John Powys - Atlantis

She certainly was a shrewd and intelligent woman, this mother of Omphos, Kissos, and Sykos; and now when Zeuks entered her domain to get a light so as to deal with Pegasos, and found her directing her three sons in the complicated task of piling up and putting away all this precious crockery, he was conscious of being delivered, merely by drawing her attention to his situation, from a whole load of tiresome responsibility.

She told him at once to fetch Pegasos out of that cold and dark shed and to bring him into the kitchen; and when he obeyed her and they had tied this mutilated and one-winged creature, who had once flown above the turrets of Arabia and the domes of China and the pyramids of Egypt and had distended its quivering nostrils in its flight to catch the enchanted odours that are wafted down on certain human midnights from the ghostly valleys of the moon, to one of the shadowy meat-hooks that broke the flickering fire-lit surface of those friendly walls, it was easy to see from the immortal animal’s grateful eyes as they were turned first to one and then to another till they finally rested on the woman herself, that the prospect of a night behind the cyclopean pre-historic walls of Ornax after his windy lodging on the outskirts of Cuckoo-Hill was now wholly congenial to him.

Nemertes hesitated not to take entire possession of Zeuks at once and to tell him exactly what he had better do if he wished his one night in Ornax to be really a pleasant one.

“You will have to sleep in the porch of the Chamber of the Mirror so as to be a guard for the sleep of the Mistress. This will be the sleeping arrangement with which nothing must interfere; but if you, my Lord Zeuks, and you, my Lord Pegasos, agree to accept this arrangement, it is in my power to give you ”—and she turned to Zeuks—“and you ”—and she stroked the great free beautiful useless unhurt wing of her animal-visitor which now trailed across a third of the floor, “the peacefullest sleep you’ve ever had in your lives.”

“Give us this?” enquired Zeuks in his most cheerful and humorous intonation.

“How will you give us this?” asked Pegasos with his appealing eyes.

And the woman answered by immediate action. She went to a great brazen receptacle in a corner of the kitchen and scooped up two handfuls of oats which she forthwith presented to the winged horse, who reverently swallowed them. Then she lifted the lid of a substantial chest made of sycamore wood from the main-land and brought out a small loaf. This she deliberately broke into four pieces, one big piece and three small pieces; and handing one of the small pieces to each of her sons who straightway began munching and masticating it with intense satisfaction, she gave the large piece to Zeuks who promptly kissed it and crammed it into his mouth, but allowed half of it to remain in one cheek, and half of it in the other, un-chewed and un-swallowed.

It was at this point that Zeuks noticed a hurried whispered conversation going on between Omphos, Kissos, and Sykos; and before he had made up his mind whether to ignore what he perceived or to boldly ask them what was the matter, Omphos, the eldest of the three, crossed the kitchen with obvious nervousness, while Pegasos, answering this respectful courtesy with equal consideration, did his best to move his unhurt wing out of the young man’s way.

When Omphos reached Zeuks he stood in front of him like an earnest-minded school-boy summoned for an oral examination; and Nemertes couldn’t help noting how quaint it was to see the two cheeks of this examiner of young men bulging so auspiciously for his own future enjoyment but rendering him practically inarticulate before an academic questioner.

But the question asked by Omphos was a simple one. “Could you tell us, my Lord Zeuks, exactly what you thought of when you say we must still practise ‘prokleesis’ though we were soon going to be cut to pieces by those pirates?”

What Zeuks desired to do at this point was first to use his tongue to push both halves of that delicious little loaf into one bulging cheek, and then with that same tongue to discourse so eloquently on the practice of “prokleesis” when you were watching people tortured or when you were being tortured yourself, that not only Omphos but his sympathetic brothers and possibly even their wise mother would decide to try how it worked in the ordinary vexations of every day.

But all he could blurt out at the moment was: “Of course nobody can bear more than a certain amount of pain; and if you’re watching its infliction on others there comes a point when you break out or go raving mad; but nothing helps anyone to endure what can be endured more than forcing yourself to feel in the way ‘prokleesis’ makes you feel: for when you feel like this it isn’t the cruel enemy or executioner or torturer or murderer you are defying; it is Life itself!

“And what are you defying Life to do? You are defying Life to make you stop fighting Life! You are defying Life to make you worship Death! You are defying Life to make you lose yourself in those Half-Deaths of mystical ecstasy, such as Enorches praises; he who this very day plucked out the wing that was the twin of this!”

Zeuks’ whole figure looked absurdly un-heroic and unprophetic as with his mouth full of half-munched bread he pulled out from under his belt a corner of his shirt and used it to dab up a small trickle of blood-stained ichor that was at the moment feeling its cautious way along the spine of the Flying Horse in evident fear of ending its career as a living stream in a pool on the kitchen-floor.

It is doubtful whether even the most perspicacious ghost among those who were rumoured to have recently escaped from the under-world under the guidance of Pontopereia’s father, had such an one passed through Ornax, would have been drawn to Zeuks as a person naturally provocative of spiritual attention.

But whatever an enlightened fugitive in the train of Teiresias might have thought of this short, vulgarly-attired individual, with his thumbs in his belt, who now proceeded to rub his bleached and bloated physiognomy, making as he did so a grotesque purring sound in his gullet, against the arched neck of the wounded offspring of the Gorgon’s blood, Zeuks himself had not experienced a more delicious sensation of well-being since the days when he lived so contentedly with the cast-off paramour of the goat-footed Pan.

The bread he was masticating was proving so delicious and he kept turning it round and round in his mouth so long that when he finally did gulp it down it was simply saliva that he swallowed, only faintly tinctured with a lingering taste of wheaten bread. But it conveyed to every cell, tissue, nerve, fibre, gland and sense-centre in his whole body all the long air-nourished, sun-perforated, dew-quickened, rain-soaked experiences that had filled with more than physical richness each grain of wheat that made up Nemertes’ precious flour.

Zeuks felt sure as he rubbed his head against the neck of Pegasos that the animal was feeling from its digesting of those oats exactly what he was feeling himself from his long-munched bread. It was therefore something of a shock to him when he heard the voice of young Nisos addressing him from the doorway and saw the others all turn round to greet the excited boy.

Nisos brought the news that Odysseus had decided to start for home extremely early; actually, in fact, before that faint grey light that preludes the rising of the sun and in Ithaca was called “Lykophos” or “Wolf’s Light”. Between the three sons of Nemertes, as Nisos made his announcement, a swift glance of pleasure and surprise had passed; and it was clear to both Zeuks and the boy that whatever the feeling of Nemertes might be, as far as Omphos, Kissos and Sykos were concerned the fact that this visit was to end before dawn was an indescribable relief.