to me, then dropped to his side.

His eyes had the marble core of nothingness in them.

Appalled, I could scarcely stand. O God, what is this that can happen to a man? Why has it happened? His arms in bandages, his eyes forever bandaged by the dark.

“Alcaeus...”

He heard my whisper and shuffled backwards, bumping his servant; he moved forward then and gripped me hard, twisting my flesh, his great muscles rising in his hands.

“Take me to my room... You haven’t forgotten the way, have you?”

I took his arm and the Parthian opened the door and servants bowed about us; yes, I took his arm and silently we climbed the stairs to his room, his clothes rough against me, his sea smell around me. We passed his library that held the books he had loved. We passed his mother’s room, where she had died. We passed where light fell around us, though no light entered his eyes.

“You are in your room,” I said.

“Where?”

“Beside your Egyptian chair.”

“Can I sit down on it?”

“Yes, it’s ready for you.”

Grasping the heavy frame, he lowered himself and the taut leather squeaked. I placed a pillow behind him and drew a fur across his knees, then sat next to him. The door had shut itself and we were alone. We listened to each other’s breathing and his hand sought mine and climbed my robe to my face and the coarse fingers felt my cheek and I felt them reach my heart, with the past roaring around me like the recent storm.

I couldn’t speak. I felt that the war was forever between us and I hated those years, those battles, the lines on his face. My hate was there, between us. Then, then, tears came to his eyes. Silently, he wept. And I drew him to me.

I heard the wind cross over his house.

Voices shuffled below us in the courtyard, the excited voices of the caretakers, the idle, the hangers-on. I could imagine their leers, their whispers. I lifted his face toward mine and kissed him, his heavy beard sticking my mouth.

There was a sob—a broken gasp. How ill he looked, how tired...

“You must lie down, Alcaeus. Come, I’ll help you.”

And when he was settled, I brought him water.

“Water...there hasn’t been much water these last few days at sea...”

P

So he had come home, “homeward from earth’s far end,” on the shield of blindness. I saw him next day and the next, but he seemed strange, withdrawn. I found two of his servants but he wasn’t interested.

I thought of him as old. But was he old? Age was in his scars, in his streaked hair and beard, the hands lifting and settling awkwardly.

Warm under the stars, the daphne fragrant, his sea terrace tiles smooth un­derneath our feet, we sat alone, some rooster vaguely saluting the night, the movement of the surf faint, almost lost. I crushed some daphne in my palm, remembering their four-pronged flowers, remembering—remembering Alcaeus after his field games, his javelin and discus throwing, his flushed face, his eyes lit, his mouth hungry for mine. Remembering—was he remembering, too?

“There was no daphne where I was,” he said, his voice sullen. “It would have been better to have died there, than come home like this.”

“It’s spring, Alcaeus, don’t talk like that,” I said, and wondered what spring might signify to him.

He did not speak for a while, then quietly, as though to himself, or from an­other world, he repeated lines we had loved:

“The gods held me in Egypt, longing to sail for home, for I had failed to seek their blessing with an offering...”

His voice had not changed, I realized with a start. Surcharged with new meaning, it entered my being, as he went on about the galleys and the old men “deep in the sea’s abyss.”

The phrase haunted me because it was he who lived in an abyss.

As days passed, defeat was all that we heard in our town, not outright defeat, but capitulation—retreat combined with truce, truce necessitated by deception. Or was it confusion? The soldiers I met, after their drunken reunions, spoke of the war with bitterness. Ten years, they said. Ten years, for what? And how many of us came back? Those who had been away longest considered themselves out­casts and those who had returned during the war complained, unable to recog­nize their families.

Standing on the wharf, I familiarized myself with the fleet, its remnants, an­chored forlornly in the bay, boys swimming around the hulls, the decks bone dry, hawsers trailing, a door off its hinges, the cordage so rotten a gull might topple a spar. Disgust in my mouth, I tasted the waste of life, Alcaeus’, my own, my friends’.

What is life for, but love?

And love sent Atthis and me along the beach, stretching our legs, running, dashing in and out of shallows, finding periwinkles, the day even-tempered, goats nibbling at wild celery, their bells lazy, a fisherman waving at us as he cast his net, clouds over the mountain. I noticed Atthis against the luminous water, her fragile face trusting life. Her yellow ringlets in my lap, she sang to me and then, eyes shut, fingers in the sand, she seemed to steal away.

“What are you thinking about, darling?”

“You...”

“What about?”

“You and Alcaeus—you are so troubled for him.”

“Then you have seen him?”

“Yesterday. And I’m afraid.”

“Why?”

“Because what is there left for him—and you?”

“I can’t answer you, Atthis. Time answers such questions.”

I sense my old loneliness, a loneliness that was distorted like a ship’s rib, tossed on the beach, warped because of bad luck.

“His arms have been injured, too,” Atthis said.

“They will get better, in time...” And I heard time in the receding wave and felt it in her ringlets and in her hands.

“You’re so sweet,” she said and I saw myself mirrored in her eyes. And it oc­curred to me that Alcaeus and I would never again be able to exchange notes, those hasty, affectionate scribbles. Would he ever again dictate his bawdy poems, lampoon dictators and brag about war? Had pen and desk become his enemies?

Many things occurred to me, there on the sand, as Atthis and I talked softly.