Not Apollo, she thought heavily. He took his own life…
“We found him lying at the foot of the pinnacle.” The priests shuffled awkwardly. “There was… nothing anybody could do.”
Knowing sympathy was inadequate, they retreated, leaving her alone with the body. How long, though — an hour? — before they trooped back? Not long, that’s for sure, since it was essential that the obsequies commenced as quickly as possible, and since women were not allowed inside the temple mortuary, this was her only — and last — time alone with him. She wished she could make peace with him, too.
We named you Cassandra, your mother and I, because during the time of the Trojan War, Cassandra’s curse was to prophesy but not be believed. Her father’s words echoed in the stillness. We thought, no we hoped, it would spare you the fate of the previous sibyls. But you, child — he had smiled — you were always so headstrong.
“The name Jason means healing,” a voice rasped at her shoulder. “Which I will, if you will allow me.”
She looked up at him, blond and bronzed, and thought her heart would break in two. He knew. He knew the minute he’d tried to inspect Laertes’ corpse that something wasn’t right…
“I prised it out of the Keepers of the Vigil in the end,” he had told her. “No one was allowed near the body. Only someone in authority could have issued that command. I made them divulge who, then I knocked up the temple physician.”
That’s why he was gone so long, he explained.
“The physician said that Periander had been acting oddly for a few days, and that he’d been worried.”
It was why the physician agreed to go for a walk above the Shining Cliffs with him, and why he’d accepted it had been Periander’s clumsiness, not malice, that had caused him to fall and break his ankle.
Jason stared at the bloodied sheet on the bier stained by one tear, then another, then another. “Your father was not a bad man,” he whispered.
“With so many choices open to him, so many different paths he could have taken,” she sobbed, “why did he choose to become a cold-blooded killer?”
“Because, darling, he loved you.”
Anger replaced grief. “It was not for him to decide Laertes’ fate,” Cassandra spat. “Between us we could have used the Oracle to divert Laertes from his murderous intentions, and at least warn him of the assassin at his back. After that, it would be up to him how he proceeded, not for my father to decide.”
Jason watched her tears darken the shroud.
“Laertes came to Delphi to receive sanction for the rebellion he was planning. The king’s assassin followed,” he said. “By listening and observing, he found a willing implement in, yes, this temple’s seer of all people, but don’t be too harsh on your father, my love. We all have something we want desperately, and we all have something to trade. Your father simply wanted to save his daughter’s life.”
Old sequences replayed in her head. Periander grief-stricken when his beloved wife fell ill to the noxious vapours inside the sanctum. But not half so pained as the day his only child announced that she was following the same career path as her mother.
“To spare you the agony of dying young, your father became the assassin’s instrument, feeding Laertes belladonna in the belief that, whatever happened, Laertes was a dead man, but this way he could at least save his daughter.”
If only it were that simple, Cassandra thought. He reasoned that if he discredited the Oracle and another prophetess took her place, what did principle matter, provided his daughter was safe? But did he not realise that she not only understood but accepted, when she donned the bridal robes, that the deadly vapours that rose from the rock would probably kill her? Weighed against the balance of life, the opportunity to become the holy Oracle at Delphi was still the most exciting, the most challenging, the most invigorating role any woman could hope to take on.
“To live a few years fully is better than to live many years badly,” she said, hugging her arms to her breast.
Once again, the decision was not her father’s to make, but the tragedy was that with Jason’s assistance she had arranged that circus this morning specifically to convince Periander that his daughter had breathed the vapours of death and that there was nothing for him to live for. Sacrilege in Apollo’s shrine had indeed been punished. But at what price, she wondered—
“Come,” Jason said. “The priests are returning. Let’s go back to the sanctum.” He kissed her tear-stained cheeks. “There’s a fissure I want to block up.”
Healing, he said. The name Jason means healing, and maybe, just maybe, Cassandra would grow to love him as much as he adored her.
Right now, though, she doubted it.
How could she love him, if she hated herself?
A Viennese Romance
by Stefan Slupetzky
Copyright © 2004 by Stefan Slupetzky; first published as “Eine Wiener Romanze” in Absurdes Gluck. Translation © 2007 by Mary Tannert.
Stefan Slupetzky was born in 1962 in Vienna and studied at the Vienna Academy of Arts. He worked as both a musician and drawing teacher before turning to writing, and has writ-ten and illustrated more than a dozen books for children. Mr. Slupetzky now writes dramas, short fiction, and novels for adults. His crime-fiction debut, The Case of the Lemming, was awarded the Friedrich Glauser prize for best first crime novel.
Translated from the German by Mary Tannert
Lizzy had almost everything. Everything but a place of her own. But because she had almost everything, she had Charlie, and he had a spare. A spare apartment, that is. Charlie would have moved in with Lizzy, but Lizzy said: “You know, living together’s best when I’m doin’ it alone. ’Cause of the vibes, you know? Then I can think about you more than when you’re always here. Know what I mean? Yeah, you know…”
Charlie didn’t know, not really, but Lizzy got the penthouse high above the park, with the rooftop terrace and everything. Charlie had more than just “everything”; that was from his days as a great center forward on the soccer field and because he had a star manager and all. But Charlie wasn’t the brightest guy, and, well, he could be a little impulsive. Once, for example, when Lizzy didn’t answer the phone or open the door for two whole days, Charlie got a little wound up. Luckily, Lizzy’s Fiat was still in the underground parking garage, and to make sure it stayed there, Charlie slit all four tires.
Lizzy was pretty shaken up. “My Chitty Bang,” she sobbed. “You broke my Chitty Bang!” All of a sudden, Charlie couldn’t be mad at her anymore; he was overcome by guilt instead. And soon Chitty Bang’s parking spot was occupied by a shiny new red Ferrari. To make up. Because basically Charlie was a good guy.
So Lizzy forgave him. “Oh, Charliesweetie,” she sighed, and blew gently in his ear. Charliesweetie liked that.
Even so, a week later the television took the brunt of it, on account of a letter on Lizzy’s nightstand. A letter that she hid from Charlie fast — but not fast enough.
“I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it!” screamed Lizzy, and locked herself in the bathroom.
Charlie was seized with a terrible fear that Lizzy would slit her wrists. But she didn’t, and the next day, when Charlie apologized with a Super Reality Video Wall, he was happy, because Lizzy blew in his ear again.
And so, with time, Lizzy’s penthouse was no longer a run-of-the-mill penthouse with a view of the park and a rooftop terrace and all. The couch had been replaced with a queen-sized electrical massage lounge; where the bathtub had been there was a Jacuzzi; the extra-bright daylight lamp had become a whole solarium. And Charlie never broke anything twice. Lizzy made sure of that. The business with the sixty-piece dinner service, for example. Lizzy had found it when she was out shopping and had fallen in love with it. And the next time Charlie got all wound up, she ran into the kitchen, threw herself protectively in front of the china cabinet, arms flung wide, and begged him: “No, not Mama’s beautiful plates!” And before you knew it, Lizzy had her sixty-piece porcelain service. And a nice new mahogany cabinet to put it in.