The Murderess
by Paul Murgatroyd

 

 

                        After I concluded my prayers and vows to the hordes
                        of the dead, I seized the sheep and sacrificed them,
                        letting the dark blood flow into the trench. The souls
                        of the dead and departed came swarming up from Erebus –
                        brides and unmarried youths and old men who’d had much to endure
                        and tender girls with sorrow still fresh in their hearts
                        and masses of men who’d been stabbed by bronze-tipped spears
                        and killed in combat, still wearing their blood-spattered armour.
                        They fluttered to and fro around the trench in masses
                        with eerie shrieks. I went pale in the grip of fear.

 

When he finished writing out this translation of part of the hero Odysseus’ account of his journey to the Land of the Dead, Professor Emeritus Guy Vellacott decided on a brief break. He straightened up in his chair, capped his pen and lined it up next to and parallel to the writing pad. His back was a bit sore after all the hours spent hunched over his desk. He considered taking a second glass of dry sherry, but chose not to indulge, on the grounds that it might enervate rather than stimulate. He looked at his watch and saw that it had just gone ten PM. He’d got quite a lot done that day and felt his version was accessible and flowed rather well. He smiled as he thought yet again what a good idea it was to translate Homer’s epic poem as a retirement project. He put his elbows on the desk, interlaced his fingers, rested his chin on them and closed his eyes.

He pictured the scene he had just rendered into English. The poet helped him visualize the swarming ghosts easily enough, but was vague about the place itself, supplying only a few details and leaving the reader to fill in the rest. Guy duly did that. Behind his closed eyes he surveyed a landscape of desolation and decay: sorrowful shadows; withered trees, with taloned, grasping branches; a mephitic marsh throttled by sallow rushes and reeds; and, enfolding all that, the sinuous Styx, the River of Hate, with its ninefold coils and sinister slow flow. He stared, mesmerized, at the oily water slithering along without a single eddy or ripple, endless, fathomless, ageless. He gazed on and on, scarcely aware of the ghostly clamour.

Suddenly he heard the languid drawl of a husky female voice: ‘Talk about the unquiet dead! I say, you chaps, do put a sock in it, with all convenient speed. I want to have a little word with our venerable visitor here.’

He stared in amazement at the speaker, a tall and imperious woman in her prime who had just sauntered up and was now lolling with her right hand on her hip, exhaling hauteur. A clinging sin-crimson robe accentuated the ample breasts and buttocks, and her cascading hair, long nails and voluptuous lips were also a boisterous red. The eyebrows, eyelids and luxuriant lashes were blacker than black. The left eye had a slight cast, and an intimidating glint as she regarded the souls before her.

She waited for the other ghosts to fall quiet, and then purred: ‘Hi, Guy.’

When he goggled, she giggled.

Then she aimed a radiant smile at him and added: ‘Hallo, old scream. Good of you to come.’

Non-plussed, Guy spluttered: ‘What? How did you –‘

‘How did I know your name? Of course I know your name, darling. You’re a leading academic from Cambridge University with a brain as big as a beachball, a world-famous Classicist – how would I not know your name. I’ve read your Studies in Homer and The Tragedies of Aeschylus and found them brilliant works of scholarship. Positively brilliant.’

‘Oh, er, thank you very much. They were labours of love, a –‘

‘Right. So I know you. But you don’t know me, do you?’

‘Well, er, no I don’t,’ said Guy, with a bewildered frown.

‘Well I must say, it’s a bit much. After all I achieved in life – the eminent position, the great fame, the wealth and prestige…To be unrecognized now, unknown, negligible – it’s too, too sick-making, my dear.’

Guy blushed. ‘Oh I’m sorry, I do apologize, I’m er –‘

She chuckled. ‘Oh you are an old sweetie. Don’t worry, darling. I was just teasing. Don’t you love it when attractive females fool about like that?’

‘Well, to be honest, I’m not particularly given to frivolity or –‘

‘Actually you do know me, you know lots about me, great Classical scholar that you are. I am Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and I’m claiming you as my new Antony. The old one now is a mere shadow of himself, lacks sparkle somehow, does gibber so. Consequently I gave him the push. Told him to biff off, and off he duly biffed. Now I’m in need of a new consort, and I’ve selected you.’

