Age of Heroes

by James Lovegrove

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, big fella,” said Chase. “First, get your arm off me or I’ll break it.”

  “You?” Salvador laughed derisively. “Not a hope.” But he let them both go.

  “And second,” Chase went on, “we didn’t mean to damage your wrestler cred, if that’s what we’ve done. We just needed to find you ASAP, and this was the only place we knew of where you’d be. So back the fuck off, you great hairy oaf.”

  “What Chase is trying to say,” said Theo, “is that we’re sorry to have blundered in the way we did, and we wouldn’t have if it wasn’t an emergency.”

  “Hmph.” Salvador pretended to be unmoved by the apology, but he relented a little, dialling his anger down a notch. “You weren’t to know, I suppose. An emergency? Really? What could that be?”

  Theo explained as simply and succinctly as possible. Salvador listened, eyebrows knitting more tightly together the more he heard.

  “If this were anyone else but you, Theo,” he said at the end, “I would think it pure fantasy. But you always were a trustworthy companion. You sailed with me to Themiskyra. You were fearless and true even as a brat. I remember when I visited your school at Troezen: I took off my cloak and all of Pittheus’s pupils fled in panic, thinking it was a real live lion – all except you, who attacked it with an axe.”

  Theo tried not to blush. “I did get a bit carried away, didn’t I?”

  “Carried away? You’d have chopped the damn thing to pieces, if it hadn’t been indestructible. ‘This youngster Theseus,’ I said to myself, ‘he’ll go far.’ And I was right. And now you reckon somebody has got it into their head to start slaying us demigods?”

  “The evidence is stacking up.”

  “Then I can see why you’d need me. If it’s reinforcements you’re after, you can’t do better than the greatest hero of all time.”

  Theo shot Chase a look, silencing the snarky riposte his cousin was poised to make.

  “That still leaves us in a quandary, however,” Salvador continued. “I can’t let you get away with the harm you’ve done to my image. How can I show my face back out there, among the luchadores I train with on a daily basis, when they know I’m associated with gringos like you two?”

  “You could have tried not being so polite to us in front of them,” Theo said.

  “I could not show a lack of xenia.” Heracles, perhaps more than most, treasured the Hellenic principle of hospitality. “It would have been ungracious to spurn you, not least seeing as you are kin. All the same, I will never hear the end of this. Word will spread. There’ll be whispers backstage at the Arena México. They’ll be saying El León is a fraud. El León has connections north of the border. El León is as bad as any American.”

  “They will?”

  “They will. It would be the next worst thing to having my mask removed in the ring, which is the ultimate insult in lucha libre.”

  “Then what do you suggest we do about it?”

  “I have an idea.”

  IT WAS NOT a good one, but it was Salvador’s, and he was disgruntled, and he needed to save face somehow, so Theo had no alternative but to go along with it.

  Everyone in the gym gathered at the ringside to watch as El León and the gringo squared off. Theo was wearing borrowed boots, tights and leotard, none of which quite fitted, and he felt faintly silly in this get-up, but at least, small blessings, he hadn’t had to put on one of those masks. In fact, it would have been an insult to los enmascarados everywhere if he had. A luchador’s mask was no gimmick; it was his alter ego, his emblem, his essence. Many wrestlers refused to be seen in public without theirs on, and amateurs certainly did not qualify for the honour of wearing one.

  Salvador nodded to him from across the ring. He had warmed up. He was ready.

  Theo nodded back. He wasn’t ready. He wasn’t looking forward to this at all.

  But needs must. If a wrestling match with Heracles was what it took to keep the man amenable and cooperative, so be it.

  All Theo knew was that he must not win. If he did, El León would lose even more face, and he would not take that kindly. He might never forgive it.

  Theo wasn’t even sure if he could win. He had some significant skill as a wrestler, but against Heracles he was seriously outclassed in terms of sheer strength.

  He had to lose, but make it look good, so that El León looked good.

  And whatever happened, however he did that, it was going to hurt.

