For the next few days Damatria twisted in a vortex of disgust and guilt. In that time someone thought to give the child a name-Antalcidas-in honor of Molobrus’ father, Alcidas. She allowed them to put the thing on her chest again, but she made no effort to help him nurse. As with many unwanted children, however, his hunger for life exactly matched his mother’s longing for him to die. He taught himself to suckle, which transported Lampito into fits of admiration.
“What a fine boy!” she exclaimed. “And what a good Spartan mother, to compel the little warrior to find his own mess!”
“He will have nothing to fear from the tribe,” agreed Molobrus.
Damatria perked up. Every Spartan infant was brought to the tribal elder when it was evident that he or she would survive the first days. The child would be examined, and if found to be in any way deficient, would be consigned to be thrown into Langadha Gorge. Most Spartan mothers respected the tradition, but dreaded the appraisal. To Damatria, it represented a ray of hope-a possibility that a lifetime ordeal would be cut mercifully short. She rose from her bed and took little Antalcidas in her arms.
“I will prepare him for the judgment,” she swore.
Damatria’s devotion to her son’s improvement became legend in the village of Kynosoura. Molobrus returned to his regiment and was rarely seen since, but Lampito had ample opportunity to witness her daughter’s commitment. Antalcidas was not only bathed in wine-his “bathwater” was pure, unmixed stuff. As the child screamed from the stinging in his eyes, Damatria ladled more over his head, until Lampito was quite sure she would drown him. When at last he began to convulse and vomit up his milk, she would relent, though she would never coddle him with swaddling clothes. Instead, she placed him outside her door to air dry. She did this even as winter came on and the temperatures plunged. His grandmother found him out there one evening, naked on the cold flagstone, his skin a color somewhere between wine-dark and hypothermic blue. Despite her pride in his Spartan toughness, Lampito feared for the boy’s health. But when she brought him inside, she found Damatria impassively beaming.
“Don’t worry, Mother,” she told Lampito. “One day, when he is camped in the dead of winter on the Taygetos in nothing but his skin and a thin cloak, he will thank his mother for this training.”
The day finally arrived for the judgment of children born to mothers of the Dymanes tribe. Seven women, stern faced and unaccompanied, gathered with their babies in front of the Shrine of Athena-of-the-City. This was called the Brazen House because the sturdy, four-square structure was decorated with bronze reliefs from the history of the Dorians. Between one plaque depicting Herakles’ capture of the Hind of Ceryneia and another the defeat of the Messenians, the oldest surviving members of Damatria’s tribe, Arcesilaus, son of Areus, Alcander, son of Pausanias, and Nicander, son of Cleomenes, had installed themselves on stools. Sadly, the earthquake had cost the city so many of her elders that these judges were not so old after all-Alcander was not yet sixty.
The order of presentation was determined by a preselection by the magistrates. The weakest candidates for survival were brought up first, so that the judgment could end with the state’s happy endorsement of the stronger. Damatria was disappointed to learn that her son was picked third-too late in the round for her to be sure of the result.
The first child presented was a girl with a cleft palate. Arcesilaus glanced at her once, exchanged a few words with his colleagues, and nodded to the guards. A basket was presented to the mother; with a stricken look, she placed the infant inside and covered its face with a cloth. In exchange, they handed her a barley cake for Eileithyia so that she might assuage her grief with a dedication. A dutiful Spartan mother, she offered a proud, if threadbare, smile. The grimace vanished from her face when, as the basket was borne away to the gorge, the contents began to cry.
The second candidate was a boy. There seemed nothing outwardly wrong with the child until Arcesilaus tested his vision. Making him focus on a single finger moving laterally, Arcesilaus found the left eyeball at first tracked the target but then veered in the opposite direction. The boy’s mother flushed with either fear or embarrassment: this was a defect she had not found. The elders murmured amongst themselves. Arcesilaus repeated the test, got the same result, and conferred again. To Damatria’s surprise, the elders let the boy pass. The earthquake had changed more than the shape of Mount Taygetos.
Damatria presented Antalcidas, who was sleeping. She shook him awake. Arcesilaus regarded him, stroking his beard as the boy’s head rolled on his tiny neck. They felt his grip, counted his digits, tested his reflexes.
“This one’s eyes seem irritated,” Alcander remarked. “Have you been bathing him in unmixed wine?”
“I have.”
Arcesilaus shook his head. “Mothers should wash their boys in wine at half strength, not neat. Understand?”
She looked away, saying nothing. This was not going as she hoped: the elders were smiling at the boy, evidently pleased at his vigor despite the ignorance of his mother.
“Listen to his voice,” she said. “His lungs are weaker than the other children.”
Nicander scratched his freckled pate. “His cry sounds healthy to me.”
“His movements are slow. And he nurses poorly.”
“The nursing,” thundered Arcesilaus, “is something you must teach him!”
“I have tried.”
“Try harder.”
“Esteemed Equals,” she sighed, “who knows this child better than I? Please…”
Arcesilaus’ eyes widened. Anticipating what she meant to say, the other mothers regarded her with something close to horror. Damatria tried to continue, but couldn’t.
“There is nothing wrong with this boy. Rejoice in your good fortune,” Arcesilaus pronounced. With that, his gaze shifted to the next candidate. Antalcidas had been passed.
Damatria drifted a few steps away, her useless eye throbbing in its socket. Seeing the other women with their cherished babes made her dizzy with revulsion. The sound of Antalcidas’ little breaths, his cloying smell, his very weight on her arm, filled her with unspeakable indignation. She whirled back at the elders.
“I see that wisdom is dead among you. Before the gods, then, hear me: one day, one way or another, this child will grow up to be the shame of this city! Remember that a Spartan mother told you this, when you lacked the courage to act!”
After this disaster she took the boy home and put him on the floor. She left him there a long time as she sat and thought. Might she have disposed of him earlier, she wondered, while sickness remained a plausible excuse? Could she still do so? Her mistake, she decided, was to leave her salvation in the hands of others. She resolved that she would not move until she knew what she might do to tolerate the prospect of her own future.
3.
Antalcidas was quiet at first, turning his head back and forth across the blur of the rafters above. At length he felt a discomfort in his stomach. He began to whimper, kicking off his blanket as he rooted for the nipple against his cheek. Feeling nothing, his fear rose, though he could not understand it as such, and he began to cry. His voice, scratchy and croaking, resounded through the soft tectonics of his skull, magnifying his dejection. He was alone.
He cried some more, grew tired, and stopped. In the silence he felt his need again, and went from quiet to full-on bawling in an instant. But then he stopped just as suddenly, and when the hunger ailed him again he produced only a murmur. What had been a bright blur above him was now an opaque gloom. Opening his mouth to root, he produced a yawn.