Autolycus spoke with such feeling that the shepherd divined he spoke from experience, even though he was so young.
‘Would you be a thief, then, Autolycus?’
‘Did I say so, sir?’
‘Would you be a thief like Sisyphus – that pigmy Prometheus with the manners of a brutish Ares?’ pursued the shepherd.
‘Sisyphus is rich,’ said the boy enviously. ‘And between you and me, he’s no fool, sir.’
‘It is not between you and me,’ said the shepherd coldly. ‘The world knows Sisyphus. The hoof marks of the herds he’s stolen are like a trumpeting highway of tongues.’
‘I’d have tied tree-bark to their hooves,’ said the boy dreamily. ‘Or something like that.’
The shepherd started – then shifted slightly as if to evade some sudden heat of the sun.
‘I wish,’ went on the boy in so low a voice that the shepherd bent near to hear him, ‘I wish I could change the look of things so that anything I picked up, or found, or happened on, I could make look my own. For between you and me, sir – and it really is between you and me – that would be a gift of the gods; especially for lads like me who are more peaceable and delicate than Titans – even though they dream as high.’
The talk of dreams appeared to have infected the shepherd; he lapsed into a brooding quiet. His golden eyes seemed to shed veils and mirror a wider world than the banks of the dancing little stream. Endless sands and landlocked pools of light that sparkled fierily.
‘You’ve caught something!’ said the boy suddenly.
The shepherd awoke from his dream. He laughed and drew his staff out of the coiling water. A fish jerked and twisted and flashed on the end of it. He gave it to Autolycus and in so doing touched the boy’s head and hands with the strange staff.
‘If I were truly a god and you were truly my son,’ he murmured, ‘I think I would grant you the gift of changing the look of things . . .’
‘And—?’ said Autolycus, holding the fish by its tail and staring with childish desire at the shepherd’s pretty sandals.
‘And the modesty not to overstep the limits of your nature,’ said the shepherd, abruptly standing up, ‘and ask for too much.’
Then, with a curious, half-sideways, half-backwards movement, the shepherd vanished into the wood that skirted the stream.
The boy Autolycus gazed after him. ‘If he was truly a god and I was truly his son,’ he whispered to himself, ‘I’d never get caught again.’
He grinned cheerfully and walked neatly by the stream, carrying the marvellous fish and the marvellous story home to Chione, his mother.
SEVENTEEN
TWO THIEVES
The lands of Sisyphus straddled the Isthmus of Corinth. Everything about him was huge; his strength, his wealth and his villainy. His cattle were said to be as splendid as the legendary herds of Apollo; and his brilliant wife, Merope, was reputed to be a Titan’s daughter. Nothing but the best for mortal Sisyphus who, if he lacked fire, would have picked the pocket of the sun.
Now Sisyphus, unlike the gods but like all other men, had a neighbour. It was perhaps the one thing he had that hadn’t been stolen. He’d had neighbours before, but none like this one whose charm and modesty were almost supernatural. His name was Autolycus. Several times he’d called on Sisyphus and admired the treasures of his home; but when he left, Sisyphus counted them up with a shrewd frown.
There was something about this sleek, dark-haired neighbour, who always seemed to go through doors sideways, that he didn’t altogether trust. Under the perfume of scented oil that wafted from his neat curls, Sisyphus was certain he’d caught the familiar whiff of dishonesty.
But nothing was ever missing, so Sisyphus concluded he’d frightened Autolycus off.
Nonetheless, Sisyphus kept a watchful eye across his wide rolling pastures towards where Autolycus had built his modest home on the shoulder of a hill.
It was in the spring time and Sisyphus’s fields were sparkling green. Indeed, they seemed to be greener than usual; or rather, more green than usual seemed to be showing among his mighty grazing herds. Sisyphus’s eyes narrowed. Either his lands had stretched or his cattle had dwindled.
He stared across the landscape towards the humble estate of Autolycus – then back to his own gigantic domain. He did this at frequent and unexpected intervals, sometimes early in the morning and sometimes in the secret time of evening when the herds cast giant shadows like mountains on stilts.
There was no doubt. His cattle was steadily dwindling. Unfortunately, Autolycus’s seemed to be increasing at almost the same rate. This was odd.
