Atlantis

by John Cowper Powys

  “But do go on, Master Fly, with what you were telling me you had just over-heard from the talk of the Sixth Pillar with the Club of Herakles.”

  “The Sixth Pillar told the Club that Princess Nausikaa had been chosen Queen of her Native Land and that those two Immortal Horses, that the Priest over there tried to maim, are even now on their way through the air to take her back to that country where her palace still possesses that famous garden which is the most beautiful garden that has ever been seen in the whole history of the world.”

  “Those two Horses coming here, do you say?”

  At this startling piece of news Nisos jumped to his feet, removed his hand from his ear, opened his fingers, and let the Fly go free with a flourish of his wrist. The Fly was no sooner free than it was instantly joined by the Moth, and the speed with which the two of them flew off the top deck, down the ladder to the oarsmen’s deck, down the next ladder to the cabin-deck, and thence straight into the interior of the great weapon that was their nomadic home, was incredible.

  We human beings in our crowded life are more aware of the starting-points and arriving-points of insects than of the rapidity of their movements from point to point.

  “Come along, Zeuks, for heaven’s sake come along! And you too my lord Enorches! Fate will find a Community for you—don’t you doubt it—where you can preach, if not practise, your nihilistic ideas, whether under the love-charms of Eros or under the Thyrsi of Dionysos!”

  Our friend’s voice was pitched so high, and he flung into it such a resounding intonation, that not only did Akron cast a sweeping glance from one end to the other of all the Horizon that was visible from their present position, but, to the evident surprise of Zeuks, Enorches actually did scramble clumsily to his feet, and even began automatically kicking at the skirt of his longest blanket as if to make sure that his sandals were firmly fastened.

  Nisos then snatched instinctively at Arsinöe’s arm; and followed closely by Zeuks, with Enorches lurching and shuffling after them, he turned his back upon the dragon-neck of the ship’s figure-head and, avoiding the eyes of Pontos and Proros, for with a certain part of his mind he felt as if he were running away, he headed for that already familiar ladder leading down to the oarsmen’s deck.

  At the foot of this first ladder he paused for no more time than was just needed to get a glimpse of the face of Euros, a face that at that second looked vexed, irritated, touchy, anxious, full of the most sensitive perturbations, as he bent above his. motionless oar, ready to give it the pull of a master oarsman at the faintest hint from the upper deck.

  Arrived at that crowded, ticklish, furtively confused and terribly littered centre of all the gossip and eavesdropping that went on in the passenger’s quarter, Nisos, who was followed closely by Zeuks and by Arsinöe, who once again had a tight hold of each other’s hands, but who himself, since he had no. hand to share with anyone, nor much thought for anything either, save to steer the wavering steps of the Priest of the Mysteries, had a moment’s breathing-space. Now that this weird and disturbing individual was safely under at least temporary control Nisos couldn’t help noticing the insatiable and unpleasantly greedy manner in which the man snuffed up and inhaled with, undisguised relish all the odours and all the smells and all the fragrances and all the airy essences and all the fetid stinks that challenged both the nostrils and the stomachs of any newcomers who dared to plunge from the upper deck into the stygian reek of these bowels of the “Teras”.

  And Nisos couldn’t resist saying to himself: “Would this extraordinary creature advise us to lose ourselves in the madness of love or the madness of drink, and thus get to the Original nothingness, before the earth, before the sky, before the sea, before the sun, before the gods created man, before man created the Gods, if he hadn’t forgotten the oracle that my mother used to tell me was what, by his obedience to it, made Odysseus the wisest of all men—Meeden Agan, ‘nothing in excess’?”

  “Why in the name of Aidoneus,” the lad’s thoughts ran on, as he watched his blanketed priest snuffing up with such a frenzy of maniacal sensuality the whirligig-reek of kitchen-fumes mixed with the contaminated sweat of the youthful disposers of excrement, “why in the name of Aidoneus was mother always quoting that Meeden Agan, ‘Nothing in Excess’, motto? It had nothing to do with the House of Naubolides, and was always on the lips of Odysseus. I can’t understand it! Well, well! ‘Nothing in Excess’ will have now to be my motto, even when it comes to plunging into the revelry of this weird feast.”

