In a way I was allowed to be my own punishment.
Because I loved the earth. Because the seas of the earth held no fear for me. Because I had learned the positions of the planets and the track of the stars. Because I am strong, my punishment was to support the Kosmos on my shoulders. I took up the burden of the whole world, the heavens above it, and the depths below. All that there is, is mine, but none of it in my control. This is my monstrous burden. The boundary of what I am.
And my desire?
Infinite space.
It was the day of my punishment.
The gods assembled. The women were on the left and the men were on the right. There’s Artemis, worked muscle and tied-back hair, fiddling with her bow so that she doesn’t have to look at me. We were friends. We hunted together.
There’s Hera, sardonic, aloof. She couldn’t care less. As long as it’s not her.
There’s Hermes, fidgety and pale, he hates trouble. Next to him lounges Hephastus, ill-tempered and lame, Hera’s crippled son, tolerated for his gold smithy. Opposite him is Aphrodite his wife, who loathes his body. We’ve all had her, though we treat her like a virgin. She smiled at me. She was the only one who dared …
Zeus read out his decree. Atlas, Atlas, Atlas. It’s in my name, I should have known. My name is Atlas – it means ‘the long suffering one’.
I bent my back and braced my right leg, kneeling with my left. I bowed my head and held my hands, palms up, almost like surrender. I suppose it was surrender. Who is strong enough to escape their fate? Who can avoid what they must become?
The word given, teams of horses and oxen began to strain forward, dragging the Kosmos behind them like a disc-plough. As the great ball ploughed infinity, pieces of time were dislodged. Some fell to earth, giving the gift of prophecy and second sight. Some were thrown out into the heavens, making black holes where past and future cannot be distinguished. Time spattered my calf muscles and the sinews in my thighs. I felt the world before it began, and the future marked me. I would always be here.
As the Kosmos came nearer, the heat of it scorched my back. I felt the world settle against the sole of my foot.
Then, without any sound, the heavens and the earth were rolled up over my body and I supported them on my shoulders.
I could hardly breathe. I could not raise my head. I tried to shift slightly or to speak. I was dumb and still as a mountain. Mount Atlas they soon called me, not for my strength but for my silence.
There was a terrible pain in the seventh vertebra of my neck. The soft tissue of my body was already hardening. The hideous vision of my life was robbing me of life. Time was my Medusa. Time was turning me to stone.
I do not know how long I crouched like this, petrified and motionless.
* * *
At last I began to hear something.
I found that where the world was close to my ears, I could hear everything. I could hear conversation, parrots squawking, donkeys braying. I heard the rushing of underground rivers and the crackle of fires lighted. Each sound became a meaning, and soon I began to de-code the world.
Listen, here is a village with a hundred people in it, and at dawn they take their cattle to the pastures and at evening they herd them home. A girl with a limp takes the pails over her shoulders. I know she limps by the irregular clank of the buckets. There’s a boy shooting arrows – thwack! thwack! into the padded hide of the target. His father pulls the stopper out of a wine jar.
Listen, there’s an elephant chased by a band of men. Over there, a nymph is becoming a tree. Her sighs turn into sap.
Someone is scrambling up a scree slope. His boots loosen the ground under him. His nails are torn. He falls exhausted on some goat-grass. He breathes heavily and goes to sleep.
I can hear the world beginning. Time plays itself back for me. I can hear the ferns uncurling from their tight rest. I can hear pools bubbling with life. I realise I am carrying not only this world, but all possible worlds. I am carrying the world in time as well as in space. I am carrying the world’s mistakes and its glories. I am carrying its potential as well as what has so far been realised.
As the dinosaurs crawl through my hair and volcanic eruptions pock my face, I find I am become a part of what I must bear. There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me and I am continents. I am the journey you must make.
Listen, there’s a man telling a story about the man who holds the world on his shoulders. Everybody laughs. Only drunks and children will believe that.
