Rachel Swirsky: A Memory of Wind

Left in the harbor with no one to fight, they were burning up fast. They couldn’t survive without wind to stoke them, to blow them onto dry firewood. They needed new things to burn. They needed fuel.

You came to the tent where Iamas settled us to wait for the wedding. All three of us looked up at your approach. Orestes stretched his arms in the direction of your voice. You called only for Clytemnestra.

Mother slipped out of the tent, leaving Orestes and me to peer out from the shadows. Orestes fussed; I held him close. Mother’s garment was bright against the dun ground, her sandaled feet pale and delicate. I heard cloth rustling as she embraced you.

“You’ve arrived.” Your voice splintered with ambivalence.

“Come inside,” mother said. “Iphigenia is wearing her wedding flowers. She’ll want to see you. She looks radiant.”

“I can’t. I have things to attend to.”

“Just come in for a moment. You have to see your Iphigenia one last time while she’s still a maiden.”

“I can’t!” Your shout was sudden, anguished. “I must go. I’ll return later.”

Dust swirled around your retreating footsteps. I inhaled it, ready to choke.

Do you remember what happened later on that night when you led me out to see the soldiers in the fog? It has only just come back to me, how you took me by the hand and led me, walking this time, back out of the copse of trees and into the palace, up to my chamber where the other girls lay, half-awake, waiting for us to return.

I stared after your retreating form. I felt as if I were waking from a dream into my mundane existence. I wanted to run after you and make the dream last.

So I did.

Do you feel it now? The sky is darkening. My power grows. I feel the ruffle of waves beneath what has become of my spirit. They churn into tiny crests, surmounted with foam. Boats tremble beneath me. Sails billow with my breath. I tousle the hair of men who have set aside their helmets, and they totter, no longer sure of their footing.

I am still weak, my father. Soon, I will do more than wail in your ear.

Mother sat at the edge of the tent after you departed, staring out (as I stared after you when you left me to mundanity after showing me marvels). Perhaps she had begun to suspect something from your refusal to see me, from Iamas’s shudder as he looked up at my wedding adornments.

Outside: a flash of gold.

Mother squeezed my hand. “That’s Achilles’s shield,” she said. “Stay here. I’ll ask your questions for you.”

It was not like my stern, proper mother to expose herself to strange men.

I swung Orestes into my lap. I could only see a narrow slice of the camp from where I sat. I saw the arm and chest of the man who must be Achilles, his body rippling with muscles as sharply delineated as those on a statue. His helmet and breastplate were wrought of fine, detailed gold. His oiled brown skin shone as brightly as his armor.

Mother extended her hand. “Greetings, Achilles! May you and my daughter have the happiest of marriages.”

Achilles eyed her fingers. Beneath his helmet, his eyes were dark and chary. (Fog, a branch, a dandelion mirroring the moon.) “Woman, why do you offer your hand to a stranger? You may be beautiful, but that is no excuse.”

“Forgive me. I thought you’d recognize me from my description. I’m Agamemnon’s wife.”

“Are you? I would have thought such a powerful man would have better control of his women.”

I could not see my mother’s face, but I knew the taut smile she would wear in response to such an affront, the catlike stretch of her lips that would not reach her eyes. (Like the taut smile Helen flashed me in the courtyard, late that night when I had nine summers: “Come walk with me, niece.”)

“We’ll be related in a few days,” said mother. “Just pretend we already are.”

“Are you insane?” Achilles’s dark eyes examined the length of my mother’s body. “No one told me Agamemnon married a madwoman.”

Mother’s voice became dangerously low. “Young man. I am not mad.”

“You must be. I’m the son of Thetis, goddess of the sea. I’ve slain a thousand men. I wear glory like other men wear scent. Why would I marry your daughter just because you tell me to?”

“My husband sent for us,” said Clytemnestra. “He said that you wanted to marry my daughter.”

“Why would I tell him that? I’ve never even seen her.”

For a long moment, mother fell silent. (My head, ringing with emptiness, the sound of forgotten memories.)

“You’ll forgive me if I sound skeptical,” she said at last, “but either you are mistaken, or my husband is lying. What should a loyal wife believe?”

Achilles’s eyes hardened like metal.

Before Achilles could speak, the slave Iamas pushed himself between the two of them. He turned toward Clytemnestra, panting, his face red with exertion.

Mother snapped, “What do you want?”

Iamas told them your plans. He revealed how the armies had delayed in the harbor, waiting for a wind. He told of how the goddess had demanded a sacrifice, and how the wedding was a ruse designed to lure us to my death.

All around us, the air was as still and expectant as a held breath. (Me, in my bed, forgetting green and figs and wool.)

“Tomorrow,” Iamas said, “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”

My imagination caught on the moment when you forged your plan with Menelaus, Odysseus, and Calchas. My mind had become a scatter of half-forgotten fragments. Tatters of old memories hung in the places of things I could not recall. I couldn’t remember Menelaus’s face, so I saw my mother’s instead, wearing the beard you had when I was younger, black through and through. A restless Achilles paced as Odysseus, sandals of gold kicking up dust as he paced the fog-filled copse. Calchas wore a thin linen robe instead of priestly raiment. He turned to you, and it was Helen’s mouth sneering around his demands, her indigo eyes filled with visions of my blood.

Will you sacrifice your daughter?

I will.

Was your voice loud and resonant? Did mother-Menelaus clap you on the back? Achilles-Odysseus would have spoken with grudging respect, a flicker of admiration in his chary eyes. “You’re a callous son of a bitch,” he’d have said, “but you do what must be done.”

Did you sink your head and whisper? Did Helen-Calchas crane her shapely neck to hear you, the red ribbons on her headband fluttering over her ear?

“Tomorrow,” Iamas said. “They will do it tomorrow at dawn.”

He knelt before Clytemnestra.

“I wasn’t sure whether I should tell you. A slave owes his loyalty to his master, but he owes his loyalty to his mistress, too. I came to Mycenae with your dowry. I was a young man then. I’ve always been yours.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” mother pleaded. “We could have ridden back to Mycenae. Agamemnon would never have known.”

“I tried to,” said Iamas. “I am a coward.”

If it was necessary that you kill me, did you have to use a wedding as your ruse? Do you see how cruel it was to promise me all the treasures of womanhood that I would never possess?

Perhaps you thought you were marrying me off, after all, one way or another. As I if were Persephone, spending my youth on the arm of Hades. But there will be no spring for me.

Orestes struggled and cried in my arms. He could hear his mother. He reached for her voice. The sounds of Clytemnestra’s weeping carried on the air, tiny pitiful sobs.