Arcadian Nights

by John Spurling

  ‘What about you, Perseus?’ said Polydektes. ‘I have been a father to you. Can you help?’

  ‘I have neither horse nor gold,’ said Perseus, ‘but if you are really going to marry Hippodameia and not my mother, I will go anywhere and do anything I can to help.’

  This was exactly what Polydektes was hoping to hear. Now he could send Perseus off to the mainland or another island on some fool’s errand and marry Danaë while he was away. Why was Perseus so easily deceived? The truth was that he was finding life on this tiny, isolated island increasingly restrictive and was more and more unsettled by the tales of heroes and monsters that were recited by the island’s storyteller whenever Polydektes held a dinner for his friends. At one of these gatherings recently he had been particularly excited by a story about the Gorgons, three terrible creatures with wings, bronze claws and teeth like boars’ tusks, with serpents instead of hair. Two of them, Stheno and Euryale, were sisters and immortal, but the third, Medusa, was mortal. She had originally been a virgin priestess of Athene, but had been seduced by the sea god Poseidon in Athene’s temple and the insulted goddess had turned her into a Gorgon, so hideous that no one could look at her without being turned to stone.

  With this story still echoing in his mind, Perseus, full of youthful enthusiasm at the thought of leaving the island and embarking on some adventure, added:

  ‘I would even bring you Medusa’s head if that was any use to you.’

  ‘Now that would be still better than a horse,’ said Polydektes. ‘That would be sensational! If I took something like that to Elis, I don’t see how either the king or his daughter could possibly prefer any other suitor. It would be the clincher.’

  What he didn’t know, of course, was that, whatever gifts they brought, Hippodameia’s suitors were required to take part in a chariot race with her father which invariably, until the arrival of Pelops, ended in their defeat and death. But, then, Polydektes had no intention of becoming Hippodameia’s suitor. It was Danaë he wanted and he was certain now of getting her because surely no one at all, let alone an inexperienced youth like Perseus, could even find Medusa, far less cut off her head, and the task would keep him away for years, if it didn’t kill him.

  Perseus’ first move, after making this rash promise which had been so swiftly accepted, was to visit Polydektes’ storyteller in the hope of obtaining more information about Medusa. Some hope! The storyteller was an old man with white hair and beard, yellow skin and shaking hands who lived in a ramshackle hut with his sharp-faced and sharp-voiced wife. He had always had poor health and, being unable to compete as a fisherman with his stronger contemporaries, had taken to telling the stories he had heard from his mother, with embellishments of his own, as a way of earning a little gold from Polydektes and the other better-off inhabitants of the island, and dining and wining well at their tables. His wife, who did not get the benefit of the free dinners, was always hungry and bad-tempered, so that although the storyteller seemed convivial and cheerful enough in public when he was practising his craft and away from his wife, he was the opposite at home.

  Perseus found the storyteller sitting morosely in his courtyard contemplating their livestock, which consisted of four or five hens and a cock. They couldn’t even afford a goat or a donkey. In order to ply his trade and eat his dinners in other parts of the island, the storyteller had to walk and he would soon be too old for that. Storytellers’ circumstances have not much changed down the ages. Perseus sat down beside him on a step and came straight to the point:

  ‘Where can I find the Gorgon Medusa?’

  The storyteller nearly choked with ribald laughter and the cock crowed in sympathy.

  ‘Over the moon, I should imagine,’ he said when he had finished convulsing.

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’ crowed the cock.

  ‘What do you mean? She doesn’t exist?’

  ‘I didn’t say that. What exists or doesn’t exist is not my business. As far as I’m concerned, if they make a story they exist and if they don’t, they don’t.’

  ‘No. I see,’ said Perseus doubtfully.

  ‘If I have them in my head, they exist. If I don’t, they may exist, but not for me.’

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  ‘So are you saying the Medusa does exist? I need to know where.’

  ‘In my head, stupid boy. That’s all I can tell you. North or south, east or west, she may exist – in Libya or Ethiopia, in Persia or among the Hyperboreans, on the borders of Ocean or on the other side of the moon, who knows? Maybe she’s living in a secret cave on this very island of Seriphos, I might find that in my head along with all the other rubbish that’s stored there, but if I told you that for certain you couldn’t be certain in your head that my head wasn’t making it up as it went along. I couldn’t even be certain myself.’

  ‘Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

  Perseus shook his head as if he had got a wasp in his ear, but thanked the old man politely and went home to tell his mother of his promise to Polydektes and to ask her if she had ever heard where the Gorgons lived. No, she hadn’t, and she was extremely disturbed by this development, guessing at once that the whole thing was simply Polydektes’ subterfuge for getting rid of her son and closing in on her. But she was unable to persuade Perseus to abandon this impossible adventure and in great distress she crossed the island to a small temple of Athene that stood on the cliff above Diktys’ village. She wanted to ask Athene to intercede with Zeus – Perseus’ father, after all, as well as Athene’s – not to deflect her fate, whatever that might be, but to give her some guidance. Should she perhaps marry Polydektes, however much she disliked the idea, so that Perseus would not need to go through with his perilous mission?

