Orestes reveals that Apollo’s oracle had commanded him to avenge Agamemnon’s murder. In a long poetic passage, Electra steels Orestes’ courage, and he goes forth to kill Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. He obtains entrance to the palace by deception, pretending to his mother Clytemnestra that he is a messenger from far-off Phocis, bearing news of Orestes’ death. Once inside, he slays Aegisthus, and then, confronting his mother, he accuses her of the murder and kills her.
The play ends with Orestes, maddened by his crime, seeing the Furies coming to pursue him. He takes refuge in the temple of Apollo. The mystic and allegorical sequel, The Eumenides, sees Orestes absolved of blame.
Aeschylus, in short, was not overly concerned with the credibility of his play’s action. His purpose in the Oresteia trilogy was a theological one: to examine the actions of the gods in placing a curse upon a house, a curse stemming from murder and leading to further murder. The keynote of his philosophy is perhaps the line, “’Tis Zeus alone who shows the perfect way of knowledge: He hath ruled, men shall learn wisdom, by affliction schooled.” Aeschylus sacrifices dramatic technique, or at least holds it in secondary importance, in order to focus attention on the religious and psychological aspects of the matricide.
The Electra of Euripides is virtually at an opposite pole from the concept of Aeschylus; though he uses the same plot, he elaborates and innovates to provide far richer texture. Electra and Orestes stand out in relief in Euripides: Electra a near-mad woman, banished from the court, married to a peasant, craving vengeance; Orestes a coward, sneaking into Mycenae the back way, abjectly stabbing Aegisthus from behind, luring Clytemnestra to her doom by a ruse. Euripides is concerned with dramatic credibility, whereas Aeschylus is not. After the famous parody of the Aeschylean recognition scene, Orestes makes himself known to Electra not by his hair or the size of his foot, but rather by
* * *
Oh God. Oh shit. Shit shit shit. This is deadly. This is no fucking good at all. Could Yahya Lumumba have written any of this crap? Phony from Word One. Why should Yahya Lumumba give a shit about Greek tragedy? Why should I? What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her? I’ll tear this up and start again. I’ll write it jivey, man. I’ll give it dat ole watermelon rhythm. God help me to think black. But I can’t. But I can’t. But I can’t. Christ, I’d like to throw up. I think I’m getting a fever. Wait. Maybe a joint would help some. Yeah. Let’s get high and try again. A lil ole stick of mootah. Get some soul into it, man. Smartass white Jew-bastard, get some soul into it, you hear? Okay, now. There was this cat Agamemnon, he was one big important fucker, you hear, he was The Man, but he got fucked all the same. His old lady Clytemnestra, she was makin’ it with this chickenshit muthafuck Aegisthus, and one day she say, Baby, let’s waste old Aggie, you and me, and then you gonna be king—gwine be king?—gonna—and we have a high ole time. Aggie, he off in the Nam runnin’ the show, but he come home for some R & R and before he know what happenin’ they stick him good, right, they really cut him, and that all for him. Now there this crazy cunt Electra, dig, she the daughter of ole Aggie, and she get real uptight when they use him up, so she say to her brother, his name Orestes, she say, listen, Orestes, I want you to get them two muthafucks, I want you to get them real good. Now, this cat Orestes he been out of town for a while, he don’t know the score, but—
Yeah, that’s it, man! You’re digging it! Now go on to explain about Euripides’ use of the deus ex machina and the cathartic virtues of Sophocles’ realistic dramatic technique. Sure. What a dumb schmuck you are, Selig. What a dumb schmuck.
FIFTEEN.
