A Handful of Time Read online

  “Would it be possible, do you think, for me to meet your husband, the noble Pericles?” Mercedes’ heart thudded at the mere thought. She missed her sal volatile badly.

  Aspasia looked shocked and spoke in a hissing whisper. “Sh, honey. I’m legally married now. My husband is terribly jealous of my past. Pericles is dead twelve years this Dionysia. Where have you been?”

  Mercedes berated herself for not having read up on history before she came. It would have been so easy to get a few more facts. But Kim had been so masterful and had rushed her into the machine so fast…

  “If I told you, Aspasia, you might not believe me.”

  “Never mind, dear,” Aspasia said comfortingly, “you’ll look like an Athenian hetaira by the time I’ve finished with you.”

  Mercedes was, really, in a state of shock. She kept trying to tell Aspasia, “Really, you know, I’m not that kind of girl.”

  And Aspasia would answer, “Either you’re the daughter of an Athenian citizen or you’re not. If you’re not, you’re a working girl and what other sort of work is there? I mean for a woman with any self-respect at all?”

  While Aspasia was painting her face with a practiced hand, Mercedes, almost overcome by the smells of various perfumes, put the question that had been uppermost in her mind for some time. “Do you still hold your brilliant salons?”

  Aspasia shook her head in puzzlement. “I used to run a House,” she said, “when I first came here from Miletus. But after I met Pericles‌—‌well, I gave up my career.”

  “Then you really were his Intellectual and Spiritual Companion?”

  Aspasia put down the tweezers with which she had been plucking Mercedes’ eyebrows. She sat in thought for a moment, and a hint of tears dampened her eyes.

  “We used to recline around the tables in the evening, talking the night away and settling the problems of the world. We thought we owned it. For a while, I guess we did. And now look at it!” She sighed, and picked up the tweezers. “Don’t you think the Sicilian Expedition is what we need to put new life into us?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” Mercedes answered. It was her turn to be puzzled. “I don’t know anything about war and politics.”

  “Don’t know!” Aspasia gasped. “What do you expect to talk to men about? You don’t know anything about the art of politics, the art of war, or even the art of love! What do you know?”

  “Well,” Mercedes began. She was about to say she was Interested in Greek Culture, but it occurred to her that, considering the ignorance she had displayed thus far, Aspasia might receive this rather rudely.

  Aspasia stood up. “Now you’re all painted and dressed and you look very nice if I do say so myself. I don’t like to be unkind, dear, but I think you’d better begin your education from the very basic things. I’ll have a slave take you to the temple of Aphrodite Pandemos. Remember, it’s a sacrilege to refuse yourself to anyone, be he ever so old or ugly. You can’t accept money, of course, but it’s very good practice.”

  Mercedes had no intention of hanging around the temple of Aphrodite. However, it was clear that she could expect no more from Aspasia, who had shown her a real, if misguided, kindness. She therefore followed the slave out into the thronged and evil-smelling streets.

  As they made their way through the marketplace, she experienced an entirely new and unexpected pleasure. Men, she noted, were staring at her with looks she could only describe as “admiring.” She found herself clutching unconsciously at the neck of her vermilion peplum, which dipped dangerously low. She gasped with surprise and (admit it) some delight when a handsome man with an expensive-looking bracelet on his arm fell into step beside her and began murmuring exaggerated compliments. Life began to take on an entirely new meaning.

  They reached the temple of Aphrodite and stood in the shade of a pleasant little grove of trees. The slave left and the young man stood with arms folded, watching her with a twinkle of amusement in his eyes. Mercedes took one look at the drunk sailors and clumsy, embarrassed-looking farmers standing around. She shuddered and turned to her new admirer, who now looked to her like a heaven-sent protector.

  “What’s the matter, kitten?” he asked. He had a languid, self-possessed air that reminded Mercedes, with a (no other way to describe it) slight thrill of Kim. “Got cold feet? Can’t say I blame you.”

