The Whispering Muse: A Novel

by Sjón

  ‘Now the bow timber had some motherly advice for Jason son of Aeson, captain of the Argo, telling him to order his crew back on board and continue on his way. Gently but firmly she reminded him that by our hazardous voyage into the blue grasp of Poseidon the earth-shaker, who could easily twiddle the greatest galley in the world like a sixpence between his blue fingers – by this voyage, we Argonauts were intending to be the first men ever to negotiate the Clashing Rocks. For thus we would enter the Black Sea to reach the land of Colchis and find the golden fleece that Jason’s people had lost and wished to recover. They had promised to make him king if he fulfilled this quest.

  ‘But as Jason son of Aeson stood foursquare on the gangway with the message from doe-eyed Hypsipyle in his upraised hand, he was deaf to the ship’s voice of reason. The Queen of Lemnos had concluded her letter with the words that he was welcome to a banquet at her palace together with those of his crew who were not standing watch that evening. So now Jason ordered us Argonauts to ready ourselves for a visit to the nation of women.

  ‘Jason buckled on his purple mantle of double fold, a gift he had received from the hand of Athena the day the keel was laid in our ship the Argo, and this mantle was a creation of such blazing splendour that it rivalled the dawn; red as fire in the middle, deepening to indigo at the richly illustrated hem. This hem was embroidered with gold and told the story of the siblings Phrixus and Helle, children of King Athamas and the cloud goddess Nephele. When their stepmother Ino convinced their father that he should sacrifice his children to prevent the harvest from failing in the land of Iolcus, they escaped on the back of a certain golden-fleeced talking ram.

  ‘Having flown a longish way, the children began to tire and it so chanced that midway the girl Helle fell to earth over the sea of Marmara which has been known ever since as the Hellespont. But at the ram’s urging the boy Phrixus clung on for dear life to his dazzling woolly coat and so at last they reached land at Colchis. There the boy married the princess, sacrificed the ram and dedicated the sacrifice to the war god Ares. He hung the blazing gold fleece in a grove of trees, casting a web of spells so that it would be guarded by a sleepless dragon and no man would ever be able to lay hands on it. Meanwhile, back in Iolcus, the children’s homeland, the people thought it a national disgrace to have lost the fabled ram into the clutches of the men of Colchis.

  ‘All these events could be seen woven into our captain Jason’s purple cloak. And where the story of Phrixus and Helle ended, his own story began.

  ‘Jason son of Aeson now set out to meet doe-eyed Hypsipyle, the powerful queen of the Lemnian women, together with the poet Orpheus, the beekeeper Butes and the brothers Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of Boreas. The mantle swirled about the captain’s body – how well he wore it! – while the dazzling storied web billowed about his feet as if he were floating like an immortal on a sun-flushed cloud. Towards evening the rest of us were to march through the town and meet them in the palace gardens.

  ‘So, with the help of the finery that we had brought along in our kitbags, we deckhands hurriedly set about making ourselves presentable for the womenfolk of Lemnos.’

  IV

  TODAY THERE WAS AN ACCIDENT at the sawmill. I was sitting in my spot on deck with one eye on the cable cars that were crawling up and down the mountain as they had the day before, the other on the fishing rod that I had cadged from the purser. I had baited the hook with bully beef, cast the line over the port side and fixed the rod firmly to the gunwale. The line glittered as it arced gently in the spring breeze. My gaze was fixed on the float when the factory siren suddenly set up a deep strident wailing in the bay – and a moment later there was a clank from the mountainside: the cableway had ground to a halt, timber wagons swaying on one side, iron-bound blocks of paper on the other.

  A workman in blue overalls came racing out of the mill and ran over to the yellow, two-storey house where the director Raguel had his headquarters. Two clerks came out to meet him. The workman waved his arms in the air, pointing to the sawmill and the yellow house in turn. Then he clenched his fist and held it to his ear as if talking on the phone, at which one of the clerks ran back into the house, while the worker and the other clerk raced back to the mill. As they reached it the big doors at the eastern end were flung open and four factory hands hurried out carrying a fifth on a stretcher between them. He seemed delirious and kept trying to throw himself off the stretcher while his workmates pushed him down again. He beat them off with what seemed like unusually short arms that I understood later had been truncated in the accident – torn off at the elbows. More workmen came out of the mill doors on their heels and looked on apprehensively. One turned, shouted something to the others and pointed to the cable cars.