  Perseus accompanied her, sacrificed a goat on the altar, and then, begging her to ask the goddess where he could find the Gorgons, left her to pray alone while he went outside to look at the stretch of sea that had brought them here in their chest when he was still a baby. He was determined, whatever happened, to cross it again, but was trying to think what he could do to protect his mother while he was away. As he walked up and down with his eyes on the sea he became aware that he was being watched. There was a village woman in black standing under an olive tree just above the path where he was pacing. She beckoned to him and he went up to her and asked, a little abruptly because she was breaking into his uneasy thoughts:

  ‘Yes, kyría, what is it?’

  ‘Perseus!’ she said.

  He was not particularly surprised that she knew his name. On such a small island people knew who everyone was, though it was true he didn’t recognise her. Most of her face was hidden by her black hood.

  ‘Yes, I am Perseus.’

  ‘You have a long way to go and Medusa is not easy to find. You must first find the Graiai and ask them.’

  ‘The Graiai?’

  ‘Three old women, sisters of the Gorgons, who live in the Atlas Mountains far to the south-west.’

  ‘And they will tell me?’

  ‘Not willingly. You will have to make them.’

  ‘How can I do that?’

  ‘They have only one eye and one tooth between the three of them and they are continually passing both to each other so as to see and eat.’

  ‘What a frightful fate!’

  ‘They are quite used to it. They were born old, but they are immortal and have been doing this for ever and will be doing it for ever, except for this one occasion when you visit them and interrupt them.’

  ‘By asking about Medusa?’

  ‘By putting your hand between them as they pass the eye and the tooth and capturing both.’

  Perseus looked shocked.

  ‘You will give them back. But only when they have told you how to find their sisters the Gorgons.’

  Perseus smiled.

  ‘Brilliant!’

  The disguised goddess smiled too. He was a very handsome youth and his smile was particularly seductive. The Olympians, who are subject to sudden strong fe
elings such as lust, jealousy or anger, never themselves experience the slow ache of unhappiness which they so often observe in mortals. For that reason they never really appreciate their own everlasting happiness. So to see the happiness of mortals, however brief, even if it lasts only as long as a smile, always gives them pleasure, much as a cat’s happiness when it purrs gives pleasure to us.

  ‘But I must tell you,’ said Athene, for it was she, who having left Danaë praying in her temple had come outside in person to answer her prayers, ‘that this mission of yours is absolutely impossible …’

  Perseus’ smile faded, but Athene still smiled since she had better news in reserve.

  ‘Impossible for a mortal alone. But you will not be alone. I shall accompany you and so will my brother Hermes. You will seldom see us, but we shall never be far off.’

  In fact it was Athene who had put the idea of decapitating Medusa into Perseus’ head in the first place. Having punished Medusa by making her a Gorgon, Athene now wanted her devastatingly ugly head to wear on her cape (or aigis) when she went into battle. The job had to be done in this generation, since Medusa, being mortal, would not live beyond it and her unique head would simply rot down to a skull like any other when her spirit joined the shades in the underworld.

  There is nothing so exhilarating for an ambitious person as to know that a god is on his side, and Perseus was duly filled with energy and self-confidence. But he was a sensitive and affectionate son and thought immediately of what this would mean for Danaë.

  ‘But my mother,’ he said. ‘What’s to become of her while I’m away? Must she marry Polydektes?’

  ‘Certainly not,’ said Athene. ‘You will see that I’ve not forgotten your mother. Meanwhile, you must borrow a boat and row or sail across the sea to the Peloponnese. Then you must make your way over the Arcadian mountains to the waterfall below Mount Chelmos, where the River Styx disappears into the underworld.’

  ‘Am I to enter the underworld?’

  ‘By no means. Playing around the waterfall you will find the Stygian Nymphs. They will try to seduce you, but don’t succumb! You must not lose your virginity to anyone until you have dealt with Medusa or you will certainly fail. Instead, use your charm and the nymphs’ mutually competitive temptations to persuade them to give you three necessary things: an adamantine sickle, a satchel made of the pelts of giant bats and a dragon-skin helmet. All these objects belong to Hades and the nymphs are charged with looking after them. Hades himself seldom makes use of them and will not miss them for the time being. When the nymphs have given you those things, put on the helmet, which will make you invisible. Then you can easily escape their attentions.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem very fair on the nymphs.’

  ‘Perseus, I am giving you instructions. Your part is only to understand, remember and obey them. There is no room for sentiment or discussion. Heroes singled out by gods cannot always have the compunction of ordinary men. You will need those three things and the nymphs do not need them. In any case they will get them back in due course.’

  Perseus bowed his head, avoiding the goddess’s fierce grey eyes, and was silent.

  ‘Once you have escaped the nymphs, you will meet my brother Hermes and he will give you further instructions. Now repeat to me everything I’ve told you!’

  Perseus did so, and as he finished, asked again:

  ‘And my mother? You said you wouldn’t forget her …’

  He got no reply. The figure of the woman in black seemed to grow into a great column of light and vanish, while a wind blew and the ground shook so much that Perseus could not keep his feet and fell flat on the path. He picked himself up, brushed the dust off his clothes and was about to re-enter the temple to find his mother, when he saw her coming out of it. At the same time he heard a voice behind him.

