“Never has detour seemed more attractive.”
“This way then,” said the head.
They went in silence until they came to a broad cypress-lined avenue. “This is the Road Away,” said the head. “We must follow it.”
Asclepius saw shapes beneath the trees. They stood in a silent double row, facing each other.
“What are they?” he whispered. “Sentries?”
“Statues. Come, we must pass between them.”
The head rolled swiftly, leading Asclepius through the aisle of statues. He followed very slowly. A strange reluctance clogged his pace. He felt the air grow thick and resistant, as if he were pushing through an invisible hedge. A torpor invaded him. He looked up into the stone faces. They were in pairs — middle-aged men and women, mostly, who stood upon their pediments, facing each other. Some were younger, some older, but most were in their middle years. He saw that the couples were looking at each other out of their stony eye pits. They were carved of dark marble, stiff and lifeless, but it was their stares, he knew, meeting in midair, that made the space between them so resistant.
“We must take another way,” he cried. “I cannot pass between.”
“You must. It is the only way.”
“Who are they? Why do they glare at each other so?”
“They are those who, in life, turned each other to stone.”
“I don’t understand,” said Asclepius.
“You have heard the story, no doubt, of the young sculptor favored by Aphrodite because he carved one hundred statues of beautiful young girls and gave every one of them her face and form. Finally, he fell in love with the most beautiful statue of all—and was going mad trying to make it respond. But Aphrodite was so pleased to know that even a marble likeness of herself could rob a man of his wits, that she turned the statue into a living girl, and made the sculptor happier than any mortal had ever been. His name was Pygmalion, and hers, Galatea.”
“A charming tale,” said Asclepius. “But what does it have to do with these statues here?”
“These people were Pygmalions in reverse. They chose each other as mates, lived with each other—but in time, froze each other’s responses. They took warm living creatures and turned them into stone. Now, having shed their mortal casing, they are imprisoned in marble effigies of their own deed, and must stand face to face through eternity, staring at each other in silent reproach.”
Asclepius was weeping. Hot tears burned his face. But the sadness of the tale turned his attention from himself. His torpor fled. He was filled again with bitter salt energy, and walked swiftly, following Orpheus between the statues.
A cold wind blew. The cypress needles clashed. There was another sound—low and hollow. Asclepius stopped, aghast. “They speak!” he cried. “The statues speak!”
“It is the wind whistling through their earholes,” said Orpheus.
“It sounds like voices saying, ‘No! No!’”
“That is the word they spoke most often while alive,” said Orpheus. “It is the only word left to them now.”
Asclepius stopped again. He was standing between two taller statues of extraordinary beauty—a young man and a young woman, and even in cold hard stone, their faces glowed with quenchless vitality. A light clung to the carved faces as if a rosier marble had been used. Both wore short tunics. The man held a leaf-bladed hunting spear. The woman held the collar of a stone hound, lithe as a panther.
“Come,” said Orpheus. “I pray you, hasten. We are still too near the palace grounds.”
But Asclepius could not stop looking at the marble woman. Her legs were so long, so suavely powerful. The cant of her shoulder and the thrust of her hip as she held the great dog reminded him of Telesphora, and he began to weep once more. The hot tears fell on the stone feet. He wrenched himself away and stumbled on.
“I hate this place,” he said.
“Of course,” said the head. “That’s the idea.”
The avenue wound among cypresses. There were no more statues. The head rolled faster and Asclepius picked up his pace. He heard a rumbling and whirled in his tracks. The statue of the woman was walking after him. Her live feet had broken the stone; her big, bare, sinewy feet were stepping through the dust on the road. Pieces of marble still clung to them—like eggshell to a new chick. The stone dog ran alongside. Behind them strode the statue of the man.
Asclepius paused. They approached and stopped. He was flanked by two towering stone figures. They looked down at him.
