megara. We do not need to understand everything; or in Kerkyra he could be.
She turned to see far away the boy she knew stand up like a giant now this tall boy, she could measure just how tall. He’s heard the chanting. He could contemplate the procession. She was with him in an instant, his name close to her tongue, her heart, in her fingers, not to be spoken though a message like a prayer saying what she hadn't yet; his shirt was white there in the distance, a small stain on it of dirt or blood, younger than Areté but not much, a neighbor and more, and the land around them in sunlight, cloudy rock, earth-soil, green cover like an early crop, this whole region, Arkadia or Peloponnesus, took time to know, she had not seen a map, the land was just like something else, she felt it inside her, it was not the sea; she had visited the boy weeks ago under a deep black shadow of cloud when it broke and plunged him into remembered rain and it came to her then that water in other shapes might exist and though she could not tell what, that very not what turned land like long time, too long it came to her and now deep to get back to the beginning which maybe did not exist beneath it all and it might sound with a hard blacksmith’s clang; so she would look nearer home, though needed to ask, but could draw with a stick of charcoal. And what was beneath? Footstep kicks stone. Soil deep and granite deeper they would go, and overhead was not one map but many in season.
The stranger gone, let others blab to her mother how. It would grow like rumor, or be silenced. People talk, men talk; and with his changing were they unwell eyes she for one had studied, the stranger talked. Yet just now with a new reserve that came from far away or more years than he himself knew. A passing awe of him, a random warning.
The walking is a comfort. It measures the distance and takes us there. Now beside her her much older cousin fingered Areté’s hair band that had fallen loose. Where did the wild quince blossom come from? cousin asks. Areté had not noticed. Your mother put it there? No, she did not. That man touched you. My bag. Does he know what you carry there? Red-finger root? Areté would not say a word to this hearty person about the stranger who was even more so now. Cousin fixes the blossom in the hairband, binding the dark braids. Her fingers are discolored from years of pinching leaves and stems in the garden. This quince color of not orange not pink: both—with from the center growing upon what fine, leaning stems the tiny messengers: how could a man have placed such a thing in her blossom in the hair band. Where the stranger came from maybe he has gone to. It risked everything, she wanted to say to him too late, respect for strangers.
It was not a wrong done to her. Yet she would show him something she knew of him. A man who presumed out of all proportion to give her independence when it was not his to give, being a stranger. Was he one? To draw her years ahead as if she with him were there too—she had missed her chance to tell him, No—that she was only here and now.
A fisherman was trudging somewhere, two loach in his basket, only she perhaps could make out the rays and across each slender length the double stripes singly shining. Since before dawn, when darkness breathes with what must be light, she knows he has been at the tireless stream that runs off the wider river, his handline marked by a cork float. She looked back beyond the horses and stopped for just a second. Is she a traveler? Is that all she will be? Who will she ask? Her cousin? The fir trees massed darker green at the foot of the mountains?—where, known not only to her mother, she has hunted not only alone; her gaze sweeps again to the stream which reflects something moving in the air above even this procession. Olive grove on a leaning hill, leaves aglint, branches like what she kept to herself in her legs and eyes, shoulders and ears, questions of the body that gave her pause, for in it there are no interruptions, it came to her.
Who could the stranger be? He had asked about her mother. Nowhere did Areté see him but in her mind’s eye, for he was gone. (Her cousin close brushing shoulders.) If Areté met the stranger ten years from now would he look different? Wellborn but become something else, or not become what he desired. Her skin had prickled like her face coming apart in the hot dusty air of the horses. It was then she suspected he might be some strange personage, his eyes’ inner blue swelling like illness or uneasy power, who knew the war developing that she had only heard some of read aloud by a traveler not long ago who thought it the greatest movement of mankind yet, though had corrected himself when asked by her mother citing oracles in memory. Yet even she was amazed to learn that country folk up in Attica were taking shelter in the City. He himself, writing a history, though not really writing it yet, had stopped in Mantineia for the night, having known her years ago—was that it?—heard of her?—more than heard; liked her. He knew well to keep clear of Spartans and get back to Athens, which was not his home in fact, which once had been Thrace. But of himself he was in some way right, speaking not only to her mother but curiously to Areté, it was not just people but a way of writing difficult to her ears or harsh or like science, not the beloved Herodotus, whom this traveler had once heard read, but was this history more like the new medicine being explained? the traveler, for a moment not liking his own words, had asked her mother, who had turned to Areté.