* * *
No man believes what he does not feel to be true. I should like to unbelieve myself. I sleep at night and wake in the morning hoping to be gone. It never happens. One knee forward, one knee bent, I bear the world.
Heracles
Heracles stepped out of the shadows where he had been listening.
Here he comes, the Hero of the World, wearing a lion-skin and swinging his olive club.
‘Have a drink Atlas, you old globe. We’ve all got our burdens to bear. Your punishment is to hold up the universe. My punishment is to work for a wanker.’
‘And who’s to blame?’ said Atlas. ‘Not your father Zeus, but your foster-mother, Hera.’
‘Call it Fate not blame,’ said Heracles. ‘Your name means “long-suffering” mine means “Glory of Hera”, which is a bit of a liberty under the circumstances. Does any woman feel love for her husband’s bastards? I am son of my father Zeus, but my mother Alceme was mortal. Hera was deceived into suckling me. She’s not happy about that. Women don’t like a stranger at the tit.’
‘She sent a serpent to kill you.’
‘I strangled it in my cot. I was too young to bear a grudge.’
‘And then she drove you to madness.’
‘There’s plenty of men been driven to madness by a woman.’
‘Only a madman would come here.’
‘I need your help.’
Help. He comes for help at the hinge of the world. Heaven and earth fold away from each other, but here they lie edge to edge. To this doubleness he comes for help, this man of double nature, the god in him folded back in human flesh.
‘What kind of help?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I’m not going anywhere.’
‘Well,’ said Heracles, ‘If you’ve got all the time in the world, I’ll begin.’
Men are unfaithful by nature. This is not a fault in men, for nature should not be accused of faulty workmanship. It is as useless to rail against man’s infidelity as it is to complain that water is wet. What god or man is content with what he has? And if he were content, then he is less than god or man.
Alceme was beautiful, so Zeus dressed himself up as her husband and had a quick word with the moon and he got Alceme into bed for a night that lasted thirty-six hours. He gave her pleasure and pleasure grew into a son. To save me from Hera’s marital wrath, he tricked her into suckling me just once, and so I gained immortality. Hera can hurt me but she cannot truly harm me. What she really likes to do is humiliate me.
Even a goddess is still a woman.
I was a bit of a braggart in my youth – killed everything, shagged what was left, and ate the rest. Then Hera made up her mind to drive me mad, and while I was mad, I slit six of my own children, which I regret, and a tent full of other people whose names I didn’t even know. Not good behaviour, Atlas, and I always had my standards, even when drunk, so I went to Delphi to try and get forgiveness. The pythoness at Delphi ordered me to make myself servant to Eurystheus. Yes, that slack-prick, gnat- witted, wine-sour Eurystheus. As an atonement, you understand. For twelve years I must do whatever he asks. No matter that he is weak and I am strong. No matter that I could kill him by spitting on him. He is my master. For his glory I have already killed the Nemean Lion, destroyed the Hydra, caught the golden hind of Artemis, captured the world’s biggest boar, cleaned the Augean stables, driven away the man-eating Stymphalian birds, coralled the Cretan bull, tamed t
he carnivorous mares of Diomedes, stripped Hippolyte’s Amazon girdle from her body, fetched home the Geryon cattle, and now I find myself here with you, for the eleventh of my labours.
Fruit.
Didn’t I say she wanted to humiliate me? What kind of a hero chases after fruit?
You see, Atlas, my old mountain, my old mate, I have to get hold of some of Hera’s apples – the special ones she got as a present from your Ma when she married Zeus. They’re in your orchard, aren’t they? Have you still got the key? You didn’t leave it with those bloody Hesperides did you? I don’t fancy smarming your daughters, Atlas, I’m strictly off women at the moment – got to concentrate, you know. By the way, just as a bit of gossip, your other daughter Calypso has got that idiot Odysseus in her den and will she let him go? No she won’t. Hera herself can’t get him away. Odysseus is slippery as a greased boar but Calypso has hands like skewers. They are a bunch, your girls, I must say. You should get them married off.