  “I’m cold all over. Oh, I do wish I had my‌—‌” There was no Greek word for it. “Salts,” had entirely the wrong connotation… “I simply don’t know what to do,” she went on, thinking that with her eyebrows plucked she must look rather appealingly helpless.

  “I do,” he said with a disarming smile. “You just come along with me and let your sacred obligations go for a while. It happens, by pure luck, that I’m having a little party tonight and we’re short one flute girl.” He took her elbow and guided her along a narrow, winding street.

  “I don’t play the flute.”

  “Darling, you’re marvellous!”

  “But I really don’t. Whatever gave you that idea?”

  “Never mind. The flute-playing part always bores me anyhow. Do you want to come home with me now or have my slave come for you tonight?”

  Tears trembled on Mercedes’ lashes. “I don’t know where I’d go. I have no home here and I can hardly go home with a complete stranger.”

  The young man laughed and hugged her briefly. “Stranger! You really don’t know who I am? I’m Callias!”

  “Callias?”

  “Son of Hipponicus. Of course everybody and his brother in Athens is named Callias. It’s annoying. But I’m Callias rich as Croesus, not Callias the charcoal seller. Zeus, I thought every woman in Athens knew me. My person may pall but my money never fails to fascinate…”

  Mercedes spent the afternoon alone in a room in the women’s quarters. It was well furnished with mirrors, cosmetics and unguents, and she spent her time repainting her face. She had drifted far, she realized, from her neo-Victorian principles. But somehow, now, especially in view of her new face in the mirror, the Bifurcate Review seemed very far away.

  Evening was well under way when the flute girls arrived, swirling in their bright dresses and chattering like a swarm of little tropical birds. Mercedes recognized Phye, her friend from the theatre, and reintroduced herself.

  “Darling, Aspasia’s done wonders with you. Only do try not to talk through your nose.” Phye introduced her around and Mercedes winced at some of the nicknames which were much too obvious to be Lost in Translation.

  “You must be for Callias,” a bland-faced little brunette said. She patted Mercedes confidentially. “I had him last. If he’s not carrying a purse get a nice bit of jewelry. He’s stingy when he’s sober.”

  Mercedes found this kind of talk distinctly unpleasant. It was becoming too obvious that Callias’ Intentions were not Honorable. She began to wonder wildly when Kim and Jack would translate her back to her own time. In the excitement of being practically pushed into the little telephone booth that was the time machine, she had forgotten to ask.

  They were soon ushered into the banquet room. The men were lying on couches by little tables arranged in a large circle. The other girls stood inside the circle, holding their flutes and ready to perform. Mercedes looked helplessly at Callias. He had a large cup in his hand and his eyes looked unnaturally bright. He had clearly been Drinking.

  He sprang up and lifted Mercedes onto one of the tables. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I want you to meet the find of the seasons. She actually doesn’t play the flute. Can you think of anything more refreshing?”

  The other girls eyed Mercedes jealously. Why hadn’t they thought of an approach like that?

  Mercedes drank her first cup of wine out of politeness… The second she tried only to see if it would taste better than the first.

  The third, fourth, and succeeding ones she drank for the sheer pleasure of it all.

  A time came when she was aware that Callias was looking deep into her eyes and saying, “Yo
u know, you’re a terribly attractive woman.”

  There was, Mercedes found, a warming pleasure in seeing Callias with the torch light flickering over his well-oiled muscles. It was even more warming to touch him. Never, in all her reading, had she come across such a sensation.

  She reached up and pulled his short, curly beard. “Hell with the Bifurcate Review” she hiccoughed. “Kiss me again that funny way…”

  Mercedes woke to a feeling of cramped discomfort. She reluctantly forced her eyes open and found herself curled grotesquely in the little booth of the time machine. Her head ached abominably, and there was an unfamiliar furry taste in her mouth. Being translated back to her own time, she reflected, apparently had side effects which the trip to the past had not.

