Jocasta: Wife and Mother. Brian Aldiss

‘I have in my life answered one great puzzling question. I have worked out – and my solution has been confirmed by certain Athenians – that it is not the sun that goes round the earth, but the earth that goes round the sun.’

      She gave a grunt of contemptuous laughter. ‘Divination! Often unreliable.’

      ‘Mathematics. Always reliable.’

      ‘Then you are surely mistaken. We can see that the earth is stationary and that the sun goes round it. Any fool can tell that, ancient Aristarchus.’

      Unperturbed, he replied, ‘Fools can tell us many wrong things. Fools mock me for my deduction, yet I have arrived scientifically at my conclusion. The earth is round, and travels about the sun in a grand circle. The earth also rotates on its axis, like a wheel, making day and night. At a lunar eclipse, we see from the earth’s shadow on the moon that it is a round body.

      ‘You must think more rationally. The old life of magic is dead, or all but dead. We are now in a new epoch, which offers much more than the old.

      ‘The past has no existence, except in our memories, nor the future either, except in our expectations. Your future may lie within you, curled up, sleeping within your nature. You must not become a slave to appearances.’

      ‘I prefer appearances …’ She turned away. ‘I regret I am not able to talk more. Your speech only confuses me. Goodnight, Aristarchus of Samos.’ She walked away down the beach.

      He called in his weak voice, ‘Do not fear confusion. Doubt is a better guide than faith.’ The words were almost lost beneath the sound of the lapping of the waves, yet she heeded them.

      She stopped and turned back. ‘I apologise if I have been impolite. I am glad to have spoken to a wise and distinguished man. I regret that my mind is burdened. I make bad company. I’m sorry …’

      He raised a hand in benediction and farewell. She found there were tears in her eyes.

      The old man’s words were too unsettling. Surely she could not be as mistaken in her perceptions as his statements implied …

      He had said that both past and future were qualities. What else had he said? Had he said there was no future path? Had he said, ‘You must not judge by appearances …’?

      Perhaps there was sense in that remark, as in much he had said. Jocasta was disturbed to think that her response, about preferring appearances, which she had considered clever at the moment, was rather silly …

      Appearances differed so sharply from realities.

      In the early hours of the morning, when the moon sank beyond the shoulder of the hill, she dreamed she was blind and alone in the world.

      After his vigil, Oedipus slept. His slumbers were drugged, for once again Apollo had turned his face against him.

      Ismene wakened her mother, who was sleeping heavily. ‘Mother, the sun has come up, and so must we be.’

      Jocasta said heavily, ‘It’s not that the sun has come up. Rather the other way round.’

      Ismene laughed. ‘Wake up, Mother!’

      Jocasta lay where she was, fatigued by sleeplessness, trying to go over in her mind the conversation with Aristarchus. Had it happened or had it been a vivid dream?

      In a while, Antigone came to her mother, kneeling by her and looking earnestly into her face.

      ‘How are things with you, Mother? Did you sleep badly?’

      Jocasta put an arm about Antigone’s neck and kissed her cheek.

      ‘No, I slept well and had a beautiful dream.’

      Later, Antigone and Ismene walked with their brothers among the market stalls, followed by their personal servants. The stalls were pitched along the land that ran on the cliff above the beach and led to Apollo’s temple. There were decorative objects of bronze to be bought, mirrors and suchlike, and pendants of blue glass, wooden toys from eastern lands, perfumes, drugs, bangles, sandals for women’s feet, bright-dyed costumes, rugs from the southern climes, figs and foods of all sorts.

      Antigone bought a pair of gold sandals, which her handmaid carried for her.

      Among the jostle of people, some of them preparing for the festivities that night, were warriors, a strutting sort of persons. They drank at drink stalls and eyed the pretty women passing. One such youth was pressing through the crowds on his own. He addressed Antigone. He had a great thatch of dark hair on his head, suppressed by a metal and leather helmet, and a scanty beard on his chin. A long leather tunic covered his torso, crossed by a belt from which hung a sword. His features were pleasing enough, although his look was grim.

      He grasped Antigone’s arm, to detain her amid the crowd.

      ‘So you must be sister to King Oedipus,’ he said.

      ‘Take your stinking hand away from me!’ She was immediately furious that he, a stranger, should touch her. Her blue eyes, blazing, became darker than the Aegean sea.

      The warrior held firm. ‘I could dispossess you with one word!’ He would have said more, but Eteocles, rushing up, caught the warrior a stunning blow across the face with the side of his open palm.

      ‘You dare touch my royal sister!’ he shouted, preparing himself for attack. But the warrior was falling back with a bleeding nose which took all his attention.

      Polynices, jumping in, seized the warrior by the throat with both hands. ‘Who may you be, you wretch? Tell me or I’ll strangle you!’

      ‘They call me Chrysippus of Cithaeron,’ said the warrior, breaking free and grasping the hilt of his sword. ‘And you shall remember it.’

      Eteocles immediately took hold of the man’s sword arm, twisting it behind his back so that he fell over backwards to the ground. Whereupon Eteocles jumped on his stomach. Polynices got in a swift kick to his groin.

      Chrysippus of Cithaeron rolled over, groaning. Staggering to his feet, seeing himself outnumbered, he ran off through the crowd, shouting that he could unmask them all if he wished.

      The two brothers roared with angry laughter. Their sisters embraced them, praising their bravery before leading them to a stall where the stallholder was selling wine from full-bellied pigskins.

      ‘Wine for libation!’ said Ismene, filling four earthenware cups from the stall. ‘Teach a commoner to touch the sons and daughters of King Oedipus! Well done, brave brothers!’

      ‘Yes, hurrah!’ cried Antigone. ‘But why did that wretch call me the sister of Oedipus?’

      ‘The cur was drunk,’ said Polynices. ‘As we shall shortly be.’

      They all laughed, and dipped their noses into the cups, drinking until the wine ran down on the outsides, as well as the insides, of their throats.

       4

      A meeting was held in Thebes while the king and his family were away. Absence had made some hearts grow bolder. The main speakers were men in the prime of their youth, with golden hair and good sinews. Older men and women stood on the fringes of the crowd that had gathered. Children, those who had energy enough, ran about and played in the dust.

      ‘The curse that has come upon this town will soon kill us all unless we do something about it,’ said one youthful speaker. ‘We bring our green boughs to the altars of Pallas, and the sacred embers of divination, yet still the drought prevails, the River Ismenus dries, and still its waters turn to mud.’

      ‘How are we to water our fields?’ called a man wrapped in a sheep’s hide. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

      Other voices shouted that there was death in their pastures also, and in their patches of garden, and in every place where once things used to grow green.