Guy mumbled: ‘Er, look, I’m very sorry, but I’m already –‘

A great bubble of laughter escaped from her lips. ‘Just kidding again. I’m not Cleopatra at all. Actually I am, of course…’ She paused, then threw her arms wide flamboyantly and sang out: ‘Clytaemnestra. A much more famous queen. And much more beautiful. I mean, old Cleo has got whacking thighs. Positively whacking. Anyway, never mind that, I really am Clytaemnestra.’

Guy couldn’t believe what he was hearing. ‘No!’ he said, shaking his head in an attempt to clear it.

‘Yes!’ said Clytaemnestra with a delighted grin. ‘Well, I was the last time I looked. Yes, I am the astonishing adulteress of Mycenae, who murdered her own husband, the well-known worm Agamemnon, commander of the Greek warriors at Troy. Well, he commanded them when he could spare the time from rogering female captives. And he actually brought one home with him – some doxy called Cassandra. No doubt fancied a threesome, the blighter. Well, I wasn’t going to take that lying down, even if Cassandra was. So for a start I hacked her into little pieces, little red pieces, not to mince words, ha ha. She was thrilled to bits.’

‘You’re joking about it?’ gulped Guy. ‘That’s appalling.’

‘Yes, my dear,’ she replied easily, ‘you would think that, wouldn’t you? Off in your ivory tower, away from the harsh realities of life, of the Classical world that you only read about. Queens don’t tolerate rivals…’ Then she smirked and added: ‘As for old Ag…well - never mind what Homer said - with a little bit of help from my lover, I caught him while he was having a bath and gave him a quick slosh on the skull with an axe.’

Her lips twitching with amusement, she made a hacking gesture with her right hand, and then went on: ‘He was getting above himself, bringing back Trojan totty to share his bed, so I cut him down to size, axed his position as king.’

She snickered at Guy’s sharp intake of breath and said: ‘Oh dear, now I’ve shocked you again. Anyway then I took over his position and ruled with an admirably firm hand. Wouldn’t stand any nonsense from the old inferiors. I relished power. Positively relished it. All gone now of course. Nobody for me to queen it over now, as Hades is the Lord of the Dead, and he’s a god. Or Dis, to give him his Latin name. Dis, not to be confused with Dat, or De Other, come to dat.’

She smiled, and then continued with a wistful sigh: ‘I did love being queen. But all good things come to an end, and my position was terminated.’

‘In revenge for the murder of your husband.’

‘Well yes, technically.’

‘Your son Orestes –‘

Clytaemnestra rolled her eyes and said: ‘Oh don’t mention him to me, my dear. Or my homicidal daughter Electra. She’s unnatural. Loves her father far too much – a classic case of the Electra Complex, ha ha. Do you have any idea of what it’s like to be butchered by your own son and daughter? Probably not. Well, I can tell you, darling, it’s just a tad dispiriting. Anyway let’s not talk about those mother-killers. Criminals, animals!’

Guy was scandalized and protested: ‘But you’re a murderess, you deserved –‘

‘Oh, rats to you, sir, rats to you. Why talk about them when there are much more interesting people among the ghosts here? You’ll soon be translating Odysseus’ conversations with the dead, as envisaged by that old hack Homer, and pretty dull exchanges they are, with whiners and sulkers and so on. But the group of spooks here contains much more entertaining characters.’

‘Oh really?’

‘Yes really. Do you see the young man on my right? With the face of a choirboy sick of sin? That’s Rimbaud, that is, a much more intriguing poet than boring old Homer. And he used to scoop off the lice from his head and throw handfuls of them at passing priests.’

Guy pulled a face and muttered: ‘Oh no, that’s disgusting.’

‘If you say so, darling. You are rather quaint, aren’t you?’

As she said this, a man ran past them, a man in a grey corduroy suit with a neat beard, pursuing a giggling woman. Clytaemnestra said: ‘That’s Erik Satie, that is. The famous musician. Stravinsky described him as the strangest man he’d ever met, and old Igor should know, as he’s pretty damned strange himself. Rather an amusing cove, Satie. Wrote a work called Memoirs of an Amnesiac, ha ha. And when Suzanne Valadon there broke off their affair, he was so upset he composed a piece of music called Vexations, which consisted of fourteen jangly bars repeated four hundred and eighty times, to get the full feeling of vexation. And after listening to a piece by Debussy entitled Effects of the Sun on the Sea from Dawn to Noon, he said he’d enjoyed it in general, and there was a particularly nice bit at eleven thirty, ha ha…Lots of arty types here. Poets, musicians and all that.’