“Thank you, stranger,” said the young woman in her windharp voice. “The hot juice of your compassionate heart overflowed your eyes and awakened my feet from their stone sleep. I have come off my pedestal to abide with you as you walk your dire ways.”
“I abandoned her in life,” boomed the stone man. “Where she goes now, there must I also go, through every avenue of hell. I thank you also, live little fool, who comes at your own invitation. And shall abide with you in dire ways.”
“Come!” called the head. They moved on.
12
A Hellish Battle
Walking between the statues of hunter and huntress, Asclepius followed the head as it threaded its way among shafts of stone. The huge pillars of rock thrust straight up and lost themselves in darkness. Asclepius didn’t know it, but he was moving among those spurs of rock belonging to the root system of Olympus.
Chained upright to the most massive of these pillars was a naked body towering higher than the tallest tree. Its ceaseless sobbing was like wind in the top branches of a cedar. Harpies wheeled about the great bearded face. They had long since torn out his eyes, but dipped, sipping at the blood, which welled like tears out of the empty sockets.
“Who?” whispered Asclepius.
“Tityus,” said the head of Orpheus. “Mightiest of the ancient Titans, who led a revolt against Zeus.”
Asclepius breathed a foul stench. The Harpies had torn the Titan’s stomach open and were gorging themselves on the stinking viscera—which grew again, as they were being eaten, so that his pain might never cease.
“Come,” said the head. “We must pass under him.”
“Why?”
“She whom you seek is in the deepest part of Hades’ realm, called Tartarus. And the Titan’s legs frame the portal of that place.”
The head rolled on. And as Asclepius followed, he knew that he was entering the entrails of hell.
The air darkened. The heavy sulphurous light became tan, then brown; there was a smell of smoke, but no flicker of flame. Asclepius toiled on. The head rolled before him. The stone couple and the stone dog rumbled behind.
He heard men and women screaming, demons laughing. Agonized rattling screams that became small, helpless, puppy-like whimperings. The laughter was wild and mirthless, rising as the screams died. Asclepius froze. He could go no farther. The head rolled back.
“This is no place to stop and gawk, my friend! Spectators are too often persuaded to play more active roles.”
“Is this the place of torment?” asked Asclepius.
“One of them,” answered the head.
“Who is screaming so dreadfully?”
“The younger brother of Tityus, who also conspired against Zeus. We are coming to his site of punishment.”
“I don’t want to see it.”
“Unfortunately, she whom you seek is also there.”
The head rolled swiftly on. Asclepius raced to follow, and came upon the worst sight he had ever seen. Chained to a shaft of rock was a magnificent young Titan being eaten by a serpent. Although his capacity for pain was as limitless as his strength had been, his pride was even stronger, and he was trying to bite back his screams as the huge speckled serpent twined about him, devouring his flesh. Through his horror and outrage, Asclepius felt his doctorly instincts stirring, and found himself studying the anatomy of the Titan’s ordeal.
Being of divine stock, the Titan could not wholly die, but his flesh was not wholly renewed, and Asclepius re
cognized that the spectacle of his own mutilation would be a special cruelty to the beautiful young giant who had exulted so in the strength of his body. Thus it was that he had lost an arm and a leg. His head was intact, but the thorax had been eaten away; only the mighty spool of his backbone linked the mangled cavity of his chest to his pelvis.
The serpent twined, weaving colors; grey melted into green, and tan into grey again—a looping, sliding dance of colors, climaxed by a smooth thrust of tapered head as it touched the Titan and pulled away, swallowing a gobbet of flesh. And then, Asclepius saw something even more horrifying.
Beyond Titan and serpent was Telesphora, shackled to another pillar of rock. Asclepius heard her moaning. He drew his sword.
“Put it back!” said Orpheus. “That beast will take you in one gulp, like a grass snake eating a frog.”
“I have to do something!”
