30
Elektra
‘Where is he?’
I’d prepared myself to see her, but the moment she appears beneath the stone lionesses, I recoil. I didn’t know hatred could feel so strong. And, along with the hatred, fear. Something has held us back. The prospect of my father’s return was always on the horizon, and, for that, I held my tongue – at least a little. Perhaps she did, too. But now she has done the unimaginable. Now there are no boundaries to hold us back.
‘Orestes, your brother – where have you taken him?’
I stare at her. I’d thought she’d be smug, smiling in that way that makes me want to rip the serene mask right from her skull and see what she really is underneath. Instead, in the flickering firelight that illuminates the road home, she looks wild. For the first time, I see fear in her eyes. It tugs at my memory, the image of her face ravaged once before. The split in her voice when she told us what had happened in Aulis.
‘Why isn’t he with you?’ Her voice rises.
‘I didn’t take him with me.’ This woman murdered my father today. I want to say it to her, scream it in her face and make her crumple, but I’m wrong-footed by the way this has begun.
‘Did you kill him?’
I almost laugh. Why would I kill my own brother? It isn’t me who is the murderess. Any conversation with her is futile, I can see. There is no point: she has no shame, and, it seems, barely a grasp on reality. I twist away from her, trying to pass her without touching her, but she blocks my way.
‘Did you? Did you take him to the tomb and—？’
I am sure she will grab at me, and I can’t bear the thought of her seizing my arm, the same hands that killed my father on my skin. ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ I try to infuse every syllable with the contempt I feel for her, but three words cannot contain the limitless oceans of it.
‘Then where is he?’
I shake my head. ‘Why are you pretending that you care? When did you last even look in his direction? I’m amazed that you remember he exists – as though you’ve noticed any living children of yours.’
She flinches, as though I’d slapped her. I wish that I had. I wish I could steel myself to do it. ‘She was your sister.’ Her voice is low. ‘And he killed her.’
I snort. I try again to contort myself to get around her, but she steps in front of me.
‘Children die every day,’ I say. ‘How many grieving mothers did the war create? They don’t all rise up and take revenge. What makes your grief so special? What difference does it make?’
‘What difference? What difference does it make that your father slit his own daughter’s throat?’ Her words spill out too fast. She really is rattled, maybe for the first time I’ve ever known.
‘Iphigenia was a sacrifice. The gods demand a heavy price sometimes, and it is an honour to pay it. I wonder what they will ask of you, to atone for what you’ve done. If that could even be possible.’
‘Don’t you care? Can you really not care? That your sister was slaughtered, that your brother is missing?’
‘The only danger to Orestes shares your bed. You invited him into our home. You brought him here.’ I watch her eyes widen in shock. ‘Are you really so stupid that you can’t see it? Do you think for one moment that Aegisthus, cowardly as he is, would let the son of Agamemnon live?’
She knows. I can see, through her defensiveness and her worry, that the truth of what I’m saying is not new to her. Perhaps that’s why she panics, on finding Orestes already missing. She didn’t think Aegisthus would strike quite so soon. Maybe she even planned to send Orestes away herself, and she fears her lover has second-guessed her. That she’s been outmanoeuvred after all. Well, she has, but not by the dull-witted Aegisthus.
I can’t resist pressing my advantage further. ‘You brooded so much on Iphigenia’s death that you opened the door to a man who would kill your son.’ I laugh. ‘Isn’t it a little late to play the loving mother? To pretend that you care what happens to Orestes . . . or me?’
She’s confused. She didn’t expect this. I don’t know what lurid scenario she concocted in her mind; some twisted idea of the kind of revenge I might take upon her by murdering the brother I’ve just sent to safety. How she could think me capable of such a thing, I don’t know. She doesn’t know me at all – and no surprise, since she’s spent most of my life staring into the distance, as though she could conjure my sister back from the Underworld.