The Woman of Andros / the Ides of March by Thornton Wilder
‘That is something!’ she said to herself suddenly and for a moment her heart stopped beating.
She had intended to recite to them The Clouds of Aristophanes that evening, but she now changed her mind. She felt the need to nourish her heart and those watchful eyes with something lofty and deeply felt. Perhaps what she called the ‘lofty’ was in this world merely a beautiful form of falsehood, cheating the heart. But she would try again tonight and see whether, after so dejected a day, it woke any stir of conviction. ‘What shall I read?’ she asked herself as the tables were being removed. ‘Something from Homer? – Priam begging of Achilles the body of Hector? No. . . . No. . . . Nor would they understand the Oedipus at Colonus. The Alcestis? The Alcestis?’
One of the shyer guests, seeing her deliberating over the choice of the evening’s declamation, timidly asked her to read the Phaedrus of Plato.
‘Oh, my friend,’ she said, ‘I have not seen the book for several years. I should be obliged to improvise long stretches in it. . . .’
‘Could you . . . could you read the opening and the close?’
‘I shall try it for you,’ she replied and rising slowly disposed the folds of her robe about her. The servants withdrew and silence fell upon the company. This was the moment (on happier evenings) that she loved; this hush, this eagerness, this faintly mocking affection. What drives them – she would ask herself – in the next fifteen years to become so graceless . . . so pompous, or envious, or so busily cheerful?
At first all went well. The boys listened with delight to the account of how other young men gathered in the streets and palaestra of Athens to hear the arguments of Socrates. Listening, they agreed that nothing in the world was more to be prized than a beautifully ordered speech. Then followed the description of the walk that Socrates and Phaedrus took into the country. ‘This is indeed a rare resting-place. This plane-tree is not only tall, but thick and spreading. And this agnus castus is at the very moment of flowering and its shade and its fragrance will render our stay the more agreeable. These images and these votive-offerings tell us that the place is surely sacred to some nymphs and to some river-god. . . . Truly, Phaedrus, you are an admirable guide.’
From there she passed to the close:
‘But let us go now, as the heat of the day is over.
‘Socrates: Would it not be well before we go to offer up a prayer to the gods of this place?
‘Phaedrus: It would, Socrates.
‘Socrates: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, grant that I may become beautiful in the inner man and may whatever I possess without be in harmony with that which is within. May I esteem the wise men alone to be rich. And may my store of gold be such as none but the good may bear. Phaedrus, need we say anything more? As for myself I have prayed enough.
‘Phaedrus: And let the same prayer serve for me, for these are the things friends share with one another.’
All went well until this phrase. Then Chrysis, the serene, the happily dead, seeing the tears that stood in the eyes of Pamphilus, could go no further, and before them all she wept as one weeps who after an absence of folly and self-will returns to a well-loved place and an old loyalty. It was true, true beyond a doubt, tragically true, that the world of love and virtue and wisdom was the true world and her failure in it all the more overwhelming. But she was not alone; he too saw the long and failing war as she did, and she loved him as though she were loving for the first time and as one is never able to love again. That was sealed; that was forever assigned.
After a few moments she collected herself and quieted the guests who had risen in concern about her. ‘Sit down, my friends. I am ready now,’ she said smiling. ‘I shall read you The Clouds of Aristophanes.’
But it was some time before the laughter rose among the couches, the laughter that was a just tribute to the divine wit of the poet of The Clouds.
Brynos rose with the dawn, and it was not many hours later that the morning’s work was over. Several days after the conversation recorded above, Pamphilus, having helped his father in the warehouse and being in no mood for exercising in the field, started out to walk to the highest point on the island. It was early Spring. A strong wind had blown every cloud from the sky and the sea lay covered with flying white-tipped waves. His garments leapt and billowed about him and his very hair tugged at his head. The gulls themselves, leaning upon the gusts, were caught unawares from time to time and blown with ruffled feathers and scandalised cries towards the violet-blue zenith. Pamphilus led his life with much worry and self-examination and all the exhilaration of wind and sun could not drive from his mind the anxious affection with which he now turned over his thoughts of Chrysis and Philumena and of the four members of his family. He was straying among the rocks and the lizards and the neglected dwarfed olive-trees, when his attention was suddenly caught by an incident on the hillside to his left. A group of boys from the town was engaged in tormenting a young girl. She was retreating backwards up the slope through a disused orchard, shouting haughtily back at her pursuers. The boys’ malice had turned to anger; they were retorting hotly and letting fly about her a few harmless stones. Pamphilus strode over to the group and with a gesture ordered the boys down the hill. The girl, her face still flushed and distrustful, stood with her back against a tree and waited for him to come toward her. They looked at one another for a moment in silence. Finally Pamphilus said:
‘What is the matter?’
‘They’re just country fools, that’s all. They’ve never seen anyone before who didn’t come from their wretched Brynos.’ And then from rage and disappointment she began to cry uncontrollably and despairingly.
Pamphilus watched her for a time and then asked her where she had been going.