  She groped to her feet and opened the door.

  Her father and Kim stared openmouthed. Jack finally said, “We’ve been waiting three hours for you to come out. The door has to be opened from the inside.”

  Kim was still gazing at her in amazement and (no doubt about it) admiration. He whistled softly.

  Her father paused, looked her over again, and took her in his arms. “My little girl seems to have grown up,” he said, patting her head as though she had unexpectedly won a blue ribbon in a horse show. “But, dear, what happened?”

  “I don’t quite know,” Mercedes answered truthfully. “That is, I’m not sure.”

  On the other hand, she thought a touch complacently, it had not been a neo-Victorian evening‌—‌what else, after all, could have happened?

  “I think we may assume,” Mercedes went on with some archness, and plainly not speaking of her adenoids, “that something was Lost in Translation.”

  STEP IV

  THE FIRST time Juba saw him, she couldn’t help recalling the description of Ariovistus in Julius Caesar: Hominem esse barbarum, iracundum, temerarium.

  She unpinned the delicate laesa from her hair, for Terran spacemen are educated, and if they have a choice, or seem to have, prefer seduction to rape.

  Step I. A soft answer turneth away wrath, leaving time for making plans.

  He caught the flower, pleased with himself, Juba saw, for not fumbling, pleased with his manhood, pleased with his morality in deciding not to rape her.

  Rule a‌—‌A man pleased with himself is off guard.

  He was big, even for a Man, and all hair, and in his heavy arms the veins were knotted and very blue. He had taken off his shirt, letting the air blow shamelessly over him.

  It was true he was wonderful to see. And Juba knew that such is the nature of our violences, if she had been born into such a body, she too, would be a thing of wars and cruelty, a burner of cities, a carrier of death and desolation.

  His face softened, as though the hand of Juno had passed over it. Softly he gazed at the flower, softly at Juba.

  Rule b‌—‌This is the only time they are tractable.

  “Vene mecum,” she bade him, retreating into the glade‌—‌what was left of it after his ship burned a scar into it. She ran lightly, so as to give the impression that if he turned, only so far as to pick up the weapon on the ground by his shirt, she would disappear.

  “I follow,” he said in her own language, and she stopped, surprise tangling her like a net. For she had been taught that Men speak only New-language in our time, all soft tongues having been scorned to death.

  She should not have stopped. He looked back toward his gun. “Wait a moment,” he said. His “a”s were flat and harsh, his words awkwardly sequenced.

  “Come with me,” she said, and ran off again. She had been caught off guard.

  Would he follow her? “Wait!” he cried, hesitated, and came after her again. “I want to get my gun.” He reached for Juba’s hand.

  She shrank back from him. “Mulier enim sum.” Would he get the force of the particle? What could he fear from a mere woman?

  When he had followed her far enough, when he had gone as far as he would, for fear of losing his way from his ship, she let him take her hand.

  “Terran sum,” he said. And then, with meaning, “Homino sum.”

  “Then you are, naturally, hungry,” Juba said. “You have no need to come armed. Let me take you to my home. There are only my sisters and I and the mother.”

  “Yes,” he said, and took her other hand.

  She blushed, because he was strangely attractive, and because the thought came to her that his ways were gentle, and that if he spoke a soft tongue, perhaps he was not like other Men.

  Rule c‌—‌They are all alike.

  “Come,” Juba said, turning, “We are not far from the cottages.”

  She watched, during the meal, to see how he impressed the sisters and the mother. The little sisters‌—‌all bouncy blond curls and silly with laughter‌—‌their reaction to everything was excitement. And the mother‌—‌how could she seem so different from her daughters when they were so completely of her? They had no genes but her genes. And yet, there she sat, so dignified, offering a generous hospitality,, but so cold Juba could feel it at the other end of the table. So cold‌—‌but the Man would not know, could not read the thin line of her taut lips and the faint lift at the edges of her eyes.

  Juba brought him back to the ship that night, knowing he would not leave the planet.