  But it is easier to formulate a philosophy, even if we are destined to be a prophet in later life, than to apply it to a definite and particular occasion; and Nisos was puzzled by the sharpness of the pang of jealousy of which he became aware when Zeuks put his arm round the waist of Arsinöe.

  The daughter of Hector and the son of Arcadian Pan, however, seemed wholly and entirely oblivious of the feelings they were exciting in their guide as they pushed on in front of him.

  Nisos, indeed, had all he could do, apart entirely from his feelings, in steering the blanketed Priest of Orpheus through this packed and perspiring crowd. The most difficult place to pass, with Enorches as your self-absorbed ghost-walker, was the spot where a couple of elongated planks had been laid down to cover a slippery slope that led to the kitchens and pantries and sculleries as well as to the sleeping-quarters of the Lybian and Syrian ship-boys.

  Nisos was struck at this particular point at once by the perfect opportunity which such a spot offered for the accumulation of filth, and by the noteworthy fact, which certainly spoke well for the crew, that those planks were so immaculately clean. As both white and black serving-boys, in spite of their trained politeness and of their evident terror of the blankets of Enorches, were pushed and jostled against him by their companions, Nisos decided that the sweat of the lads of the Greek islands and mainland had a completely different odour from the sweat of the lads from the more eastern Asiatic shores and harbours.

  But he had no time to pause to philosophize now upon differences of human sweat for Zeuks had already got himself and Arsinöe into that unusual cabin crowded with people and it had fallen to the lot of Nisos to project the staring Enorches, blankets and all, into the presence of Odysseus and Nausikaa who were on their feet in that extempore dining-hall talking gravely together.

  The old king and his ballad-princess of so long ago were, however, spared the discomfort of having to be polite to such a person as Enorches by the appearance on the scene, this time for just the sort of occasion Nisos had always prayed would never arise, of the super-official, super-courtly, super-distinguished, super-pontifical Herald; who at once, as a born authority in regard to all ceremonies that require magisterial handling, and as a practised expert in all those concatenations that need super-natural tact, greeted Zeuks and Arsinöe with a glance and a couple of words, and took the Priest of Orpheus under his impeccable wing.

  As for Nisos, who was quite alone now, he found himself once more following Zeuks and Arsinöe with his eyes. Neither Odysseus nor Nausikaa seemed to notice him, although the king may have done so without revealing it. But the feeling that caused him to stand and gaze at the back of Zeuks’ satyrish knuckles as they presented themselves to his view, with the implication that the palm of the man’s hand was enjoying the curve of the girl’s hip, was accentuated now by an uprush of self-revelation that nearly knocked him over.

  The truth of the matter now must be, he now boldly dared to tell himself, that it was this Trojan woman Arsinöe, and not either his friend Tis’s little sister, Eione, nor the prophet’s prophetic daughter, Pontopereia, whom he desired for his wife.

  “Yes,” Nisos told himself, “though she must be years and years older than I am, she’s the one I want! She understands me better than anybody in the world except Tis; and I like her better than anyone in the world. I like her better than father or mother or Agelaos.”

  Odysseus and Nausikaa, who now seemed completely absorbed in each other, kept moving a li
ttle nearer to him, though without taking any notice of him; and this went on till he was leaning with his back against several pieces of suspended armour and a couple of tunics woven in Ithaca but dyed in Tyre: it went on, in fact, till he began to feel, not so much hungry, as extremely sleepy.

  What was indeed like a demonic teasing of him by fate than anything else was the fact that although he could just make out from where he leant, or rather crouched, behind the king and Nausikaa, the figure of Okyrhöe seated calmly, and with a face like a mask, at one of the long tables, with an empty place next to her, devouring with an absorbed and concentrated attention a somewhat over-ripe Sicilian melon, he could only just see, between the embroidered sleeve of the protective Herald and the bare neck of the protected Enorches the delicate waist and the left breast, the latter only half-covered with “linon” that specially lovely Achaian linen so dear to the ladies of all lands, of the girl with whom he now knew he was really in love as he had never been in love before.