‘Nowhere. I was just going for a walk and they followed me from the town. I can’t do anything. I can’t go anywhere. . . . I wasn’t hurting them. I was just going for a walk alone and they called names after me. They followed me way up here; I called names at them and then they started throwing things at me. That’s all.’
‘I thought I knew everyone on the island,’ said Pamphilus thoughtfully, ‘but I have never seen you before. Have you been here long?’
‘Yes, I’ve been here almost a year,’ she replied, adding indistinctly, ‘. . . but I hardly ever go out or anything.’
‘You hardly ever go out?’
‘No,’ and she fumbled with her dress and stared at the sea, frowning.
‘You should try to know some of the other girls and go out for walks with them.’
This time she turned and looked into his face. ‘I don’t know any of the other girls. I . . . I live at home and they don’t let me go out of the house, except when I go out for walks nights with . . . well, with Mysis.’ She continued to be shaken with sobs, but she was adjusting her hair and the folds of her dress. ‘I don’t see why they have to throw stones at me,’ she added.
Pamphilus looked at her in silence, gravely. Presently he collected himself and said: ‘There’s a big smooth stone over there. Will you go over there and sit down?’
She followed him to the stone, still busy with her hair and drawing her fingers across her eyes and cheeks.
‘I have a sister just about your age,’ said Pamphilus. ‘You can begin by knowing her. You can go for walks with her and then you wouldn’t be a stranger any more. Her name is Argo. You’d like one another, I know. My sister is weaving a large mantle for my mother and she’d like you to help her with it and she could help you with yours. Are you making a mantle?’
‘Yes.’
‘That would be fine,’ said Pamphilus, and from that moment Glycerium loved him forever.
‘I probably know your father, don’t I?’ he asked.
‘I have no father,’ she replied, looking up at him weakly, ‘I am the sister of the woman from Andros.’
‘Oh . . . oh . . .,’ said Pamphilus, more astonished than he had ever been in his life. ‘I know your sister well.’
Here she fell to weeping even more despairingly than before and Pamphilus could do nothing but say ‘Well’ several times and ‘Yes.’ At last he asked her what her name was.
‘Glycerium. Chrysis went away from home a long time ago and I was living with my brother and he died and I couldn’t live with him any more. And I had nowhere to go or anything, and one day she came back and took me to live with her. That’s all.’
‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’
‘Oh, no.’
‘Who is Mysis?’
‘Mysis isn’t Greek. She is from Alexandria. Chrysis found her. All of them in the house, – she just found them somewhere. That’s what she does. Mysis was a slave in the cloth mills. Sometimes she tells me about it.’
Pamphilus still gazed at her, and bringing back her wandering evasive glance from the sea she looked at him from her thin face and enormous hungry eyes. Even a long glance did not now embarrass them.
‘Do you want me to ask Chrysis to let you go about the island by day?’ he asked.
‘If she doesn’t want it, we mustn’t change her. Chrysis knows best.’ She turned away from him and said in a lower voice, dreamy and embittered: ‘But what can become of me? Am I always to stay locked up? I am fifteen already. The world is full of wonderful things and people that I might never know about. I know it was wrong of me to break my promise; but to live for years without ever knowing new people, – to hear them passing the door all day, and to see them a long ways off. Do you think I did very wrong?’
‘No.’
‘I don’t know anyone. I don’t know anyone.’
‘Well . . . well, you’ll come to know my sister. That will be a beginning,’ he said, taking her fingertips thoughtfully and wonderingly in his.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Everything is beginning over again. I’m your friend. Then my sister. Soon you will have a great many. You’ll see.’
‘But where will I be five years from now and ten years from now,’ she cried, staring about her wildly. ‘I don’t know. I’m afraid. I’m unhappy. Everyone in the world is happy except me.’
The caress of the hands in first love, and never so simply again, seems to be a sharing of courage, an alliance of two courages against a confusing world. As his hand passed from her hair to her shoulder, she turned to him with parted lips and hesitant eyes, then suddenly bound both her arms about his neck. Into his ears her lips wildly and all but meaninglessly repeated: ‘Yes. Yes. Yes. I can’t stay there forever. I should never know anyone. I should never see anybody.’
‘She will let you come to see me,’ he said.
‘No,’ said Glycerium. ‘But I’ll come by myself. I mustn’t ask her. She would not let me come. She always knows best. And the boys can throw their stones. I don’t mind if you’re here. What . . . what is your name?’
‘My name is Pamphilus, Glycerium.’
‘Can . . . can I call you by it?’
It was not at this meeting, nor at their next, but at the third, beneath the dwarfed olive-trees, that those caresses that seemed to be for courage, for pity and for admiration, were turned by Nature to her own uses.
