Exclusive short story; The final sacrifice

Jeanette Winterson

AUGUST 31, 1997. Some time after midnight. A black Mercedes 600 SEL pulled away from the back door of the Paris Ritz into the narrow Rue Cambon. The driver might have been drinking. The bodyguard was tense. The man in the back wanted to marry the woman he had been dining.

As the car headed south towards the Rue de Rivoli, the bodyguard noticed the Mercedes was being followed by photographers on motorcycles. The driver of the Mercedes increased his speed as he went along the Rue de Rivoli, and out into the north-east corner of the Place de la Concorde. He kept to an outside lane, leaving the Champs Elysees roundabout on to the Cours de la Reine. He knew there was a straight run here, before a short tunnel beneath the Place de l'Alma. There was plenty of time for a car with a V12 engine to reach high speed. The couple in the back held hands.

The motorcycles behind were very close now. The driver glanced in the mirror, said something in French that no one understood, then swung the car towards the tunnel, at around 120 mph.

As he lost control of the wheel, the car skidded across the duel carriageway, until it mounted a small kerb and its nearside struck the 13th pillar of the tunnel's central support section.

The driver and one of the passengers were killed instantly. The bodyguard was taken to hospital. For two hours, the emergency services tried to cut the second passenger from out of the crushed car.

What is the difference between sacrifice and betrayal?

The shield lies on the beaten shore.

The sand is burnished gold like the shield. Like the shield, the shore has been pounded by time. Everyday, the tide that follows the moon indents the sand. Everyday, the shield takes a blow from some lunatic chasing time.

They all want their 15 minutes of fame. Achilles knows that. Fight a hero and you get famous. Snap a princess, and your picture makes history.

Human beings love making history ... Make love. Make history. It's sexy to do both. Achilles knows that. He leaves making money to greengrocers.

Today though, Achilles has to make time. He's in love with a princess of his own, and if he wants her, he will have to fight for her in a way unusual to him. He must lay down his sword and shield and kneel before a woman he could break with one arm.

He has to give up being a hero, just for today. There is nobody to talk him through it, because Freud has not been born. Nevertheless, Achilles knows that love and death are twins born at the same moment, each fighting for mastery. And if death would take all, then so would love, but Achilles knows we fight love harder than we fight death.

Death is seductive. Love is a challenge.

Death is inevitable. Love is a chance.

Achilles sits alone in the sand and polishes his shield. It helps him to remember who he is. What follows has no rehearsal time. Curtain up. Here she is.

Iphigenie, daughter of Agamemnon, King of Greece, walks barefoot across the shore towards her destiny. She could be any girl. This could be any moment. She walks lightly through the salt-weight of the water, her hand pushing back the wind-weight of her hair.

Her hair is as dark as destiny, and as heavy. She was made for difference. She cannot be obscure, any more than day can obscure night. She is night. She is star-lit, moon-changeful, as paused, and broken and reflective as a night spent on the seashore, eyes like stars, reading the sky.

When she was born, her mother Clytemnestra, read the runes of the after- birth, and deciphered a child less dependent on grammar than poetry. The meaning might falter, but the image would stay true. f

Clytemnestra, who translated the day though the lexicon of the night, understood that her child would be watchful and careful, minding her steps, guarding her breath, walking slowly - without the advantages of too much sun - with the intuition of other lights.

Achilles, who is a sun-god and a daytime hero, shines like his shield. Iphigenie bounces off him, making strange shapes and unlikely shadows in the sand. He cannot absorb her, though she enfolds him. Achilles is a noon-time man. Iphigenie is his shadow. She is with him wherever he goes, although he has tried to forget her. Only at midday does he feel himself whole and entire again. At midday he casts no shadow. At midday she casts no spell. He eats and drinks, then sleeps under the easy skin of his tent. When he wakes in his own skin and goes and kneels by the stream to wash his face, he sees his reflection, which he knows. Then he stands up and finds his shadow, which he hardly knows.

She is always with him.

The route they took suggests they were heading for the Bois de Boulogne or the Porte Maillot.

Achilles and Iphigenie are alone together on the seashore. There are no long lenses developing their intimacy into display. He kisses her and a gull shrieks. She rests her hand under his armour. She loves his skin, burnt like meat, and the pink of him where the sun never goes. She runs her finger in the tight divide of his bum. She feels him stand for her. He is a noon-time man. His wants are simple. He draws her to him out of obvious desire. She draws him to her because she is hidden. He never knows, really knows, that she wants him, but she does.

There was speculation that they might become engaged, or even marry, later in the year ...

She is royal. Her father Agamemnon is jealous of whom she marries. He has promised her to Achilles, but his daytime heart and his nighttime thoughts are not the same. He hears voices. His daughter is marked. She has not been birthed for ordinary happiness. He cannot save her; the gods have made her theirs.