Savagely Sisyphus scowled at his own thinning pastures – and then towards his neighbour’s crowded land. He scratched his head. Though his own cattle had been of a rich reddish brown, and Autolycus’s were unarguably black and white, there was something familiar about them.
He shook his fist and, in the distance, Autolycus, perhaps mistaking the gesture, waved to him courteously and bowed.
Sisyphus nodded grimly. ‘Very well, my oily friend. I don’t know how you’ve done it, but I’ll catch you at it yet. And then you’ll wish you’d settled elsewhere and not matched your wits against great Sisyphus.’
That evening Sisyphus and his servants were busy among the engulfing shadows of his herds and, try as he might, Autolycus could not see what they were at. He could hear a faint sound of scraping and the occasional lowing of some protesting cow; but nothing more. He shrugged his shoulders and waited for the modesty of night.
Next morning, Autolycus received a visit. Sisyphus’s servants called and sternly asked to see his cattle. Autolycus, all courtesy, said he understood his neighbour’s herds were failing and he was very sorry on that account. No one liked to see cattle disappear. It was a sad and uncomfortable thing. But as Sisyphus’s herds were horned and reddish-brown, and all his own were hornless and noticeably black-and-white, he didn’t see how he could help. But he, Autolycus, was the last man to stand in the way of a just inquiry. By all means, search the stables and the fields. Better it should be done at once rather than that suspicion should be left to hang like a cloud between neighbours. An honest man has nothing to fear and welcomes further proof of his honesty. An honest man—
Autolycus stopped. His smile turned waxen and his complexion matched it. He opened his mouth and shut it; and looked exceedingly awkward. The servants of Sisyphus stared at him grimly. They pointed to the hoofs of a cow. There was something engraved on the inside.
Autolycus’s mind flew back to the scraping he’d heard in the evening. He bent down to examine the tell-tale hoof, thinking furiously how it might be accounted for.
Alas! It was beyond even him. The trail of indulgent smiles that had followed him since childhood came to an abrupt end. On the inside of the cow’s hoof were scored the damning words, ‘Stolen by Autolycus.’
‘Some god must have done it,’ mumbled Autolycus feebly, observing Sisyphus’s servants rummaging among other informative cows.
‘Some god indeed,’ came the stern reply. There was silence; and the great sun grinned down on the unlucky scene, making Autolycus sweat even more.
Suddenly there was a shriek from the front of the house. Autolycus, thankful for any excuse to escape, rushed to see what had happened.
He was too late. While the search had been going on at the back, Sisyphus had taken his revenge uninterrupted at the front. Autolycus saw his mighty neighbour departing, shaking with triumphant laughter. He had ravished Autolycus’s daughter, Anticleia, and left her, scarlet-cheeked and sobbing, in the porch. Her gown was torn, her hair awry and everything about her proclaimed her ruin. Sisyphus had struck a frightful double blow.
Even as he bent to comfort Anticleia, whose shame was giving way to anger, Autolycus saw his cattle being driven across the fields.
‘Avenge me, father,’ wept the girl. ‘For who will marry me now?’
Autolycus nodded. Sisyphus had certainly damaged his daughter’s chances. He
scowled and clenched his fists.
But Sisyphus was a big man, even a head taller than Autolycus; and he had the strength of a Titan. Autolycus relaxed his fists. He remembered the shepherd he’d met by the stream, long ago. ‘Do not overstep the limits of your nature.’ Well . . . well, there was no doubt that Sisyphus was outside the limits of his nature.
‘Avenge me, father,’ repeated Anticleia, her lovely face cancelled with tears.
‘Yes . . . yes . . .’ muttered Autolycus, stroking his daughter’s tangled hair and gazing mournfully towards where the huge figure of Sisyphus dwindled in the distance. ‘Revenge.’ He sighed. ‘But what’s done cannot be undone, my dear. Not that I don’t feel a father’s anger and sense of proper outrage. But – but were I to go and bring you back the head of monstrous Sisyphus, what good would it do? Maybe you’d bruise your little foot with kicking it – and then it would hang about and smell out the house. The sweetness of revenge, my child, very soon turns rotten and plagues the revenger. Surely, daughter, it is more a father’s duty to look to the future?’
