Sam Crain is a fiction-writer and PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Minnesota. For most of the year, she can be found in a carrel of Wilson Library  feverishly researching her dissertation and studying Old Germanic and Modern Greek when she’s not writing in the handful of coffee shops kind enough to allow her to stay for hours at a time. At the moment, she’s in Scotland scribbling, sprinting through the Complete Novels of Charles Dickens, and taking hikes in completely unpredictable weather. Her story “Debts Discharged” can also be found here, as an Honorable Mention for the Medusa Contest. You can find her Author Page on Facebook at SamCrainWritesLonghand.

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Eyes Full of Promise

by Sam Crain

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I’ve put this off long enough, I guess. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe-taverna in Athens, a half-eaten plate of food in front of me, I’m out of hiding-places. The proprietress of this little place knows me by sight and by one of my names. A name cannot pin you in place if you have more than one, as I learnt long, long ago. She knows me as Marcus.

The good woman brought me alcohol that she says is equal parts vodka, gin, and Kahlua. Perhaps she sensed how I needed shoring up as I face this page, lined as my true face is—the medium I am condemned to since my lyre was smashed. Since I smashed it, I ought to say, in the interest of truth-telling. No sense in lying to my own notebook.

Across from this place is a small church to their God who has never been my god—not I who so long served Phoebus-Apollo. Yet the old ways are not so far gone as some suppose—unless they think those altars with their votives and offerings of sweet oil and incense were entirely their Single God’s idea. And I—I feel my Great One’s power with every sunrise. It has the strength to rip the skin from backs, faces, and all, though some hold him at bay with expensive white liquids.

But I am still stalling. I must to the matter, lest I sit here til I match the stone and tile beneath my feet. I take up a stick pen—and another sip of the proprietress’s kindness—writing in the language of so many of the tourists who come here, the language of the strident singing that permeates this place. I hit upon this idea, finally, this morning, in the grey before Aurora’s coming. No rosy fingers today—the grey kept on; but I sat bolt upright in my bed, sweat pricking at my flesh like so many thorns.

WRITE IN ENGLISH.

It goes a bit against the grain to turn aside from the language which formed my soul and comprises the marrow of my bones. But then—the native tongue of my own country is no longer my tongue, either. Not even the Puristics of two hundred years ago could bring back what I have spoke and sung since Apollo blessed my voice and strings. They only succeeded in dating themselves so that these Athenians who surge past could not more read those same Puristics than converse with me in the tongue I was born to.

And. And it would be easier, perhaps, with such a degree of separation.

So I begin:

There are poets after me who sought to sing this song, and some things they kept true while others—well, who am I to question a fellow singer’s license?

My lady and one true love had hair of shadows and eyes the color of the sweetest promise ever whispered in a lover’s ear. Promise needing uncovering filled every bit of her when I first knew her. She was quiet, sought little at first, and it was for me to show her how to ask for things.

Beware finding the one who suits you best for, should she die, your bereavement will know no limit, no end, til death itself take you.

Thanks to the Lord Apollo, I had no need of further patron. With my lyre, I might go where I would, free of meaner demands. But this is the very beginning. She was a nymph, a child of the river—and its embodiment, too. I was traveling from Athens to Argos, on-foot to spare my precious lyre and I stopped to refresh myself on the river’s bank. It was a day that stuck your shirt to your back and bathed your face in the salt of perspiration. Kneeling on the mossy stones of the bank, I scooped up water to rinse my cheeks clean—

Coming eye-to-eye with a nymph, the water dribbled through my fingers. Her eyes were lighter than the many-colored stones over which the river ran, and she rose from the water, the sun glinting on it, like a fresh blessing.

“Forgive the intrusion,” said I.

She shook her head, reaching out with her own hands to pour water over my head, cool and sweet. “You have far to go?

Let it be known that I, Orpheus, was speechless in that moment, all eyes as my heart pounded painfully beneath my breastbone.

“Will you come below with me?” she asked, and she smiled.

“I had not thought you a Siren, lady.”

She laughed. “Nor am I.” She seated herself on a rock. “I would hear you play.”

It never occurred to me to refuse. The strings were supple, giving beneath my fingers, and I sang the finest hymn to beauty I could.

Her eyes widened to match mine as the last note of the lyre faded into the hot air. “I have heard your name before, Orpheus,” she said, still holding my gaze with hers. “But I had not thought you a lyric poet.”

“Epic has been my calling, Muses be thanked,” I agreed.

“You think lyrics inferior, do you?” Her eyes flashed a little.

“Oh, no, lady! Perhaps I did, once. But I have learned—”

Her eyes on mine were knowing as I sweated more than ever. She stood and the lines of her body admitted of no doubt as she crossed scant space between us to press her lips to mine. “You taste of salt,” she murmured, leaning in yet closer, and my hands trembled upon my instrument. My knees were weak under me and yet (oh, to be so young) I had absolute faith I would live forever in the twin salvations of Apollo’s music and the embrace of Eurydice. In that moment, I did.