  EL LEÓN CAME at Theo like a freight train, piling into him at full tilt. He pounded him back against the corner-post padding and drove the air from his lungs.

  The spectators cheered.

  Theo retaliated almost without thinking. He planted a foot behind El León’s ankle and tipped him over onto his back. The sound of 250 pounds of demigod slamming onto the canvas echoed to the ceiling joists.

  The spectators jeered.

  El León flipped up onto his feet.

  The spectators cheered again. “El León!” they chanted. “El León! El León!”

  Theo was left in no doubt who was the técnico in this particular fight and who was the rudo.

  What followed was twenty minutes of tussling and pummelling, wrenching and squirming, crunching and crushing. Several times Theo found himself being pressed to the canvas, Salvador bearing down on him with his full weight. Always he managed to twist out of it, gaining just enough leverage to break the hold. Well, almost always. Once, Salvador managed to get him in a headlock he could not unpick. No matter how hard he pulled on the arms that were noosing his neck, Theo couldn’t make him let go and was forced to tap out. Another time, Salvador lifted him bodily into the air and executed a grand amplitude throw, dumping him on his back with his legs in the air before securing him in place with a knee to the thorax. Theo could have interrupted the move with a reversal by scissoring his legs around Salvador’s head, but he more or less gave Salvador the submission.

  That was the line Theo was trying to tread, letting Salvador chalk up his three submissions but not making it obvious that he was letting him. And it wasn’t easy. A part of him – a deep-seated part – rebelled at the idea of throwing the fight. He was Theseus, a champion. He did not like being the bad guy, even if it was just pretend. It offended his sense of himself.

  As it dawned on Salvador that his opponent was not willing to be a complete pushover, he began to grin. He also began to use more and more of his immense strength. There was no tiptoeing around now, as there had to be during his matches with mere human wrestlers. No pulling punches, no need for the usual restraint. Delightedly he shoved Theo around the ring, flinging him to and fro, with as much concern for his wellbeing as if he was a crash test dummy.

  Theo, in turn, became sneakier and craftier. He was considerably more nimble than Salvador and kept darting out of his clutches every time he tried to establish a solid hold. He would use Salvador’s bulk against him, overbalancing and toppling him. He even tangled him up in the ropes at one point, though he stopped short of upending him and spilling him out of the ring. That would have been a severe humiliation for Salvador, and Theo didn’t want to go the full rudo. He had standards.

  Eventually Theo won two submissions of his own, leaving him and Salvador at level pegging. The next submission would be the decider.

  All round the ring the spectators were going wild. They were aware that this was a proper fight, unrehearsed, nothing staged about it: a genuine grudge match. It thrilled them. They bellowed support for El León and insults at his gringo opponent. Chase joined in. Mostly he just swore –¡pendejo! ¡cabrón! ¡hijo de puta!– not aiming the expletives at either of the fighters in particular, but not wanting to be left out of the general hullabaloo.

  As they circled each other in readiness for yet another clinch, Salvador murmured to Theo, “We should bring this to a close, my friend. You have done enough. Let’s not drag this out any further than necessary.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Theo replied, swiping sweat from
his forehead. “You’re not the one who’s got to fold like a little bitch.”

  “Fold? I’m beating you fair and square. If you can’t see that...”

  “Funny. Kerkyon of Eleusis said much the same thing when I wrestled with him. That was shortly before I hoisted him up, smashed him head first onto the ground and broke his neck.”

  “Don’t trumpet your Labours at me, sonny boy. Any of my Twelve beats all of your Six. Yours were just pleasant diversions. A man who wishboned people with pine trees? Try a swamp full of man-eating bronze-beaked birds. A host cutting up his guests to fit his bed? I have two words for you: Lernean Hydra.”

  “And I have two words for you,” said Theo. “Shut. Up.”

  They crashed together, an impact of flesh on flesh so loud and hard that it startled the spectators briefly into silence.