But to the point, Atlas. If you have got the key, would you mind just popping down there and picking one or two, well three, as it happens, three golden apples for your old friend Heracles? I’ll take the world off your shoulders while you go. Now there’s a handsome offer.
Atlas was silent. Heracles slit a skin of wine and slung it at him, watching the giant’s face while they drank. Heracles was a bastard and a blagger, but he was the only man alive who could relieve Atlas of his burden. They both knew that.
‘Ladon lies curled round the apple tree,’ said Atlas. ‘I fear him.’
‘What, that poxy snake? That hundred-headed whodunit? Every tongue a question, every answer a hiss of nothing. Ladon’s not a monster, he’s a tourist attraction.’
‘I fear him,’ said Atlas.
‘Let me tell you,’ said Heracles, ‘I’ve faced a lot worse than Ladon. The Hydra, now she was a worm. Chop off one head and straight away there’d be another glaring at you. Like marriage really. And after this I’ve got to go down into Hell and drag out that stupid dog, what’s his name Cerberus? Three heads, loads of teeth – that one. No wonder the dead don’t get any letters; who’s going to deliver them with a dog like that at the gate? I’ll fix him though, just like I fixed the Cretan bull. You’ve got to look them in the eye Atlas, show ’em who’s boss.’
‘Ladon has two hundred eyes,’ said Atlas.
‘Two thousand, two million, I’m Heracles, don’t worry about it. I’ll go and kill him and bring us something to eat on the way back.’
There he goes, the hero of the world, thick-cut as his olive-club. Is he a joke or a god? His doubleness is his strength and his downfall. He is a joke and a god. One or the other will be the death of him. Which is it?
* * *
Heracles vaulted the wall into the Garden of the Hesperides. He had the key, but the lock was rusted and he thought it unwise to use his thug-trough manners on Atlas’s property.
The garden was thick and overgrown. Heracles trampled through it towards the shining centre, where Hera’s tree was rich with fruit.
Ladon was under the tree. Ladon curled like a worm-cast. Ladon, a dragon with a man’s tongue. Ladon, a man turned reptile, cold-blooded and morose.
Heracles hailed Ladon.
‘Is that you, you bag of venom?’
Ladon opened sixty-five of his eyes but did not stir.
‘Don’t play dead with me Ladon. Look lively.’
There was a ripple. Small music of Ladon’s scales. At his head, he was heavy-sounded as a cymbal, but towards his tail, where the scales were smaller and higher, he was a chime or a triangle. He tinkled at Heracles.
‘The girls haven’t done much mowing, have they?’ observed our hero, looking at the grass, tall as a tower. ‘No one’s been here for ages.’
‘I live alone,’ said Ladon.
‘I don’t live anywhere,’ said Heracles. ‘I’ve been on the road for years now.’
‘I heard,’ said Ladon.
‘Oh, what have you heard?’ said Heracles, trying to sound casual.
‘That you have offended the gods.’
‘That’s an overstatement,’ said Heracles. ‘Hera doesn’t like me. That’s all.’
‘She hates you,’ said Ladon.
‘All right. She hates me. So what?’
‘This is her tree. These are her apples.’
‘That’s what I’ve come for.’
‘You will be cursed.’
‘I’m cursed already. How bad can it get?’
‘Go home, Heracles.’
‘There is no home.’
* * *
Ladon reared up, and with his terrible bulk began to uncoil from the sacred tree. His hundred mouths dripped venom. His eyes flashed prophecy. Heracles knew that it would be this poison or the one after. He had taken milk from Hera’s breast and she would one day return it to him as poison. He had known as much when he was a baby sleeping on his mother’s fleece, and Hera had sent the azure serpent to kill him. This he had strangled, and he had avoided cups and libations ever since. He had defeated the Hydra. He would defeat Ladon. He would not die today. But he knew he would die. Sometimes he thought it was a strange life, this life of avoiding death.