  ‘Perseus!’

  It was the fisherman, Diktys, who had rescued them from the sea. Both Diktys and Danaë had felt the ground heave and thought there had been a mild earthquake. But Perseus understood that their synchronised arrival was Athene’s reply. Diktys, who was increasingly at odds with his brother Polydektes and did not fear him, offered to take Danaë into his house to be looked after by his wife while Perseus was away. He also lent Perseus a boat to take him to the mainland. When Perseus asked him how he knew that these were exactly the two things he needed at that moment, Diktys laughed:

  ‘Perhaps I dreamed it,’ he said, ‘or saw it written all over your face, or perhaps, since everybody on the island knows what you’ve promised to bring to my brother and why he wants to get you out of the way, it was perfectly obvious.’

  2. THE NYMPHS

  After crossing the Myrtoan Sea and landing on the long curving beach directly below our village, Perseus left Diktys’ boat in the care of a fisherman who knew Diktys and promised to look after it. Perseus then walked for many days over the mountains towards the north-west until, on the borders of Achaia, under Mount Chelmos, he came to a sinister ravine of rocks, worn and twisted into grotesque shapes, and above it the source of the River Styx. A long slender waterfall plunged down into a pool and a dark cavern, where the river was lost to sight as it flowed away into the underworld. Perseus climbed down the side of the ravine and stood on a rock facing the cavern, where the force of the waterfall drove a spear of silvery water deep into the black pool, sending up bubbles and a perpetual ring of waves over the surface. There was no sign of the Stygian Nymphs, so Perseus clambered down still further until he reached a little stony beach beside the pool. There, hot and sweaty from his journey, he laid down his small bundle of food and his cloak, with his belt and knife, and slipping out of his tunic dived into the pool. It was icy cold and he came out as soon as he had swum once round the pool, to find that his clothes, his satchel, his belt and his knife had all disappeared. He looked round, thinking that perhaps he had come out on a different beach, but saw at once that there was no other and at the same time heard laughter.

  ‘Where are my things?’ he said loudly and sternly.

  ‘Come and get them!’ said a female voice.

  ‘Come and get them, come and get them!’ said others.

  Five naked nymphs, all very much alike, small and stocky, with black hair and dark skin, emerged from behind the rocks where they had been hiding. They were not all quite naked. One wore his tunic, another his belt strapped round between her plump breasts and her navel, a third had tied his lunch bag round her waist so that it dangled suggestively just under the thick dark hair of her pubis, a fourth had his cloak flung carelessly across her shoulders and only half concealing her breasts, and the fifth, entirely naked, was twirling his knife between her fingers. He made a dart for this last, who was nearest, but she easily evaded him and retreated to a rock, where she sat smiling and throwing his knife from hand to hand, so that he was afraid it would fall into the pool and be lost.

  ‘What’s your name?’ she said.

  ‘Perseus.’

  ‘Should we know you?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’

  ‘Where do you come from?’

  ‘Seriphos.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Over the sea. It’s an island.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Perseus?’

  ‘Looking for the Stygian Nymphs.’

  Laughter.

  ‘What do you want with them?’

  ‘Three favours.’

  ‘Only three? There are five of us.’

  ‘So I see. But are you the Stygian Nymphs?’

  ‘What if we are?’

  ‘Then I’ve come to the right place.’

  ‘And supposing we’re not?’

  ‘I’d be very surprised if you were not, considering you look like nymphs or what I’ve always imagined nymphs look like, and that this is the River Styx.’

  ‘Well, you’re right, we are the Stygian Nymphs.’

  There was a pause during which Perseus, standing there naked, was very conscious that five all but naked nymp
hs were staring intently at his body and especially at his penis, which, having shrunk from the coldness of the water, was now beginning to stir. His mind was very conscious of Athene’s warning, but his penis had a mind of its own. He had never before seen women without clothes and he – it – liked what he saw. He went towards the nymph wearing his tunic and, as she retreated, sat down on a rock with his back to the nymphs so as to conceal his arousal.

  ‘Can I have my things back?’ he said.

  ‘Come and get them, Perseus!’

  They danced and ducked and jumped about displaying his things and their own charms, but he knew he would never catch them, so pretended to ignore them, and after a while the nymphs, like the shy wild creatures they partly were, came and sat on the little pebble beach around his rock.

  ‘Are you a mortal or an immortal?’ asked the nymph wearing his belt.

  ‘A mortal,’ said Perseus. ‘And you, I suppose, are immortals?’

  ‘Not entirely,’ said the nymph with his cloak, ‘but we live much longer than mortals and we don’t grow old.’

  ‘A nice life,’ said Perseus, ‘swimming and sitting in the sun all day.’

  ‘We have to look out for satyrs and creatures like that. They always want to catch us and they have much bigger tools than you.’

  ‘Much, much bigger and always at the ready,’ said the nymph with the knife. ‘When they turn up, we have to dive down quickly into the pool and go down the river into the darkness.’