Free Girls by Nic Kelman Page B

Atreus, has taken it back again outrageously. Go back and proclaim to him all that I tell you, openly . . . wrapped as he is forever in shamelessness; yet he would not, bold as a dog though he be, dare look in my face any longer.
    ‘I will join with him in no counsel, and in no action. He cheated me and he did me hurt. Let him not beguile me with words again . . . not if he gave me gifts as many as the sand or the dust is, not even so would Agamemnon have his way with my spirit until he made good to me all this heartrending insolence.
    ‘Nor will I marry a daughter of Atreus’ son, Agamemnon . . . not if she matched the work of her hands with grey-eyed Athena . . . . For if the gods will keep me alive, and I win homeward, Peleus himself will presently arrange a wife for me. There are many Achaian girls in the land of Hellas and Phthia, daughters of great men who hold strong places in guard. . . . And the great desire in my heart drives me rather in that place to take a wedded wife in marriage, the bride of my fancy, to enjoy with her the possessions won by aged Peleus.
    ‘For not worth the value of my life are all the possessions they fable were won for Ilion, that strong-founded citadel, in the old days when there was peace. . . . Of possessions cattle and fat sheep are things to be had for the lifting, and tripods can be won, and the tawny high heads of horses, but a man’s life cannot come back again, it cannot be lifted nor captured again by force, once it has crossed the teeth’s barrier.
    ‘For my mother Thetis the goddess of the silver feet tells me I carry two sorts of destiny toward the day of my death. Either, if I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, my return home is gone, but my glory shall be everlasting; but if I return home to the beloved land of my fathers, the excellence of my glory is gone, but there will be a long life left for me, and my end in death will not come to me quickly.’” — Achilles,
Iliad
9:364
    You are visiting St. Peter’s with your wife. You haven’t been married very long. You bought a new camera for this little vacation. It is impossibly small, a spy camera, very expensive. In the basilica, your wife overhears a couple about your own age speaking English and asks them if they’d take a picture of you. When she hands the woman the camera, she is fascinated by it. She can’t believe how small it is. “Look how small it is!” she says to her husband. They are dressed differently from the two of you, in clothes sold in large stores where entire families can shop. He just nods and says, “Uh-huh.” Then your wife, thrilled with the camera to begin with, eager to show it off to someone else who appreciates it, says, “Isn’t it great? And look — it does this and this and this.” And she shows the other woman all the things this camera does, this camera that is so well machined it resembles the eye of some kind of surgical robot. At last the other woman says to her husband, “Honey — we have to get one of these!”
    And before he replies he looks at you and shakes his head slightly and rolls his eyes, then he says without looking at his wife, flashing his eyes and his eyebrows briefly up to heaven, “Oh sure, honey, no problem, we’ll pick one up this afternoon. . . .” And she laughs but you know he’ll hear about that camera for some time. And always when he least expects it. And you know he’ll never be able to buy her one. And you suddenly feel very bad for him. You suddenly want to take him aside and slip him the money for the camera — nothing to you, almost spare change — and say, “Here, here you go, get her the camera.” But you know you could never do that. You know that would be even more embarrassing. You know that would damage his pride. You know that would change his camaraderie to resentment, that that would destroy the moment the two of you shared when, without speaking he said, I don’t hate you for being able to give your wife