Helpful hint: it's a conversation with one speaker on mute.  If you want to try to figure out what Helena's saying between paragraphs, feel free.  It's all about the audience participation. :)

TYRANNUS  by Jayne Leitch
C. 2001

"You will not speak with good grace, but will in pain." --Sophocles, Oedipus Tyrannus

* * * * *

     Hello, Mother.

     How kind of you to join me; after my discussion with your young man
earlier--Andreas, is it?--I wasn't sure you would be able to attend.  You've no idea how
delighted I am that you're here.

     No, your little bedwarmer won't be bothering us.  We're alone here; I have you all to
myself.  No Andreas, no Nikolas, no Alexis...no Stavros.

     He *won't*.  I've made sure of that.  Shouldn't you know by now that it's extremely
foolish to underestimate me?

     Ah, the wine.  Don't be afraid, I haven't done anything to it.  It's a particularly fine '57;
I wouldn't dare meddle with the bouquet.  It might not have the bite of Father's port, but
it's still an excellent year.

     The point?  Isn't it obvious, Mother?  I wanted to spend some time with you.  We
spend so little time together...I've missed you.

     No, I wouldn't believe that, either.  All right; the real reason I've arranged for the
pleasure of your company this evening is because I wanted to speak with you without
being interrupted by one of your inane plots.  I didn't want one of your serving boys
barging in and calling you away with some cryptic reference to a crisis unfolding in one
or another of your schemes; I wanted you all to myself, just for an evening.  Is that too
much for a son to ask of his mother?

     If I was always so unsatisfactory, why am I still alive?  Hmm?  The "runt" is always
the easiest to put down, if I recall Father's instructions about the dogs properly.  Of
course, I was never important enough to receive any of those lectures first-hand...Stavros
was always the one who went with Father to see the new litters, I always waited until
Alexis was allowed to go.  I wanted to make her feel less of an outsider, and because of
that I was punished--

     She was my sister, Mother.  I might not have known it then, but at the time the simple
fact that she was not your child was enough.  I came to be very grateful for that.  If she
hadn't been Father's as well, I believe we all would have been much happier.

     Stavros was happy because he cared about nothing other than himself; he disregarded
anything that wouldn't lend him an advantage.  Do you think his remarkable
self-absorption came naturally?  Well--perhaps it did, but you and Father both helped
engender it by lavishing him with your doting affections.  Alexis and I...we had to endure
much colder lives.

     Of course not.  Do you imagine us as poor, pathetic fairytale children, cast out by evil
parents and forced to make our way through an uncaring, friendless world with nothing
but our own bonds of love and understanding to sustain us?  It doesn't surprise me that
you do.  You've always been something of a romantic.

     No, Alexis and I might have been alone and unloved, but we rarely exposed our pain
to each other.  Comfort came through different channels between us.

     You'd like that, wouldn't you, Mother?  You'd like to hear me tell a tale of finding
Alexis weeping in the closet under the stairs after Stavros fed her only doll to the guard
dogs, or of her finding me among the wisteria with a black eye and bloody nose after
confronting him.  You'd love to hear of how we would slip into each others' rooms at
night and cling together, weeping under the covers because something you had done
during the day hurt one of us so badly we couldn't sleep.  I imagine you've dreamt up any
number of fantasies in which our teenage curiosity and shared misery got the better of us
and led to a night of clinging together under the covers in ways our younger selves
wouldn't have imagined.  How many times have you pictured me kissing my sister,
Mother?

     No.  Not even once.  Were you listening when I told you that we came by our comfort
in different ways?  We might have been desperate for affection, but we were both too
used to hiding our emotions from everyone on that island to get it from each other.

     Yes, I thought you might have known about her time with Demetrios.  She wasn't
quite adept at covering her tracks when they were together, and I suspected that all those
trips to the mainland couldn't have escaped your notice.  I remember when he went away
to school; she lost her appetite for a month.

     Ah...it doesn't surprise me that you did.  You were never content to let her be happy; it
had crossed my mind that you had done something to him, but to be honest, Alexis's
romance wasn't the only one capturing my attention at that time.

     Of course you don't.  I was much better than Alexis at keeping secrets.

     Laura was different.  Laura was on the grounds, and on the grounds there was always
someone spying and being paid to scurry back to tell you everything.  No...I kept my first
liaison from you and Father and Stavros all the time it lasted, and ever after.  None of you
ever knew about Fyodor.

     Don't be so hungry for the details, Mother.  It's ruining your attempt to look horrified.

     Now now, be patient.  We do have all evening, after all...you're not going to drink
your wine?  There really is nothing wrong with it, you can trust me.  He was...tall, taller
than I was, and strong.  He was working as a labourer on the mainland, making far more
money moving from farm to farm than he ever could have if he'd stayed in Russia.  He
was naturally dark, and tanned so deeply by his outdoor work that when first I saw him I
thought he was black.  He had a thick mane of straight, black hair that fell across his
shoulders and forehead in a way that I knew would have utterly repulsed you.  I think that
was what initially drew me to him; I knew you wouldn't approve of your son spending
time with someone like him, even if you didn't care what I did otherwise.

     As I told you already, Mother, Laura was different.  I knew you didn't approve of her
either, but that wasn't the attraction, for myself or Stavros.  You wouldn't let yourself
realize it, but Laura was very much like you; Stavros hasn't figured that out yet, but I...I
understood a long time ago that it wasn't just our loneliness that drew me to her.  When
we were together, Laura and I understood our mutual wretched existences...as well as our
mutual fortunes...

