“It isn’t true!” sang out a handsome voice behind me.
“It isn’t true!” chorused the Amazons.
They began to play their game. They sang the phrase “It isn’t true,” and one of them would reply by trotting out some traditional wisdom, so that they could all chorus again, “It isn’t true!” At other times, they would chant, “But, this is true.” Then a voice had to make a comment they all considered true and they would round it off by chorusing again “Yes, that is true!” The whole procedure was accompanied by dances and bizarre melodies, charming but outlandish. Dogs barked, disturbed by the clapping, and jumped up panting against the dancers.
“It isn’t true.”
“We lived in kitchens, cooking, baking bread,
Till younger women claimed our husband’s bed.”
Once again I recognized an allusion to Aeschylus.
“It isn’t true!”
“It isn’t true!”
“We joined the band of Amazons because
Vile men had raped our sister and we knew
That what one suffers all must suffer too.”
“It isn’t true!”
“It isn’t true!”
“We joined the band of Amazons because
The mighty goddess Pallas forced us to,
When Zeus’s bolt had scattered far and wide
The Argive fleet and battered Ajax’ pride,
For raping wise Cassandra while Troy burned.
Hence we to fiery Amazons were turned.”
“It isn’t true!”
“But this is true!”
“We are the children of the God of War
As wolf-raised Romulus and Remus were.”
“Yes, that is true!”
“It isn’t true!”
“When young, we burned one nipple off our chest
To leave the right side with no trace of breast.”
“It isn’t true!”
“But this is true.”
“Each god and goddess treats us like a friend
And to our arms grants power without end.”
“Yes, that is true!”
“It isn’t true!”
“We broke male children’s legbones, cutting short
Their speed, to cripple them in war and sport.”
“It isn’t true!”
“But this is true.”
“Yes this is true!”
“We went to Troy and forced our foes to flee,
Wielding the arms that bring us victory!”
“Yes, that is true!”
“It isn’t true.”
“All that we keep of lost Atlantis’ pride
Is songs the victims sang the day they died.”
“It isn’t true!”
Here, as if in contradiction, someone sang what might have been a song from Atlantis:
Beat loudly on your turquoise drum,
O child of flowery passion, come!
Come with heron’s feathers dressed
And stripes of paint across your chest!
And here to leave you satisfied
Are shields made from a tiger’s hide.
“It isn’t true,” called half of the Amazon chorus.
“But it is true,” challenged the other. “It is. It is!”
“Neither the song nor Atlantis is real.”
“Atlantis is as real as you and I are. Thirty thousand Amazons once invaded it. There were innumerable prisoners. Nobody ever saw booty like it!”
“Pure gossip!”
“It’s true.”
“It’s a falsehood.”
“It’s true, I tell you.”
With an imperious gesture Hippolyta brought the dance to an end; it had grown feverish and the quarrel over the reality of Atlantis was on the point of developing into a pitched battle. She walked away and everyone followed her.
All together we arrived at the communal bed of the Amazons. On one side of the two palm trees that guarded the giant black stone, somebody had spread a thick, soft covering of cool grass. Hippolyta took me to where the covering looked thickest and there we halted. All the Amazons settled down to sleep, without another word. The only sound was the tuneful weeping of the lovesick Orthea; all else was still, until Hippolyta resumed the conversation we had begun around the fire.
“Orthea. Did you really mean she’s grotesque? What’s wrong with her? Thalestris made love all night, for three consecutive nights, with Alexander the Great. She wanted a son by him. ’There’s nothing better than a son of Alexander,’ she said. But Love’s arrows were infected and she died shortly afterwards, without having borne a child. Penthesilea was defeated by Achilles, because she allowed herself to love him. Do you think Penthesilea and Thalestris fell for that old canard, that one’s mate is one’s other half and together the two compose one unity? But I see you don’t want to discuss this. You can hardly keep your eyes open. Let night fall on the Amazons!”
She fell quiet. Where she and I lay down, they had spread a layer of rose petals over the cool grass. All the Amazons, stretched out on their soft collective bed, were listening to the lamentations of Orthea over her passion for the god. One or two repeated her words out of sympathy for her. Others were weeping, distressed. A somewhat chubby Amazon, lying near me, kept clutching her hand to her chest to check an impulse to sob. But the sobs emerged and between them she was saying, “Poor little thing, just listen to her, poor little Orthea.” A small woman, smiling and rosy-cheeked, replied, “But if you’ve got us, dummy, what else do you want?” Cackles broke out in unmitigated ridicule. Some laughed with a certain tenderness, as if they noticed in the lamentations a childlike quality that stirred them, but most were mercilessly contemptuous. Orthea’s song simply enraged others and they put their hands to their ears to blot it out.
Hippolyta’s attitude surprised me most. In an intimate tone, inviting sleep, she sang us all a lullaby, as she crouched on the bed of petals, resting one knee on it.
Demeter, grieving friend to grieving friends,
Who guide your chariot with fell snakes for reins,
Tracing great paths of woe that never ends,
Now grant us peace, bring comfort to our pains.
Artemis, titanic archer, almost male,
Nursing the young of beast and humankind!
As long as dogs hunt deer o’er hill and dale,
Cherish us all with loving heart and mind.
Now come, soft Sleep, and all our sorrows take,
That we may gently sleep and gently wake.
A wave of serenity passed over the Amazons. They had all cuddled up to each other, their bodies bent, arms laid across the next body, as if when standing they had been separate pieces of a huge, broken dish, which the act of lying down had reassembled. They composed one huge body, contradicting the false image of the tirelessly conflictive Amazon portrayed by artists. Nobody here brandished a sword, drew a bow, waved an axe or drove home a dagger! Nobody was beaten, nobody stabbed, nobody hauled away by the hair. The foot of one was hooked in the armpit of another, here a head lay on a breast, there a bottom was up against a belly, and there again an arm across a thigh. It was like a thread passing through the eye of a needle. Or a button through a buttonhole. Lying there together, they melded into each other, both mold and model, unified, united. Hippolyta and I were the only ones who did not form part of this necklace of bodies. She was leaning one knee to the ground, the rest of her body tilted toward the sky. I watched her crouched there.