  Then it was the two of them locked in a stance, chest to chest, sinews taut, muscles cording, like something on a Greek vase or temple frieze, both of them straining, both of them resisting, the canvas vibrating beneath them, the entire ring shaking, the ropes quivering like plucked violin strings, and the noise from the spectators rose to a deafening tumult, and Salvador jockeyed for advantage and Theo jockeyed for advantage, and their teeth were bared and their eyes bulged and their knuckles cracked...

  ...AND SEVERAL HOURS later they were sitting together at a table in a cantina in the La Condesa district, along with the gym owner, the other luchadores and Chase. Salvador kept ordering fresh rounds of Tecate beer and ogling the waitress who brought them over, while everyone else joked and chattered and bantered. Music played on the sound system, a weird hybrid of mariachi and techno, and it was loud but their carousing was louder and their voices pealed out of the cantina’s open windows into the sweltering night.

  “Was that not an epic fight?” Salvador said to Theo repeatedly. “Was that not like something from the past? It should be noted. It should be celebrated! My victory, of course, was never in doubt, but you gave me a run for my money. Drink up. Drink up. You too, Chase. Drink!”

  Chase didn’t need much encouraging, but Theo was more hesitant. Under the present circumstances, he wasn’t sure it would be prudent. What if the demigod killers were here in Mexico City? What if they were spying on the three of them right now? How much easier would their job be if their victims were pie-eyed and incapable.

  But Salvador kept plying him with beer, and Salvador’s joviality was infectious, and Theo gradually relaxed and got into the swing of things.

  At one stage he and Salvador ended up pissing side by side in the cantina’s gents washroom. In front of them, above the urinals, was a lavishly detailed mural. A large bejewelled skull gazed down on them with a broad grin, wreathed in flowers and surrounded by guitars, musical notes, beer bottles and human figures cavorting. A cigar was clenched between its tombstone teeth.

  “Ah, Mexico,” said Salvador, returning the skull’s gaze. “Life and death intertwined. Celebrate the now because you don’t know what tomorrow might bring. That’s the Mexican philosophy. And that’s how it should be for us, Theo. We’re heroes. It should be all about fighting, feasting and fornicating. What is the point otherwise? There was a time, you know, when my one and only ambition was to earn a place in Olympus. That was all I wanted, to ascend to Olympus, to be welcomed into the bosom of my true family, to sit at my father’s side, to be one with the gods. I thought that my heroic deeds would grant me that.”

  He zipped up and went to the washbasin.

  “But it seems as though the gods had other ideas,” he said, running the tap. “I was excluded; we all were. It was a cruel joke. There never was any intention among the Olympian order for us to join them. Somehow we got it into our heads that there was, but there wasn’t. We were just their castoffs, their disinherited brats. Born on the wrong side of the blanket, and never destined to receive our due.”

  He moved to the paper-handtowel dispenser.

  “But you know what? We are immortal. We live. Whereas the gods, they’re gone. Nobody prays to them any more. Nobody offers them sacrifices or libations. Nobody believes in them. Other gods have taken their place. And without that human support, without belief, they have faded away, dwindled to nothing. I suspect that if you and I were to travel to Olympus right now – if that were possible – we would find nothing there. If we could fly on the back of Pegasus as Bellerophon did, through the clouds, above the bronze dome of the sky, what would be waiting for us? Nothing but ruins and skeletons. Celestial flesh turned to dust, blowing in the wind. Crumbling palaces littered with goblets of dried nectar and dishes of shrivelled ambrosia. An empty paradise.”

  “Bellerophon was punished for attempting to reach Olympus,” Theo said. “He broke both legs and went blind, spent the rest of his days as a crippled hermit.”

  “A lesson to us all,” Salvador said. “But it rather proves my point. It is far better to be us, I believe, Theo. To be a demigod rather than a god. We survive. We still have life. And fighting, feasting and fornicating – that’s how to live it.”

  Hands dried, he left the room. Theo lingered, thinking.

  Salvador, he decided, was right. After all, what was the harm in letting your hair down every once in a while? What good was immortality if you couldn’t have a little fun? Theo seemed to have forgotten, in the million days he had seen go by, that those days were there to be enjoyed. The more so, given that he might die tomorrow. Might even die tonight. So drink the beer. Laugh. Revel in the company of others. Make the most of what the world had to offer. Live.

