John Powys - Atlantis

And it was at that precise second that an infinitesimal and entirely haphazard thing occurred such as had happened to Nisos from his earliest childhood. The fact that he was watching Zeuks so closely sharpened his powers of observation to an abnormal extent. And the result of this was that his attention was caught and held by the fact that a small sea-swallow, swooping and swerving along this particular deck, had let fall upon the deck’s well-scrubbed surface a little clot of bird’s dung from which protruded not only the featherless stalk of a tiny feather but the clipt edge of a human toe-nail.

Nor did this extra discovery prevent Nisos in his moon-induced mania for minute observation, from noticing that Zeuks himself, as he straightened his shoulders to draw his breath before answering, laid bare upon his own chest a peculiar tuft of especially black hairs. “Is the sky going to fall when Zeuks answers?” thought Nisos: and certainly the general sigh that rose from the whole company just then struck him as curiously connected with all those aspects of human bodies of which human consciousness especially dislikes being reminded.

It was almost as if the unseemly parts of every corporeal frame in that whole company joined in that general sigh; joined in it indeed so pitifully that it seemed as if that sigh proceeded not so much from the lips of those gathered there as from those disparaged parts of their human bodies of which we only seem to grow fully aware when we are seized by an intense longing to escape from our bodies altogether!

It was a weird thought to come into a youthful head just then, but Nisos welcomed it, and indeed was proud of it, telling himself that his mother would have regarded it as an absolute proof that he was destined one day to be a prophet. Yes, he told himself, this great sigh from all these people came from every single one of the out-of-the-way hairs in their secret orifices of excretion and copulation, and from the ignoble hairs under their arms, whether male or female, and from every crushed, deformed, twisted, and squeezed-sideways toe-nail in that crowd, whether belonging to a male or a female.

Nor did the effect of the moon’s motionless motion, through those indifferent clouds, affect only human beings. It was especially potent where small, disregarded, insignificant material objects were concerned, objects such as pieces of burnt wood, broken shells, wisps of wool, flakes of foam, strips of sea-weed, frayed bits of cordage, and even certain infinitesimal scoriac fragments risen to the surface of the water and carried in circles over leagues and leagues of salt waves from the burning craters of the great mountain Kunthorax which towered above the city of Gom, the capital of drowned Atlantis.

Yes, this curious universal sigh rose not only from the less honourable portions of the bodies of the people upon the deck of the “Teras”, but from a host of derelict scraps and bits of scraps that winds and tides and sea-gull beaks had helped chance to collect at this particular moment and upon this particular deck. To the mind of our youthful prophet Nisos this heavy undulant sigh was drawn from every mortal thing there present that had, or could ever presume to claim that it had, suffered from the arrogance of immortal gods or the recklessness of mortal men.

A deep and spontaneous sigh like this was, he decided, clearly and unquestionably due to an obscure craving in existence itself to escape from every physical and every mental effort that was forever “having to be made” that it might remain what it was and not perish utterly in the abyss. All the animal, all the vegetable, all the mineral offscourings, castaways, shreds, patches, scrapings, splinters, parings, drift and flotsam, together with all the human abortions, misfits and degenerates and all the infected members of each particular corpus of corruption, seemed to Nisos just then as he tried desperately to unravel the psychic knot of that half-circle of suspended life and reluctant death under that intent moon as she passed those casual clouds, to be asking to be heard.

The universe seemed to be giving them some final pitiful chance that their breath should be audible and some broken syllable of their desire should be expressed, which, if Odysseus would only ask it or Zeuks would only answer it, might redeem all. But Odysseus was now repeating his question and Zeuks was now beginning to laugh.

Yes, it was with a laugh he commenced his answer, and with a laugh he finished his answer; and there were many there who must have thought that Odysseus would be overwhelmed by his answer. Zeuks told how it was soon after the “Teras” had sailed that the whole thing happened. Led by Krateros Naubolides, Nisos’ father, and by Agelaos Naubolides, Nisos’ brother, the enormous faction among the warriors of Ithaca who were opposed to the House of Odysseus swept down in a resolute mass upon the king’s palace, ransacked it, scoured it out, gutted it, scraped it clean of every trace and vestige of the House of Odysseus, till from the Corridor of Pillars to the innermost caverns of its washing-chambers, sculleries, pantries, and kitchens, it became a primitive, antiquarian annex to the prosperous barns and picturesque enclosures and to all the long-reverberating rural and insular traditions of the autochthonous House of Naubolides.

“And Eurycleia?” enquired Odysseus, fixing upon the narrator a long, deep, quiet, steady look, not in the least degree an excited or emotional look, and not at all what could be called an inscrutable look. What it really was was a patient ritualistic look, like the look of a priest who has uttered the same words so many times that his emotional reaction to them has the modified, qualified, calmly reverential feeling such as is really the reaction to their destiny of many generations of a closely knit nation, gravely, but not solemnly, honouring their past, guarding their present as something sacred, and facing their future with a massively unruffled assurance.

Zeuks clearly found it difficult to tell the truth as to just how Eurycleia perished; but after a good many noises in his throat that were too like the sounds in an ox-stall to be called laughing and too like the sounds in a cow-shed to be called crying, he explained that when the old nurse saw Leipephile by her betrothed’s side among the foremost intruders she was unable to restrain her indignation and burst out in a rhapsody of vituperation. She abandoned herself indeed to such “shame-crying” and to flinging such “momon” or reproach upon Leipephile that Leipephile, who is, as we all know, a mightily big and powerful wench, lost her temper completely and struck her such a blow over the head with a large marble mixing-bowl or “depas” which she snatched from a side table that the old lady fell down and died instantaneously.

“In the confusion that followed, I fancy I began myself to behave in a wild and excited way and I think I must have drunk quite a lot too, for there was a great deal of wine floating round and I remember that the more adventurous of the intruders soon struck me as being a good deal more intoxicated than I was myself.

“Our Trojan Arsinöe here will bear witness to the truth of what I am narrating to you, O king; for in my tipsy folly I well remember thinking that it was my first duty to you to keep a tight hold on all your captives from the old Trojan War: and it was in the spirit of this sense of duty, O King, that I found myself clinging so closely to the maiden Arsinöe when we took our places on the back of the flying horse. It was your wise and cool-headed herdsman Tis, the brother of the maiden Eione who I understand is with you on board this ship, who insisted on our making use of Pegasos to follow you all this way across the sea.

“I tried to persuade him to accompany us rather than enter the service of the House of Naubolides but he maintained that his duty was first and foremost to the cow Babba, and that Babba’s shed and hay-loft and her field of meadow-grass were, taken together, enough of a kingdom for any man to guard and fight for. He also said that if it was the will of Atropos that Krateros Naubolides should rule in Ithaca while its King was sailing where no mortal had ever sailed before, it might well be her will also that when you returned you would find your cow Babba as ready to give you as good milk and as perfect cream as she did before you sailed away.