Atlantis

by John Cowper Powys

  The longer Zeuks pondered upon the psychic implications of the old warrior’s tone the more he became convinced that the picturesque apophthegm, purporting to give a characteristic idea of the man, that had already, long ere his death, spread throughout all Hellas, was substantially correct. You had only, Zeuks told himself, to observe for half an hour, as you followed the man, the twitchings, quiverings, tightenings, relaxings, compressions, releases, explosions, of his mouth, his lips, his jaws, to realize that the muscles which set these objects working were themselves set in motion by the drift of his whole spirit.

  It became clear in fact that when Ajax in a fit of blind rage “defied the lightning” he was not in any mood of metaphysical rebellion, not, for instance, obeying Zeuks’ own precept of philosophic prokleesis, but was quite simply giving way to a natural fit of violent human fury. But whether his mood at this moment was normal or abnormal the febrile nerves of his malleable mouth were now twitching like something subjected to an extreme emotional stress.

  “It’s an extraordinary light!” he cried. “I must go and see what it is! It’s like that dream I’ve always had since my childhood! And do you know what started that dream?”

  At this Zeuks felt more interested than he had expected to feel in the outbursts of this white-haired hero.

  “I would greatly like to know,” he answered.

  The tall, thin, bent figure swung round, using its left heel in its black sandal as a pivot.

  “My father whose name was——” The old warrior suffered from some impediment in his throat, an impediment which his attendants usually mistook for phlegm, but which was in reality the fragment of a golden arrow-head which the exceptional adaptability of the man’s flesh and blood had appropriated to themselves and rendered innocuous, and it was now as he struggled with his father’s name that a sound like a suppressed lion’s roar burst from him.

  “Telamon”, interjected Zeuks patiently. “Telamon”, the man repeated, —“who was king of Salamis, used to tell me of a rock on that Island near the village of Cychreus through which there was a bottomless hole.

  “To this hole every infant born in Salamis was brought; and into this hole, whether it was a boy or girl, it looked, and sometimes saw nothing but impenetrable darkness, and sometimes saw a dazzling light; and its parents knew by its cries of joy when it saw the light and by its cries of sorrow when it saw the darkness. And once when I told my father—Telamon that is, and it’s a good sign you’ve heard of him—when I told my father that I always dreamed of meeting a laughing man at the bottom of that hole he said it would be a son of the great god Pan I should meet and that when I met him I should die.

  “He said—Telamon I mean, and it’s a good sign you’ve heard of him—that the light in that hole came from a dancing-lawn of the Nymphs on the other side of the earth and that among the Nymphs the most beautiful of all was Maia who was the mother of Hermes, who himself was the father of the great god Pan. And now when it’s such a good sign for me that you said ‘Telamon’, and when there is that light over there, I must go and see it.”

  Zeuks never forgot how Ajax looked, as once more, with that weird gurgling sound in his throat that resembled the suppressed roar of a half-dead lion, he cried that he must go to that light. What made the man look so specially grotesque—and yet he was the noblest-looking human being Zeuks had ever seen—was the manner in which, while his tall thin majestic figure was bent almost double, his snow-white hair and ivory-white forehead not so far away from his jet-black sandals, his head was twisted sideways in order that he might fix upon Zeuks the intense stare of his yellowish-green eyes, a stare that had about it just then a golden effect, as if that fragment of solid gold that had incorporated itself among the native elements of his throat had the power of emitting gold-dust rays, even as the terrible Typhon breathed forth fire and smoke!

  Zeuks, who had no more idea than Ajax himself what it really was that burned so grandly in the sun’s afternoon rays, moved with him now in the direction of the tree-carved Hector standing there in heroic isolation. But little did he guess for all his cleverness what was on the point of happening.

  They had moved together about fifty paces from the point where they had, so to speak, stopped to get their breath, and had joined issue on the matter of the prophetic words of Telamon of Salamis.

  Suddenly Ajax began swaying backwards and forwards as if he had been sprinkled with a handful of the holy dust from that Cychrean hole, and each time he swayed, first to the East and then to the West, just as if he were indulging in some ancestral and primordial ritual, he managed to accentuate into a grotesque distortion of his whole gaunt frame the way his white skull bent sideways to stare at Zeuks while it came bowing down from the mystery of the East to the mystery of the West.

