John Powys - Atlantis

Pontos and Proros were playing some private game of their own at the foot of the mast, a game that was clearly one rather of skill than of chance; for they threw no dice, and seemed to be moving little bits of wood from one position to another across some geometrical figure scrawled on the deck.

Nisos had the boldness at this moment, so quietly and silently was the “Teras” being rowed along that rocky coast of the Island of Wone in that unearthly moonlight, to sink down himself upon the old king’s seat of coiled ropes, as he watched in a sort of trance across the slowly changing rocky edges of Wone those two weird figures from Arima, whose unearthly and unending disputation with each other the wind must now be carrying back towards those old Eastern lands they were so steadily leaving as they sailed through the moonlight towards the unknown West.

It was a moment in his life, so our friend told himself, as he tried to arrange his limbs on his pile of ropes as comfortably as the king always did, that until his death he would remember.

“I don’t believe I will go down to dinner at all tonight,” he thought, answering, as he fancied, some call out of the moonlight that was more imperative for him than even the second call to the most important meal of the day, and in a flash of interior penetration he recognized that he still couldn’t decide whether it was Pontopereia or Eione he would like best to have for his wife.

“I don’t even know to which of them I am the more attracted! In fact, as I watch Arsinöe now, who is ever so much older than they are, I really think I would feel more at ease and more content if it were she rather than either of those young girls who was to be my mate. And she’s not only older; she’s a Trojan too! Of course I’d be thrilled to make love to either of those girls and overjoyed to sleep with either of them; but I’d be scared of being fixed up for good with that stupid little face of Eione’s or with that heavy little body of Pontopereia’s. I simply can’t understand it! But there it is: it’s the truth. What I feel now is that something — someone — a Presence of some kind — is calling to me out of this moonlight and out of this night-wind and out of these waves, though I’m damned if I know what kind of a Presence it is!

“Come! Tell me, you Unknown! Are you a living girl, you Mystery of the Night? Or are you a boy like me, alone and puzzled and not quite knowing what you want, but not wanting to go back to your mother, and hating your father and brother and your brother’s girl? Are you a boy like me, you Mystery of the Night, serving one of the greatest heroes the world has ever seen and a hero who has seen more of the world than any other human being who has ever been born? Are you a lonely girl who-want me for your mate? Or are you a lonely boy who want me for your ‘Hetairos’ or friend? Speak you Mystery of the Night! Speak and tell me which of the two you are!”

But there was no answer and the Moon grew steadily larger and larger and larger. And as Nisos settled himself deeper and deeper in the centre of that pile of ropes he began to feel as if it were the Moon herself, Selene the Moon-Goddess, who had selected him, as according to the rumours he was always hearing she had long ago selected Arcadian Pan and as she had lately selected, so the angelic scandal-mongers swore, the Carian shepherd Endymion of Mount Latmos.

He allowed himself to dally with this idea of having really attracted the attention of the Moon-Goddess on this night of all nights when her circle of white magic was full to the brim, until the inhuman murmur from Eurybia and Echidna, neither of whom seemed even remotely affected by their voyage through the air from Arima to Wone, reached such a point in their choreographic accompaniment to his fancy, as if — pair of ancestral Titanesses as they were! — they were about to vary the monotony of their immemorial argument by hopping up and down in the fury of their repartees!

It was at this point that Nisos fancying he saw Arsinöe, still in the arms of the now soundly sleeping Zeuks, throw him an understanding if not a companionable smile, replied to her by kissing his hand.

“I can’t help liking this Trojan girl,” he said to himself; and then, as his gaze returned to Eurybia and Echidna, and from them wandered back to the coast of Wone, and from thence to the moonlight on the ocean, there rushed through his mind like jaggedly forked lightning a startling philosophical speculation.

“Does everything come round in circles and repeat itself? Was there, when people first invented boats and ships, some boy like me ten thousand years ago who lay on a ship’s deck, such as ships were in those days, with only one deck, and only a couple of oarsmen, and a sail made of the skins of seals and wild goats, and said to himself, just as I am saying now: ‘I don’t want to go back to mother and father. I want to serve my King. I want to make love to that girl I saw on that wharf where we moored yesterday!’

“And will there be a boy like me ten thousand years hence who will lie on a much grander deck than this and say to himself: ‘I don’t want to go back to my mother and father! I want to sail round all the known West to the Isles of the Blest!’ That boy who was like me; and this boy who will be like me, shall we three meet in the kingdom of Aidoneus?”

Nisos had only just begun to turn his mind away from thinking about boys like himself ten thousand years before and ten thousand years after, when he saw Arsinöe open her beautiful eyes very wide indeed and give a start that would have waked from sleep anyone in the world save the son of Arcadian Pan who was holding her on his knee.

At the same time Nisos felt himself touched on the shoulder. He twisted his head round, and there before him in the moonlight stood the figure of Odysseus!

“Hush!” whispered the old hero while his bowsprit beard tickled Nisos’ chin: “get up as quietly as you can, my boy, and take a step with me!”

It was a comfort to Nisos to notice when he was on his feet that his friend Arsinöe had been shrewd enough to shut her eyes and pretend to surrender herself to what certainly looked like a sleep as deep as Zeuks’ own.

“I won’t take you with me just now further than the ladder, my boy,” said Odysseus still speaking very quietly. “I came to fetch ‘Expectation’, my most valued weapon, with which, as you know, Herakles killed the Nemean lion. But I also came to tell you what my intention is. I have already told Akron, who is at this moment informing the oarsmen what I have in mind, and I have already told Eumolpos the helmsman. My intention is this. My son Telemachos received, when he visited the yellow-haired Menelaos, as a guest-gift from Helen herself, a little phial of Nepenthe which was given to her by the King of Egypt.

“When even a few drops of this divine Nepenthe, the enemy of all suffering, are dropped into wine, the wine into which the Nepenthe has been poured, takes away all thoughts that bring anxiety or pain or fear or doubt or suspicion or grief or envy or hatred or terror; and in place of these a beatific happiness fills our souls to the brim.

“A little of this precious Nepenthe goes a very long way; and I have brought some of it with me to this ship. Now what I propose to do is to put a few drops of this divine drug into the wine which our four Ladies, together with Nausikaa’s official Herald, will presently be drinking in my cabin. You and I, however — and for heaven’s sake, child, don’t you go and get caught by the fragrance of the wine or lured into letting the least drop of it touch your tongue! — as soon as we see that the four ladies and Nausikaa’s Herald have fallen asleep and are deep sunk in this blessed Elysium of happy visions, having taken good care — and don’t you forget that part of it, my son! — to eat enough to last us, if need be, for a whole night and day, we, I say, will leave that lower deck and come up here, to be ready for, well, for whatever fate may bring!”