  Now the door of one of the workers’ huts burst open and a wailing woman tried to run to the injured man but before she could go far the man in blue overalls intercepted her and clasped her tight. Three young children appeared in the doorway and stood there watching their mother cry, not daring to venture out.

  I heard a truck start up on the quay and a moment later it drove over to the group by the mill. The driver shouted something out of the window to the stretcher-bearers but they didn’t stir. At that, the office clerk from the yellow house did some fast talking, gesticulating with his arms and stamping his feet, trying to drag the others over to the back of the truck. The man holding the woman now relinquished his task to someone else, shouted an order at the stretcher-bearers and ran to the beetle-black limousine parked beside the yellow house; it was the director’s own car, a Chrysler Windsor, 1947 vintage.

  I nudged the first engineer who was standing beside me on deck watching the events unfold like the rest of the crew of the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen.

  ‘This should be interesting ...’

  The man in blue overalls tore open the rear door of the director’s car and the others hurried over with the amputee. Meanwhile, the office clerk cupped his hands around his mouth and flung back his head, bellowing for all he was worth at the upstairs windows of the yellow house. As the men began to ease their bleeding workmate into the limousine its owner appeared at one of the office windows. He yelled and brandished his fist at the workmen, but pretending not to notice, they continued with their rescue effort. Next moment Herr Bastesen was down in the car park, ready to defend his pride and joy, moving extraordinarily nimbly, I thought, for such a fat man. He was about to grab one of the four workers by the shoulder when the man in blue overalls intervened and drove his clenched fist under the director’s nose with such careless force that the fellow crumpled to the ground unconscious.

  At that the entire crew of the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen (including the purser’s lady friend) broke into applause – for I was not the only one who didn’t care for Raguel Bastesen. Captain Alfredson, unable to join in with his men by virtue of his position, contented himself with coughing ‘ahem’ several times into his chest. I meanwhile said as if to myself but loud enough for others to hear:

  ‘Good, good ...’

  Throughout this sorry spectacle the factory siren had been wailing unremittingly and did not let up until the car vanished from view in a cloud of dust over the shoulder of the mountain. Then everything became so quiet that in the ensuing silence the hearts of the onlookers on deck were filled with sadness and shame at their failure to act, though one couldn’t really have done anything to help. Captain Alfredson cleared his throat and uttered a single word:

  ‘Men!’

  It was enough to make the crew return wordlessly to their former tasks. That left just the two of us, the mate Caeneus who was off duty and I who was a supernumerary, to watch the aftermath. Bastesen’s clerks lugged their supine boss up the steps of the yellow house. The young children stood in the hut doorway, supporting each other, until the man who was looking after their mother led her inside, closing the door behind them.

  I moved closer to Mate Caeneus, took up position at his side and gripped the rail like him. He nodded to me bu
t somehow I sensed he was looking at my hands. I nodded back and returned the favour. It was only then that I realised just what a big fellow the mate was. At the dinner table I had thought we were of a similar build, in spite of the age difference, but now it became clear that he was your average man multiplied by one point twenty-three (5’ 6” × 1.23 = 6’ 9” tall) and his bulk was consistent with this. I have always been considered a strapping fellow but Caeneus was a titan. And it was all muscle that rippled beneath his mate’s jacket.

  Having finished my examination I said in a casually conversational tone:

  ‘Well.’

  ‘Yes,’ he responded.

  ‘So it goes.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Life in Norway ...’

  ‘I s’pose so ...’ he said.

  I changed the subject:

  ‘That’s quite a story you tell the crew in the evenings.’

  ‘You said it ...’

  ‘They seem to enjoy it, for all its oddness.’

  There was a short pause – a black-headed gull flew overhead.

  ‘Anyway ...’