  And then with one single movement of his whole body the old warrior became as motionless as the Stone of Sisyphos, had Sisyphos been suddenly saved from the undying cruelty of Zeus. And from that motionlessness, just as if some primordial vein of gold in that Cychrean hole had really uttered a cry, there rang out a challenge so startling, that any daring wanderer passing through that deserted Arima, where Eurybia and Echidna no longer kept up their reciprocal incantation, would have said to himself: “By the gods, I must get nearer to this! Something really exciting is happening in this queer place! Hush! I must creep nearer!”

  And nearer such an one would have crept. And he would have been rewarded.

  “A power tells me, you laughing one, that you are my dream come true! Yes, by the earth our mother, you are no servant of Odysseus! You are no farmer of Ithaca! I, Ajax, the son of Telamon, know you for what you are! You are a true son of the great god Pan! You are the son of Pan, who is the son of Hermes, who is the son of Zeus, who is the son of Kronos!”

  Certainly if the person who called himself Zeuks had all along known his parentage he couldn’t have acted differently. His fate it was just then to lead the desperately old Ajax to his fantastic end; and that is what he unhesitatingly did though without the faintest idea that death was hurrying there too. Straight up to that carved image of Hector of Troy he led the greatest Achaian. Full upon that figure shone the slanting afternoon sun in a blaze of burning light and all the artistry of Hector’s own daughter flamed forth in her father’s majestic person.

  “Watch your sandals as you walk, my Lord Ajax. There are snakes in the grass.”

  It was because the Trojan hero heard this instruction and obeyed it to the letter that they reached the carved tree before he lifted up his eyes to see what it was that burned before him with such a flame.

  “Hector!” he cried with a ringing battle-cry; and then almost querulously as he rolled over at the feet of the son of Priam, “so its you and neither the one nor the other of us who at the end has the arms of Achilles!”

  CHAPTER IX

  By the time the body of the white-haired son of Telamon lay still, and Zeuks, “the laughing man”, had satisfied himself that this long, lean, fleshless form, whose mighty muscles had once hurled back from the hulls and bulwarks of the Achaian ships troop after troop of Trojans and Trojan allies, was really and truly dead, the sun had begun to fall horizontally upon the golden armour of Achilles, hanging now so easily and naturally on the ash-tree carved to resemble Hector. The Image of Hector, thus blazing in its blinding splendour, seemed to be exulting over the body of Ajax, as if it had stricken down that mighty son of Telamon not from the broken towers of a darkened Ilium but from the battlements of some new aerial Troy that were now emerging victorious.

  And at this moment there came over Zeuks an unusual craving to get to the bottom of the old familiar mystery of his own birth. Those particular words which Ajax had evidently uttered under the direct impact and pressure of some sudden inspiration had sunk like a lump of adamant into the mind of Zeuks. He repeated them to himself—“The son of Pan, the son of Hermes, the son of Zeus, the son of Kronos”—and he even carried this liturgical genealogy a step further, and murmured
the words: “the son of Gaia and Ouranos.”

  Murmuring these words like a ritualistic chant he knelt over the body before him and thrusting his arms beneath it lifted it sufficiently high as to be able to prop it up with its back against the shins and knees and thighs of the graven image of the greatest of the Trojans, still blazing like fire in the armour of Achilles.

  In carving Hector’s image out of that tree-trunk his unrecognized daughter had thought more of making the man’s face resemble its original than of making his form as muscular as it actually was. So that now, when the real muscles of the tall emaciated son of Telamon were thus contrasted with the supple and pliant elegance of that sunlit golden “eidolon” of his famous enemy, there would have been plenty of excuse for Zeuks had he cried out: “Gods in Heaven! No wonder Troy was taken and destroyed if one leader was like this and the other like that!”