Cleon walked beside Areté—what is walking with another?—and beside him his nephew. Your great friend is nowhere to be seen, Cleon said. Your friend she took for teasing; she was wrong. She looked at the two men. In a single glance could Areté tell them what she had been through? (Where did the stranger go? Into the forest, into the cool mountain? Where was the wagon now, inappropriate for a sacred procession?) Cleon did not read her face aright. You too must go, he said, as they walked, who had been good to her, hadn’t he? when she was a kid asking questions. Why had he been?
To vanish, did Cleon mean? she asked—she could not tell. Or Athens. For years she had wished to talk with him. His nephew said, We want you here, Areté, like your mother. Hardly thirty, a man almost twice her age, he liked her. Leon, a builder of houses earthen or of stones when he could find them—and with her help, she a builder too or a thinker laboring. He had come upon her hunting once. It was a little secret they had. What was next? Men talk. Leon brought them a haunch of deer and her mother astonished her and roasted it—meat of all things. They examined its color.
You are unteachable, your mother says the same, said Cleon now. She means something else, Cleon, Areté raises her hand to stress her words. A diaphanous cloud on the eastern horizon of sudden interest, fear and in the sky a heartstopping genius as in the land the boy works everywhere you look, boy and barley, he stands up and it is funny, too, he is taller than a few minutes ago. We all speak, sir, it is, it is…what we must do. She is afraid for only a moment. She needed no shield.
She would tell her mother not everything—who said, Be not a slave to memory. But this: Cleon aghast at the stranger or that Areté spoke with him. Her mother took pride in Areté. She had said so. Hair, blood, it is all changing, just as we are coming and going, her mother agreed with her, they could both talk; but nothing greater than one’s own children, her mother would say. We must run any risk for them. So her mother thought the world of her. But what then?
Areté felt the day inside her, her feet on the road, a stray stone. Did the sun smile on Areté? A bloody ceremony to come, the meat shared by priests who apparently did not eat it. What would become of her? She could not share her thoughts with Leon but she did, her steps bound northward. Does Cleon want me to vanish? she said. What you want to learn can be taught, she said. The Plague will end soon in Athens, she said. The future enters into you before you are aware of it, my mother said, and Areté felt it was the body she had meant. It came to Areté to tell Leon the thought she had not with the stranger about Kerkyra shared: The trouble there is sometimes the mind sick and in need of healing, to hear what is written about the revolution—armies against navies now.
More than scorn in Cleon’s eyes. Was he his own enemy? it came to her as if Leon could see it in her eyes, or not. Leon was glad Areté shared such thoughts. He did not quite grasp why. Nor did she. Run a risk—walk a risk—for one’s child, yet giving freedom not asked for. Her mother protected the Mysteries. People came to her. Her hands did not grow old. Her eyes warm. Leon listened. He liked how Areté talked. And her silence now, though able to speak, though silent looking back in vain for the man and the two horses.
Who was right? What law would she follow? Not know her own father, he became something else if it went on. So much else to know. Athens. To have your life and not know it, a scent of licorice, a merchant traveler had called it. How to say that to Leon.
* Archílochus in Richmond Lattimore, trans., Greek Lyrics, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960, pp. 2, 3.
***
Pages excerpted here from Joseph McElroy’s nearly completed tenth novel unfold, this time, in an expressly historical (indeed ancient) setting; yet its distance from earlier work such as A Smuggler’s Bible (1966), Ancient History: A Paraphase (1971), Lookout Cartridge (1974), Plus (1977), The Letter Left to Me (1988), and Actress in the House (2003) may not only turn upon premises remote from contemporary America but also parallel common issues of origin and family which upon their revision if not dissolution release themes rethinking social relations, history, polis, science, nature, prophecy. Thus, with still greater scope, Women and Men (1987), the elliptical Iraq-War-era Cannonball (2013), and after half a century Hind’s Kidnap: A Pastoral on Familiar Airs (1969 – to be reissued this September, 2021). Night Soul and Other Stories appeared in 2011.