Agamemnon has brought Iphigenie to Aulis to marry her to Achilles. She believes that. She trusts her father completely. It is Achilles who makes her wary; Achilles, the ladies' man. Achilles, with a girl in every port, and his best friend Patroclus everywhere else. Iphigenie isn't sure about a friend who takes longer to dress than she does.

She holds her head up as she stands before Achilles. At least she can trust her father.

Down the beach they are preparing the altar.

Iphigenie has escaped her waiting woman to be alone with Achilles. Achilles has slipped loose from the young men who are his playmates and casual army. They are alone on the beach, and although everyone is looking for them, no one knows who they are; they are special, they are celebrities, she is royal, he says he is descended from a god. No one sees past these things, and even the two of them are in love with their reflections. They are constantly reflected in someone else's eyes, and if they complain, well, it will always be easier than seeing themselves or each other, as they are.

Achilles is often naked, but his body is the property of myth. Iphigenie undresses, but her body belongs to the State.

The couple had taken the decision to end their cruise early, because of the intrusions of the press.

Why marry? What is the human need that asks for intimacy to be complete? When I enter your body, what secret palace do I hope to find? What rooms do I long to inhabit, not visible on the surface? Why must I possess you, hold the key to you, when love at its best is free?

I am self-contained. I am proud. I seek neither company nor advice. But you occupy my thoughts. I wonder, then, do I occupy yours? I wonder then, if our individual freedom lost can only be regained by occupying each other? I want you to be mine. What do I mean by that? I want you to be my homeland. I want to be your soil. I want you to jump from your ship and run through the breakers and fall and kiss me, the way you do when you see Greece again. I never want to stop you sailing; but I want to be the land you love.

It is so simple. It is complex. You are not the kind to be held, and nor am I. I do not want to make you obliged to me, nor do I wish that I should become your duty. I want you to find pleasure here - pleasure of scent, and sight and sound. I want you to find the calm of a favourite walk. I want you to be excited when you see my coastline again, and know how to navigate the inlets and natural harbours private to us.

Think of me when you are away - not every day, but with the longing of a dream.

Think of me when we are together - I am a map you have unfolded. I am your journey.

What is this love that must be travelled? I am marrying you because you are a journey I choose to make. I do not know the length of the voyage, or where, or when, it will f end but it must be done well, if it is to be done at all, and I will say yes to you, because anything less is only a different version of no.

Yes or no. It is so simple. It is so complex. Do I or don't I?

I do.

Proud Achilles heard Iphigenie and trembled. He did not understand her but all his longing was constellated in her body. When he sailed at night and looked up at the stars he saw her there. She arched over him, sheltering him from an empty universe. She was not earth to him; she was the sky where he travelled when he lay on his back.

He lay on his back now, and pulled her across him, smiling at her, kissing her, and although she knew he would never understand, she had chosen him, and that was enough.

She would marry this man.

The impact of the crash was so massive that rescuers found the radiator grill on the front passenger's lap.

Their moment of calm was cut through by noise. The attendants had found them out. They were coming to escort them to the wedding altar. There were trumpets and flower garlands and a young white bull led on a halter by a 12-year-old girl.

Achilles picked up his shield and buckled on his golden armour. He took Iphigenie by the hand and bowed to the crowd who were laughing and touching them. The beach that had been empty was full of people. This was the moment of happiness, the moment of marriage. Achilles hung a jewel around her neck.

They began to walk slowly towards their destiny, hand in hand, as lovers do.

A fellow diner said they had been holding hands as they waited for the lift.

Then the servant Arcus came running up to Iphigenie and warned her not to go to the altar.

Achilles roughly handled him, asking him what he meant by his intrusion, and Arcus told him that Agamemnon intended to sacrifice his daughter. That was enough for Achilles. Shouting to his men and to Patroclus, he dropped Iphigenie's hand, and raced across the sun- reddened sand.

The priest was tending the sacred flame. Agamemnon, his face turned to stone, was sharpening the knife himself, until Achilles knocked it out of his hand.

"Who insults me?" said the King

"You gave her to me. You cannot take back what is mine."

"She belongs to the gods," said Agamemnon.

"She belongs to me. I will be her god."

Achilles would have slaughtered them all, but Iphigenie took his wrist as he raised it, and held his strength between her finger and thumb.

"Oh my daughter," said Agamemnon, "I have not betrayed you, the gods have demanded you for their sacrifice. For the sake of Greece, you must be sacrificed."

"Why must she be sacrificed?" said Achilles.

"The people love her. Only a love-sacrifice is enough."

What did she feel as she moved towards the altar? Why did she open her robe to receive the knife?

An emergency operation to open her chest discovered that she had suffered a ruptured pulmonary vein and had bled heavily into her chest cavity ...