I tried to be good to Judith, I tried to be kind and loving, but our hatred kept coming between us. I said to myself, She’s my kid sister, my only sibling, I must love her more. But you can’t will love. You can’t conjure it into existence on nothing more than good intentions. Besides, my intentions had never been that good. I saw her as a rival from the word go. I was the firstborn, I was the difficult one, the maladjusted one. I was supposed to be the center of everything. Those were the terms of my contract with God: I must suffer because I am different, but by way of compensation the entire universe will revolve about me. The girlbaby who was brought into the household was intended to be nothing more than a therapeutic aid designed to help me relate better to the human race. That was the deal: she wasn’t supposed to have independent reality as a person, she wasn’t supposed to have her own needs or make demands or drain away their love. Just a thing, an item of furniture. But I knew better than to believe that. I was ten years old, remember, when they adopted her. Your ten-year-old, he’s no fool. I knew that my parents, no longer feeling obliged now to direct all their concern exclusively toward their mysteriously intense and troubled son, would rapidly and with great relief transfer their attention and their love—yes, particularly their love—to the cuddly, uncomplicated infant. She would take my place at the center; I’d become a quirky obsolescent artifact. I couldn’t help resenting that. Do you blame me for trying to kill her in her bassinet? On the other hand you can understand the origin of her life-long coldness toward me. I offer no defense at this late date. The cycle of hatred began with me. With me, Jude, with me, with me, with me. You could have broken it with love, though, if you wanted to. You didn’t want to.
On a Saturday afternoon in May, 1961, I went out to my parents’ house. In those years I didn’t go there often, though I lived twenty minutes away by subway. I was outside the family circle, autonomous and remote, and I felt powerful resistance to any kind of reattachment. For one thing I had free-floating hostilities toward my parents: it was their fluky genes, after all, that had sent me into the world this way. And then too there was Judith, shriveling me with her disdain: did I need more of that? So I stayed away from the three of them for weeks, months, at a time, until the melancholy maternal phonecalls became too much for me, until the weight of my guilt overcame my resistances.
I was happy to discover, when I got there, that Judith was still in her bedroom, asleep. At three in the afternoon? Well, my mother said, she was out very late last night on a date. Judith was sixteen, I imagined her going to a high school basketball game with some skinny pimply kid and sipping milkshakes afterwards. Sleep well, sister, sleep on and on. But of course her absence put me into direct and unshielded confrontation with my sad depleted parents. My mother, mild and dim; my father, weary and bitter. All my life they had steadily grown smaller. They seemed very small now. They seemed close to the vanishing point.
I had never lived in this apartment. For years Paul and Martha had struggled with the upkeep of a three-bedroom place they couldn’t afford, simply because it had become impossible for Judith and me to share the same bedroom once she was past her infancy. The moment I left for college, taking a room near campus, they found a smaller and far less expensive one. Their bedroom was to the right of the entry foyer, and Judith’s, down a long hall and past the kitchen, was to the left; straight ahead was the livingroom, in which my father sat dreamily leafing through the Times. He read nothing but the newspaper these days, though once his mind had been more active. From him came a dull sludgy emanation of fatigue. He was making some decent money for the first time in his life, actually would end up quite prosperous, yet he had conditioned himself to the poor-man psychology: poor Paul, you’re a pitiful failure, you deserved so much better from life. I looked at the newspaper through his mind as he turned the pages. Yesterday Alan Shepard had made his epochal sub-orbital flight, the first manned venture into space by the United States. U.S. HURLS MAN 115 MILES INTO SPACE, cried the banner headline. SHEPARD WORKS CONTROLS IN CAPSULE, REPORTS BY RADIO IN 15-MINUTE FLIGHT. I groped for some way to connect with my father. “What did you think of the space voyage?” I asked. “Did you listen to the broadcast?” He shrugged. “Who gives a damn? It’s all crazy. A mishigos. A waste of everybody’s time and money.” ELIZABETH VISITS POPE IN VATICAN. Fat Pope John, looking like a well-fed rabbi. JOHNSON TO MEET LEADERS IN ASIA ON U.
S. TROOP USE. He skimmed onward, skipping pages. HELP OF GOLDBERG ASKED ON ROCKETS. KENNEDY SIGNS WAGE-FLOOR BILL. Nothing registered on him, not even KENNEDY TO SEEK INCOME TAX CUTS. He lingered at the sports pages. A faint flicker of interest. MUD MAKES CARRY BACK STRONGER FAVORITE FOR 87th KENTUCKY DERBY TODAY. YANKS OPPOSE ANGELS IN OPENER OF 3-GAME SERIES BEFORE 21,000 ON COAST. “Who do you like in the Derby?” I asked. He shook his head. “What do I know about horses?” he said. He was, I realized, already dead, although in fact his heart would beat for another decade. He had stopped responding. The world had defeated him.
