Echoes of Memory
This story was written for my Greek and Roman II class, and inspired by The Aeneid. It was a creative exercise, whose goal was to assess "the processes we undergo in constructing narrative through navigating mythic symbols in physical space.” A number of art and performance projects were completed by my classmates and I and placed around the space of a specific room on campus.
This exercise was inspired by Bettina Bergmann’s article "The Roman House as Memory Theater: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii.” For my part, I print three copies of this story and placed them around the room, folded into a booklet. The cover I created can be seen below.
Flames lick at the sky, shooting small embers high that drift down like down feathers in the breeze. For a moment, Anna cannot discern what she’s seeing through the flames. Until, suddenly, the scene snaps clearly into focus.
Anna feels the scream drawn from the depths of her soul, shredding her from the inside out as it rises. A wail the likes of which this land has never heard before, but that will scar it forever after.
She rushes forward, brushing off the hands of others that try to stop her. Soldiers? Servants? It doesn’t matter. They don’t matter. Only she does.
Dido.
Anna sobs and screams, but she doesn’t hear it. She doesn’t hear the soldiers or servants or priests yelling for her to come back out of the pyre. She doesn’t hear the roar the fire makes as it consumes everything that reminds her sister of that man. She doesn’t feel the burns as she fights the flames for her sister.
She hears the ragged breathes that emerge from her sister’s lungs, the pained whimpers as the fire dances around her, on her. The scream of rage and loss and pain that emerges from Dido’s throat. She feels is the deceptive lightness of her sister’s body as she heaves her out of the flames.
Deceptive because her sister is not slight or small, she is larger than life. Dido is a queen, a leader. She is a survivor and a trickster, a protector, a lover. Her existence is a planet, around which Anna’s whole life orbits like the moon. It always has. She is Anna’s big sister, and she has been through so much, but she has never given up.
Until now. Until him.
Anna collapses on the stones of the courtyard, still far too close to the fire but too weak to move farther away. Too weak, despite the strength she has always followed like a flower follows the sun. Strength she tried, in every way, to emulate. Strength that she’d never seen break, even in the darkest night. Strength that now lies, bleeding and burned and stained with ash, in her arms.
Dido. Her sister. Her queen. Her best friend.
A priest moves around her, prayers to the gods rising from his lips to drift lazily to the heavens, much as the smoke does. A physician arrives, tries to pry Anna’s hands away from her sister, says something about treating her injuries. Is she injured? She doesn’t feel it. Her soul is in too much pain to feel something as simple as physical injury. She doesn’t let Dido go. The physician doesn’t attempt to help her. Why is he worried about Anna when Dido is obviously so much worse off?
Memories of the past rise unbidden her mind as Dido gasps and writhes in her arms.
Visions of Dido’s wedding day, the first one, filled with dancing and feasting and joy. Of the wail Dido released at her husband’s funeral. Of the determined look on Dido’s face, gaunt and bloodless, when she woke Anna in the middle of the night and told her they had to leave. Of the curse Dido laid on their brother as they sailed away from the only home they’d ever known with nothing but a group of retainers that looked to Dido for leadership the same way Anna did.
The memories rush at her like a tide, gaining speed now. The glint in Dido’s eye when she bargained for land with the brash young king who thought he was so smart. The triumph in Dido’s smile when she laid out her finely cut strips of hide and earned them enough land to survive on. The pride on Dido’s face when the first stones of Carthage were laid. The surprise Dido hid so well when she was approached by him and heard his story. Dido’s shy laughter when Anna asked slyly how long she’d invited him to stay for. The grief in Dido’s voice when she asked Anna what her first love would think of her now.
The rushing tide halts on an image that overlays over with the present. An image of the happiness shining from her sister on her second wedding day, a day that could not have been more opposite than her first. No open blue skies or colorful dresses whirling in intricate dances, no great feast attended by hundreds or elaborate sacrifices to entice the gods to bless the new couple. Instead, it was a grey day, the rain just beginning to pelt down. The guests, if you could call them that, wore the utilitarian clothes of the hunt. The only music was the sound of the horn driving the dogs forward. The only sacrifices were made by the wild animals that fell to the hunters’ arrows and spears.
And yet Dido had never shone brighter than she had as he led her towards the unassuming cave. She’d never smiled so large as when she motioned for Anna to be quiet, to not draw attention to their departure. She’d never experienced such pleasure, she said later, or felt so safe as she had in that cave when he held her in his arms and promised her forever.
And this was what forever brought them to, Anna thinks bitterly, holding her broken sister in her arms, rocking her gently. Heartbreak so great that only a great pyre can match it, flames reaching towards the wide blue sky.
Anna holds Dido for a long time. Long enough that the greedy flames begin to burn down, having eaten through all their fuel. Long enough that the priests and soldiers have moved on, other concerns taking precedence. Anna has no other concerns but to hold her sister. Maybe if she holds her long enough, Dido will be okay. If she keeps holding on, Dido will realize she’s not alone. She’s survived heartbreak and betrayal once. She can survive it again. She has to.
Dido has stopped whimpering and shifting in Anna’s arms, but still she holds her sister. Anna stares, sightless, at the great blue dome that spreads above her. There are no flames left, no warmth, no roaring to cover her own ragged breathing.
“My queen,” a servant is kneeling beside her. Anna waits for Dido to respond, waits for her sister’s warm alto voice to break the silence. Instead, a sob does.
“My queen, the physician must treat your burns or infection might set in,” the servant insists. Anna looks at her, looks through her.
The servant takes a deep breath and then nods as if she’s come to a decision. She looks up towards someone Anna can’t see.
“Please escort the queen to her quarters. The physician is waiting for her,” the young woman says, determination flaring to life on her face. She turns her head a quarter turn, speaking to another unseen bystander, her determination pushing her through even when she stutters. “Bring the—the body to the temple. It must be prepared.”
There’s a flurry of movement at her words and Anna feels Dido being drawn from her arms. She tries to protest, struggles to hold on to her sister. They don’t understand, Dido feels so alone right now, but she’s not alone. Anna is here; Anna loves her. Like the moon loves the world it circles, Anna loves her sister.
The stones of that place echo with her cries as Anna is separated from her sister for the last time. They will always echo with them, the ghosts of her screams haunting the courtyard for years to come, long after the pyre has been cleared. After Anna’s burn wounds have been treated and healed, her hands scarred but functional. After the proper sacrifices have been made and the old queen sent to her final resting place. After Anna has accepted a crown she never wanted.
The stones of the courtyard hold the memory of her grief, and the echoes of it ring out through the years.