John Powys - Atlantis

“Don’t you think, my friend, that what she really wants is to re-establish something of her old link with the old man? Don’t you think that in this subtle battle between these two — and I confess, my dear, it’s a surprise to me that this complete stranger from Thebes, of whom we know nothing except what she herself tells us, should presume to make such a bold move as to try at once to link her life with his in sexual love so as to forestall any natural return of the old romantic attraction between Odysseus and Nausikaa — don’t you think that it’s our business to help Nausikaa all we can and to put as many spikes as we possibly can in the wily path of this confounded sorceress?”

Was it Atropos again who now inspired the Trojan captive with a lie worthy of the old Odysseus himself?

“I have already, Nisos Naubolides, thought of this very thing. In fact I have been spending all the twilight hours of this long and heavy evening, while these sailors of the Princess have been making such a barbaric rumpus, in carrying out to a particular tree, yes, Nisos Naubolides, to a special ash-tree in our ghostly Arima here which for years I have been carving into a faint resemblance to Hector of Troy himself, one after another of these golden pieces of the armour that once belonged to Achilles.”

Nisos stared at the woman for a second in absolute wonder, even with awe. How clever girls were! How they anticipated everything that could possibly happen, and long before it happened too! So this was the explanation of a premonition he had had for some while that something was going to happen here at home that would turn out to be more serious than any crazy excursions upon which Arcadian Pan might embark with poor little Eione, Tis’s small sister!

“Listen, you wise one!” he cried, pulling her close to him by her shoulders and putting his eager lips to her right ear, “can’t you think of some trick you and I might play upon this damned woman from Syracuse — no! from Thebes it was! And, by the gods I shall hate the very name of Thebes from now on! Yes, I shall always think of Thebes in future as a filthy city of rats, with walls of stinking rottenness, and towers and domes that are just heaps of dung!

“But tell me, Arsinöe, O please, please tell me, Arsinöe, how we can play some effective trick upon this scriggling and wriggling worm of a woman! You were so clever, Arsinöe, so divinely clever, in making an image of carved wood out of a living tree and hanging the armour of Achilles on it! Surely you can think of some device, some trick, some stab in the dark, by which you and I together could save the old man from this curst Theban Sorceress! Do, do, I beg and beseech you, Arsinöe, put your good Trojan wits alongside of my poor rocky-island ones and see what we can do! Never mind your coming from Troy. In a thing like this we are at one. Your grand old Priam would agree with me I know; and as for the noble Hector himself, why, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second! I know it, I am sure of it, my sweet Arsinöe! Ithaca and Ilium can hold together as well as any civilized pair against this dock-yard Brothel Bitch from the slave-markets of the Orient! Think, think, think, all-wise one! I swear to you that you and I, if we can only put our heads properly together, can forget all that old Helen-of-Troy business and show this confounded Theban witch that she shan’t meddle with us in our gratitude to these Phaiakian sea-farers and to their brave Princess Nausikaa.

“For the gods’ sake think, my wise one, think out a cunning scheme that’ll save our old man from this infernal witch!” Nisos then became silent for a while, holding Arsinöe by the shoulders and pressing her gently against one of the walls of that long narrow down-descending passage, illuminated here and there by richly-oiled and richly-ensconced torches, and echoing at intervals, as the door at the bottom of it opened to let someone in or out, to the excited voices of the Phaiakian sailors, who, in Eurycleia’s subterranean kitchen, were enjoying her sagacious hospitality. Then, bending his head down gravely and seriously he touched Arsinöe’s forehead with his lips. And it was at this moment that the thought first flashed through his mind that he was the kind of boy who could only be really happy if he had as his wife a woman a lot older than himself.

“For don’t you see, Arsinöe, my darling friend,” he went on, “don’t you see, here there has suddenly come by the very will of Atropos herself, the grandest chance that the old man is ever likely to have to realize his desire to sail over the great Western ocean, under the waves of which Atlantis lies and to discover what unknown lands and continents and peoples and cities and fields of rich grain exist beyond those furthest horizons of water! For don’t you see, Arsinöe darling, if this Princess Nausikaa can only be brought to see our old man as she saw him once when she loved him at first sight, why then, my lovely Trojan, let the armour of Achilles be left on your Image of Hector! Odysseus will be the Captain of Nausikaa’s ship; and together they will sail into the fabulous memory of all the men who come after us — and, O my dear! may the old little goddess of Fate, Atropos herself, see to it that I am with him in this venture!”

Nisos was again silent, holding her by her shoulders against that wall. And then suddenly, freeing herself from him and throwing his hands back, she held herself erect and closed her eyes.

“I think,” she said, speaking clearly and very rapidly, “that it’s his beard that puts her off. What I would do if I were you is to make someone you happen to know, someone who wouldn’t suffer the punishment you would have to suffer for such a thing in case it turned out badly, cut off with a sharp sword, or a polished knife, or a pair of shears, this teasing and intrusive and conceited and aggressive beard of the old man! Yes, Nisos Naubolides, that is what you must do! I see the doing of it clearly in the curious darkness into which at this moment the mental effort of trying to do exactly what is required has thrown around me. The thing to do is to cut off his beard!

“But one thing I know. The moment that beard of his has been cut off Nausikaa will see him as she saw him at the very first, when, while she was playing ball with her companions, he came straight to her out of the sea. Yes, Nisos Naubolides, that is the only way this witch-woman from Thebes who is already succeeding in enlarging the gulf between these former lovers, can be defeated. I swear to you I am right. I see it as if it were being done at this very moment. The love-light will come into Nausikaa’s eyes the second that beard is gone. No, it is not your king’s age that keeps them apart, now that they are together again. It is the beard. And Okyrhöe knows it very well and plays upon it. I have been watching her. She doesn’t come between them herself if she can help it. She is too wise for that. She leaves it to the beard.”

It was at this point — and, whether she was one of Hector’s many illegitimate daughters or not, she certainly had a particular kind of intense and absorbed gravity, especially when there was a frown between her eyebrows, which anyone who had ever seen Hector would have recognized as his — that she opened her eyes and laid her fingers upon the young man’s sleeve.

“Have you anyone in your mind, Nisos Naubolides,” she asked him, “who would be the best person of all persons to do this bold and dangerous thing, whether a man or a woman, whether old or young? I mean,” she went on earnestly, after a pause to let a couple of Nausikaa’s ship’s officers pass down the passage, and Nisos couldn’t help admiring the way she instinctively let her fingers slip from his sleeve to his hand and let her head droop towards her shoulder—“I mean the actual cutting it off?” And when she saw he hadn’t missed her gesture as the men passed, “Lovers, not conspirators, eh?” she added.