  This certainty reached his mind in close connection with those clutching knuckles of the lecherous son of Pan which he now could detect beneath that white linen and whiter breast; but it obtained its domination over him and over his destiny in connection with a secret resolve he now made that was totally different from any purpose or any vow or any dedication he had ever made before.

  And with this new intention, with this new gathering together of the diverse forces of his soul into what he decided must be, from now on, one intense, strongly compressed will, a will most malleable, a will most adaptable, a will that lends itself, a will that adjusts itself, a will that conceals itself, a will that multiplies itself, a will that seeks its irrepressible level, a will like water, a will like air, our young friend made a convulsive clutch at the foot of the Heraklean club upon which Odysseus had begun to lean so heavily in his absorbed talk with Nausikaa that there was a real danger of its suddenly sliding along the floor and letting him down.

  But no sooner had Nisos clutched it than the familiar tinkling voice of the scientific Fly was in his ears. “Oh how much easier it would be, this ancient language of yours,” he thought, “if only there weren’t all these accurst adverbs! It’s the adverbs that spoil it. Why can’t you sting without stinging violently or buzz without buzzing gently? Why can’t you kiss without kissing tenderly? Why can’t you even think without thinking stupidly or cleverly?”

  Although he didn’t relinquish his hold upon the club of Herakles, Nisos worked himself up into such irritation over the mania for adverbs in the language of insects, that in a whisper that contained something of sheer unkindness he called the attention of the Fly to the emergence from the club’s “lifecrack”, which was just above his fingers, of the priest-enamoured Moth.

  But those adoring brown wings had barely fluttered twice up and down the sweltering space between the wet hairs of the man’s blanket and the wet hairs of the man’s chest, before, in her shrinking desire to comfort the Interpreter of the Mysteries without driving her companion to any regrettably rash act she had not only darted back to their lodging but had implored the Fly to translate for her what the news was that the club was hearing from the omniscient Sixth Pillar.

  “Haven’t you yet caught across that moon-lit ocean of yours, my adventurous friend,” were the startling words that were now communicated to the moth by the fly and over-heard by Nisos, “the heavy breathing of Pegasos upon the wind and the quick gasps of his long-maned companion? And I presume Odysseus is already aware that his friend Nausikaa is now the Virgin Queen of her native-land, and that not only her parents’ palace and garden await her return, but the whole country passionately wants her back?”

  Nisos clutched the foot of the club of Herakles so fiercely that the force of his grip squeezed the club’s attention out of his ears and reduced his Nemean senses to the same sort of deaf, dumb, and numb condition with which they had expected, washed up upon the shore of Ithaca, the reviving right hand of a new possessor.

  And it was then that, more vividly than ever aware of those knuckles of Zeuks concealing from him so much of the bosom of Arsinöe, our young friend decided that he must learn from this queer rival of his, this fantastic child of Arcadian Pan, whose whole personality resembled an unburst bubble of purposeless laughter, the trick the fellow had of repeating some logos, some slogan of conduct, some motto of behaviour, by which a person’s divided will-power could be unified and concentrated.

  And Nisos then and there decided that the word he wanted was the word spoudazo. “Yes, yes,” he muttered in his secret heart—“that’s the word, that’s the incantation I want! I want the feeling of being able to pull myself together till I’m like an arrow-head of intense will-power! Yes! yes! Spoudazo is my word, but I must add to it the word terpsis, the sensation of enjoyment, and I must throw into-these words my whole self and with my whole self, I here and now must will intensely that Arsinöe the Trojan shall belong to me!”

  Nisos had no sooner decided upon selecting spoudazo, “I absolutely will” as the logos that should henceforth represent the motive-power of his life, than Odysseus and Nausikaa having decided upon something that was clearly very important as the result of their prolonged and absorbed discussion, swung clear round and came out of the extempore dining-hall into that wretchedly littered ante-chamber where those carefully scrubbed planks led down to the ship’s lowest hold.

  Our friend followed the aged King of Ithaca and the middle-aged Queen of the Phaiakians till they paused at the threshold of the cabin that Nausikaa shared with Okyrhöe. The ever-watchful old warrior was aware in a flash that they were being followed, and turned indignantly upon Nisos. But Nisos, knowing the wanderer’s almost supernatural self-control, flung himself on his mercy without a second’s hesitation.