  “Mother,” Juba said, kneeling before the mother and clasping her knees in supplication. “Mother… isn’t he… different?”

  “Juba,” the mother said, “there is blood on his hands. He has killed. Can’t you see it in his eyes?”

  “Yes. He has a gun and he has used it. But mother‌—‌there is a gentleness in him. Could he not change? Perhaps I, myself…”

  “Beware,” the mother said sternly, “that you do not fall into your own traps.”

  “But you have never really known a man, have you? I mean, except the servants?”

  “I have also,” she said, “never had an intimate conversation with a lion, nor shared my noonday thoughts with a spider.”

  “But lions and spiders can’t talk. That’s the difference. They have no understanding.”

  “Neither have men. They are like your baby sister, Diana, who is reasonable until it no longer suits her, and then the only difference between her and an animal is that she has more cunning.”

  “Yes,” Juba said resignedly, getting to her feet. “If thus it is Written. Thank you, Mother. You are a wellspring of knowledge.”

  “Juba,” Mother said with a smile, pulling the girl’s cloak, for she liked to please them, “would you like him for a pet? Or your personal servant?”

  “No.” she said, and she could feel the breath sharp in her lungs. “I would rather… He would make a good spectacle in the gladiatorial contests. He would look well with a sword through his heart.”

  She would not picture him a corpse. She put the picture from her mind. But even less would she picture him unmanned.

  He would rather die strong than live weak. And Juba‌—‌why should she have this pride for him? For she felt pride, pangs as real as the pangs of childbirth. There are different kinds of pride, but the worst kind of pride is pride in strength, pride in power. And she knew that was what she felt. She was sinning with full knowledge and she could not put her sin from her.

  Juba ran straight to the altar of Juno, and made libation with her own tears. “Mother Juno” she prayed, “take from me my pride. For pride is the wellspring whence flow all sins.”

  But even as she prayed, her reason pricked at her. For she was taught from childhood to be reasonable above all things. And, having spoken with this Man, having found him courteous and educated, she could not believe he was beyond redemption simply because he was a Man. It was true that in many ways he was strange and different. But were they not more alike than different?

  And as for his violences‌—‌were they much better, with their gladiatorial combats? Supposed to remind them, of course, of the bloodshed they had abhorred and renounced. But who did not secretly enjoy it? And wh
ose thumbs ever went up when the Moment came? And this making of pets and servants out of Men‌—‌what was that but the worst pride of all? Glorying that a few incisions in the brain and elsewhere gave them the power to make forever absurd what came to them with the seeds at least of sublimity.

  Juba stood up. Who was she to decide what is right and what is wrong?

  She faced the world and its ways were too dark for her, so she faced away.

  There was a sound in the brush near her, and she wished the stars would wink out, for the sound had the rhythm of her Mother’s approach, and Juba wanted to hide her face from her mother.

  The mother frowned at Juba, a little wearily. “You have decided to forsake the world and become a Watcher of the Holy Flame. Am I not right?”

  “You are right, mother.”

  “You think that way you avoid decision, is that not right?”

  “That is right,” Juba answered.

  She motioned the girl to the edge of the raised, round stone and sat. “It is impossible to avoid decision. The decision is already made. What you will not do, someone else will do, and all you will have accomplished is your own failure.”

  “It is true,” Juba said. “But why must this be done, Mother? This is a silly ceremony, a thing for children, this symbolic trial. Can we not just say, ‘Now Juba is a woman,’ without having to humiliate this poor Man, who after all doesn’t…”

  “Look into your heart, Juba,” the mother interrupted. “Are your feelings silly? Is this the play of children?”

  “No,” she admitted. For never before had she been thus tormented within herself.

  “You think that this Man is different, do you not? Or perhaps that all men are not so savage of soul as you have been taught. Well, I tell you that a Man’s nature is built into his very chromosomes, and you should know that.”

  “I know, mother.” For Juba was educated.