Chimera

by John Barth

  “ ‘I hate flying,’ the seer said sourly, and gave me my instructions: we were not to attempt to sneak up on the monster, who could not be fooled, but rather fly directly to the crater’s rim; at noon the Chimera regularly retired to her cave for a long siesta—doubtless that was why I hadn’t seen her in my recent overflights—and the trick was to trap her there, where she lacked maneuvering-room. The late absence of smoke from the crater, which I had remarked, indicated that her breath was temporarily less fiery than usual (such things happened); but given her triple ferocity, this was small advantage. Just as Perseus, vis-à-vis Medusa, had made his enemy his ally, so I like a cunning wrestler must enlist my adversary’s strengths against her. Hence the special spear he’d brought along, a larger version of the writing-tool he’d given Philonoë, which instead of a sharp bronze point had a dull one of lead. Depositing Polyeidus behind the cover of a rim-rock, I was to blindfold Pegasus, put upon my spear-tip several sheets of paper from the prophet’s briefcase impregnated with a magical calorific, and thrust my spear deep into the cave. Chimera would attack it; the calorific would super-heat her breath (I was to shut my eyes and hold my own breath against the noxious smoke) and melt the lead, which then would burn through her vitals and kill her. ‘Got it?’

  “ ‘I don’t get to see her?’

  “ ‘You’ll see her,’ Polyeidus promised. ‘But do it my way, or you’re cooked. No need for your girlfriend to check out the cave tomorrow, incidentally; there’ll be other evidence.’ We landed on the rim, no monster in sight, only a bit of steam rising from one smallish hole, which Polyeidus identified as one of her vents and thus as good as any to attack her through. ‘So have a nice battle,’ he said when the spear and blindfold were prepared, ‘and marry your princess and like that. I’m sure your brother would be pleased to know what a great success you turned out to be. Don’t trust your father-in-law too much; he’d’ve put you away before now if I hadn’t invoked the hospitality laws and set him up as your taskmaster instead. See you around, hero.’

  “Well, so, I did all that, wondering why he spoke so curiously. Pegasus couldn’t fly blind; I walked him to the hole, popped in the old spear, hit something anyhow: whoosh came the smoke, black billows, a certain stink, a sound like a horn-call. No thrash or struggle. I peeked to see whether I’d missed; withdrew my charred spear, its tip half-molten, and apprehensively rethrust, waiting for the bite. Instead, a kind of flapping came; I jumped back, slipped, very nearly fell from Pegasus as in the pall around us something large and obscure appeared to rise, rolling and spreading like the smoke itself, and buffet across the crater toward my prophet’s perch. I unblinkered Pegasus and took off after, eyes running from the vapors, but before we overhauled the rim there was a whump: the mountain shook, and a smokeball rose from the spot upon its own black column. No sign of Polyeidus; only, on the rock-face, a blurred silhouette in soot of what I took to be the beast herself. With my cindered spear I sadly traced it, lion’s head to serpent’s tail, as down upon us gentle ashes—whose, if not my imperfectly combusted tutor’s?—commenced to fall. I yearned to spell out his name there for the generations he had glimpsed ahead; would not have minded subscribing my own for those same readers, had I known one letter from another. I headed sadly back on slightly smutty Pegasus, resolved to learn from Philonoë how to write.

  “I spied her on a beach not far from town, wearing of all things Melanippe’s chiton and waving a flag at me. I landed, dismounted, kissed her, and said: ‘Hi. I killed the Chimera. But she killed Polyeidus. What’s up? Why are you wearing that? You don’t look right in it.’

  “She answered: ‘Hi. Good. Good. An ambush. Because it’s time to make war, not love. I thought you liked Amazons; no matter; I’ll take it off after the battle.’ She had an excellent memory, even as a teen-ager. What battle? Rapidly she opined that Polyeidus had been a traitor: according to her father, from whom she had demanded an explanation of his inhospitality on pain of eloping with me, the message from Proetus had been Pray remove the bearer of these letters from this world; he has tried to violate my wife, your daughter. But when, heartbroken, she had examined the document itself, she found it to contain in fact only the first of those two clauses. In any case, it made no mention of purificatory tasks, which Iobates freely admitted having imposed, on Polyeidus’s advice, to get rid of me. Anteia’s husband, he had declared to her, was no hero, but except in the area of his feud with Acrisius he was a reasonable man: whether or not I’d tried to rape Anteia, I must have mortally offended him in some way; therefore Philonoë was neither to see me again nor to interfere with the ambuscade of palace guards waiting to slaughter me should I return. Surely she had no use for a man who had murdered his father and brother, abandoned his mother, tried to rape her own sister, and in fact raped and murdered a helpless Amazon prisoner-of-war? Heh heh, et cetera.