I left him to his brooding and made polite talk with my mother: her Hadassah reading group was discussing To Kill a Mockingbird next Thursday and she wanted to know if I had read it. I hadn’t. What was I doing with myself? Had I seen any good movies? L’Avventura, I said. Is that a French film? she asked. Italian, I said. She wanted me to describe the plot. She listened patiently, looking troubled, not following anything. “Who did you go with?” she asked. “Are you seeing any nice girls?” My son the bachelor. Already 26 and not even engaged. I deflected the tiresome question with patient skill born of long experience. Sorry, Martha. I won’t give you the grandchildren you’re waiting for. You’ll have to get them from Judith; it won’t be all that long.
“I have to baste the chicken now,” she said, and disappeared. I sat with my father for a while, until I couldn’t stand that and went down the hall to the john, next to Judith’s room. Her door was ajar. I glanced in. Lights off, blinds drawn, but I touched her mind and found that she was awake and thinking of getting up. All right, make a gesture, be friendly, Duvid. It won’t cost you anything. I knocked lightly. “Hi, it’s me,” I said. “Okay if I come in?”
She was sitting up, wearing a frilly white bathrobe over dark-blue pajamas. Yawning, stretching. Her face, usually so taut, was puffy from too much sleep. Out of force of habit I went into her mind, and saw something new and surprising there. My sister’s erotic inauguration. The night before. The whole thing: the scurry in the parked car, the rise of excitement, the sudden realization that this was going to be more than an interlude of petting, the panties coming down, the awkward shiftings of position, the fumble with the condom, the moment of ultimate hesitation giving way to total willingness, the hasty inexpert fingers coaxing lubrication out of the virgin crevice, the cautious clumsy poking, the thrust, the surprise of discovering that penetration was accomplished without pain, the pistoning of body against body, the boy’s quick explosion, the messy aftermath, the guilt and confusion and disappointment as it ended with Judith still unsatisfied. The drive home, silent, shamefaced. Into the house, tiptoe, hoarsely greeting the vigilant, unsleeping parents. The late-night shower. Inspection and cleansing of the deflowered and slightly swollen vulva. Uneasy sleep, frequently punctured. A long stretch of wakefulness, in which the night’s event is considered: she is pleased and relieved to have entered womanhood, but also frightened. Unwillingness to rise and face the world the next day, especially to face Paul and Martha. Judith, your secret is no secret to me.
“How are you?” I asked.
Stagily casual, she drawled, “Sleepy. I was out very late. How come you’re here?”
“I drop in to see the family now and then.”
“Nice to have seen you.”
“That isn’t friendly, Jude. Am I that loathsome to you?”
“Why are you bothering me, Duv?”
“I told you, I’m trying to be sociable. You’re my only sister, the only one I’ll ever have. I thought I’d stick my head in the door and say hello.”
“You’ve done that. So?”
“You might tell me what you’ve been doing with yourself since the last time I saw you.”
“Do you care?”
“If I didn’t care, would I ask?”
“Sure,” she said. “You don’t give a crap about what I’ve been doing. You don’t give a crap about anybody but David Selig, and why pretend otherwise? You don’t need to ask me polite questions. It isn’t natural coming from you.”
“Hey, hold on!” Let’s not be dueling so fast, sister. “What gives you the idea that—”
“Do you think of me from one week to the next? I’m just furniture to you. The drippy little sister. The brat. The inconvenience. Have you ever talked to me? About anything? Do you even know the name of the school I go to? I’m a total stranger to you.”
“No, you’re not.”
“What the hell do you know about me?”
“Plenty.”
“For example.”
“Quit it, Jude.”
“One example. Just one. One thing about me. For example—”
“For example. All right. For example, I know that you got laid last night.”
We were both amazed by that. I stood in shocked silence, not believing that I had allowed those words to pass my lips; and Judith jerked as though electrified, her body stiffening and rearing, her eyes blazing with astonishment. I don’t know how long we remained frozen, unable to speak.
“What?” she said finally. “What did you say, Duv?”
“You heard it.”
“I heard it but I think I must have dreamed it. Say it again.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Leave me alone, Jude.”
“Who told you?”
“Please, Jude—”
“Who told you?”
“Nobody,” I muttered.
Her smile was terrifyingly triumphant. “You know something? I believe you. I honestly believe you. Nobody told you. You pulled it right out of my mind, didn’t you, Duv?”
“I wish I had never come in here.”