Heracles used the overgrown garden to hide himself from Ladon’s angry searching. As the serpent slithered through the long grass and over the unused trellises and frames, Heracles retreated further and further from the centre, towards the wall, where he had left his bow and arrow.
He strung the bow and braced his feet.
‘Over here, Ladon, you creep!’
The serpent reared up and as he did so, exposed his soft throat to Heracles’ arrow. The flint pierced him and he died at once, his lidless eyes filming over, his jaw-plates sagging.
Heracles knew that all serpents feign death to avoid capture, so he cautiously walked around Ladon’s body and hacked off a piece of his armoured tail. The scales were thick as a breastplate, but Heracles wore no armour, only the skin of the Nemean lion that he had slain so easily so long ago.
Caught in a moment’s thought between death and death, Heracles did not see Hera standing before him. He suddenly felt a drop of rain against the sweat of his skin. He looked up. She was there. His tormentor and his dream.
Hera was beautiful. She was so beautiful that even a thug like Heracles wished he had shaved. Without a mirror she showed him to himself, muscle-swollen and scarred. He feared her and desired her. His prick kept filling and deflating like a pair of fire bellows. He wanted to rape her but he didn’t dare. Her eyes were all contempt and mild disgust.
‘Must you kill everything, Heracles?’
‘Kill or be killed. Don’t blame me.’
‘Whom else should I blame?’
‘Blame yourself, drop dead gorgeous, all this starts with you.’
‘All this started with my husband’s trickery and your brutality.’
‘You drove me mad.’
‘I did not ask you to kill your own children.’
‘A mad man has no reason in his head.’
‘A brutal man has no pity in his heart.’
‘You are my fate, Hera, and guess what? I am yours.’
‘A god has no fate. You will never be immortal, Heracles, you are too much a man.’
‘You suckled me, and my father is Zeus. That makes me immortal enough.’
‘Enough is not enough. I could kill you now.’
‘Then kill me. Do you think I’m frightened?’
‘You must bring about your own ruin, Heracles.’
‘But you’ll be there to help me to it, won’t you, Hera?’
‘If I seem like fate to you, it is because you have no power of your own.’
‘No man was ever stronger.’
‘No man was ever weaker than you.’
‘You talk in riddles, like a woman.’
‘Then I will speak plainly, like a man. No hero can be destroyed by the world. His reward is to destroy himself. Not what you meet on the way, b
ut what you are, will destroy you, Heracles.’
Hera moved forward, and delicate as she was, hair shining, her limbs pale, she picked up Ladon light as a toy, and threw him into the heavens where she set him forever as the constellation of the serpent.
The effort had bared her breasts.
‘Well then, Heracles, why do you not take the apples?’
Heracles moved forward and with his finger he touched Hera’s nipple. He felt it harden, and wetting his fingertip, he touched it again, rubbing around the aureole with his thumb. He wanted to suck her breasts.
Hera put her hand over his. ‘Take the apples, Heracles.’
He remembered. He stepped back. Dark-hearted Hera was smiling at him. He had been warned not to pick the apples himself. He must leave them on the tree. Someone else must do his gathering for him.
He stepped back. Her breasts were bare. Why not die now, take the inevitable with some pleasure? He could have her, force his prick in her, and then she’d kill him. He’d die in the cave of her hatred, but she’d feel him die. She’d feel the last pulse of him inside her.
He dropped his hand to his prick and started to masturbate. She watched him, rough and practised, beat himself off in a dozen quick strokes. As he started to come, she kissed him once on the mouth and walked away.
Night.
Ladon’s imprint was still in the grass. His image was bright among the stars. Heracles was sitting alone under the sacred tree. He no longer understood the journey, or rather he understood there was a journey. Until today he had gone about each task unconcerned by the one before or the one after. He had met the challenge and moved on. He did what he had to do, no more, no less. It was his fate. Fate could not be questioned or considered.
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