‘What future?’ wept Anticleia bitterly.
‘We must not look on it,’ said Autolycus, brightening up and exercising his divine gift for changing the appearance of things, ‘as being the grievous loss of your honour. Let us instead look on it as it truly is. He has lost in you his child. He shall have no part of the infant you will bear. It will be a son, Anticleia; I know it . . . and glorious. Yes, indeed, we have robbed Sisyphus of a real treasure.’ Autolycus grew more and more enthusiastic as he changed disaster into triumph – and hoped his daughter would see it the same way, too. ‘I know a prince,’ he went on, effortlessly. ‘A gentle, simple fellow called Laertes. Ithaca is his home. You shall marry him, Anticleia; and all that’s happened this morning will remain for ever between you and me. Laertes shall be the father of my grandson . . .’
‘Is this, then, to be your only revenge, father,’ whispered Anticleia wearily, ‘to have deceived the prince of Ithaca?’
‘Pooh!’ said Autolycus. ‘Laertes will never suspect.’
‘I would have thought,’ said Anticleia softly, ‘that the grandson of Autolycus and the son of Sisyphus would rouse suspicion in a daisy.’
‘He will bring us glory,’ mused Autolycus, lapsing into golden dreams. ‘His fame will blot out Sisyphus as if he’d never been. And that will be a true revenge, my daughter.’ Here he smiled as he deftly shifted all thought of vengeance onto the unborn shoulders. ‘Call him the Angry One, Anticleia. For my sake, call him Odysseus . . .’
Prince Laertes was everything that Autolycus had represented him to be – at least in the way of simplicity. He married Anticleia and, in the course of time and nature, the child was born on stony Ithaca. Proudly Laertes claimed fatherhood; while Anticleia smiled a trifle sadly and called the boy Odysseus.
Then she returned to watching over the darkly winking sea for the next tall ship to come from Corinth with the news she longed to hear . . . that someone had avenged her on that great villain, Sisyphus.
But the world was Sisyphus’s garden, and Autolycus was his footstool. The huge criminal seemed to get great pleasure from jeering at the gentle thief, and lost no opportunity of belittling him. Merope, his proud wife, irritably begged him not to make a fool of himself by breathing fire that scorched no more than the air. Autolycus wasn’t worth it. But Sisyphus had got it into his head that Autolycus had been helped by a god, and he longed to sting the oily fellow into admitting it so that the world might know that Sisyphus had outwitted a thief who was half divine.
At last, Merope, hoping to turn her great husband’s ambition towards something nobler, told him in confidence that Atlas was her father. At once, Sisyphus claimed Prometheus as an uncle by marriage and began to entertain powerful and confused thoughts of inheriting the Titan’s vast estate.
‘He is going mad,’ wrote Autolycus to his daughter in Ithaca. ‘Between ourselves, I do believe our friend will try to outwit Zeus himself. If so, then I fear that vengeance is entirely out of my hands. So watch the sky, daughter . . .’
He sent also a jar of perfumed oil for his grandson Odysseus’s rich gold hair. Then he continued to watch with interest the gigantic affairs of his neighbour, while helping himself to odds and ends of cattle from the other side.
EIGHTEEN
A DEADLY VISION
It was late in the year and the last of autumn lingered in the air. Already Demeter had lost her child and the river nymphs cast frightened glances in their fathers’ streams, seeing in them the menace of ice. But Zeus still played, for the game of the year was not yet done. He came in gold – as if to tempt the woods and glades into an unseasonable spring . . . while mighty Hera watched and bided her gigantic time. Sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, the great goddess would whisper to the nodding sea; sometimes in the blinding blaze of noon, she would move across the sun . . . and, as always, the terrible arrows of Artemis would strike wherever wild Zeus loved. Such an autumn was in the air . . .
Dreamily great Sisyphus watched the brown leaves curl and twist away from an oak tree that stood at the edge of a wood he’d newly claimed. He played Titanic games in his mind: if such a leaf fell before another, then he would gain this and that; if they fell together, he would live a hundred years more. Whichever way they fell, he could not lose.