‘Er, forgive me for saying this, but I wouldn’t have expected you to be much taken with musicians and poets.’

With an easy-going smile she responded: ‘Oh my dear, I do forgive you, don’t worry. And you’re not entirely wrong. I thought you’d be interested in them. For obvious reasons I personally prefer fast baggages (I’m great pals with Lucrezia Borgia – lovely lady) and murderers. The lady on my left, with the hard face, and the fox fur around her neck – that’s Kate Webster, that is.’

‘Who?’

Clytaemnestra widened her eyes and raised her hands to her temples in mock despair, murmuring: ‘Tut tut, an educated man and you don’t know who Kate Webster was? What is Cambridge University coming to? O tempora, o mores! She was a Victorian servant who murdered her mistress, dismembered her and boiled the bits, which produced lots of fat, which she scooped up into bowls and sold to the neighbours as dripping. When they eventually found out, they felt pretty sick, I can tell you.’

‘Ugh. That’s absolutely awful.’

She guffawed. ‘I say, do you really think so? I thought it was rather droll myself…Anyway I’m also quite close to sundry dictators. Like that one over there.’

She pointed to her left, and Guy followed the line of her finger and saw a figure moving up and down a line of cringing forms and flogging each one in turn with a long green snake, which cracked and hissed with each blow.

Nodding approval, Clytaemnestra said: ‘That’s Sani Abacha, who was military dictator of Nigeria. Something of an intimidating character. So much so that when he announced transition to democratic government and awarded official recognition to five parties who applied for it, each of them declared him as their leader. So there was a democratic election, but he was the only candidate, ha ha.’

When Guy grimaced, she sighed and said: ‘Oh my dear, do you have to be so bourgeois? I thought you’d find it funny…Do you see the other one, the chappie beyond him over there. Performing really rather graceful bastinado with that ebony cane? Yes? Well he accused a hundred political prisoners of trying to stage a coup while they were actually in jail. And in their mock trial ensured that their own defence lawyer asked for the death penalty for them. And when a member of the opposition had the temerity to protest, he had the man murdered, and announced in the state-controlled press that he had committed suicide, by throwing himself off his veranda repeatedly, ha ha ha. Now come on, you have to admit that’s funny.’

Guy snorted. ‘Nothing of the kind. I don’t find that at all funny, I can assure you.’

‘Well, you old fuddy-duddy, if you assure me, I’ll have to take your word for it, won’t I,’ was her leisurely reply. ‘All I can say is you have a deficient sense of humour, you’re seriously warped. Life is short, believe me. Loosen up, have a laugh, while you still can.’

‘I really wish you wouldn’t tell me about such awful things.’

She shrugged, made a mischievous moue and said: ‘Do you, darling? Then you probably won’t want to hear what this lady here with the veil did. She opted for cheap cosmetic surgery, not wondering why it was so cheap. And the reason why it was so cheap was because the cack-handed practitioner had acquired his qualifications by taking a quickie course in Brazil, but didn’t actually speak Portuguese. He injected her silly face with silicon, which had rather an unfortunate effect on her jaw. She grew tusks; yes, actual tusks, my dear.’

Clytaemnestra smirked at Guy’s wince and went on: ‘I do love stupid people, don’t you? So amusing. Like the pair who decided to make themselves light sabres. So they took two neon light tubes, filled them with petrol, switched on and blew themselves to hell…They’re around here somewhere. All rather singed and charred. I keep on telling them smoking is bad for their health, but they won’t listen.’

As she tittered, Guy shook his head in disbelief and murmured: ‘You’re sick.’

She looked down her long nose at him and said: ‘What do you expect, dear. After all I am Clytaemnestra. Not Mother Teresa. Perfectly ghastly woman by the way, a frump’s frump, so meek (with good reason), forever trying to help poor unfortunates. Pah! People with good intentions! The road to hell is paved with people like that. In creative writing courses they claim nobody is entirely bad, they say even a maniac and a mass murderer like Adolph Hitler loved German shepherds – the dogs, that is. Well, take a look at me, baby, and see how very wrong they are over that!’

