John Powys - Atlantis

Our friend’s voice was pitched so high, and he flung into it such a resounding intonation, that not only did Akron cast a sweeping glance from one end to the other of all the Horizon that was visible from their present position, but, to the evident surprise of Zeuks, Enorches actually did scramble clumsily to his feet, and even began automatically kicking at the skirt of his longest blanket as if to make sure that his sandals were firmly fastened.

Nisos then snatched instinctively at Arsinöe’s arm; and followed closely by Zeuks, with Enorches lurching and shuffling after them, he turned his back upon the dragon-neck of the ship’s figure-head and, avoiding the eyes of Pontos and Proros, for with a certain part of his mind he felt as if he were running away, he headed for that already familiar ladder leading down to the oarsmen’s deck.

At the foot of this first ladder he paused for no more time than was just needed to get a glimpse of the face of Euros, a face that at that second looked vexed, irritated, touchy, anxious, full of the most sensitive perturbations, as he bent above his. motionless oar, ready to give it the pull of a master oarsman at the faintest hint from the upper deck.

Arrived at that crowded, ticklish, furtively confused and terribly littered centre of all the gossip and eavesdropping that went on in the passenger’s quarter, Nisos, who was followed closely by Zeuks and by Arsinöe, who once again had a tight hold of each other’s hands, but who himself, since he had no. hand to share with anyone, nor much thought for anything either, save to steer the wavering steps of the Priest of the Mysteries, had a moment’s breathing-space. Now that this weird and disturbing individual was safely under at least temporary control Nisos couldn’t help noticing the insatiable and unpleasantly greedy manner in which the man snuffed up and inhaled with, undisguised relish all the odours and all the smells and all the fragrances and all the airy essences and all the fetid stinks that challenged both the nostrils and the stomachs of any newcomers who dared to plunge from the upper deck into the stygian reek of these bowels of the “Teras”.

And Nisos couldn’t resist saying to himself: “Would this extraordinary creature advise us to lose ourselves in the madness of love or the madness of drink, and thus get to the Original nothingness, before the earth, before the sky, before the sea, before the sun, before the gods created man, before man created the Gods, if he hadn’t forgotten the oracle that my mother used to tell me was what, by his obedience to it, made Odysseus the wisest of all men— Meeden Agan, ‘nothing in excess’?”

“Why in the name of Aidoneus,” the lad’s thoughts ran on, as he watched his blanketed priest snuffing up with such a frenzy of maniacal sensuality the whirligig-reek of kitchen-fumes mixed with the contaminated sweat of the youthful disposers of excrement, “why in the name of Aidoneus was mother always quoting that Meeden Agan, ‘Nothing in Excess’, motto? It had nothing to do with the House of Naubolides, and was always on the lips of Odysseus. I can’t understand it! Well, well! ‘Nothing in Excess’ will have now to be my motto, even when it comes to plunging into the revelry of this weird feast.”

But it is easier to formulate a philosophy, even if we are destined to be a prophet in later life, than to apply it to a definite and particular occasion; and Nisos was puzzled by the sharpness of the pang of jealousy of which he became aware when Zeuks put his arm round the waist of Arsinöe.

The daughter of Hector and the son of Arcadian Pan, however, seemed wholly and entirely oblivious of the feelings they were exciting in their guide as they pushed on in front of him.

Nisos, indeed, had all he could do, apart entirely from his feelings, in steering the blanketed Priest of Orpheus through this packed and perspiring crowd. The most difficult place to pass, with Enorches as your self-absorbed ghost-walker, was the spot where a couple of elongated planks had been laid down to cover a slippery slope that led to the kitchens and pantries and sculleries as well as to the sleeping-quarters of the Lybian and Syrian ship-boys.

Nisos was struck at this particular point at once by the perfect opportunity which such a spot offered for the accumulation of filth, and by the noteworthy fact, which certainly spoke well for the crew, that those planks were so immaculately clean. As both white and black serving-boys, in spite of their trained politeness and of their evident terror of the blankets of Enorches, were pushed and jostled against him by their companions, Nisos decided that the sweat of the lads of the Greek islands and mainland had a completely different odour from the sweat of the lads from the more eastern Asiatic shores and harbours.

But he had no time to pause to philosophize now upon differences of human sweat for Zeuks had already got himself and Arsinöe into that unusual cabin crowded with people and it had fallen to the lot of Nisos to project the staring Enorches, blankets and all, into the presence of Odysseus and Nausikaa who were on their feet in that extempore dining-hall talking gravely together.

The old king and his ballad-princess of so long ago were, however, spared the discomfort of having to be polite to such a person as Enorches by the appearance on the scene, this time for just the sort of occasion Nisos had always prayed would never arise, of the super-official, super-courtly, super-distinguished, super-pontifical Herald; who at once, as a born authority in regard to all ceremonies that require magisterial handling, and as a practised expert in all those concatenations that need super-natural tact, greeted Zeuks and Arsinöe with a glance and a couple of words, and took the Priest of Orpheus under his impeccable wing.

As for Nisos, who was quite alone now, he found himself once more following Zeuks and Arsinöe with his eyes. Neither Odysseus nor Nausikaa seemed to notice him, although the king may have done so without revealing it. But the feeling that caused him to stand and gaze at the back of Zeuks’ satyrish knuckles as they presented themselves to his view, with the implication that the palm of the man’s hand was enjoying the curve of the girl’s hip, was accentuated now by an uprush of self-revelation that nearly knocked him over.

The truth of the matter now must be, he now boldly dared to tell himself, that it was this Trojan woman Arsinöe, and not either his friend Tis’s little sister, Eione, nor the prophet’s prophetic daughter, Pontopereia, whom he desired for his wife.

“Yes,” Nisos told himself, “though she must be years and years older than I am, she’s the one I want! She understands me better than anybody in the world except Tis; and I like her better than anyone in the world. I like her better than father or mother or Agelaos.”

Odysseus and Nausikaa, who now seemed completely absorbed in each other, kept moving a little nearer to him, though without taking any notice of him; and this went on till he was leaning with his back against several pieces of suspended armour and a couple of tunics woven in Ithaca but dyed in Tyre: it went on, in fact, till he began to feel, not so much hungry, as extremely sleepy.

What was indeed like a demonic teasing of him by fate than anything else was the fact that although he could just make out from where he leant, or rather crouched, behind the king and Nausikaa, the figure of Okyrhöe seated calmly, and with a face like a mask, at one of the long tables, with an empty place next to her, devouring with an absorbed and concentrated attention a somewhat over-ripe Sicilian melon, he could only just see, between the embroidered sleeve of the protective Herald and the bare neck of the protected Enorches the delicate waist and the left breast, the latter only half-covered with “linon” that specially lovely Achaian linen so dear to the ladies of all lands, of the girl with whom he now knew he was really in love as he had never been in love before.