The Last Song of Orpheus

7

We said nothing as we set out on our way. The foggy haze of death still swirled about her spirit, and as for me, I moved as though moving within a dream. In the early stages of the journey I neither spoke nor touched my lyre’s strings; scarcely did I do so much as think. Onward we walked, Eurydice always following a few paces behind me; and though the denizens of the Netherworld peered at us with a kind of blank-eyed curiosity as we passed, I did not meet their glances, nor did I pay heed to the idle questions they called out to us.

So I retraced my steps, past the place of torments, where all was proceeding once more as it would through eternities to come, and past the white cypress and its pool of forgetfulness, and the black poplars in whose crooked branches black birds of evil omen perched, glaring at us with their glinting yellow eyes, and in time we came to the ferryman’s place at the bank of the Styx, where somber Charon had put me ashore at the outset of my mission.

He was nowhere to be seen, for he has no reason to wait for passengers on this side of the river; but I brought out my lyre and let some notes drift off into the mists that lay low over the black waters, and in time I heard the sound of his oars, and his boat came slowly toward us through the darkness.

If he felt any surprise at seeing us there, he showed no sign. In his dour way he beckoned, and I climbed into the boat and heard Eurydice clamber in behind me, and we stood, one behind the other, as he took us to the other side.

There we disembarked and left Charon and his boat behind, and started off on the road back to life.

All was night here. Apollo’s heavenly light does not reach the realm of Hades, of course, but the places where the shades dwell have a certain dim glow of their own. Here there was none of that, only the dire emptiness that is the frontier of the kingdom of Hell, and a clammy dankness and a stale reek. But by the mercy of everloving Zeus I was able to see the signs of my own earlier track, the faint glimmering glow that my sandals had left when I made my way inward, and I was able to follow those faint clues as I proceeded toward the surface of the world.

Could Eurydice see those same signs, I wondered, and was she able to follow me as I went? Or would she lose sight of me and wander away from me in that multitude of branching forks?

Now and again I heard some small sound that told me she was still behind me, a soft sigh, a little gasp of discomfort as she touched her wounded heel to the ground, even a stirring in the air that perhaps she caused as she breathed. Then would come long stretches of total silence, and I would begin to fear that she had lost the way. At last after one interminably prolonged period of such silence I chose to strum my lyre again—its sudden sound, breaking into that murky quietude, was almost frightening even to me—and in relief I heard what must surely have been the quick intake of Eurydice’s breath.

Thus I guided her upward by the sounds of my lyre, through dark, steep passages that I scarcely had noticed during my descent, but which now were challenging and difficult as I went the other way. It is easy enough to descend into Hell, for its gates will open readily for anyone; but climbing back up again into the light, ah, that is not so simple! I pressed on, scrambling and clambering over the slippery rocks, and strained my ears to hear the sound of Eurydice behind me, and from time to time I thought I did. But was it so, or only the invention of my eager mind? And why, as I drew ever closer to the gateway that would lead us out into the world again, did I no longer hear anything that might betoken her presence?

I turned a sharp bend in the passageway and I saw the light of the upper world gleaming just ahead of me. And in that critical moment I became possessed of the belief that Eurydice had strayed into some side passage and become lost.

Despite Hades’ terrible warning I turned, helpless to do otherwise, to reassure myself. And there she was.

But I had only the merest hasty glimpse of her, and she of me. For an instant I beheld her pale frightened face and her eyes wide with shock and horror at my transgression. And then the grinning shadowy minions of Hades came gliding out of the darkness to cluster about her and pluck at her with their talons.

“Oh, Orpheus—Orpheus—farewell forever!” she cried, in a faint, vanishing voice. Desperately she stretched her arms to me, and I toward her. But we could not so much as touch. And then, as they pulled her back from me, she became incorporeal and ghostly, a shadow of the woman that once had been, the merest of misty shades. I lunged for her and my arms closed on empty air. I beheld only a fleeting reproachful vision moving swiftly backward, fading from me like a wisp of smoke, and in another moment she had disappeared into the darkness and all I could hear was the eerie whistling sound as those merciless phantoms hurried her away from me to return her to Hades’ kingdom.

So Eurydice met her second death, and my soul was devastated as it had not been even at the time of her first death, and I stood there frozen, dazed, knowing beyond all doubt that I had lost her forever.