‘You’re right there. You’re even worse than I thought you were.’

Clytaemnestra suddenly adopted a serious expression and said: ‘Then again you could view me as a victim of patriarchy. In the Greece of my day women were regarded as prey or prizes and were supposed to stay at home and keep quiet. I rebelled. And as a result male authors ever since have depicted me in a relentlessly bad light. Don’t you think, honestly, it’s high time for a reassessment?’

‘Well, you do have a point there, I suppose,’ said Guy, squirming with discomfort.

‘Thank you so much, darling. But, you see, actually I do not want a PC makeover as an oppressed victim, fetchingly feisty but basically beige. No, I’m much more interesting than that. A thoroughly bad egg. A femme fatale in more senses than one. And I’m perfectly happy being depicted as such. Positively glory in it in fact. But no writer has given me credit for my beauty. I’ve had lots of men drooling for me, simply scads of them, and I’ve made them my footstools; but you’d never know that from the literature.’

After a resentful sniff she continued: ‘I’ve put up with that omission for thousands of years, but my patience has finally snapped – something Helen said, really cheesed me off. Damn her and her black lacy underwear! Well, you can imagine what happens when people spend so much time together, especially sisters…Anyway I want that glaring omission rectified, and you can help me with that, darling.’

‘Me? How?’

‘You’re about to translate Homer’s lines on the murder of Agamemnon. In which I don’t come across all that well, and I’m described as “cunning”. I am that, certainly, but also much more than that – beautiful, alluring, amusing, witty, outrageous and so on and so forth. But enough of all that – I cannot speak too highly of my own qualities. Anyway after the assassination comes the list of heroines seen in this place by Odysseus, in which I do not figure at all.’

‘Yes? So what can I possibly do about that?’ he asked, raising a supercilious eyebrow.

‘I’ll tell you what you can do about that, my good man: you can put that eyebrow back down again for a start, and then add me to the list of heroines. And give me a positive spin there.’

‘What?’ squeaked Guy, scarcely able to believe she’d made such a scandalous suggestion.

‘Look, old bean, when you’re dead your fame on earth is all you’ve got. And it’s so boring here I need to occupy myself. I can’t rule in another’s kingdom. Or murder people who are already dead, ha ha. So I’ve come up with this little project, to improve my image, and keep me sane.’

Guy objected: ‘But, but –‘

‘I’m really not asking much, Guy. Just a little tweak. Nothing too positive. I got a friend to come up with a line of verse just like one of Homer’s hexameters – ten te Klytaimnestren kalen idon argyropezan. Which you can render: “And I saw beautiful, silver-footed Clytaemnestra” or something like that – I leave that to you. Wouldn’t want to intrude on the translator’s territory. That would be wrong.’

With a jutting chin, Guy said: ‘That’s dishonest, simply unthinkable. It would go against everything I’ve stood for over all the years of my scholarly career.’

‘Well, Guy, after all those years isn’t it time for a change?’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Guy, pale with outrage. ‘There’s a saying that’s pertinent here: you can’t teach an old cat to dance.’

Clytaemnestra grinned and countered: ‘Or a young cat, come to that…But let’s move on from fox-trotting felines. What’s just one little line of verse between friends, Guy?’

‘What you’re suggesting is disgraceful. Unethical.’

‘Oh drat ethics. Pooh and pah to ethics. Don’t be such an old fusspot. If you’re really bothered about silly old ethics, put square brackets around the line in your translation to indicate that you suspect it to be not actually by Homer but an interpolation. Which it is. There you are, darling, that should salve your conscience. Problem solved. So you will slip it in, won’t you, Guy?’

He writhed. ‘Um, that’s not really…Anyway that epithet “silver-footed” is reserved for goddesses, in Homer’s Iliad for Thetis in particular.’

‘Quite,’ she crowed. ‘That’s an elegantly economical elevation of yours truly…And as you’re such a big name in academic circles, Guy, and have a contract with the prestigious Oxford University Press for your translation, it will be read widely, and that positive spin will reach a wide audience, and so everything will be oojah-cum-spiff.’