     Fyodor, Mother.  If you want to hear all the sordid details, you'll have to stop
interrupting.

     Very well.  I tutored him in Greek; he knew enough rudiments of the language to live
and work, but he wanted to have a thorough grasp of the country and the speech.  He was
quite intelligent; he learned quickly and easily, and more of our lessons were spent in idle
conversation under a tree or in whatever bedroom he was keeping than in actual
instruction.  We discussed...almost everything.

     You sound eager, Mother.  Shall I ask you why?

     You should ask Stavros.  Alexis and I weren't the only ones who went looking for
distractions on the mainland, and I know he has some interesting stories to tell...

     Do you want to hear that we kissed, Mother?  We did.  After two weeks of lessons we
did nothing but.  Fyodor had a beautiful mouth, very full lips and enough of a beard to
scratch red marks on my face.  If he was in a particular mood he would bite at my jaw
and pull my hair--you remember how long I wore it when I was young--and I would ask if
inflicting pain gave him respite from his own--

     We all suffered.  Most often because of you.  Alexis would be in almost holy fear of
you when you chose to single her out for punishment, and she would tell me after you
had done your worst that she always felt as if you were taking something precious from
her...I always suspected that was something to do with her mother.

     I thought I might be right about that.

     You enjoy boasting entirely too much, Mother.

     I?  I was constantly frightened that I had acquired some...some pollutive family trait
from you and Father.  It's the same fear that plagues Nikolas, the same pain of
recognizing our inheritance and wishing that we did not.

     Fyodor?  I never asked where his pain came from.  It was enough that we saw like
injuries in each other and did our best to soothe them; we didn't want to know the causes.
From what I gather, it was the same for Alexis and Demetrios, possibly for Stavros and
Sofi or Denis--ah, I've said too much...

     No, no more.  Ask him.  After all, he can give you *details*.

     I remember one long, blistering summer afternoon in a private hollow on the bluffs
over the Aegean.  Fyodor and I had packed up our books and two bottles of ouzo--stolen
from the cellar of his current employer--and were spending the day ignoring his lessons
in favour of becoming thoroughly drunk.  The little hollow was perfectly hidden from all
directions; you had to be right on top of it to see it, but the view out over the sea was
breathtaking.  We spread a blanket over the grassy sand just under the lip of the hollow
and simply lay there, passing the bottles back and forth, staring out at the water.  There
was almost no shade, and the sun roasted us both...hours passed, the bottles emptied--we
dozed, off and on--until sometime around sunset, when Fyodor turned to me and asked
why, even when I was with him and free to behave however I wished, I was always so
silent and withdrawn.  He wanted to know if that was who I was, or if it was simply
habit, an affectation designed to protect what little sense of worth my family hadn't
drummed out of me.  It was the first time he had ever wanted to know why I chose to be
with him, since I seemed no freer no matter where I was or who I was with.

     You know I didn't answer him, don't you Mother.  After growing up with you and
Father and Stavros ready to ridicule the slightest sign of emotional weakness, I couldn't.
Instead, I laughed a little, said something meaningless and comforting, and began kissing
him so he couldn't ask anything more.

     I thought you might interpret my behaviour that way.  Rest assured--you're probably
right.

     No.  I don't know.

     Anyway, I kissed him, and for a long while neither of us said anything further.  Then,
just as it was becoming truly dark...Fyodor pulled back, placed his hands on the sides of
my face, and kept me from looking away while he told me why he had left Russia.  He
made me look straight up into his eyes as he spoke, tightening his grasp every time he
began to cry or I began to try to pull free...it was a painful story for him to tell and for me
to hear, and he looked absolutely beautiful while he told it.

     I'm not going to tell it to you.  Try not to look disappointed.

     The point, Mother, is that the first person I ever allowed myself to become truly close
to, the first person who allowed himself to become truly close to me, laid bare his soul in
front of my eyes and considered my silence encouragement to reveal everything.  And
when he had given me the truth of his life, I reached up, pulled his hands away, climbed
to my feet, and left him alone in the darkness.  I never said a word in response to his
story--I just left, and never saw him again.

     Of course, you don't understand.  But that afternoon, that evening, lying under the sky
and staring out to sea, sucking spilled drops of ouzo from each other's chins and
chests...that time, with Fyodor, I was more honest than I ever was and have ever
been--and yet I still wasn't honest *enough*.  Now, every time Nikolas or Alexis or Laura
or even Luke comes to me with pain in their eyes, I see Fyodor above me, holding me
down, trusting me with his truth, forcing it on me and begging me to be truthful in return.
And I feel just as desperately cold inside now as I did then.

     Do you remember...I told you once that you taught me the most important lesson I
have ever learned: how to close my heart and turn my back on someone who can only
offer pain.  I was speaking of Laura at the time, but in truth my first practical application
of your teachings was with Fyodor.  He called it a withdrawn silence, a protective
measure taken against you; I never told him that I thought of it as strength--the strength to
reject whatever pain *he* might try to offer.  You gave it to me, Mother.  Does knowing
that make you happy?

     Perhaps.  After all, "Those griefs smart the most which are seen to be of our own
choice."

     I am aware of that; I saw it every time I walked into Father's study.  I seem to recall
that Stavros thought it hilarious, but I never liked it.  Imagine that.

     There--isn't it good wine?  With a decided lack of toxins, you notice.  I told the truth
about that.

     You might very well be right, Mother.  Now...aren't you glad we had this little chat?

End.

Quote from Oedipus Tyrannus, by Sophocles

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