“Not with a sword. That is Hades’ own serpent, the simplified shape of evil. It moves faster than the eye can see. If you come near, it will cast a single loop, wrap you in a cable of living muscle, drag you to its maw, and swallow you alive. You will not even be granted the boon of fangs, but feel your bones pulping on the way down.”
“Nevertheless,” said Asclepius, “I must do what I can.”
Again he raised his sword.
“No!” cried Orpheus. “Let me try something first. Once, when I was young, courting a nymph who lived in Libya, I was attacked by a tiger. I had no weapon but my lyre. I began my song as the beast crouched to spring—a lullaby, so slumberous the tiger fell asleep. He slept until I awakened him, then followed me like a house cat. I know my voice has become rusty, but let me see what I can do.”
Asclepius lowered his sword. The head began to sing:
Who quenched your eye and muffled your sense?
Who has enslaved the ancient king?
It was she, she.
She was created before all creation;
Out of her came the first darkness.
She divided into light and darkness.
From her womb flowed snakes of light;
And she named you Ophion or Moon-snake.
Ophion was your name.
Her belly swelled like a storm cloud;
She bore a son who swore to kill you.
You were angry, serpent, with a terrible anger,
Your mother sang to you—a lulling song, a spell;
The wind was in it and the few created things.
The song was a spell, the first charm,
Full of sleep and magic—like bees buzzing,
Like a spinning wheel. She spun life on the wheel,
And you turned it—spun goats, fish, mice.
She cut the earth with a sharp piece of bone,
Your leg bone. Your legs folded
Into your belly. You had to crawl on your belly.
She filled a bladder with moon-fire and mice;
It burst into rain. For forty days,
The moon-fire rained jewels and flowers and tigers.
The mice became demons to serve your angry son.
And that infant, guarded by spiked demons,
Grew apace, maturing in eight days.
On the ninth day he put his heel to your head
And pronounced himself king.
Who quenched your eyes and muffled your sense
And stole your name? Do you know? Do you know?
So Orpheus sang, and the snake seemed to listen. Its loops slackened; it ceased to forage the Titan’s raw bones. Its lifted head was weaving slightly to the music.
The statue had moved closer and stood silently, listening.
Who quenched your eyes and stole your name?
Do you know? Do you know?
And, as the beast seemed to be yielding to the honeyed slumber in that magic voice, the head of Orpheus advanced, not rolling in its usual way, because that would have blotted the sound, but hopping on its neck stump.
Ancient sire, fallen king, do you know?
Do you know?
The tapered head swayed heavily, sleepily. Orpheus moved closer, singing. Then slowness melted horribly into speed. The snake’s head dipped as the living cable of the 60-foot body uncoiled in a blur of movement. In a loathsome mime of kissing, the rubbery lips moved over the song-rapt bearded face. Asclepius tried to close his eyes, but it happened too fast. He saw the snake swallow the head of Orpheus like a child eating an apple.
He heard himself yelling. He rushed forward and slashed at the serpent with his sword.
But the blade never touched the mottled scales. The serpent moved too swiftly, sliding away from his blow and casting a single loop about Asclepius, binding his arms to his sides. He felt a paralyzing constriction. The sword fell from his hand. The breath rushed out of his lungs in a moaning gasp, and he could not draw another. The pressure was unbearable. He felt his arms mashing into his ribs. Darkness swarmed.
He heard a rustling, a grinding, a phlegmy scream, and thought, “I am dead. My shade has been taken to the Lake of Fire. I hear the voices of those swimming in the flame.”
The pressure eased. Air rushed into his lungs. The loop had slackened. He fell out of the coil. He tried to stand but could not. He coughed and spat blood. He moved his arms. The pain blinded him, but pain pierced his fog. His sight cleared. He pulled his sword to him and, using it as a cane, climbed to his feet. Retching and spitting blood, he leaned against a rock and watched the statues fighting the serpent.