  “ ‘You might be right about Polyeidus,’ I admitted. ‘Sometimes I’ve wondered about him myself. But there is another way to read his role in all this. Proetus knows the truth about his wife and me. False letters! You’ll have to teach me how to read and write. Thanks for warning me about the ambush. I didn’t kill that Amazon; I took her home to Mother. The rest is pretty much true, and I admit it makes me look bad, at least on paper. There. How come you’re here?’

  “Philonoë answered: “Because I love you with all my heart and mind and soul. And body. My sister always wanted to be a mythic hero. I always wanted to be loved by one.’ She fingered the chiton. ‘Did you rape this poor girl?’

  “I said: ‘Yep. I was sorry afterward, but as my deed wasn’t involuntary, that fact scarcely matters.” She shuddered; murmured something about Rough Edges; inquired whether, we being alone there in a secluded spot and she unable to call for help, I intended to ravish her as well.

  “ ‘I guess not. I say let’s fly off to Corinth and take over the kingdom.’

  “Philonoë considered. ‘I don’t think you tried to attack my sister. You wouldn’t’ve had to; I know how she is. Did you sleep with her?’ When I shook my head she squeezed me, wiped soot from Pegasus’s muzzle, confessed happily that she’d have gone off with me, albeit unhappily, in any case, and as wife or mistress, even if my love for her didn’t measure up to hers for me. Her late mother’s advice—never to wed a man whom she loved more than he her—Philonoë regarded as sensible enough if it meant love should be equal, basely self-gratifying if it meant the opposite inequality; what it lacked in either case was the dimension of Tragedy, which in her view—but there’d be time enough for her view, and my rape-tale, and Corinth too, when we’d deposed her dad and taken charge of Lycia—which we could do by nightfall if we played our cards right.

  “ ‘What are cards?’

  “ ‘Figure of speech. While you were doing hero-work up on the hill, I wasn’t sitting on my hands. My roommate at U.L. is a meteorology major and vulcanology minor: she predicts that this afternoon’s tremors from Mount Chimera, together with the recently prevailing south winds, the time of day (almost low water), month (full moon), and year (vernal equinox), will produce an extraordinary flood tide a few pages from now. Interviews conducted by her and me a couple hours ago with certain Xanthian fishermen (my contact with whom I’ll explain presently) confirm this prediction. Here’s what I suggest: I’ll fly home on Pegasus now, for effect, and announce to Daddy that unless he comes off it and does the daughter’s-hand-and-half-my-kingdom thing, you’ll come on like Poseidon and drown the city. You pray to your father (whom I really look forward to meeting after we’re engaged) (your mother too) to lend us a hand, or at least excuse the trick. I believe we can count on the palace guard to fold: they’re mostly uplanders, scared to death of water. At a certain point, when you and the tide are up over the Xanthian plain, a delegation of women from the fishing towns approaches Daddy and offers him politically to offer themselves to you sexually in return for your sparing the city, in return for his granting matriarchal home rule to the Xanthians, which their women’s gr
oups have agitated for for years. Got that? The minute I stepped out this afternoon with this chiton on, you see, their lobbyists approached me as a convert, and we worked all this out. Daddy’ll go for the idea because he thinks you’ll go for the idea because he thinks you’re this horny rapist, okay? And I act as though I’m very upset at the prospect of my fiancé‘s laying all those women, which I am. But what you do, you chastely decline, just as you did with my sister, and I point out to Daddy that that proves the whole thing was forged by your former tutor, who’s out to get you for some mysterious reason, which I think he is. Daddy agrees to everybody’s conditions; you hold out till the moon’s just overhead, that’ll be tide-turn; then you agree not to flood the city and you ask Poseidon out loud to make the water go down. The point of walking up with the tide instead of flying on Pegasus, I forgot to mention, is to demonstrate Change of Pace—the way Perseus did when he rescued Andromeda without using the Gorgon’s head? In my senior thesis I argue that mythic heroes do this now and then to show that it’s the general favor of the gods that gives them their clout, rather than some particular item of gear, which could be lost, stolen, or neutralized. It’s a debatable generalization, I know, but I had to get a prospectus in by mid-semester. I hope you’ll take a look at my list of examples and counter-examples. All set? How do you make Pegasus go up and down? But maybe you don’t want to do all this…’