‘Oojah-cum-spiff? Why do you use diction like that, like a character from a P.G. Wodehouse novel?’

‘I though you might find it amusing. And it also indicates subtly your standing vis-à-vis myself.’

‘What?’

‘Doesn’t your royal family talk like that?’ asked Clytaemnestra. ‘No? Well, the nobles, the upper classes? No? Oh lord. Well, you must bear in mind I’m not a native English-speaker. Oh well, no matter. The Greek line is unexceptionable, so be a poppet and pop it into your translation, there’s a dear.’

‘I most certainly will not,’ said Guy, bristling. ‘Anyway the reviewers will know there’s nothing like that line in the Odyssey.’

With a languid shrug she said: ‘Oh will they? These days? Scholars might, but your general run of literary critics who write reviews for papers and magazines are an ignorant bunch. Stupefyingly ignorant, to quote an expert on ignorance.’

‘Yes, well, I’m afraid that is true, in this illiterate age.’

‘Yes, and that’s why this is just the first step for you in a wider campaign of tinkering with translations. Aeschylus and Euripides will also figure in what will be an interesting little retirement project to keep you from being bored and going ga-ga.’

‘What?’

‘In actual fact, Guy, it’s remarkably kind of me. Other people have gone so far as reading a newspaper upside down in a mirror to keep their minds supple, whereas I have come up with this much more interesting little scheme for you to keep the old grey matter ticking over…Oh, it’s all right, you don’t have to thank me for looking out for you, darling. Just say Yes, there’s a nice translator.’

Raising his voice, Guy said: ‘I absolutely refuse to desecrate Homer, and ruin my academic reputation with an obviously ersatz hexameter.’

She replied, undeterred: ‘Oh do you? Well, I can offer you an inducement, a reward.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I happen to have in my possession a certain object which I’m sure you’d be delighted to have – the shield of Dgian-ben-Dgian (the builder of the Pyramids), which consists of seven dragon skins laid on top of each other, joined by diamond screws and tanned in a parricide’s bile; depicted on one side are all the wars fought since the invention of weapons, and on the other side all the wars which will be fought before the end of the world. Sounds super, doesn’t it? And that could be yours. In return for a teeny-weeny favour for a nice lady. Wouldn’t you just love to possess that fabulous object, tonight’s star prize?’

Guy screwed up his eyes in bewilderment and said: ‘No. What on earth would I do with such a thing?’

She chuckled. ‘Well, you could hang it up over the mantelpiece, darling…No? Well, you have a mousy little wife, don’t you? I can provide you with much more alluring partners when you end up here. Have you ever bonked a queen? A female queen, that is. How about Semiramis? Or the Queen of Sheba? Or me? I might just bend over backwards for you myself. Or forwards, if you fancy mounting a rearguard action.’

‘Don’t be so disgusting! I love my wife. Deeply. I would never be unfaithful to –‘

‘Oh I say, you prude! Well, how about meeting somebody colourful and interesting, an arch criminal, like Charles Manson or Jack the Ripper or Margaret Thatcher? No, I know, how would you like to meet King Nebuchadnezzar?’

She waved her hand expansively and sang out Ta-daa. A crowned figure was abruptly illuminated about twenty feet away. He was eating and drinking alone on a lofty dais. As Guy looked at him, he noticed that on the ground beneath him were crawling men in chains also wearing crowns, to whom he threw bones to gnaw, and beyond them were other figures with bandages round their eyes. Clytaemnestra explained helpfully that they were captive kings and Nebuchadnezzar’s blinded brothers.

Guy recoiled and hissed: ‘My god! What on earth makes you think that I’d like to meet a monster like that.’

She raised her hands in mock surrender and said with a grin: ‘OK, OK, just kidding again… But how about great Classicists of the past, like Wilamowitz, Porson, Page and so on – wouldn’t you like to meet them, partake of tea and muffins, and conversazione? Fancy a bit of scholarly hobnobbing?’