The stone hands of the hunter were clamped about the serpent below its head, and he was trying to throttle the beast. The snake had cast its loops about the statue and was squeezing him to a pulp. Marble had begun to crack off the petrified shade of the dead hero, and Asclepius saw the pink pulsing mist of his spirit at the core of stone.
The huntress was helping her husband. Her tall legs were flexing in a beautiful curve of marble thew as she leaped high in the air and fell with all her tremendous weight on the middle part of the serpent’s body. The stone girl was leaping twice her height and falling upon the giant snake, crushing the thick cable of bone and muscle like a gardener crushing a worm with a spade. Again and again she leaped and dropped, breaking her own body with every fall—until she lay motionless upon the mottled green coils, her stone carapace shattered. The pink mist of her spirit was fuming out and mixing with the hissing blood of the serpent.
All this while the great jaws of the stone dog were savaging the snake, striking here and there, driving stone teeth into leather body.
And the stone man still grappled the monster; it was now a death grip. Blood spurted from the lidless eyes. The tapered head lolled. The coils went slack. The stone man collapsed, tried to rise, but could not. Asclepius watched him drag himself toward the huntress. She pulled herself to her shattered knees and crept toward him.
They stretched out their hands. Both collapsed. With their last strength they reached toward each other. Their hands met, clasped, and were still. These two, hunter and huntress, whose marriage had failed, and whose shades had been frozen into stony shapes of reproach and remorse, staring at each other out of great scooped eyes—these two, wakened from rancorous stupor by the hot tears of a living man, had attached themselves to his deed, and, sanctified by generous risk, had, in their last gesture, annulled their failure. Shells shattered, they forgave each other before an expert witness, departed hell, and entered legend.
Asclepius had no time to mourn them. He ran toward Telesphora, leaping over the fallen statues, trying not to look down at them but unable to avoid a glimpse. He saw that the shattered stone, spirit departed, had lost luster and individuality, and had merged with the rubble of that penitential field.
Asclepius stepped over the coils of the dead serpent and reached Telesphora, who stared at him in wonder. He lifted his sword and struck twice. His blade sheared through her chains.
Tenderly, he drew her out of her shackles. They embraced. “Come … let us return to earth,” he said.
“Can
we really leave?” she whispered. “They’ll be after us, won’t they, those horrible winged hags?”
“They can’t be worse than that serpent. And we escaped him.”
“Yes, we did!” cried Telesphora. “Let’s go, dear doctor. Let’s start.”
Hand in hand, they began their journey out of the underworld. Harpies observed them, and reported to Hecate, who hurried to confer with Hades. He listened to her silently, then said:
“What do you propose?”
“To take them, of course,” said Hecate.
“Consider this, O Hag. If we keep them down here with their obsessive yen for easing pain and their combined skills, they will always be trying to disrupt our torments. They’ll be a constant source of trouble.”
“But,” said Hecate. “If we allow them to return to earth they will continue to postpone death for their patients, and reduce our intake.”
“Only so long as they live,” said Hades. “And by the nature of things, that can’t be much longer than the mortal span. So if we wait for a bit, they will fall into our hands in a natural way; no fuss, no family quarrels. Yes, we can afford to let them go. We’ll get them back one day. When we do, we’ll teach them to regret their damned good works, won’t we?”
“We will, master, we will! And perhaps relish our vengeance all the more for the delay.”
So Asclepius and Telesphora were allowed to return to earth and take up their practice where they had left off. And, it is told, the doctor began by restoring the girl to full health. It is also told that they interrupted their labors long enough to get married. They had many children and grandchildren, and all of them, legend says, practiced medicine.
What happened later to their shades, we do not know. And, perhaps, we don’t want to.
Things have shrunk since then. Giants are freaks; dragons are flies; heroes are sandwiches; monsters eat cookies. Demons have shrunk too, become so tiny that they are invisible, but still plague humankind, more expertly than ever, attacking from within. We don’t know where Hecate is, exactly, but Harpies still fly.
Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One Page 50