  With that the broad-shouldered Caeneus raised his index finger to touch his scalp on the right in a brief salute and took his leave:

  ‘Thanks for the chat, Mr Haraldsson.’

  I hesitated a moment. As the mate tilted his head, his eyes twinkled like a woman’s. Having seen some pretty odd things in Berlin in the years after the First World War, I thought:

  ‘Aha ...’

  But said merely:

  ‘Thank you!’

  And raised my left hand halfway to my temple. Caeneus headed to the bridge while I returned aft to tend to my rod.

  I was in luck: a huge cod had taken the bait and swum far out into the bay with the line. There it was fighting to free itself from the hook, bending the rod to breaking point for what seemed like an eternity – it took me a full forty minutes to reel it in. When it finally stopped flapping about the deck and lay gasping at my feet, I calculated that this gargantuan fish would suffice for at least two meals for the seven of us at the captain’s table.

  The diners raised their eyebrows when the main course was served that evening. It consisted of poached cod and potatoes with melted butter and slices of tomato. The cook emerged from the galley to inform the dinner guests that I’d come up with this recipe off the top of my head and had told him that on the rare occasions when Hermann Jung-Olsen and I had had the good fortune to dine together this was the dish that had been served, though sometimes with haddock instead of cod.

  ‘Quite right!’ I said, though I pointed out that the tomatoes were the cook’s idea, and the only accompaniment apart from potatoes that the late Hermann and I had eaten with this dish was dulse. Most of the diners tucked in with gusto and a voice was heard to comment that this made an unexpected change from the ship’s customary menu.

  Whether it was thanks to this light but substantial fare or not, a novelty occurred in that Mate Caeneus took up his tale between the main course and dessert:

  ‘That evening we trooped to Queen Hypsipyle’s palace where they were throwing a great banquet in honour of Jason and his Argonauts. The streets were lined with the skirt-clad populace of Lemnos: civilian women, crook-backed bondswomen and giggling young girls, all hungrily eyeing the troop of heroes who passed through the city like molten lead in the crucible of Hephaestus, glowing hotly in their moulded, sun-burnished armour, eager to harden in the tempering embrace of the court ladies. The only thing that detracted from the magnificence of the occasion was the powerful stench that filled the streets like steam from a bathhouse, the iron-smell of blood mingling with the sweetness of cow dung, the sour reek of burnt wood in the rain and the bitterness of apricot kernels.

  ‘We breathed through our mouths, hoping the miasma would disperse when we emerged from the close-packed houses. But when we drew near the palace and the stench proved even more pungent there and worst of all in the banqueting hall where the women awaited us, we realised that it originated in none other than the reed-soft bodies of the ladies we had come to meet. From innate courtesy both men and women pretended not to notice the stink. Doe-eyed Hypsipyle ordered her court ladies to form a line and Jason ordered his crew to do the same. Once this was done one of the maidens stepped forward and curtseyed and the crew member standing opposite her stepped up to join her and bowed, then she took his hand and led him to a seat in the hall, and so on down the line until there was no one left but Jason and Hypsipyle who bowed simultaneously, he lower still, and then walked hand in hand to the throne.

  ‘Great was the relief of both sexes when the stench evaporated the instant the hands of man and woman met. For with our arrival and willingness to touch such noxious-smelling women we had unwittingly broken the spell on our gentle hostesses. They told us that as a punishment for driving away their husbands, Aphrodite had put a spell on the women of Lemnos that they would give off such a putrid stench that no man would wish to come within three hundred paces of them. The reason for the spiteful nature of this curse was that Aphrodite’s husband, that clumsy cuckold Hephaestus, held sway on Lemnos and the women had always diligently tended his temple with sacrificial gifts and paeans. But Aphrodite envied her husband the attention and had long sought a means to harm the women. Yet now it transpired that in devising her vengeful gift the busy goddess of love and underhand dealings had forgotten that a long sea voyage renders all women equal in a sailor’s eyes ...’

  Here Caeneus broke off, raising his eyebrows to the roots of his hair and waiting for his shipmates’ reaction.

  ‘Yes, don’t we know it!’ piped up the first engineer.

