I cast my mind back to the first time I saw you.
You were my age then.
“You kept growing and got older.
I stayed the same age.”
I hadn’t opened my lips. You answered my thoughts. The other times, when I saw you, the light shone through you: you shimmered like dust motes in the air. But that night, the night of Sokrates’s death, you were as solid in your flesh as I was. I blinked. You didn’t disappear. I put out my hand to touch your tunic. There was a crackling sound in the air. My hand jerked back.
“I was struck down by Zeus’s lightning.
I don’t think it was a punishment,
but of course, I couldn’t survive.
I think you couldn’t see me before
because you didn’t want to. I was impossible,
so I was invisible. And I was of no use to you.
But tonight your heart is broken;
you long for the dead to come back;
you see beyond the world of the living:
you’re at the end of your wits.
The time has come for me to set you free.
“Your mother laid a curse on me,
binding us together —
She’s gone now. I don’t know where she is,
whether she’s among the living or the dead.
I only know she told me to free you.
It’s been three years.
I couldn’t make you pay attention to me.
But now I see a way. My father will help you,
only you’ll have to persuade him.
You’ll have to convince him that you’ve seen me.
You’ll need proof.
So we have to leave the city. Tomorrow, at dawn.
It’s a journey of two days:
Two days there, and two days back.
I can guide you.”
You spoke like a god, but also like a spoiled child of the ruling class. You were used to giving orders and getting your way. It flicked on the raw.
“I can’t just leave because you say so!
A slave can’t just go on a journey!
I’ll be caught and beaten, branded as a runaway.
— What do you know about my life?”
“I’ve watched you for three years.
If you need permission to go, ask Zosima.
She’ll help you.”
“What can she do? She can cry all she likes;
she can’t change anything!
Phaistus is the master of the house.
A woman has to obey her husband.”
“They have to. But they don’t.
Haven’t you noticed that?
Zosima loves you.
Give her the thing she wants most in the world,
and she won’t deny you.”
I scarcely remember the rest of that night.
I know I made you repeat
repeat
repeat
the tale of how my mother bound you,
how she looked when she knelt in the graveyard;
I made you repeat everything she ever told you about me.
I was hungry for stories about my mother —
then I’d remember Sokrates,
his body growing cold even as we spoke together,
and I’d gasp for breath, and swallow,
fighting for control. You sat beside me,
hugging your scratched knees to your chest.
I can’t remember all I said,
I remember at one point, I went off on a tirade
about how I didn’t want to make sandals,
I wanted to make horses. I’d never told anybody that,
not even Sokrates.
I’d pause for breath and I seemed to see Sokrates,
wearing his hairy old cloak,
wading across the river
between the quick and the dead,
bound for the House of Hades.
“I’m sorry about Sokrates. I know you loved him.
I used to watch you together.”
Then I was ashamed, because it struck me that this girl, this highborn girl, had followed me, watching me, for three years. I’d thought I was alone, and she’d been haunting me, staring at me, spying on me.
“It wasn’t like that.
I didn’t watch you every minute,
I didn’t watch every time you blew your nose
or scratched yourself
or slept. It’s an uneasy thing, being a shade.
I can’t tell you.
I don’t belong to this world anymore,
I’m half banished, and my attention drifts away . . .
You know how when you dream, you’re interested?
— except then you wake up, and there are only fragments,
just a few things you remember. It’s like that.
There’s always something dragging me, like an undertow,
separating me from the world of the living.
. . . I used to watch you work;
I could follow that.
When you were with Sokrates,
you were happy and wholly alive,
so you held my attention.
I watched you on the Akropolis,
when you were dizzy with wonder;
I was with you that day in the slave market.
I tried to make Phaistus take you. He smelled all right to me.
That’s another thing. There’s things I smell and see and hear,
things I know that I didn’t know before;
but I’m never at home. I’m not right with myself.
I’m afraid to die,
to go down to the House of Hades —
Even if your mother hadn’t bound me with her curse —
I might still be here. I don’t want to leave this world.
I’m like a sailor clinging to a wreck,
I’m sure to go down in the end.
“But in the meantime, there’s you,
and this blessed curse that knots us together.
I’m meant to help you, and I want to.
You should sleep now. Tomorrow we leave Athens.”
I didn’t believe her,
but I was never more tired in my life
so I slept.
2.
I overslept. Melisto was beside me,
urging me to open my eyes.
“Zosima’s gone to the fountain house!
Hurry and wake up! She’ll be back soon!”
. . . There was Phoibe, nibbling her bedding,
the hinny beside her,
and Melisto gleaming saffron gold
in the predawn air.
I rubbed my eyes,
got up stiffly,
and went out past the gate.
The city was stirring:
shadowy women carrying jars,
the sky as dark as water.
She was half veiled. I knew her by her gait,
which was slower than usual. She balanced one jar on her head
and cradled the other at her side.
I spoke her name. “Zosima?”
She stopped, swaying a little,
balancing the water jar.
I couldn’t see her face. I went to her,
took the jars from her,
and set them down carefully.
Then I dropped to the ground,
taking the pose of a suppliant,
bowing my head and clasping her
