The Isle of Stone

7.

A few weeks after Antalcidas and Doulos left for Attica, Andreia received a guest at their house. Damatria came over the hill from her estate without attendants, dressed in a simple linen chiton with her hair bound in woolen fillets, like a farmgirl. She carried a flat harvesting basket, and in the basket was a bouquet of wildflowers. Despite her humble getup there was nothing common about her: Damatria’s gray-frosted hair had been washed and arranged with a dresser’s skill, and she traveled in a cloud of imported perfume. Andreia recognized her only by sight, never having spoken to her mother-in-law in person. Antalcidas had long ago pointed her out from their upper story window, concealing his bitterness under a curious tone, as if he was indicating some rare kind of bird. Andreia detected the anger beneath his jauntiness, and the sadness beneath the anger.

“Hello. I am your mother,” Damatria said.

“I know who you are.”

“If that’s so, then you might offer a couch to your elder.”

Andreia took the flowers and hosted her elder guest the way a good Lacedaemonian wife ought. Damatria looked around at what had become of the little farmhouse at the edge of her domain: Andreia had turned it into a modest but fine home, with furniture un-scuffed and beaten floor meticulously swept. A subtle bubbling sound emanated from the iron cauldron on the hearth. Through an open door to the husband’s parlor, Damatria could see a small girl, no more than a toddler, lying asleep at an odd angle on the drinking couch.

“My husband is gone,” Andreia hastened, reddening.

“No need to explain,” replied Damatria. “I used to let my boys sleep in the men’s rooms in my time. It’s better than running up the stairs to check on them.”

Her reassurance was kind, but Andreia’s embarrassment only deepened. She had no idea why this lady had come; courtesy was expected in such instances, yet she could not shake a nagging sense of disloyalty to her husband.

“Can I offer you something? Water? Something to eat?”

Damatria was staring at her now. “You are fair, aren’t you? Fair but pretty. The young men love that.”

“Do you like almonds? They’re last year’s, I’m afraid.”

The other smiled. Rising, she wandered to the hearth and snatched up a rag to lift the hot lid of the cookpot.

“Barley soup?”

“With narthex.”

“Dried?”

“Fresh. They sprout early on the south-facing slope.”

Damatria stirred the mixture and tested its scent. “You used a vinegar fish sauce. Try an oil-based; the soup comes out thicker, and the men get so sick of vinegar from the mess.”

Andreia tried to look her most demure, eyes down. “I have tried it-he doesn’t like the oil.”

Lips tightening, Damatria replaced the lid. Was the girl trying to make her feel guilty, telling her something she might have known about her own son? No, look at her: she’s never had a devious thought in her life. Did he choose her as some kind of living reproof against his mother?

“There must be something I can show you that you don’t know yet. Do you use asafoetida?”

“I’ve only heard of it.”

“There must be some growing around here… Shall we look?”

The girl hesitated, looking toward the parlor.

“Your little one should be all right,” said Damatria. “We shouldn’t be gone long.”

“No, I’ll take her.”

And so they went out beyond the kitchen garden, Andreia with Melitta clinging to her side, Damatria in her faux-peasant costume. It was a cool day for early summer, with high, serrated clouds above and a hint of vernal green lingering in the foothills. As Damatria showed Andreia how to recognize the resin-bearing plants, she glanced at the girl asleep with her face buried against her mother’s neck. The sight filled her with a vague warmth; forgetting her age, she momentarily contemplated becoming a mother again. It wouldn’t be by Dorcis, of course, who had grown comfortably flaccid in his paralysis. He was Erinna’s husband now in every sense but the legal one.

Melitta stirred, yawning. As the child turned away from the warmth of Andreia’s neck, Damatria, trembling, got her first good look at her features. The face she dreaded was reflected there, but-thankfully-it was softened by Andreia’s delicacy and the tenderness of early girlhood. If she unfocused her eyes, she might even obscure the resemblance. Could she spend half a lifetime looking with her eyes crossed at her granddaughter?

“You take the stems here,” she was saying, “and pound them to render the resin, except you shouldn’t use a wooden mallet, unless you want it to forever smell of garlic…”

Back at the house the women stood side by side at the cook table. Though Damatria knew more about the preparation of asafoetida, her proficiency in the kitchen suffered from dependence on servants. Andreia, meanwhile, undertook the lesson with the confidence of knowing virtually everything else. Before long the younger woman had matched the elder’s skill; she had been at her pounding for some time before she realized that Damatria had withdrawn some distance away to watch her.

“What? Am I doing it right?”

“Does he know?” Damatria’s eyes flitted down to the slight hunch in Andreia’s abdomen.

Andreia took a few more swings of the mallet, brushed her hair out of her eyes with her wrist. “No. He left before I was sure.”

“He’ll be pleased it’s a boy.”

Andreia smiled. “How can you know that?”

“From how it lies in you. Remember, I’ve borne a few sons in my time.”

The other, not knowing whether to believe Damatria’s judgment or, more deeply, her intentions, said nothing. Damatria approached again and leaned forward, pausing only to say, “Congratulations are due.” Then she delivered a kiss on Andreia’s cheek that burned with such ambiguity that she felt it for hours to come.