Memoirs of a Bitch by Francesca Petrizzo, Silvester Mazzarella Read Free Book Online Page B

wrinkled face from the top step and said goodbye from there. He nodded. That was all.
    â€œIt’ll take us two days to the sea, Menelaus, then I’ll send the horses back. We have a ship waiting to take us to Cephalonia.” The kingdom of their exile: rocks, cliffs and goats. My cousin Penelope and her husband Ulysses lived next door just across the water.
    Leda came silently out of the palace behind me. She embraced Clytemnestra, then turned to me. “Queen of Sparta, I salute you.”
    â€œI’m still Helen, Mother.” A lie, and I knew it.
    Leda gently stroked my cheek. “You have my jewels, daughter. Make the most of them. And sometimes think of me.”
    Behind her back, Clytemnestra’s already sour expression froze. All I could do was bow my head and accept my mother’s words.
    Agamemnon and Menelaus bowed too; Leda acknowledged them both with a regal inclination of the head. Then she dropped her bright veil over her face, walked down the steps without a backward glance, and vanished behind the linen curtains of her waiting litter. Tyndareus looked at us one more time. His eyes fixed on the palace of Sparta, his palace, as if he knew Leda must be feeling the same behind the drawn curtains of her litter. He had lived an entire life there. I saw his lips moving, but could not read them. He did not speak, just made a brusque gesture. His driver climbed up and shook the reins. Sharpcries echoed around the courtyard as the cortège moved off. Four slaves lifted my mother’s litter and fell in behind the rest. As they did so, a breath of wind moved the linen curtains to reveal for a moment a simply dressed woman, with no jewelry, a sight never seen before even when she was in mourning. It must have been my imagination, I told myself, but I thought I saw tears on her cheeks. Then the curtain fell back and the procession disappeared through the gate. Even Tyndareus had turned away to fix his eyes on the mountains of the Peloponnese. The royal guard drawn up on the road hit their shields with their lances in salute. A war cry ran from house to house through Sparta. Nothing more. Only empty streets under the midday sun.

13
    Agamemnon and Clytemnestra stayed the next day and the day after that. Used to taking orders from his older brother, Menelaus was silent and thoughtful, letting the King and Queen of Mycenae give a banquet each evening at the expense of the Spartan treasury. Parties and singing, my sister wearing new jewelry every day, shouts and cries in the night. My own marriage consisted of nothing in the opaque night but the brief panting of Menelaus, who seemed to be quickly tired even by making love. When I dressed I made little effort for him apart from wearing his necklace, and felt happy when my plain unpainted face revealed to my mirror that I was exhausted from lack of sleep.
    It irritated me to see my sister dancing, carelessly swinging her stomach and laughing all the time. I couldnot laugh. Music no longer had any power over me, and my lips were automatically stretched in fixed smiles that deceived no one but Menelaus. Agamemnon bared his teeth and raised a full cup of wine to toast my life, ruined by his actions. The red lips behind his curly black beard were like the leer of a demon from the underworld.
    It was only when the queen’s belly had grown so heavy that she could hardly walk, that one gray morning Agamemnon gave the order for departure.
    â€œThe boy must be born in Mycenae,” he announced, harnessing his carriage. He saw himself as a simple man, did Agamemnon, using no coachman and doing the driving himself.
    Clytemnestra, her rapidly swelling figure glittering with gold, was barely capable of leaning forward to say goodbye to me. “We’ll meet again soon, little sister,” she said, displaying her canines with her eyes shining. It took two female slaves to lift her into her litter. Then with a languid gesture she informed her husband