Under the sun I had pledged to serve, we lay together and I pledged myself likewise to Eurydice, whose very name remains a melody on tongue and in mind, like the quickly plucked strings of the lyre.

We were wed with Apollo’s blessing, and we were blissful. Our joys were as ripe and as numerous as grapes in an arbor—as apricots in an orchard. On her river-bank, I built a cottage—she could not stray far, she said. And I was content, except that I had so few listeners for my songs. I pressed her to come away with me so I might ply my calling. “The gods mean their gifts to be used,” I told her.

My sweet Eurydice did not wish it, but she saw how much I desired this change and she agreed. Just before we left the cottage I had built for her, she gazed into my face and said, “I fear I shall never come here again.”

Wretch that I was, I kissed her quiet and set her on our single horse, which bore her to the town some distance hence. There, we had a house, large and airy, of stone. I would go out to play, and at night, I would return to my wife, and we would sleep soundly in each other’s arms.

I dared believe we were as happy as ever we’d been, but I did not know how my wife, dearer than my own breath, had taken to walking the countryside while I played for the glory of my Great One, and it must be admitted, of myself. I had thought the house I’d made her lovely enough to hold her attention, to bring her contentment, so long as I returned each night—and in the heat of the late afternoon when passion is ripest.

I heard my name on the lips of the city people, heard my verses repeated, and they urged me stay, stay. Men with tears spilling down their faces could not bear me to end my songs midway-through. Flattered, I stayed, telling myself I did my god’s work, each of the tears I won a pearl to his account—and mind.

My Eurydice was pale and embowered, but I dared to hope that I had made here with child at last and so explained it to myself. Never did she refuse me, however much I deserved her to. With her arms around me in the quiet, I could believe that all was as it ought to be—that my fate had been ordained a happy one.

One day, I awoke at dawn divinely inspired, so I believed, and I left our bed without waking my sweet Eurydice. As I took up my lyre, her cheek still pressed the mutual pillow of our marriage bed.

I went out and sang. The words tasted of honey and wine, my fingers dancing over the lyre-strings. Tears pricked my eyes, and my listeners wept openly as the sun rose behind me and heated my bare shoulders. In my hurry, I’d gone out half-dressed. The sun baked the stone beneath my sandals, but I knew no thirst, no longings at all as I sang on.

Now the sun was in my face, my eyes cracked to slits as still I sang. No one who listened moved. There was no midday meal, no nap to follow, for anyone caught in this song. Some few lay prone on the hot street stones, too drained to move.

It was dark before I felt any weariness in me. No longer did the sun warm me, and with it gone, I was thrown upon my own resources, none so great as I had dared believe.

Still, they did not wish me to go. I was singing of the Golden Fleece and the only man in old stories more foolish than myself. They were not content with any bridges to tomorrow’s song and so the whole night I kept on.

My voice broke at last and I was weary. Too, I missed Eurydice, who had surely wondered where I had gone. Strange it was, that she had not come in search of me. It was true she rarely ventured out to hear me play among the cityfolk. “I like to hear you sing,” she told me when I pressed her, “but not to them.” I had smiled, thought she only meant that she misliked sharing me.

I was nigh falling down with weariness when I reached our own door, wanting nothing so much as to sink into bed with my dearest wife. She would chide me, and I would make it up to her. We would walk in our garden, eat the oranges and peaches from their trees.

Eurydice was not in bed. The coverlet was turned down as it always was after we both rose and from its look, it had not been touched since the morning. She had not fallen asleep in the garden?

No. The garden was as empty of her as the house. Weary though I was, my very guts had griped in fear. “Lord Apollo, give me strength, and wisdom to find her,” I murmured as I hastened out of our garden and into the meadows beyond it.

It was past dawn when I, stumbling and long past exhausted, sank to my knees before her. Eurydice, Eurydice! wife of my heart, she lay as if sleeping in the tall grass. But she stirred not when I threw my arms around her, knees smarting a mere finger’s-width away. The only warmth in her flesh was by the grace of the sun-god. No heart beat within her now, and those eyes and all their promises, were hooded for always.

Weeping, I could not rise. Incoherently, I prayed until I pitched onto my face beside her and knew nothing until the heat of broad afternoon. Rousing myself, I searched for her cause of death and found the twin punctures of serpent’s teeth. A viper had stolen my wife away with him and I had not been on-hand to suck away his poison.

I had wept myself to parching already and took my wife’s corpse, stiff as drying clay now, to wash it, doubly hooding her lids with the fare for the Ferryman. I kissed her in farewell.

“You taste of salt,” I murmured, knowing as I did it was my salt I tasted now and not hers.

Beneath the carved eaves of our house, I broke my lyre into pieces, blaming its seductiveness for the loss of my wife. The pops of its strings, the crack and snap of its wood were hollow and left me so, too.

The sun rose again, and I prayed properly, laying out the wine and sweet oil and a fresh-killed ram. I presumed upon my tie to the Great One, Lord of the Sun to beseech his uncle, Hades, allow me to gain back the wife lost so over-soon to his realm. Hades looked on with shadowed eyes and spoke nothing, but his lady Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, interceded, her hand on his arm and her eyes, fathomless but softened by pity, moving from my face to his.

