Rachel Swirsky: A Memory of Wind

A girl my age nearly collided with me as I stood watching Helen. She gave me a glare, and then turned abruptly away as if I wasn’t worth her time. “Put my bench there,” she directed a slave, pointing to a spot near Helen. I wanted to ask her who she thought she was, but before I got the chance, my mother caught me by the shoulders.

Her grip was harder than normal, her fingernails digging into my skin. “Come sit down,” she said, guiding me to the bench where she sat near Helen.

I sat at Clytemnestra’s feet while she ruffled my hair, and looked up at my aunt. From below, Helen was just as beautiful, but her features looked sharper. Braids coiled around her face like snakes, bound back by a beribboned brass headband that caught the gold flecks in her eyes.

Mother kept a firm grip on my shoulders as if she could keep my mind from straying by holding my body in place. She began a monologue about housekeeping, a subject that was impersonal, factual, and utterly under her control. “Next month, we’ll begin drying the fruit stores,” she said. “It was too cold this year for the figs. We lost nearly half our crop. But we’ve traded for nuts that will keep us through the winter.”

“You’re an excellent steward, sister mine,” said Helen, not bothering to disguise her boredom.

“Mother,” interjected the awkward girl who had collided with me earlier. “I found you a perfect one.”

She extended her hand in which nestled a cube of goat cheese, its corners unbroken. A bemused smile crossed Helen’s face as she looked down at the morsel.

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly, taking the cheese. She rewarded the girl with an uncertain pat on the head.

The girl lay stretched out on the bench, imitating Helen, but to completely different effect. The languorous pose accentuated her skinny, ungainly limbs. Stray tangles poked out of her braids like thistles.

“You’re Hermione? You’re my cousin?” I blurted.

Hermione bristled. Her mother looked down at me with a slow, appraising gaze. “Why, hello,” Helen said. “Are you my niece?”

Clytemnestra’s hand tightened protectively on my shoulder. “This is Iphigenia.”

Helen’s eyes were hot like sunlight on my cheeks. I burned with embarrassment.

“She’ll be a beauty someday,” Helen said to my mother.

Clytemnestra shrugged. “There’s time enough for that.”

Hermoine pushed a tray of honeyed figs out of a slave’s hands. It clattered to the ground. “None of those are good enough for my mother!” she shouted.

Helen looked uncertainly at Clytemnestra, and then over at Hermione, and then up at the sky. She gave a sigh. “I don’t know how you do it, Clytemnestra. I was never raised to be a mother. I was only taught to be a wife.”

“Children are just small people, Helen,” mother said. “Albeit, occasionally stupid ones.”

Helen tugged a red ribbon off of her headband and held it out to me. “Here, Iphigenia, would you like this?”

Wordlessly, I accepted. The ribbon was soft and silken and magic with her touch.

“I’d like to talk with you, Iphigenia. Somewhere where other people can’t listen in. Just you and me. If your mother will agree?”

Helen lifted her gaze to Clytemnestra’s face. Mother’s fingers dug into my shoulders.

“Of course,” said mother. “She’s your niece.”

I knew my mother didn’t want me to be alone with Helen. I also knew that I wanted to be near that beauty, that glamour, that heat. I pulled the ribbon taut between my fingers.

“All right,” I said.

As I rode to Aulis, I forgot the day when I was eight when my mother plucked my embroidery out of my lap and held it up to the light. I waited for her to tear out my stitches and return it to my lap for me to do over again, as she had done every morning since I could first grip a needle. Instead she stared at my work with a thoughtful expression. “Hmm,” she said. “You’re getting better.”

I lost that day, but I remembered Helen in Mycenae, her searing eyes and her haughty pose and her daughter sitting forlornly nearby, trying to earn a moment’s attention by finding a perfect bite of food.

The wagon stopped at Aulis with a jolt. Prickling dust settled onto our clothing and skin. I pulled the canopy aside and spat onto the ground to clear my mouth. Mother reached out to stop me, but as her hand touched my shoulder, she changed her mind. She leaned over beside me and spat onto the ground, too.

A slave helped my mother down onto the soil of Aulis. He was old and bent, his right leg dragging behind his left. I felt a tug of recognition, but I couldn’t remember who he was. Iamas, my mind suggested, but Artemis had stolen everything else I knew about him.

I accepted his hand to help me down. He looked up at me and startled. His hand jerked away. I stumbled, only barely catching my balance. Orestes began to cry.

“What’s the matter?” mother demanded.

The slave whimpered.

“Iamas,” mother repeated, more softly. “What’s the matter?”

Iamas trembled. “King Agamemnon said you might not come.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said mother. “How could there be a wedding if we didn’t come? Help my daughter down.”

Iamas offered his hand again. This time his grip remained steady as I descended. His gaze lingered on the smelly decorations in my hair that I had forgotten were there. I reached up to touch them, and felt their softness, their fragility.

A shudder ran through Iamas. He looked away from me, and clutched himself as if he were cold, even though the air was hot and stagnant. I knew that he was sad and uncomfortable and lying about something. I couldn’t care much. He was a stranger.

“You could still ride back to Mycenae,” he suggested, softly.

“Iamas!” Mother’s voice grew sharp. “What’s wrong with you?”

I remember now what I didn’t then: Iamas, the old slave, who had been with my mother since before I was born. I remember him holding me when I was so small that I understood the world in images. He was younger then, his nose crooked from a healed fracture, his smile gap-toothed and ever-wide. When his work was mobile, he came to sit near me while I played, watching me run around and chatter as toddlers will. When I exhausted myself, he made a place for me to lie beside him, and told me stories through the sleepy afternoon.

He was little more than a shadow to me. I walked past him, toward the harbor where a thousand ships sat motionless on a sea as flat as glass. Wilted sails drooped from their masts, pining for a wind that refused to come. The painted eyes on the ships’ prows stared blankly forward, as if trying to make out the shape of Troy in the distance. Ten thousand oars waited.

“Why are all the ships still moored?” I asked.

Iamas spoke from behind me. “They’re trapped. There’s no wind to send them to Troy.”

“They’re just sitting there?”

“They have no choice.”

I watched the ships bob up and down with the almost imperceptible motion of the water. Seabirds circled silently beneath the brazen sun. Even they seemed to be waiting.

I turned my back to the water and surveyed the camp. It was larger than I’d thought a camp could be, an immense array of men and equipment. Regiments formed restless circles around banked fires, their strength turned to games of chance played with stones and carved figures.

The soldiers who had grown bored with sitting rubbed wax into their armor with strokes as forceful as blows. Metal shone, bright as children’s eyes and new-minted coins. As I stared at the men and their armor, the sun blazed off of the metal until it became impossible to tell warriors from breastplates, skin from gold. Orestes laughed and stretched out his hand toward the shining ranks. They seemed an array of golden men, waiting to stretch their flaming limbs and dazzle into battle like animate rays of sunlight.