Iphigenie knows she has been betrayed. She is the powerless one, the one who has lost control. Two men are fighting over her, telling her different stories about herself. One reminds her of her love for him, the other talks about her duty to him. They tear the words apart just as the knife will tear her apart. She never wanted to be cleaved in two, with love on her right hand and duty on her left. She has always done her duty; why can she not be allowed to love?

She is a princess but she is powerless. There are so many stories about her, and now she has become a story to herself. She tries to read the upturned palm of her hand, but the lines are blank. Someone else has written on her body. She is good copy - so good that the original has been lost.

Who is she?

Achilles says that all she has to do is follow him. They can go round the world together and never come back to this place. She can stop being a princess and become his wife.

And she thinks - How long will you love me when I am nothing but your wife?

She can't go back. She can't go forward. What can she do with no power?

It is a stroke of genius and she does it. She makes someone else's betrayal into a sacrifice of her own. She chooses death. By choosing death she is no longer a victim; she has become an icon.

She walks to the altar and opens her robe. They are all afraid of her now - her family, her lover, look on in horror. They are hesitating, yes, even the priest is hesitating. She's slipping the net. She's escaping them after all. No one can kill someone who has chosen to die.

At 4am, Diana, Princess of Wales, was declared dead.

The sun comes up about this time. The sun that turns the sea into a golden shield. Achilles' shield lies on the beach, useless to defend him against his feelings. This woman who was moon and water used the night to conquer the day. The daytime life of deals and compromises and money and fame proved not to be the real world at all. The real world turned out to be uncatchable as water.

Achilles knelt down and let the water run through his fingers. He was a Greek. Hadn't he sailed his ships round the whole of the known world? But what was the known world?

What could he say he knew about anything? His heart was unnavigated. He had travelled nowhere.

He wanted a god to descend to tell him what to do. He wanted someone to explain it to him. Why could he not have fought for her as he had always done? Why had she chosen her strength over his?

The sand was drying under his feet where the sun warmed it. The ending was unexpected. He believed she would live. He believed he could have saved her. Even at the last second he had fought for the happy ending. They were lovers. They were holding hands. There was no need for her to die.

The sun comes up about this time, flashing on the knife laid over her chest. She moved in and out of consciousness the way the moon appears briefly against the clouds.

She would not falter. At the Hopital La Pitie Salpetriere the surgeon tried to revive her heart, but it was too late. Her heart had gone out. She was drifting, dreaming. She was a long way out at sea, floating on time, and time burned red like a golden shield that protected her from too much life.

Time had brought her to this morning. She had somewhere to go. E

JEANETTE WINTERSON

One of Britain's most acclaimed novelists, Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester in 1959. Her first novel, Oranges are not the Only Fruit, which won a Whitbread Prize, was published in 1985. Subsequent novels include The Passion, Written on the Body and The Powerbook. This short story, based on the plot of Gluck's Iphigenie en Aulide, is her first collaboration with Glyndebourne, and was commissioned by the company as a way of promoting opera as a living, relevant art form. A second short story, based on the opera Euryanthe, will appear next week.

THE STORY

Agamemnon, king of Mycenae, has incurred the wrath of the goddess Diana, who takes revenge by becalming the Greek ships in Aulis.

To propitiate the goddess, Agamemnon agrees to sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenie, but sends a secret message warning her not to come to Aulis. Iphigenie arrives unexpectedly, however, to join her betrothed, Achilles.

Agamemnon tries another ruse, informing Iphigenia that Achilles has been unfaithful to her and urging her to depart. Achilles assures her of his love and prepares to go ahead with the wedding ceremony. But the Greeks demand the sacrifice and in spite of her mother's protests and Achilles' attempt to halt the sacrifice, the victim prepares to die. Then Diana relents. Iphigenie is saved - not for marriage with Achilles, but as a priestess for the goddess.

The Anger of Achilles, by Jacques-Louis David, left, shows Agamemnon commanding Achilles to put away his sword.

THE PRODUCTION

This costume design for the Glyndebourne production of Iphigenie is by Bettina J Walter, who was born in Ulm, Germany, and studied at the Hochschule der Kunste Berlin. She has worked on both theatre and opera productions and recent work includes Fidelio at La Fenice and Yevgeny Onyegin in Brussels.

The role of Iphigenie will be sung by Veronica Cangemi and Achille by Jonas Degerfeldt. Gerald Finley sings Agamemnon, Katarina Karneus is Clitemnestre, and Marie Arnet is Diane.

EXCLUSIVE TICKET OFFER

Glyndebourne has agreed to reserve a limited number of tickets for Iphigenie en Aulide and Euryanthe exclusively for Independent readers. All Independent readers booking through this offer will also receive a free Festival programme book and the option to receive a free audio guide to one of the featured operas.

For full details, see page 63

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