Then, quite suddenly, there came a rustling and a whispering as a breeze sprang up and fidgeted all the crisp dry foliage in the wood. Sisyphus frowned, and with humorous daring wagered possession of the world itself on the fall of a single trembling leaf. The breeze grew stronger. A little whirlwind seemed to have lost its way among the trees. A column of leaves was spinning and dancing as if to get out; then all at once it did, and with a flash of red and gold and brown, it cleaned the oak tree as if with a broom. He thought he heard a cry. He felt the air grow warm – like an unseasonable spring – and there was a smell of honey everywhere. He crouched down in the long grass and watched the whirlwind struggle in the naked branches of the oak.
Then came a gust of rain . . . from nowhere, for the sky was clear. It beat down the dancing leaves. The air sparkled and Sisyphus fancied he saw two vast bright forms struggling in passion and dread. Even as he watched, he saw the brighter, grander shape bear the other backwards.
He saw two faces – one fiery, one amazed. He saw the oak tree quiver and heard it crack from the unearthly heat . . .
Birds screamed and shrieked and spiralled wildly into the sky; then down they plunged to scorch their feathers in the blazing air. They were sparrows, mad little sparrows . . .
The double fire grew brighter, leaping and twisting in the air till all the grass and trees and rocks were tipped with melted gold.
Sisyphus’s eyeballs were blistering – but yet he watched, dimly understanding the stupendous scene. Suddenly, the radiance grew to an intolerable proportion so that the very air moaned. For an instant, it remained thus; then the heat diminished and the smell of honey redoubled, flooding the air and drowning the senses in the space of a second.
A golden man and woman – of rippling, uncertain outline – seemed to be lying in the grass. Slowly Sisyphus grinned as the wonder resolved itself. Here was a god and nymph in ecstasy. He had seen it – he had seen it!
But there was more to come. The nymph slipped from the embrace and fled. The golden man started and with new desire began to pursue her. They flickered among the trees, flaring out from time to time, leaving a fiery imprint on Sisyphus’s eyes so that he was half-blinded by a multi-coloured image of laughter that engulfed the world.
Faster and faster burned the pursuit – arms like flames licked round the shaking trees; then, abruptly, it stopped.
A new sound was in the air, a rushing, roaring sound. The nymph vanished and the golden man stood listening with a blazing smile, half mocking, half angry.
Sisyphus trembled in the long grass as the savage uproar grew nearer. The trees swayed and the lower branches splintered away from
the trunks with loud cracks like volleying thunderbolts. Water began to pour through the wood like silver blood from a thousand wounds. There was a stench of weed and slime and the golden man flashed from tree to tree, shaking with laughter.
Now it was he who was being pursued, and suddenly Sisyphus saw the pursuer. He caught his breath.
Robed in his torrent like a drowned dream of stony eyes, mouth, hair and hands, came mighty Asopus – the god of the river – and straightway there began a chase of gigantic dimensions. The river god blundered through the wood, uprooting the stout trees and flinging them aside so that their roots made snaky bushes with forking, earth-clogged tongues, while the golden man, still helpless with angry laughter, twisted endlessly out of his reach.
The wood was full of reflections as the river god rushed and plunged. Strange skies appeared amid the falling trees; and upside-down mountains and slanting palaces whose porticos broke into ripples and flowed into the ground. Then Sisyphus glimpsed himself, thin-eyed and ambitious, peering secretly into the uncanny flood.
The god had seen him. Sisyphus shrank back; then, trembling, stood erect and stared up while his narrow head was bursting to control the vision.
Asopus paused between two lofty pine trees, his huge limbs greenly glimmering; above them, reflected clouds sailed across his stony face so that his cold eyes seemed continually veiled and unveiled by billowing cataracts, while his cheeks were scarred with deep, tree-filled ravines whose other selves plunged through mountains far, far in the north.
‘My daughter,’ whispered the god. ‘Where is she? Where did she fly?’
Sisyphus’s mind struggled to stretch the limits of his mortal brain. He panted with exultation; he was poised between gods. He had spied through his grass keyhole on a divine secret; and now his power was enormous.
‘I saw her ravished,’ he answered the terrible green god, who seemed the larger of the two and consequently would have the more to offer.
The God Beneath the Sea Page 13