Guy swallowed. ‘Ulp, that is more…No, no, I couldn’t possibly –‘

‘Well, darling, what about famous writer chappies? Wouldn’t you like to have a chinwag with old Homer himself? See if you got it right with your interpretations of his poetry? Go on, I can see you’re sorely tempted. And there’s also the tragedian Aeschylus. He’s the one over there looking tragic, the one with the big dent in his bonce. Yes, the story about his death was true: an eagle did mistake his bald head for a rock and drop a tortoise on it from a great height to shatter its shell. Oh dear, how very improbable – death by tortoise.’

Guy was clearly offended by her ill-judged levity in connection with the great poet’s death, but she carried on regardless: ‘There are modern poets too. Like Dylan Thomas. Who came to a bad end (very enjoyable). And even here is still in pursuit of his eternal quest – for naked ladies in wet mackintoshes. They’ve all kept on writing as well, so there’s simply oodles and oodles of new verse they could show you, darling.’

Guy wavered at this well aimed offer, and she snorted with amusement. That made him stiffen his resolve and refuse. ‘I could not look Homer, or any other poet, in the eye after violating the Odyssey in the manner you suggest.’

‘Oh tosh! Won’t you do this little thing for me, darling?’

‘No, I won’t.’

Her smile hardened, and she said: ‘But I’m a queen. And you’re just a commoner. You have to obey me…And I should warn you that I have a regrettable tendency to peevishness when thwarted by the lower orders.’

Less firm now, Guy said: ‘Er, I have to say No. I’m sorry, but there you are.’

‘No,’ snarled Clytaemnestra, ‘there you are – remuneration or retaliation. Choice is yours, darling.’

Guy gulped and said: ‘Sorry, it’s still No.’

With a dangerous glint in her left eye, she said: ‘What a funny little man you are. Positively hilarious. Don’t make the iron enter into my soul, prole.’

Guy quavered: ‘Look, I’m, erm –‘

‘No, you look! I can be dashed unpleasant when miffed. As my dear departed husband will attest, I can cut up rough.’

When he shook his head, both her eyes flashed. Guy trembled as she added: ‘You’re not the first translator I’ve tried. The others bitterly regretted refusing me. You don’t want to join their ranks, now do you, you blasted excrescence?’

‘Sorry, sorry,’ he gabbled, with a knot in his stomach.

‘No,’ she growled, ‘you are plainly and manifestly not sorry. Now. But you will be, darling. You will be sorry, in time.’

She aimed a malevolent smile at him and made the hacking gesture again with her right hand. While his attention was fixed on that, she lunged at him with her left hand. Her long, sharp nails raked his scalp, made for his eyeballs.

‘Aah,’ shouted Guy, recoiling in his chair and opening his eyes, to see his desk in front of him.

‘Oh dear god,’ he muttered, shaking. He took several seconds to calm down, and then thought: Just a dream…Must have nodded off…Clytaemnestra, ha!...Ah yes, that’s where that came from – been thinking of writing a novel about the Trojan War…Such a striking character, crying out for a brand new spin. She was different somehow in the dream. She was…What?...No, best not try and force it. It’ll emerge sooner or later. Really good idea for a protagonist. Yes. Finish the Odyssey, then the novel.

He looked at his watch. It was five past ten. He could put in a few more hours translating before going to bed. Ha, and reading himself to sleep with Jeeves in the Offing, which is where the Wodehouse diction came from in the dream. He couldn’t use that in the novel, but at least he was starting to remember stuff from the dream.

He went to the bedroom to check on his wife, who had a bad cold. She had managed to get to sleep, and was snoring slightly. Her glasses and Maeve Binchy novel were on the bedside table, along with tissues and a glass containing the skin from her hot milk. He gazed fondly at dear old Penny for several seconds, then quietly returned to his study.

A couple of hours later he finished translating Homer’s list of heroines and decided that was a good place to stop, especially as the poet briefly broke off Odysseus’ narrative there. He straightened up in his chair, capped his pen and lined it up next to and parallel to his writing pad. His back was now very sore and stiff. He’d type up that day’s work in the morning, giving his translation a final check as he came back to it fresh.

The study door opened behind him and Penny in her long pink nightdress and fluffy slippers stood in the doorway peering at him. Guy turned with some difficulty, saw her and smiled. He said: ‘Just finished, dear. What time is it? Time for bed?’

‘No, darling, time to be sorry,’ said his wife, hefting the hatchet she’d fetched from the shed.

 

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