“Admit it. Why won’t you admit it? You see into people’s minds, don’t you, Duvid? You’re some kind of circus freak. I’ve suspected that a long time. All those little hunches you have, and they always turn out to be right, and the embarrassed phony way you cover up for yourself when you’re right. Talking about your ‘luck’ at guessing things. Sure! Sure, luck! I knew the real scoop. I said to myself, This fucker is reading my mind. But I told myself it was crazy, there aren’t any such people, it has to be impossible. Only it’s true, isn’t it? You don’t guess. You look. We’re wide open to you and you read us like books. Spying on us. Isn’t that so?”
I heard a sound behind me. I jumped, frightened. But it was only Martha, poking her head into Judith’s bedroom. A vague, dreamy grin. “Good morning, Judith. Or good afternoon, I should say. Having a nice chat, children? I’m so glad. Don’t forget to have breakfast, Judith.” And she drifted on her way.
Judith said sharply, “Why didn’t you tell her? Describe the whole thing. Who I was with last night, what I did with him, how it felt—”
“Stop it, Jude.”
“You didn’t answer my other question. You’ve got this weird power, don’t you? Don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve been secretly spying on people all your life.”
“Yes. Yes.”
“I knew it. I didn’t know, but I really did, all along. And it explains so much. Why I always felt dirty when I was a kid and you were around. Why I felt as if anything I did was likely to show up in tomorrow’s newspapers. I never had any privacy, even when I was locked in the bathroom. I didn’t feel private.” She shuddered. “I hope I never see you again, Duv. Now that I know what you are. I wish I never had seen you. If I ever catch you poking around in my head after this, I’ll cut your balls off. Got that? I’ll cut your balls off. Now clear out of here so I can get dressed.”
I stumbled away. In the bathroom I gripped the cold edge of the sink and leaned close to the mirror to study my flushed, flustered face. I looked stunned and dazed, my features as rigid as though I had had a stroke. I know that you got laid last night. Why had I told her that? An accident? The words spilling out of me because she had goaded me past the point of prudence? But I had never let anyone push me into a revelation like that before. There are no acci
dents, Freud said. There are never any slips of the tongue. Everything’s deliberate, on one level or another. I must have said what I did to Judith because I wanted her at last to know the truth about me. But why? Why her? I had already told Nyquist, yes; there could be no risk in that; but I had never admitted it to anyone else. Always taken such great pains to conceal it, eh, Miss Mueller? And now Judith knew. I had given her a weapon with which she could destroy me.
* * *
I had given her a weapon. How strange that she never chose to use it.
SIXTEEN.
Nyquist said, “The real trouble with you, Selig, is that you’re a deeply religious man who doesn’t happen to believe in God.” Nyquist was always saying things like that, and Selig never could be sure whether he meant them or was just playing verbal games. No matter how deeply Selig penetrated the other man’s soul, he never could be sure of anything. Nyquist was too wily, too elusive.
Playing it safe, Selig said nothing. He stood with his back to Nyquist, looking out the window. Snow was falling. The narrow streets below were choked with it; not even the municipal snowplows could get through, and a strange serenity prevailed. High winds whipped the drifts about. Parked cars were disappearing under the white blanket. A few janitors from the apartment houses on the block were out, digging manfully. It had been snowing on and off for three days. Snow was general all over the Northeast. It was falling on every filthy city, on the arid suburbs, falling softly upon the Appalachians and, farther eastward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Atlantic waves. Nothing was moving in New York City. Everything was shut down: office buildings, schools, the concert halls, the theaters. The rail-roads were out of commission and the highways were blocked. There was no action at the airports. Basketball games were being canceled at Madison Square Garden. Unable to get to work, Selig had waited out most of the blizzard in Nyquist’s apartment, spending so much time with him that by now he had come to find his friend’s company stifling and oppressive. What earlier had seemed amusing and charming in Nyquist had become abrasive and tricksy. Nyquist’s bland self-assurance conveyed itself now as smugness; his casual forays into Selig’s mind were no longer affectionate gestures of intimacy, but rather, conscious acts of aggression. His habit of repeating aloud what Selig was thinking was increasingly irritating, and there seemed to be no deterring him from that. Here he was doing it again, plucking a quotation from Selig’s head and declaiming it in half-mocking tones: “Ah. How pretty. ‘His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.’ I like that. What is it, David?”