  “I proposed marriage to her, she cried ‘Hooray!’ and accepted, we did all that, it worked and then some. Philonoë hadn’t mentioned that the Xanthian women’s-liberationists were the wild-mare kind; I cocked my spear and came up nicely before a beautiful surf that the hillbillies took hook line and sinker: then a great whinny came from the wall, and in the failing light I saw what looked like a dozen full moons or mad medusa-jellies charging toward me across the flat—the skirts-up tail-first business, paragraph d of the text-within-the-text et cetera. It was Corinth and Tiryns together; I dropped my spear and hit the breakers; we’d’ve lost the evening if salty Pegasus hadn’t whiffed hippomanes on those prevailing southerlies, swooped unbridled from the battlement like a five-legged dragon, and cuckolded two Xanthian haulseiners before he realized that their fleeing wives were only playing horsie.

  “ ‘My daughter’s hand and safe passage to Corinth,’ Iobates offered me.

  “ ‘Don’t be silly,’ Philonoë said: ‘he can have all of Lycia the way he can have me, just by taking it, whenever he wants to.’

  “ ‘Her plus half the kingdom outright, okay? You can’t ask for a better deal than that. Or her plus heirship to the whole operation, whichever you want.’

  “I tipped tongue to make the theta of “That’s just fine,’ but Philonoë spoke faster: ‘We’ll take both.’

  “ ‘Both!’ Iobates whistled for his landlubbers up on the roof; I for Pegasus down on the beach; Philonoë for her prospective father-in-law out in the surf. ‘You mean all three, don’t you?’ the King asked weakly, putting his daughter’s hand in mine. ‘Enjoy them in good health.’ Philonoë kissed him, tossed away the chiton, leaned her head demurely on my arm. Our engagement was declared at once (together with matrilineal-but-patriarchal home rule for the Xanthians, a compromise grudgingly accepted by the shaken mare-cultists), the wedding to be held as soon as Iobates and the Home Defense Council returned from a verification-trip to Mount Chimera. Regrettably, the party was intercepted on their descent through the goat-slopes by a troop of vengeful Amazons, possibly acting on information leaked by the haulseiners: half a dozen high Lycian officials fell in the skirmish; half a dozen more, the King included, were taken captive and, one at a time, given a knife and their choice of relieving themselves therewith of either their lives or their intromittent organs. Of this latter six, the one who took the latter option (Chairman of the H.D.C.) was set free to report—with tears in his eyes, but not, as some vulgar historians have it, in a high voice—that eleven Lycian matrons were dishusbanded; that Philonoë was now orphaned and queened, myself defatherinlawed, uncabineted, and kinged; that the Chimera was to all appearances no more, and my account of its traces correct in all particulars except that no sooty silhouette was on the rock-face, only a sooty outline, beneath which was found (and here delivered to me by the valiant old officer) a sooty scroll sealed with a wax impression of Chimera rampant and inscribed on the outside (in soot) For B from P: Begin in the Middle of the Road of Our Life. It pleased me to conclude that Polyeidus was not dead, only transmogrified. Philonoë taught me how to read and write; I put the scroll away and forgot about it until this morning. Drive me out. We were married and crowned, and lived happily ever after. Drive me out. Exile me from the city. Pegasus was put out to pasture and now can scarcely clear the clover.