If I could lead her back, so they said, to the house in which I ought to have paid her better homage, she might be mine again. Then would we return to the Gates of Death together, and in the proper time. For her part, Eurydice was forbidden to speak til we reached our own threshold once more.

But you know, probably, what happened next. At least, you know I failed. We made it from the Underworld, but the silence of my dearest one—I came to doubt as we walked upon the meadow where I had found her so recently, that she was still with me. Glancing behind in quest of reassurance that was not my right, and she vanished, her eyes boring into mine one last time.

Not even Queen Persephone was sympathetic then. The Ferryman had strict orders to ignore me, but to rebuff any attempt to climb aboard his craft. Lyre-less, I sang with a voice worn to a wisp of its former self in my long vigil. I ought to have gone mad and starved to death, drinking of the River Styx and taking no food. But I died not. I leave it to you to guess the state of my mind, and the soul that burned beneath my skin like the forge of Hephaestus.

Finally, Persephone relented—or seemed to do so. “I have released Eurydice from the Underworld, but she is transformed. If your love is as strong as you say, you will find her again and earn her forgiveness.”

Invigorated, I left the bank of the Styx, but I soon learned how huge the task was, now set before me. Heracles himself would struggle, but he was no great lover, either. I had sung of these men, these Jason and Heracleses, these Agamemnons, with irony. Long centuries has it taken me to admit on this very page, that I am more like them than is comfortable to my pride.

I never replaced my lyre, but there is more than one path up a mountain. That, perhaps, was the Dark Queen’s lesson.

I rowed aboard the Argo, after all, in my time. But after my time, I worked as a thespian in Plevron, letting the playwrights move my tongue.

I was a scrive in Alexandria before its library burned, and I saw the Romans come, and the Byzantines, and the Turks, as I worked here and there as a traveling player, as this and then that. I looked for Eurydice, finding her in dreams only.

Perhaps I lost hope.

Lately, I am what in this new tongue is called a busker. A guitar is not so different from my lyre of old, and I confess, I missed the feel of strings beneath my hand. But I keep self-vigil always, as though I stood outside myself—for the vainglory that killed my wife so long ago.

I play and sometimes, the cityfolk offer coins and sometimes spittle. But I treat these the same. Always, I search for the woman with eyes the color of promises I’ll keep at last or die trying.

I have forgotten fear of death, but forgotten, too, how to long for it. This new Eurydice who belongs once more to herself, is out there somewhere. Scrawling all this out has restored some measure of faith that our eyes will meet once more, even in the shade of this New Church. Gracious Apollo and inscrutable Persephone are not so easily dispensed with. And nor am I.

Orpheus had finished. He capped his stick-pen as carefully as if it were a fountain pen of chased silver and took out each of the pages, mindful of the perforations. He folded the sheets just as neatly into thirds, like a letter, and stamped them shut with real sealing-wax before he slid the packet into the inside pocket of his capacious leather jacket—too hot for Athens weather, but useful for a busker.

Thanking the proprietress, he went for a walk, hands in the pockets of his faded jeans as he saw, heard, and smelled the city of Athens. Gyros and frying onions mingled with car exhaust, human sweat, and the wind itself. The wind blew cobwebs from his mind and got into his blood so that his pace quickened, taking him uphill rather than down, and he looked around him more avidly. A blonde woman wore one of the cheap metal ‘laurel crowns,’ standing in line at a kiosk. What would she say if he told her he had seen men crowned with real laurels in his day—that he served the god whose tree that was? His song of Daphne herself came to his mind, but the woman had looked away long since, and so the words remained on his tongue, crowding in his throat. He walked on.

The street cafes were sparser here, replaced by sex shops and clubs, their signs mingling Greek and English, promising gratification of desire. After dark, it was no safe place, but it was broad day yet, for the sun held long dominion in summer.

There was someone perched on flattened cardboard, but it was not a fellow busker, Orpheus saw as he neared. No, a thin woman wore a shawl, a scarf over her dark hair. In her arms was a tiny child whose eyes were closed in sleep. A battered drinks cup sat at their feet, and as Orpheus looked on, the woman adjusted the thin summer blanket around her baby.

“Where do you come from?” he asked, seeing the shadows of weariness, heavy on the infant’s face.

“From Syria,” she said, tracing the baby’s cheek with a finger. “Months and months here.”

“Where is your husband, good lady?”

“Dead before we come over. He—” She stared down and away, seeking a word. “He drown,” she finished, and met Orpheus’s eye at last. Orpheus froze in the act of reaching into a pocket for coins for her cup as their gazes met.

Promises by the score were written in her eyes, and he could not speak. As he stood pole-axed before her, the baby woke and stared at him too, dark eyes questioning before his face crumpled to release a wail.

Orpheus knelt before them both. “I am called Orpheus,” he said, and he began to sing.

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End

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© 2019 Sam Crain. The content of this article, except for quoted or linked source materials, is protected by copyright. Please contact the author for usage

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