  He returned to the bar and got the next round in.

  HIS HANGOVER THE next morning, as he came to in one of the guest rooms at Salvador’s apartment in the Polanco area, was so apocalyptically awful he wished he could die. He stumbled out onto the balcony to breathe some comparatively fresh air. The smart new high-rise block overlooked a leafy street and a park. The sun was sulphurous. The city droned.

  He felt like shit.

  Still, on balance, it was worth it.

  EIGHTEEN

  Gesundheitsklinik Rheintal, Switzerland

  AS SOON AS Josie had awoken in her room at the Gesundheitsklinik that morning, she had known it was going to be a Yellow Day.

  Yellow Days were smooth and bright. They were for getting outdoors and taking in the scenery. They were days when it wasn’t wrong to listen to some music on her headphones, maybe sing along to it if no one was within earshot, maybe even dance to it if no one was looking. They weren’t as good as Green Days. Those were the best of the lot, plain sailing all the way, days of serenity and appetite. Nor were they as adventurous as Red Days, when Josie sincerely believed she could take on the world. But there were better than the Blue and Brown days, and infinitely preferable to the Black.

  How she loathed the Black Days.

  She was out roaming the grounds when Benedikt found her. The clinic sat in fifty acres of land, large enough that you felt you could get lost in it even though you never really could. Eventually, if you wandered far enough, you would come to the wall – the neat brick-topped fieldstone wall which bounded the property and was just tall enough that it could not be climbed – and you would be reminded that your freedom had limits. As long as you remained out of sight of the wall, however, the illusion held. The winding paths and neat flowerbeds, the benches and lakes, the trim lawns and evergreen glades, all seemed to exist just for your pleasure, and while occasionally you might come across a gardener or another patient, most of the time you had it all to yourself.

  Josie liked Benedikt. Of all the orderlies he was by far the gentlest and the kindest. He had thick dark hair and enviably long, curly eyelashes. She had something of a crush on him, in fact, although relationships between orderlies and patients were strictly prohibited, and – more to the point – Benedikt was avowedly gay.

  She beamed at him as he approached.

  “Josie. There you are.” A tone of mild reproof. “You didn’t come to the dispensary for your medicatio
n.”

  “Oh, is it that time already? I’m sorry. I lost track.”

  “Never mind. Here, I have it.”

  “That’s so nice of you. Thanks.”

  He gave her the pills. He’d had the foresight to bring a small bottle of mineral water with him too, so that she could wash them down.

  They sat on the grass side by side. It was a quiet, sheltered spot where few of the other patients ventured. The Swiss summer air was crisp and smelled of meadows.

  “And today is what colour?” Benedikt asked. His English was mannered and precise, and his ws had a slight v to them, which Josie found endearing. “No, don’t say. Let me guess. Yellow?”

  “Spot on.”

  He held up both hands in a double victory salute. “Yay me.”

  It was Dr Aeschbacher, Josie’s primary therapist, who had suggested assigning colours to her moods. Josie never knew, until the day began, how she was going to feel, but once she realised what sort of frame of mind she was in, that was what she would be stuck with until bedtime. If she woke up and her head happened to be jammed full of dark thoughts, there was no shaking them. They crawled all over her like cockroaches, filling every crevice of her being with their prickly legs and insistent chittering. She feared they would suffocate her. The terror was almost beyond her capacity to bear.

  Dr Aeschbacher was teaching her that her moods, even if they couldn’t be changed, could be managed.

  “Put a colour on them, Josie,” she had said. “Then see only the colour. See that it is just a colour, nothing more. It is just red, or blue, or green, or whichever. Then the mood will not matter nearly as much. You understand?”

  Josie was trying to follow the advice. Dr Aeschbacher was pretty and very wise, with thin rimless spectacles and an aura of calm that seemed to seep out of her and into Josie during their sessions together. Josie felt she could tell her anything and not be judged for it.