  But the mind of Zeuks was at that moment far too full of its own private speculations to do more than place on the ground behind him his own personal weapon, which was a thick, short, double-edged dagger with a sharp point, and lifting both hands to the bowed sun-illumined white head above him that now hung down with a distinct droop towards the direction from which they had just come, that is to say towards the rocky coast where the Naiads had their cave, he began to tilt it up and thrust it back a little, so that it should be kept in an upright position by resting it against the heart of the inmost wood of the carved tree where it was supported on one side by Hector’s left knee and on the other side by his right knee; and once having got it in that position Zeuks was as careful as a woman in the considerate manner in which he closed its eyes.

  The afternoon sun was now projecting such a blaze of light that the armour of Achilles reflected it from every curve, whether convex or concave. In fact the incredible and miraculous gleaming of this armour which the cajoleries of the sea-goddess had extracted from the smithy of the fire-god, was so dazzling that whether it flamed back from the closed eyes of the son of Telamon or from the golden greaves of the son of Priam it compelled Zeuks to bend down till his own head was as deeply sunk forward between the knees of the dead Ajax as the head of Ajax was sunk backwards between the knees of the image of Hector.

  Thus were the three figures united, one a corpse, one a work of art, and one a living creature; and this uniting of life with death, and of life and death with a graven image of human imagination had a curious and singular effect: for there came into the already confused and naturally chaotic mind of Zeuks one of the most powerful impressions of his whole life. In embracing those dead limbs and in drawing into the depths of his being the bitter smell of the old hero’s scrotum, and the salt, sharp taste of the perspiration-soaked hairs of his motionless thighs, Zeuks completely forgot the dead man’s announcement as to his own paternity. What filled his mind now was a sudden doubt about the wisdom of his proudly proclaimed “Prokleesis” as the best of all possible war-cries for the struggle of living creatures with the mystery of life.

  But was it really the best? Was this challenging and this defying of life the wisest attitude for living creatures? Zeuks had long ago found out by bitter experience that some sort of habitual life-philosophy was absolutely essential for him. But was this mood of defiance and challenge the best he could find? He began to mutter all sorts of alternatives to himself as he buried his head between the thighs of Ajax.

  By degrees he felt as if he were embracing both life and death, though like a bird swimming under water he had to rise to the surface every few minutes to get a breath of air. “By the waters of the Styx,” he said, “whatever essence of living I make up my mind to embrace, it must be capable of being reduced to a simple surge of will-power and a simple clutch of enjoyment! And I must make it such a habit that I can summon it up at any moment and use it under any conditions!

  “And since I’ve got to live out my destiny, whether I challenge it and defy it or simply submit to it, it seems silly to go on making this ‘prokleesis’ of mine the essence of the whole thing. No! I can now see well what the right word for my life-struggle is—not the word ‘prokleesis’, ‘defiance’, but the word Lanthanomai, or ‘I forget’, followed by the still simpler word, Terpomai or ‘I enjoy’. For by the Styx, its a question if we can enjoy anything till we’ve forgotten almost everything!

  “That’s what’s the matter with Odysseus”; and at the thought of the man who had won this golden armour from the sinews and bones that here lay dead, only to lose it all again to this graven tree-trunk that would never be able to know anything of these human rivalries, Zeuks lifted up his head from between those withered but still mighty thighs. “It is,” he told himself, “as if I were embracing this corpse beneath that famous tree outside the great wall of Ilium; and as if I had been given by the gods the power to suck and draw and drain from the lapsing semen of this dead body such magnetic force into the peristaltic channel of my spirit that a fresh and a new insight into the whole of life radiates through me.”

  Zeuks was not exaggerating what he felt; and indeed if the young daughter of Teiresias had been present at this moment she would have learnt as much, and perhaps more, from the motions of the man’s arms and legs just then, as she had ever learnt from his discarded clue-word “prokleesis”, or was ever likely to learn from his new clue-words, “lanthanomai” and “Terpomai”. But then Pontopereia, being, for all her prophetic gift, a natural girl, she would instinctively put less confidence in the creative impulse of a clue-word than in the simplest bodily movement.

  But it was with more than his out-flung arms that this queer son of Arcadian soil proceeded now to encircle in one and the same embrace both the dead man’s neck and the base of that ash-tree out of which Hector’s shin-bones had been so exquisitely carved. It was not indeed until the moment when he saw Ajax fall at the feet of that graven image wearing the armour of Achilles, that something in him such as had never before come to the surface of the “laughing man” rose up, and dominated his whole nature. And it was on the strength of this “something” that he now pressed against his ribs in the same desperate embrace both the dead man and the carved tree.