These conversations took place in the early Spring. One afternoon in the late Summer Chrysis slipped out of her house and climbed the hill behind it. She was filled with a great desire to be alone and to think. She looked out over the glittering sea. The winds were moderate on that afternoon and before them the innumerable neat waves hurried toward the shore, running up the sands with a long whisper, or discreetly lifting against the rocks a scarf of foam. In the distance a school of dolphins engaged at their eternal games led the long procession of curving backs. The water was marbled at intervals with the strange fields and roadways of a lighter blue; and behind all she beheld with love the violet profile of Andros. For a time she strayed about upon the crest of the hill, making sure that no one was watching or following her, then descending the further side she sought out her favourite retreats, a point of rock that projected into the sea and a sheltered cove beside it. As she drew near the place, she stumbled forward, almost running, and as she went she murmured soothingly to herself: ‘We are almost there. Look, we are almost there now.’ At last, climbing over the boulders she let herself down into an amphitheatre of hot dry sand. She started unbinding her hair, but stopped herself abruptly: ‘No, no. I must think. I should fall asleep here. I must think first. I shall come back soon,’ she muttered to the amphitheatre, and continuing her journey she reached the furthermost heap of stones and sat down. She rested her chin upon her hand and fixing her eyes upon the horizon she waited for the thoughts to come.
The first thing to think about was her new illness. Several times she had been awakened by a wild fluttering in her left side that continued, deepening, until it seemed to her as though a great stake were being driven into her heart. And all the day the sensation would remain with her as of a heavy object burdening the place where this trouble lay. ‘Probably . . . very likely,’ she said to herself, ‘the next time I shall die of it.’ At the thought a wave of anticipation passed over her. ‘I shall probably die of it,’ she repeated cheerfully and became interested in some crayfish in the pool at her feet. She plucked some grasses behind her and started dragging them before the eyes of the indignant animals. ‘Nothing in life could make me abandon my sheep, but if I die they will have to fall back on Circumstance as I did. Glycerium, what will become of you? Apraxine, Mysis . . .? There are times when we cannot see one step ahead of us, but five years later we are eating and sleeping somewhere.’ (It was humorous, pretending that one’s heart was as hard as that.) ‘Yes,’ she said aloud, to the pain that trembled within her, ‘only come quickly.’ She leaned forward still dragging the stems before the shellfish: ‘I have lived thirty-five years. I have lived enough. Stranger, near this spot lies Chrysis, daughter o f Arches o f Andros: the ewe that has strayed from the flock lives many years in one day and dies at a great age when the sun sets.’ She laughed at the deceptive comforts of self pity and taking off a sandal put her foot into the water. She drew herself up for a moment, asking herself what there was left in the house for the colony’s supper; then recollecting some fish and some salad on the shelf, she returned to her thoughts. She repeated her epitaph, making it a song and emphasising, for self-mockery, its false sentiment. ‘O Andros, O Poseidon, how happy I am. I have no right to be happy like this. . . .’
And she knew as she gazed at the frieze of dolphins still playing in the distance that her mind was avoiding another problem that awaited her. ‘I am happy because I love this Pamphilus, – Pamphilus the anxious, Pamphilus the stupid. Why cannot someone tell him that it is not necessary to suffer so about living.’ And the low exasperated sigh escaped her, the protest we make at the preposterous, the incorrigible beloved. ‘He thinks he is failing. He thinks he is inadequate to life at every turn. Let him rest some day, O ye Olympians, from pitying those who suffer. Let him learn to look the other way. This is something new in the world, this concern for the unfit and the broken. Once he begins that, there’s no end to it, only madness. It leads nowhere. That is some god’s business.’ Whereupon she discovered that she was weeping; but when she had dried her eyes she was still thinking about him. ‘Oh, such people are unconscious of their goodness. They strike their foreheads with their hands because of their failure, and yet the rest of us are made glad when we remember their faces. Pamphilus, you are another herald from the future. Some
But these thoughts were very fatiguing. She arose and, returning to the amphitheatre, laid herself down upon the sand. She murmured some fragments from the Euripidean choruses and fell asleep. She had always been an islander and this hot and impersonal sun playing upon a cold and impersonal sea was not unfriendly to her. And now for two hours the monotony of sun and sea played about her and wove itself into the mood of her sleeping mind. As once the gray-eyed Athena stood guarding Ulysses – she leaning upon her spear, her great heart full of concern and of those long divine thoughts that are her property – even so, now, the hour and the place all but gathered itself into a presence and shed its influence upon her. When her eyes finally opened she listened for a time to the calm in her heart. ‘Some day,’ she said, ‘we shall understand why we suffer. I shall be among the shades underground and some wonderful hand, some Alcestis, will touch me and will show me the meaning of all these things; and I shall laugh softly for hours as I do now . . . as I do now.’
She arose and binding up her hair prepared to ascend the slope. But just as she turned to leave the place, there visited her the desire to do something ceremonial, to mark the hour. She stood up straightly and held out her arms to the setting sun: ‘If you still hear prayers from the lips of mortals, if our longings touch you at all, hear me now. Give to this Pamphilus some assurance – even some assurance such as you have given to me, unstable though I am – that he is right. And oh! (but I do not say this from vanity or pride, O Apollo, – but perhaps this is weak, this is childish of me, perhaps this renders the whole prayer powerless!) if it is possible, let the thought of me or of something I have said be comforting to him some day. And . . . and . . .’