Jocasta: Wife and Mother. Brian Aldiss

clutched her sturdy naked form, seeming to be swayed by her pleas. ‘It can do no harm, dearest. Let us resolve this mysterious blight, once and for all.’

      ‘No! The drought will break in time, as it must. Remain quiet and be happy with me.’

      He looked intensely into her eyes. ‘Happy? Have I ever known what that empty word means?’

      Jocasta kissed his cheek. ‘Oh, a curse can do a magnitude of harm, my Oedipus. More than you know. Do not act, I beg of you. Let inaction be the saviour of the day! Please, please. Stay with me, make love to me …’

      He struggled to free himself from her embrace. Such was her tenacity that he could not escape. ‘By Hercules, woman, what possesses you? Let me go!’

      Her plump body seemed to surround him, her plump arms held him tight. Her dark hair streamed about him, while in its dark tent her eyes gleamed. She pressed her open mouth to his lips. She forgot her pledge to be chaste.

      ‘We possess each other. Do you wish to lose that gift? Stay here. Come dusk, the throng will disperse quietly enough. Make them no rash promises. Drink wine with me, ravish me, do nothing outside these four walls.’

      Reluctantly, he allowed himself to be persuaded by her eloquence. Lying against her damp and steaming body, he raised her right arm and buried his face in the fur of her armpit.

      As he penetrated her, she said in a sigh, ‘I have no reality but through you …’

      So for a while longer all was well with them. Later it would be seen that these were the good times.

      It was next morning that Semele, prowling the palace before dawn with one of her pet griffins, found that the Sphinx had disappeared. She crept into the den where her two grandsons, Eteocles and Polynices, lay clasped together, sleeping in each other’s arms.

      ‘Wake up, boys. That winged monster has gone. The omen is bad. Your papa will go mad when he finds out. You must search in town and round about to bring it back.’

      ‘For Apollo’s sake, Great-Grandmother!’ Eteocles protested. ‘It’s still dark!’

      ‘You old witch, you see in the dark, but you must have missed the Sphinx,’ said Polynices. ‘Go back to sleep and let us do the same.’

      ‘Lazy wretches. You’ve been playing with each other again. I can smell it. Get up and find the Sphinx.’

      The boys rose, slipped into their robes, and set out for the street. Once there, they made for the tiropita stall, and passed a pleasant hour, eating, sipping lemon cordial, and exchanging jests with some country lads.

      When they returned to the palace, it was to find the place in an uproar, with Oedipus shouting that the Sphinx must be found.

      ‘It is ordered that I keep the beast!’ he roared. ‘Without her I die.’

      Jocasta stood with her back against a pillar, watching. She was accustomed by now to witnessing this wilder side of Oedipus’ character, which was liable to burst forth in time of trouble: accustomed to it, certainly, but still disconcerted by it. She turned away from his shouting.

      Slaves scuttled here and there, some daring to snigger among themselves. Semele squatted in a corner of the inner court to watch the excitement. Irritated further by her grin, Oedipus went and glared down at her. ‘I suppose you know where the magic beast is hiding.’

      The old woman raised her left arm and scratched her armpit with sharp nails.

      ‘She’s laying, isn’t she? So of course she has turned invisible to protect herself. I wish I had the art! Why get so worked up, sonny?’

      ‘I know the creature’s most likely to be invisible. We’re looking for swarms of flies. Where they cluster, there she’ll be – if they’re not on you!’

      The palace had many rooms. Some had been huts, built long ago, but slowly incorporated without great thought into the main building. Jocasta investigated some of the more remote rooms without enthusiasm. Coming on one at the far end of a corridor, she pushed open its bronze door and went in, holding an oil lamp above her head.

      The door slammed shut behind Jocasta. A brilliant light filled the room, almost blinding her. Through a mist she glimpsed a sombre old man, still as a statue. In confusion and apprehension, she regarded his high forehead, his white hair and beard; certainly he did not appear threatening. Wrapped in an unfashionable toga-type robe, he stood before her, holding a scroll. His blue eyes, coddled between heavy eyebrows above and fleshy bags beneath, were fixed steadily on the queen.

      ‘Who are you? What are you doing here?’ she asked, not without a tremor in her voice.

      Only then did he move, to give an appearance of life. ‘This verb “to do”, how brief it is, yet what a freight it bears …’

      She perceived his response as unnecessarily complex. In what she thought as a deep meditative voice, the ancient claimed that he might ask her the identical question.

      He asked what indeed was he doing in this place. Could he be said to be doing anything? And where was here? He was a victim of displacement. ‘But … why, I believe – no, it can’t be … Yes, you’re the queen who comes to a bad end. Jocasta, isn’t it?’

      Was he speaking in her voice? She fumbled to find a latch on the door. There was no latch.

      ‘What do you mean, “comes to a bad end”? I have only to call a guard and you will come to a bad end yourself.’

      ‘I think not, madam. Since we are meeting, we have made this encounter in another probability sphere, out of time. Out of time, no one can hear your call. Besides, why call? I intend you no harm. It may be that you intend me harm.’

      Jocasta decided to put the matter to the test. She called loudly. No answer. She beat on the door with her fists and called. No answer. She tried to open the door. It would not budge.

      ‘What trick is this?’ she asked. ‘Or am I having a siezure?’

      The old man gave her a piercing look. She seemed to hear him say, ‘No one will come. Presumably if we are, as I suppose, in a separate probability sphere, then we are entirely alone, encased, as it were, in our own private abstract universe. If you stepped through that door you might well encounter – nothingness … We are at once here and not here, like a cat sealed in a box. But you need not be frightened. It might indeed be fruitful for you to regard our conversation as a monologue within yourself.’

      A monologue? She could not understand the implications of that suggestion.

      ‘You don’t frighten me,’ she said, pressing a finger to her lower lip to stop it trembling. ‘What do you want, anyway?’

      The elder explained that he had no wants, at least as far as this present probability sphere was concerned.

      ‘Could you stop saying “probability sphere”? It makes my tummy rumble.’

      Ignoring this remark, the elder said that their meeting was of academic interest only. Indeed, he went on to say, in a half-humorous manner, it might well substantiate a claim made by his son that he was non compos mentis …

      Jocasta, he claimed, was not a real person, but rather a character in a play he had written. To believe one had substance was subjectively almost the same as actually having substance. She lived a brief life on stage, but was otherwise a fiction.

      ‘What you are saying is meaningless to me.’

      ‘Nevertheless, I think you understand what it means to live a lie. Living a fiction is much the same.’

      This statement, he said, was not at all insulting, for fiction represented another kind of life, a rich imaginative metaphorical life in which mankind itself invented the circumstances; it was therefore an improvement on real life, where people had to endure or do battle with the circumstances in which they found themselves. He said, in his casual rather grumbling way, that she must labour under no illusion about