  “You ought O my King,” he cried, “to know at once what I’ve learnt by means of the weapon you now hold in your hand! For as you now are holding it, mighty one, this is news you will never share with the Sixth Pillar in the Corridor at Ithaca! If I don’t repeat every word of it, O great Master, may I pass at once to the kingdom of Aidoneus!”

  It was with an unclouded forehead and even with the beginning of a friendly smile that the Wanderer bade him speak; and hurriedly and breathlessly the lad told the two of them the whole story.

  To the young man’s astonishment it was Nausikaa who spoke first. “You had better tell him,” she said, addressing Odysseus, “what you have told me.”

  “I have been telling the Queen,” said Odysseus at once, “what no one in the world knows except your mother; namely, my dear child, that I, and not Krateros Naubolides, am your father.”

  Our friend stood for a moment just as if one of those golden antennae, for that is what those elongated tassels that hung from the Helmet of Proteus were really like, had got twisted round his neck. Then his whole face puckered up, in the manner of a small boy who has been slapped and told to go to bed and the biggest tears that Nausikaa had ever seen, though two even bigger ones formed, though they did not fall, in her own eyes, rolled down his cheeks.

  Odysseus looked quietly from one to the other of them, while with the wrist of the hand that held the club, that club which sometimes was called Dokeesis, “Seeming”, and sometimes “Expectation” he touched Nisos gently on the head. Then he said, while his bow-sprit beard turned with a queer jerk into the direction of the bed in Nausikaa’s cabin: “Well, my son, what our new Queen and your old Dad have to do now is to plant between us the seed of a new brother for you since you’ve lost Agelaos! And he’ll have to look sharp,” Odysseus added, as he led the Queen towards her own bed, “if our friend Leipephile is to conceive a new King of Ithaca before you and I come home from Atlantis!”

  The old man—and our young friend, for all his emotional agitation, had the wit to notice this, took good care to prop up “Expectation” against the edge of their bed, before returning to the threshold to draw the curtains of their chamber—said to Nisos with an extremely humorous expression on his fac
e: “For the sake of Aphrodite’s son, and by him I do not mean the good Aeneas—stay on guard here, my boy, and make sure that that terrible woman from Thebes doesn’t break in upon us! O yes! and don’t fail to remind me, before those Immortal Horses do carry them off, to see to it that that poor devil of an Enorches has a couple more blankets to keep him warm! He hurt both those creatures, you must remember, and flying horses, like ordinary horses, have long memories.”

  CHAPTER XII

  It was at the upper portion of Pegasos’s wounded shoulder that the hypnotized stare of Nisos was fixed. With his own back to the mast Nisos had accepted for a moment the serious responsibility of two important ropes while Proros as the natural result of the unusual amount of wine he had drunk went to the side of the vessel to relieve himself.

  But after handing back the ropes Nisos still stared at the shoulder of the flying horse; for not only was he amazed to see that the outraged wing had grown fresh and strong but there was something else going on that astonished him even more. For while Nausikaa took her place in the centre of that god-like back, and while, behind her, the meticulous Herald discoursed earnestly and authoritatively to Okyrhöe, evidently explaining to her many matters of which she was completely ignorant with regard to the political situation among the Phaiakians to whose land she was now to be transported, to his bewilderment Nisos actually beheld, stretching out of the blankets with which the priest’s nakedness was covered, a bare arm with extended fingers clutching a piece of solidified ointment wherewith he was furtively rubbing and moistening the roots of the newly-grown feathers of that resuscitated wing.

  “Is this insane fellow,” Nisos thought, “actually trying to wither up this new growth of feathers as he destroyed the original ones?”

  But when, turning his gaze upon the Flying Horse’s god-like head, he caught the creature’s calm, alert, self-composed and liquid eye, he recognized the true state of the case; namely that the crazy priest was desperately trying to redeem the harm he had done by doctoring these miraculous feathers so as to make them resemble those of a supernatural albatross.