Wolf Cassandra

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-1-907970-27-6
Verlag: Daunt Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Cassandra, daughter of the King of Troy, is endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be believed. After ten years of war, Troy has fallen to the Greeks, and Cassandra is now a prisoner, shackled outside the gates of Agamemnon's Mycenae. Through memories of her childhood and reflections on the long years of conflict, Cassandra pieces together the fall of her city. From a woman living in an age of heroes, here is the untold personal story overshadowed by the battlefield triumphs of Achilles and Hector. This stunning reimagining of the Trojan War is a rich and vivid portrayal of the great tragedy that continues to echo throughout history. 'A beautiful work.' - Bettany Hughes ' Cassandra is fierce and feverish poetry that engages with the ancient stories while also charting its own path. Filled with passionate and startling insight into human nature.' - Madeline Miller, author of The Song of Achilles 'Christa Wolf wrote books that crossed and overcame the divide of East and West, books that have lasted: the great, allegorical novels.' - Günter Grass 'A sensitive writer of the purest water - an East German Virginia Woolf.' - Guardian 'One of the most prominent and controversial novelists of her generation.' - New York Review of Books

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wolf, Christa

Leseproben

As Briseis’s friend, I accompanied her to the Greek c that too seemed reasonable to everyone except Eumelos. With us came two of my brothers and five warriors, all unarmed. Not one of us Trojans doubted that a Trojan woman who is going to her father deserves a worthy escort. But the Greeks seemed confused by us, almost anxious! Calchas, after he had greeted his daughter tenderly and warily, explained our strange reception. ‘Never,’ he said, ‘would one of the Greeks enter the enemy camp unarmed.’ ‘But they would have our word that they would be safe if they did that,’ I cried. Calchas the seer smiled. ‘A word! Adapt, Cassandra. The sooner the better. If I had not terrified them, they would have done in your unarmed brothers.’ ‘Terrified them, how?’ ‘By telling them about the magical power one of our unarmed warriors possesses, especially when he is accompanied by a woman.’ ‘One of our warriors, Calchas?’ ‘One of us Trojans, Cassandra.’ For the first time in my life I saw a man gutted by homesickness. We were standing by the sea, the waves were licking our feet. I saw the heaps of weapons – spears, javelins, swords, shields – behind the wooden wall which the Greeks had swiftly erected against us along the coast. Calchas understood my gaze, replied: ‘You are lost.’ I wanted to test him. ‘We could give Helen back to Menelaus,’ I said. Again he smiled his painful smile: ‘Could you really?’ A shock: he knew. Did they all know then, all the men who were swaggering up to gape at me and Briseis: the temperate Menelaus, the keenly observant Odysseus. Agamemnon, whom I instantly disliked? Diomedes of Argos, a lanky fellow. They stood and stared. ‘In Troy men don’t look at women that way,’ I said in our language, which only Calchas could understand. ‘They certainly don’t,’ he replied unmoved. ‘Get used to it.’ ‘And this is where you are taking Briseis? To these men?’ ‘She must live,’ said Calchas. ‘Survive. Nothing more. Life at any cost.’ So now I knew why Calchas was with the Greeks. No, Calchas, I said. At any cost? Not so. Today I think differently. I was so calm. Now everything inside me is in revolt. I will beg that terrible woman for my life. I will throw myself at her feet. ‘Clytemnestra, lock me up for ever in your darkest dungeon. Give me barely enough to live on. But I implore you: send me a scribe, or better yet a young slave woman with a keen memory and a powerful voice. Ordain that she may repeat to her daughter what she hears from me. That the daughter in turn may pass it on to her daughter, and so on. So that alongside the river of heroic songs this tiny rivulet, too, may reach those faraway, perhaps happier people who will live in times to come.’ And could I believe that, even for one day? Slay me, Clytemnestra. Kill me. Hurry. Inside the citadel they are drinking. The wanton clamour I would so gladly not have heard is rising to a crescendo now. So on top of everything else the men who come to fetch me will be drunk. We did not see the hero Achilles when we delivered Briseis to her fate. He was her fate. He saw us from some hidden place. How my heart burned when I embraced her. With an unmoved face she stood leaning against Diomedes, whom she had just seen for the first time in her life. The ungainly lout. I pictured my delicate boyish brother Troilus. ‘Briseis!’ I said softly, ‘what are you thinking of?’ ‘He loves me,’ she replied. ‘He says he loves me.’ I saw him place his hand on her the way men touch slave women. The Greek men all around us laughed their booming male laughs. I was seized by a ghastly fear of the love of the Greeks. But where was Achilles? His name was boring into me; when I mentioned it, I saw Calchas lose his look of composure at last. The mask cracked. Before me stood the Trojan I knew, the friend of my early childhood, my father’s shrewd, temperate adviser. He drew me aside, paid no heed to the suspicion of the Greeks, which he aroused when he evidently confided to me a secret that was weighing on his mind. Yes, Achilles. He was a problem to Calchas, too. Achilles and the Greeks (he said) claimed that Achilles was the son of a goddess. Her name: Thetis. Well. We priests decided among ourselves not to form an opinion. Achilles gave away many weapons and much wine to ensure the spread of the legend. He threatened the grimmest punishment to anyone who dared to doubt its truth – and no doubt about it, that man had not his equal in meting out punishment. So, Calchas said, what he told me now could easily cost him his life. Namely: when the war was about to begin, Odysseus and Menelaus were assembling the Greek allies (he, Calchas, had been present at the negotiations and since then he had known what it meant to be a Greek); then they came to fetch Achilles, too. His mother, goddess or not, said that he was not at home, that he was far away, that he had left on a journey. Odysseus, who knows people and up to a certain point himself as well (which is rare) – Odysseus smelled a rat. He left the rat and Menelaus (whom all the Greeks secretly despised because he had lost Helen) with the woman, followed his keen nose, and found Achilles in a secluded room, in bed with another young man. And since the practised, far-seeing Odysseus had tried to evade the levy himself by pretending to be mad (What, we didn’t know that? Well, what did we know about our enemies, then?); since he would not allow another man to get off when he had to bleed, he literally dragged Achilles into the war by the scruff of his neck. It might be that he already regretted it. For Achilles was after everyone in sight: young men, whom he genuinely desired, and girls, as a proof that he was like everybody else. A fiend in battle so that everyone would see he was not a coward, he did not know what to do with himself once the fighting was done. And this was the man to whom Calchas the seer later had to turn over his daughter. Perhaps he fooled himself into thinking that among wanton men, only the most wanton could protect a woman. I saw Briseis again after the fall of Troy, when we were driven through the camp of the Greeks. I thought I had seen all the horror a human being can see. I know what I am saying: Briseis’s face surpassed it all. If only he, Achilles, had died a thousand deaths. If only I could have been present at every one. Let the earth vomit out his ashes. I am very tired. On that long-ago day when we returned from the Greek camp without Briseis, I felt I had been away for a long time and very, very far. There lay my Troy, my beloved city, behind its high wall. The target, the prey. A god had given me new eyes. Suddenly I saw all the weaknesses which the Greeks could exploit. I swore to myself that never, never should a man like Achilles walk through our streets. Except for this last day of all, I was never more of a Trojan than that day. I saw that the others were feeling the same thing I did. So we came home, to the Scaean Gate. There the sentries intercepted us. We were shown into a small, dark, stinking room in the gatehouse. Eumelos’s men dictated our names to an embarrassed, pompous scribe. All of us had to say who we were, even my brothers and I, whom everyone knew. I burst out laughing, was severely reprimanded. Where had we been, we were asked. ‘So, with the enemy. And for what purpose?’ Then I thought I was dreaming. The men were searched – even my brothers, the king’s sons – pocket by pocket, seam by seam. I held the bright knife to the chest of the first man who touched me, the knife I carried on me for all eventualities, so as not to be at the mercy of the enemy. ‘I didn’t need it over there,’ I said bitterly. What did I mean by that, I was asked. Was I comparing a Trojan loyal to his king to the enemy? I knew the man who dared to speak this way to me: physically gone to pot, bloated, running to fat. He had tried to touch me in the past. I ruminated and said coldly: ‘Anyone who touches me will end up with a knife in him.’ The man retreated, half grovelling, like a dog. Oh yes, I knew him. My father’s chief scribe. Was he one of Eumelos’s men? What was happening to my city, then? What was happening to my Trojans that they did not see our little band being driven through their streets? It was simple, I saw: simply not to see. I could not find their eyes. Coldly I scrutinised the backs of their heads. Had they always been so cowardly? Was there such a thing as a people who had cowardly backs of heads? I asked Eumelos, who, seemingly by chance, was waiting for us at the entrance of the palace. I got under his skin. He hectored his deputy: ‘But not her! One must be able to draw distinctions. Not everyone who knew Briseis the traitor, or even was her friend, is under our suspicion. But what if what Cassandra calls cowardly (exaggerating as we know she is in the habit of doing) is simply loyalty to the king? It goes without saying that you are all free.’ Priam explained to me that in war everything that would apply in peace was rescinded. After all, it did not hurt Briseis what people said about her here, where she would never return. And it was helping us. ‘In what way?’ ‘Inasmuch as opinions about her case differed.’ ‘In heaven’s name, how can opinions differ about a case that does not exist? That was invented especially for the purpose?’ ‘Even if that’s true, once something has become public knowledge, it is real.’ ‘So. Real like Helen.’ Then he threw me out for the second time. Things were beginning to add up; was I addled or something? I think so. I think in a certain sense I was. I lived through it, but it is still hard to...