  And the crew of the MS Elizabet Jung-Olsen bubbled over with laughter. Whereas I, the purser’s lady friend and the purser himself (after being elbowed by his lady friend) lowered our eyes and waited for the mate to resume his tale, which he did after the men had got over their mirth:

  ‘At the banqueting tables, on the Argonauts’ first evening on the Island of Women, we were entertained with an epic from the lands north of the River Istrus. The poet was a slender, long-limbed woman who plucked a pearl-inlaid lyre in accompaniment to her song. Her corn-yellow hair was cut short, locks the length of a handspan rippling about her head like waves on a shore. About her shoulders she wore a black shawl that covered her arms down to the backs of her hands, where it was fastened to her middle fingers with silver rings. There were no pictures on this costume, but the poetess drew her song from its dark weave and the themes were all as sombre in colour as the night; the jests evoked a raven’s wing dipped in pitch, while the reality that underpinned them was bottomless as the pupil in a hate-filled eye.

  ‘Her poem told of the hapless hero Sigurd who slighted his wife, the sorceress Gudrun, by planning to take a new wife, the princess Brynhild. He told Gudrun that this would be in the best interests of their sons, Gjuki and Hogni. Sigurd made a pact with Brynhild’s father, King Grim, that Gudrun should be allowed to go into exile with a generous purse while their sons remained with him and Brynhild took their mother’s place. Naturally, his actions were motivated by consideration for the boys and had nothing to do with the young princess’s downy soft bosom or virginal rose-pink flesh. This arrangement was all the greater betrayal of Gudrun since she had cast off everything that is dearest – her father, homeland and younger brother – in order to follow Sigurd wherever the goddesses of fate led them.

  ‘The black-clad poetess began her song by describing how Sigurd and Gudrun fell in love when he raided the coast of her homeland, intending to carry off a swan’s-feather cloak of white silver that hung in the sacred grove of Freyja, guarded by the poisonous serpent Fafnir. There was no getting past this monster except by witchcraft – and no one knew this black art better than Gudrun, who at the time was both daughter to the king of the land and also a priestess of Hel.

  ‘In Sigurd’s retinue were three goddesses who travelled with him unseen. These were Frigg, Sif and Freyja, who vied among themsel
ves as to who had the most power over the mortal man’s fate. Freyja caused one of her cats to scratch Gudrun, who was so consumed by the fires of love that she became unhealthily enamoured of Sigurd. That night the two of them stole to Freyja’s temple and the king’s daughter lulled the dragon to sleep while Sigurd drew his halberd and struck the monster a blow under the pinion as she had taught him. At that the hideous Fafnir started up and blasted out a terrible poison, but thanks to Gudrun’s intervention it did the hero no harm. From this deed Sigurd won the title of “Fafnir’s bane”. He now snatched up the feather cloak of glittering silver, which had the property of endowing whoever wore it with the gift of flight like a bird.

  ‘Gudrun was forced to flee with her lover, taking her brother Helgi with her, while King Gjuki gave chase with thirteen swift-sailing ships. To delay his pursuit, Gudrun killed Helgi, dismembered his body and threw it into the sea, so that their father Gjuki would have to pause in his voyage to gather up the remains of his son. In this manner the lovers, Sigurd Fafnir’s-bane and Gudrun Gjukadottir, made their escape.

  ‘At this point in the epic the daughters of Lemnos laughed cynically, and the poetess rested her long fingers on the strings of her lyre until their laughter had died away. Meanwhile, we men seized our cups and raised them to our lips to drown the nausea that rose in our throats.

  ‘How could their womanly hearts take pleasure in such a sickening tale?

  ‘By the time the nectar had soothed my throat the women’s laughter had ceased and I glanced at the maiden beside me. She was waiting, expressionless and still, for my response and when I managed to force my lips into a curve she smiled sweetly back, stroking my hip – before her eyes, wet with tears of mirth, flickered from mine to resettle obediently on the poetess who now resumed her strumming. The second half of the story was even uglier than the first.

  ‘It told of Sigurd’s homecoming.