“I’d be surprised if you had to look at it at all! You’ve been playing the part for ages. I thought if I read it over every week or so, I’d pretty much learn it again without having to labor over it.” Sudden tears filled her eyes and she gasped at a remembered pain so intimate it was like childbirth.
“Stavvy?”
“I’m all right, Josh. It’s just… I was really reading it to distract myself, but I keep finding things in it that apply to me. Like Iphigenia being tricked to come down to Aulis. To get married, they said, when all they wanted to do was use her. You know that, you know all about it, and yet you let yourself….”
“They wouldn’t be acting it out every year in every city of Women’s Country if it weren’t applicable to something.”
Stavia picked at her salad, the tears drying in the corners of her eyes, wondering at herself once more. “Things happen to you when you’re young. And you think you know what it was that happened, but you really don’t. Then later, sometimes years later, you suddenly understand what was really going on. And you feel such a fool because it’s too late to do anything about the mistakes you made. I keep thinking of examples. Like the day Beneda and I were on the wall, and Chernon came up on the armory roof to see us. I was so excited. I thought he liked me. It seemed so casual, so fortuitous. I hadn’t any idea what was really happening.”
He put his hand over hers. “Do you want me to come home with you?”
“No. I’ll just cry, and I don’t need anyone to help me do that.”
“You’re sure? Just for company?”
“I’m sure. Go help Corrig. He’s teaching a class in the mysteries. At breakfast yesterday he said he needed you to keep up with things. I’ll be better by suppertime.” She kissed him and left him in the shop, still polishing the plate the sausages had been on, staring after her with a reflection of her own pain.
At home in the quiet of her own room she lay on her bed, propped on pillows, the book facedown on her lap. She didn’t need to read it. She remembered it.
ANDROMACHE If it is not as poets say it was, why did they kill you, maiden?
IPHIGENIA (Sighing with impatience)
Upon the shore the hosts of Hellas stood, ranked by their thousands near their bird-winged ships, come full of martial fervor to the aid of Menelaus whose wife was raped away.
ANDROMACHE So much we know. Helen was here. We did not want her, but she was here.
IPHIGENIA Don’t interrupt. If I lose the rhythm, I forget what I’m saying. Upon the shore, etc., etc., whose wife was raped away. Ah, let’s see—They stayed in Aulis where contending winds gave them no passage forth to Ilium and waiting, felt their blood begin to cool.
Some spoke of Helen as a stolen cow, unwilling to risk lives for such a cow.
Some thought of harvests waiting them at home. Some thought of wives and babes, though but a few.
Until at last the host was discontent, no longer single-mindedly intent upon the course of warlike righteousness. Yet still, each man was shamed he should appear a laggard ’fore his peers. So some of them conspiring to the benefit of all, gave Calchas minted gold to act as seer and prophesy that there would be no wind to bear them forth to topless Ilium until the hour my father kept a vow he’d made long since—a vow to kill his child, as sacrifice to maiden Artemis.
HECUBA (Horrified) Which he would never do!
ANDROMACHE No father would do that!
IPHIGENIA Well, so they thought. They thought that Agamemnon would refuse, then they could all go home.
HECUBA Surely he offered other sacrifice.
IPHIGENIA Which did not suit their purposes at all.
HECUBA And when they would not take a substitute….
IPHIGENIA He sent Odysseus, full of trickery, to bid my mother bring me to be wed—to Achilles, if you can believe that—then gave me to the priests, who cut my throat.
HECUBA And none of what the poets say is true?
IPHIGENIA Oh, Hecuba, Hecuba! You’re a woman! Can a woman believe such nonsense? Think! I was a maiden girl! Scarce more than a child! My head was full of new gowns and festivals and wondering whether I should ever have a lover or not. The words the poets poured into my mouth were the prideful boasts of Argive battalions! They say I offered to die for Hellas! What did I know of Hellas?!
HECUBA It’s true. When I was thirteen, I wouldn’t have died for Troy.
ACHILLES (Irritably scratching his crotch) I don’t understand why they said all those things if they weren’t true. I thought you were my betrothed whom I defended.
IPHIGENIA My father used me as he would a slave or a sheep from his flock. I think that many fathers do the same. Then, having done, he claimed I’d wanted it. Perhaps it made him feel less vile. Men like to think well of themselves, and poets help them do it.
ACHILLES (Petulantly) Apollo save me from a clever woman. (He looks her over, head to toe) Still, it is saidwe were betrothed.
IPHIGENIA You may as well forget it, Achilles. There is no fucking in Hades.
“THERE IS NO FUCKING IN HADES,” ELEVEN-YEARold Stavia had declaimed, striking a dramatic pose for Beneda as she did so. The two girls had been sitting in the sun on top of the city wall. Stavia had agreed to help Beneda with her math—though Beneda was almost totally impervious to math—if Beneda would cue Stavia in Iphigenia’s part. The test on the play was to be given the following week. “I like that line. It has a ring to it.”
“I watched rehearsal yesterday,” Beneda commented. “Michy won’t say ‘fucking.’ She says it isn’t womanly.”
“Michy’s