  “Why should I laugh at life rather than challenge it or defy it when all I’ve really got to do is just to enjoy it?” This was. what he was telling himself as he hugged the tree and the gold and the flesh and the bone together. And the very form of his. countenance became changed as he did so. The physiognomy of Zeuks has been, as we have seen, designed and dedicated, devoted and destined for the ribald reduction of everything in. existence to a monstrous jest.

  But something had risen just then out of the depths of his being that was neither solemn nor comical; something that found its account in quite a different direction from that of either defiance or mockery. And the advantage of this direction was its freedom from the necessity of any effort except the effort of will. It needed absolutely no mental effort at all; not even the mental effort of realizing just exactly what it was he was defying, or towards what particular thing he was directing his mockery. “To will,” Zeuks told himself, “is simply to do a little more vigorously what we are already doing spontaneously. These efforts naturally occur when we grow consciously aware of some exercise in ourselves of the life-energy which moves in every offspring of the ancient earth. All we have to do is to use our will to intensify this.”

  Nor was the expression upon the face of Zeuks that accompanied this revelation lost on the air. It was on the contrary inwardly digested. It was one of the luckiest moments in the philosophical life of the creature that always so proudly called itself “the Worm of Arima” that just when the adventurous consciousness of the son of Arcadian Pan had dived deep enough among the mysteries of the multiverse to discover a clue-word, or rather a clue-act, that was more intimate and more effective than “defy” or “mock”, the protruding, perspiring, and palpitating proboscis of the Worm of Arima happened to be above-board rather than in any of its convoluted labyrinths below. For since the illumination upon the coun
tenance of Zeuks at this second of time communicated itself by the usual aerial vibration to everything within reach, it was natural enough that the Worm of Arima, being so near to it, carried away into its underground world when it returned there, though the form of its own visage was so much simpler, a celestial exultation worthy of the noblest zodiacal sign.

  “These motions of the will,” said Zeuks to himself, “are motions of the life-energy within us, sometimes enduring and patient, sometimes violent and desperate. But, whatever these motions of the life-energy are, if they’re to give us that thrill of enjoyment we need, we’ve got to acquire the trick of forcing ourselves to forget the particular afflictions that spoil such enjoyment.”

  And it was at this point in what might have been called his pearl-diving in the ensorcerized earth-mould of Arima that Zeuks felt himself to be, at one and the same time, a god, a man, a beast, a bird, a fish, a worm and an insect. And in his heart he cried out: “O gods, O men, O beasts, O birds, O fish, O frogs, O ferns and funguses, I, Zeuks, have you all in me, and I, Zeuks, am within you all! But, O Maia, mother of Hermes and grandmother of Pan, teach me to forget! Teach me, O youthful Maia, the heavenly tracks and heavenlier side-tracks of the sacred art of forgetting! Don’t let me ever, O Maia most holy, O Maia most blessed, O Maia eternally youthful, don’t let me forget how to forget!

  “Yes, to forget the disgusts! Yes! to forget the horrors! yes! to forget the loathings! Mother of Hermes, hear the prayer of thy great-grand-son Zeuks, and grant unto him, and that not too late, the power of forgetting the madness, the loathsomeness, and the horror! I should require,” thus did the thoughts of Zeuks run on, “I who am a god, a man, a beast; a bird, a fish, a frog, a worm, an insect, I who have suffered such horrors from the sky, my begetter, from the earth, my mother, from the elements, my aunts, from Space my grandmother, from Time my grandfather, I should require a draught of forgetfulness so obliterating that it could turn every hell that all my separate natures necessitate into every paradise that all my separate natures crave! Mother of Hermes”—thus did the heart of Zeuks still jerk forth its desperate prayer to the multiverse around it—“cannot you see that for a manifold creature such as I am, a creature who is a god, a man, an insect, a frog, a newt, an ass, a camel, a bear, a monkey, an elephant, if I am really to drink a draught of pure Lethe, if I am really to obtain the power of forcing myself to forget the horrors, it can only be done by my own will to forget!