Suddenly Iphigenia remembers where she has heard that name before.
The blade piercing her neck in a blast of shrill whiteness, then a shriek. Hers. And, somewhere down by her feet, Iphigenia hears her baby's first scandalized screams at the state of the world. She feels the soggy metallic seep leaking from between her thighs, soaking the sheets.
A son, Anthea's voice says. Praise be to the gods.
Tomorrow morning Iphigenia's attendant will hang the bloody flag outside the girl's window as a trophy for all to witness. For now, exhausted by the painful newness of things, Iphigenia, sprawling in the dark hotness, slides down into a weightless sleep in which she does not believe she is sleeping, wondering vaguely what her husband is doing at this very second, and where.
Agamemnon feeling his penis stir at the sound of Clytemnestra's shoes clicking across the tiles toward him. His member prickles, begins to swell. He opens his eyes, commences a lazy rotation in his warm pine-scented bath, the thought gathering within him: Tonight I am a lucky man. Tonight I am
The arrow stabs into shocked Achilles' heel.
He pitches forward onto the dust without another idea having time to enter his mind.
The giant serpent's head darts above the terrified girclass="underline" stub-nosed, blank-eyed, drooling fangs long as a man's leg.
At the palace, Clytemnestra catches sight of the glint in her son Orestes' enormous right fist and, hand to mouth, staggers back in horror.
No, she says. Please. You don't understa
The multitude of ships plying their way across the bay toward the open sea, a multitude of whitecaps beneath the ideal sky.
Electra cackling at her mother's screams tumbling in from the next room.
Somewhere in heaven, Artemis jerking awake from uneasy dreams.
The giant serpent strikes.
It strikes again.
And in that stunning moment, Iphigenia comes to recognize death by its uncontaminated silence.
February
~ ~ ~
At the top of the next hill, Nayomi's story falling behind you, you don't find an extension of the country road you've been following. You find yourself veering unexpectedly back onto the Autostrada, traffic interlacing frantically around you. You crest 130 kilometers, 132, your mind hazy with speed. Above, the sky has begun paling into a shimmering wheat, the afternoon taking its first steps toward sunset. The landscape is the same landscape you've been driving through since late this morning. Nayomi must have been leading you in an enormous meandering circle, spilling you out almost at the same point you started. Your husband's body is no longer rigid. Robert is slumping in his seat, as if he has somehow gotten used to this new situation. He is still alert, but there is something almost relaxed in his pose. This is where we are, it tells you. This is what is happening. Because he can't do it, his body is adapting for him. You tune in to what Nayomi is saying just in time to hear her announce you are nearing a medieval village called Viterbo. This is where, she explains, she spent two nights last autumn in a hostel with her friends. The village sits atop a hill just as villages do in early Italian Renaissance paintings. In the middle rises a castle. Every June, Nayomi says, Viterbo hosts a beautiful cherry festival. She wishes she could attend someday. She wishes she could do many things someday that it now appears she won't be able to do. Isn't it amazing, she asks, how life becomes a series not so much of choices as negations of choices? To want this, you have to give up that. Every day a few more options fleck away. In the end, you're left with only one. While in Viterbo, she ate nothing but the village's famous cherry tarts. For breakfast, lunch, dinner. They were the most delicious pastries she had ever tasted, rich and buttery and full of tang. Her friends and she picnicked on benches at the base of the castle, talking about what they would do after the holidays and how. Back then their plan seemed like a dark electric fairytale. Now she is living it. You are reasonably sure you remember seeing a red star labeled Viterbo on the map this morning at the car rental office in Rome. If you're right, if that's where you are, then you are no longer traveling north. You are traveling south. Nayomi is aiming you back toward the capital. Maybe that's why traffic has started condensing around you, why you have to swerve in and out among more and more cars and trucks and busses and motorcycles to maintain your speed. You are sensing the first pulses of rush hour. Faster, Nayomi says. You can go faster. You crest 135. You crest 140. You hear the engine straining beneath you. It takes all your resolve to maintain control of the car. You've been hoping Nayomi's ramble will help your children remain under. They're exhausted from the string of early-morning wakeups to catch this plane or that train, this ferry or that bus, exhausted from the sense of perpetual motion that vacations like this engender. You've been worrying that their immune systems are wearing down, that they're due for colds, which means you and Robert are due for colds, too. It seems right that all they've done is come awake long enough to rearrange themselves more comfortably in the backseat, Nayomi their beanbag pillow. But even as this idea orbits inside your head, Celan says: I have to go pee-pee. Your breath catches. Your grip tightens on the steering wheel. This time he doesn't sound groggy at all. This time he sounds wide awake, full of honesty and need. My tummy's sloshing, he says. Nadi joins in: Me too. I have to go, too. Nayomi says: It won't be long now, munchkins. We're almost there. Das macht nichts. Celan says: I can't hold it. Nayomi asks Nadi: How about my princess? Can she hold it a klitzeklein bit more? An itsy-bitsy bit? Nadi takes the question very seriously, nods her head yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, she thinks she can. She isn't sure, but she thinks so. Nayomi gives her a cuddly hug and tells her how terrific she is. But Celan has passed the point of no return: his face, you can see in the rearview mirror, has started staining red with discomfort and embarrassment. I have to GO, he says. Nayomi reaches down and picks up her empty water bottle from the floor. She hands it to him and, smiling her adorable model's smile, says: Here you go, sweet-pea. Use this. No one will look. Hand auf Herz. Cross my heart. You say over your shoulder: We won't, honey. Really. Celan looks to his father for confirmation. Robert says: Go for it, Cel. Seriously. We promise. It's cool. It's totally cool. Celan says: Why can't we go at the next rest stop? For some reason his question prompts you to check the gas gauge. You haven't thought about it since this began. Next you are taking in the fact that you have less than an eighth of a tank left. Listen, Robert says to Celan sternly. His tone changes, melts into an approximation of patience and understanding. Because we just can't, hon, he says. I'm sorry. But it's okay. When I was your age? Gran and Gramps? They HATED to stop. I don't know why. Every time, just before we pulled out of their driveway on a trip in their Cadillac whale, Gramps used to say in his big deep voice over his shoulder: SPEAK NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PISS. Celan and Nadi laugh. Robert continues: I can still hear him. I never had to go then. Why would I? But I knew, no matter how much I emptied, that I'd have to go again in a couple of hours. It was terrible. So you know what I did? I ended up peeing in Coke bottles. That's what vacations with Gran and Gramps meant for me. And I'm here to tell you: there's nothing to it, sport. A total cinch.