  “In conclusion, I call your attention to the ambiguity of my official mythic history. I was never formally purified of my guilt in the matter of Glaucus and my brother. My behavior in Tiryns was at best questionable. Of the sinking of Chimarrhus and his Carian pirates, no observers save myself survived. To the rout of the Solymians and Amazons, the only possible witnesses were by me respectively stomped to death and raped-and-deported—I’ve never even bothered to inquire after that Amazon lance corporal in Corinth, a fact which also attests my apparent indifference to the welfare of my mother and my motherland. Not even that chiton is producible, since Philonoë took it off for keeps. Of the Chimera, no trace of either her existence or her demise except my tracing, which any schoolboy could duplicate on any wall. Of Polyeidus, the only other witness to the monstermachy, no further sign except the tedious text of this lecture. My only demonstrated wonder, the rising tide, I’ve shown to be more stratagem than miracle. Pegasus, unquestionably a marvel, was midwifed by Cousin Perseus, not by me, and merely lent me by Athene; moreover, he’s not what he used to be. But the final proof, if any is needed, of my fraudulent nature is that on the eve of my fortieth birthday, when your typical authentic mythic hero finds himself suddenly fallen from the favor of gods and men, I enjoy the devotion of my wife, the respect of my children, the esteem of my subjects, the admiration of my friends, and the fear of my enemies—all which argues the protection of Olympus. Throw me out.”

  Q: “That’s an answer?”

  A: “Pardon?”

  Q: “We’re pleased to announce, sir, that in recognition of this brilliant lecture series in particular, and in general appreciation of your patronage of the University and your distinguished contributions to the fields of heroical genetics and automythography, a committee of students, faculty, and administrators of the University of Lycia has voted unanimously to name you to the Iobates Memorial Throne of Applied Mythology, the most coveted chair in the University, newly established and funded by Queen Philonoë. Many happy returns, sir.”

  I fled to the marsh, heaved my breakfast and lecture-scroll into the spartina grass, remembered the handsome Chimera-seal on the latter, waded in to find and retrieve it from the ebbing tide, couldn’t, slogged about till sunset, found then in its place, high and dry at low water, Perseid, which I fetched back dismally to Page One, read, “Good night” “Good night,” et cetera, next A.M. fetched down the bridle after breakfast, burped to the horse-barns, was by lackeys boosted et cetera, clucked chucked et cetera: Pegasus flapped down on the tanbark like a fallen stork, here we are. In time Queen Philonoë, sitting pityingly by the paddock, read the Perseid and proposed:

  “Let’s take a trip! To all the places where you did your famous things? We’ll start in Corinth: Eurymede won’t believe how the kids have grown! Then Tiryns: I’ll tease my sister about her old crush on you and that disagreeable trick with the Bellerophontic letters, which you call Bellerophonic. Cyprian Salamis is out, since the Solymians seem to be acting up again, but we can tour the Carian-Pirate Museum at Pharmacusa and make a state visit to the Amazons at Themiscyra. I maintain a friendly interest in the Women’s Liberation Movement, though I’ve no particular desire to be ‘emancipated’ myself, as my neglect, since marriage, of intellectual activity, formerly a pas
sion with me, unhappily testifies. Finally, what I guess I’d rather do than anything else in the world besides be embraced by you: we’ll stand together on the exact spot where you killed the Chimera! It’s disgraceful that I’ve spent my whole life not a hundred kilometers from that mountain and never once gone up to see your celebrated drawing, now a leading Lycian tourist attraction—one more sad bit of testimony to the way we women are apt to let everything else slide in our preoccupation with child-bearing and -rearing, till we find ourselves grown dull and uninteresting people indeed, just at the time when our husbands and marriages may most need a spot of perking up. We’ll come home by way of the beach where I flagged you down and you proposed marriage to me and I accepted—the happiest moment of my nearly twoscore years. And so to bed.

  “Now it goes without saying that this is merely a suggestion—both the general idea of a sentimental journey and the specific itinerary I’ve proposed. Possibly it strikes you as too directly imitative of the Perseid? However, it seems to me that surely no harm could come of such a trip, and perhaps some real good might, since, as you once remarked informally to my Senior Mythology Seminar, the archetypal pattern of mythic adventure is as it is and not otherwise: while we may not comprehend it, we cannot deny it, and heroes will-they nill-they follow it. What perhaps doesn’t go without saying is that if in fact your adventure with Anteia, to name only one example, was less innocent than the official version maintains, and you feel it necessary to rehearse your past absolutely, you may depend on me as always to understand, even to honor, your decision: I count my own feelings as nothing beside my love for you and the importance of your career as mythic hero, et cetera.”