Rachel Swirsky - A Memory of Wind

I grow stronger with every moment. I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable.

I brought Orestes back to the tent, and we laid down beside Clytemnestra. I stared, sleeplessly, into the dark.

Possible paths stretched before me. I could go to Achilles’s tent and plead my case as a whore instead of a virgin. I imagined what Helen would have done in my place, how she would color her cheeks and set her hair. She would arrange herself to look like a dandelion, easily crushed, and easily conquered. Unlike my mother, she would not have halted her fingers at the laces of Achilles’s breastplate. Unlike my mother, she would have let her lips do more than hover hotly by his ear. Unlike my mother, she would have convinced him.

I could plead my case to Menelaus as his niece and an innocent. Or if he did not care for virtue, I could venture a suit to replace his lost Helen. Such methods might work on Odysseus, too. Only I was not a practiced seductress. My clumsy attempts might only succeed in doing as my mother said they would, and make the monsters feel justified when they gave me to Calchas’s knife.

I could have sought you out, in the hope that the eye of night would grant you mercy. But I already knew what you would do if you found me wandering alone through a camp of soldiers.

One path seemed best: I would run out into the cold and wake the first soldier I found. “Take me to Calchas,” I would tell him, and march resolutely to my fate. It would give me a fast, honorable end. And there might be a chance, just a small one, that I could be killed without seeing your face and knowing how it changed after you betrayed me.

But Orestes whimpered and tossed beneath his little blanket. Sweat damped his brow. I’d kept him up too late, overwhelmed him with disturbing confidences. I stayed to soothe him until dawn neared and I was too tired to chase my death.

I was not brave. I was only a girl.

You came to fetch me. You didn’t know we knew. You pretended to be overjoyed at the prospect of the wedding that would never happen. You took my hand and whirled me in a circle. “Oh, Iphigenia! You look so beautiful!”

I looked up into your eyes and saw that you were crying. Your smile felt as false as mother’s. Your tears washed over the place where I’d once kept the day when Orestes was born.

“Stop this,” said mother. She pulled me away from you and pushed me toward the other end of the tent. Orestes sat on the cushions beside me, a wooden toy in his hand, watching.

Mother turned to confront you. “I have heard a terrible thing. Tell me if it’s true. Are you planning to kill our daughter?”

Your eyes went blank. “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”

“I’ll ask again. Answer me plainly this time. Are you planning to kill our daughter?”

You had no answer. You gripped the hilt of your branch, and set your jaw. Tears remained immobile on your cheeks.

“Don’t do this.” Mother grasped at your shoulder. You wrenched away. “I’ve been a model wife. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I ran your home and raised your children. I’ve been chaste and loyal and honorable. How can you repay me by killing my daughter?”

She snatched Orestes from the cushions and held him toward you. He began to cry and kick.

“Look at your son. How do you think he’ll react when you murder Iphigenia? He’ll shy away from you. He’ll fear you.” She turned the baby toward her. “Orestes, do you hear me? Do you want your father to take your sister away?”

You tried to grab my brother. Mother held him tight. Orestes screamed in pain and fear.

“He’ll hate you or he’ll imitate you,” mother shouted over his wails. “You’ll teach your son to be a murderer! Is that what you want?”

You pushed Orestes into his mother’s arms and stormed away from her. You stopped a short distance from me and reached for my arm. I flinched away.

“Are you happy, Clytemnestra?” you asked. “You’ve scared the girl. She could have gone thinking that she was going to be married. Now she’s going to be terrified.”

You leaned close to touch my hair. (Tugging my ponytail: “It’s a good thing you were born a girl.”) You dropped a kiss on my brow. (“I know this is hard to hear,” said Helen, “but your father is the kind of man who would kill a baby.”) I wrenched backward.

“What do you want?” I asked. “Do you want me to take your hand, blithe and trusting as any goat that follows its master back to the camp to see men fighting in the fog? I’m not a little girl anymore.”

I looked into your angry, sneering face.

“Or do I have it wrong?” I asked. “Do you want me to kick and scream? Do you want me to have a tantrum like Orestes so that later you can think back on my wailing and berate yourself about the terrible things you’ve done?”

You tossed your head like a disquieted horse. “You’re acting mad.”

I laughed. “So I’m right, am I? You’re already beginning to make me into an idea. A difficult decision rendered by a great man. Well, stop now. This is only difficult because you make it so. All you have to do is break your vow and spare my life.”

“Menelaus and Odysseus would take the armies and bring them to march against Mycenae. Don’t you see? I have no choice.”

“Don’t you see? It should never have been your choice at all. My life isn’t yours to barter. The choice should have been mine.”

“You don’t understand.”

“I understand that you want me to pity you for my death.”

Wind whistled through my brain. The edges of the tent rustled. Sand stirred. Strands of mother’s hair blew out from her braids.

“You know, I never believed what Helen told me. Did he look like Orestes, father? Did my elder half-brother look like Orestes when you dashed him to the rocks?”

You glowered at my defiance. “This is how you beg me to save your life?”

“Is it sufficient?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. I inhaled deeply. “Don’t kill me.”

I had forgotten how to beg.

With almost nothing of myself remaining, I found myself reconsidering my conversation with Helen. Without my ego to distract me, I concentrated on different details, imagined different motivations behind her words. Did I think Helen was arrogant because that was what everyone said about her? Was she boastful or simply honest?

As Helen sat beneath the olive tree, watching me admire her face, she sighed. I’d always believed it was a sigh of pride. Perhaps it was weariness instead. Perhaps she was exhausted from always having to negotiate jealousy and desire when she wanted to do something as simple as holding her niece’s hand.

“You’ll be beautiful one day, too.” Was she trying to reassure me?

“Not as beautiful as you,” I demurred.

“No one is as beautiful as I.”

Her voice was flat. How must it have felt, always being reduced to that single superlative?

After she told me the terrible things about my father, I fled into the crowd to search for my mother. I found her holding a stern conversation with one of Helen’s women. She wouldn’t budge when I tried to drag her away. She dabbed my tears and told me to find Iamas so he could calm me down.

It wasn’t until I crumpled at her feet, distraught and wailing, that she realized I was suffering from more than a scrape.

She slipped her arms around me and helped me to stand, her embrace warm and comforting. She brought me to her rooms and asked what was wrong.

I repeated Helen’s words. “It isn’t true!” I cried. “She’s mean and vain. Why would she lie about something like that? Tell me she’s lying.”