John Powys - Atlantis

“‘The land,’ said Master Tis, ‘is my mother and my father and my grandmother and my grandfather. The grass growing on the land is my cow’s salvation and the milk from the udders of my cow is my redemption. The bread, made of the wheat which grows on my land, is, as I munch it, the only heaven I need, and furthermore,’ said Tis, the grandson of Moros, ‘the sweetness of the bread I munch increases as it nears the crust. My bread needs neither honey nor sugar to make it sweet but it needs land as good as my land to make bread as good as my bread; and it needs a cow as good as my cow to keep me from following my King across drowned Atlantis.’”

It was at this point, just as if the mention of the name “Atlantis” had softened some tension in the minds of all, that as Enorches, the Priest of the Mysteries, left the side of the ship and began to pace up and down within the limited space left between the mast with its reduced sail and the half-circle of listeners to this weird scene while his chiton, or body-shirt, having become ruffled in his violent disposal of his rags, his nakedness, unknown to himself, was startlingly exposed in quite a flagrant fashion.

This shameless sight combined with its exhibitor’s complete unconsciousness evoked a loud and profane chuckle from Euros which communicated itself to Pontos and from him extended to Klytos and Teknon. Whether Odysseus saw what they were laughing at or not this was one of those occasions when the root cause of all his triumphant endurances had a perfect chance to show itself. His senses might be stirred by the mischievous and provocative smile that Okyrhöe was now directing towards him: his anger might be roused by the thought of the murder of his old nurse Eurycleia, the one person in the world who had known him in the intimate sense in which our father or our mother knows us, or our mate knows us, and by the fact that the blow that killed her was struck by the woman who herself had been waiting at his table since she was a child: but as neither of these things seemed able to change by a jot or a tittle the obstinate bulk of his intention, so no burst of bawdy laughter, even though directed at the privy parts of his worst enemy, could distract him just then from the moon that covered the waters and from the waters that covered Atlantis.

“How did you come, my good friend,” he now calmly enquired of Zeuks, indicating the grotesque figure of Enorches, “to bring this confounded fellow with you on the back of Pegasos?”

“I don’t wonder, O great King,” replied Zeuks, “at your asking how it was that he came with us! Well, I can soon tell you how that happened. Your herdsman Tis, the brother of Eione here — I’m right in that, aren’t I, Eione? — was the sole cause of the whole business. None of us would be here now if it weren’t for him; and you saw just now how submissively the horse obeyed the priestess Spartika — all owing to wise treatment he received in Tis’s stable. Herdsman Tis must have learnt from that old cow Babba he so dotes on some secret language that all animals, whether mortal or immortal, make use of when alone with each other.

“It must have been painful to Tis to prepare Pegasos for leaving his stable so soon; but I can tell you, my King, you’ve got nobody in your palace-cave, nobody in your whole rock-bound island, more devoted to you and your best interests than this man Tis.

“Well! just as we were coming out of those stables and sheds of yours, that this Tis looks after so well — and only, as far as I can see, for the advantage of that one solitary old cow — lo! and behold! there came rushing up to us this egregious fellow who calls himself a priest of Orpheus and who sure is the most treacherous and teasing and tantalizing and tricky human being I have ever encountered in the whole of my life. Ye gods! and if he didn’t go so far as to demand permission to sit alongside of us on Pegasos’ back!

“For the moment, my lord, I can assure you I was flabbergasted by this request. I only knew the fellow as your enemy, and the enemy of my young friend Nisos here, and the enemy of your son Telemachos. Why then, you naturally ask, did I allow this arch-liar, this dangerous and tricky traitor, to have a seat with us on the back of Pegasos? I’ll tell you exactly why, O my King, and you must decide for yourself whether I was right or wrong. This Priest-fellow, this Enorches-man, fell on his knees before me and tapped the earth with his forehead seven successive times! As he did so he swore an oath; and he even went so far as to presume to add to this oath certain terrible and dreadful words after the manner of the immortal gods: for the words he added had to do with the River Styx.

“It was this oath of his, this oath by the Styx that he was planning no harm to you, my King, that caused me to hesitate. And then I suddenly decided to put my dilemma — as to whether to refuse his request or to allow him to join us — before your herdsman Tis and allow him to decide. And, when I put the matter to him, shall I tell you how he answered me, O great King?

“He said quite quietly: ‘Set him before me, my lord Zeuks, and let me ask him something.’

“So I did, and set the man before him. And your herdsman Tis said to Enorches: ‘May I ask you one question, O great Master of the Mysteries?’ And when Enorches nodded, for I could see he regarded Tis as not grand enough, nor famous enough, nor learned enough, nor royal enough, to have any part or lot in these high matters, this was the question Tis put to him:

“‘If your will, Master, was done about Eros and Dionysos, it would mean, wouldn’t it, that your will would also be done about the Mysteries?’

“You should have seen the look the priest gave him. But he answered quick enough; and not sharply or angrily either: ‘It would also be done about the Mysteries.’ And it was then that the extraordinary thing happened that led to the Priest of the Mysteries to be marching up and down the deck of this ship as he is doing now in the eyes of all! Your herdsman Tis called upon the cow Babba.

“At the sound of his voice the cow Babba came straight from her stall and advanced among us, thrusting her cool wet nose into our bosoms, till we had, each one of us, pressed our lips against her upper lip with a noisy kiss.

“‘Drop your token now, Babbawatty, my Holy of Holies,’ said Tis in a low voice but a voice of the greatest authority I’ve ever heard since the day when I heard my grandfather addressing my father, and neither of them was an animal like Babba or a man like Tis; for indeed they both were and are immortal gods.

“At this command the cow turned towards us again as if she were going to repeat her recent nuzzling of us one by one. She did indeed move from one to another of us as before, but did no more nuzzling; and at that moment, O great King, there was one of those perceptible arrests, pauses, hushes, and sudden silences, as when the wing of a bird of omen touches the place where we are destined to rest in our final sleep. And it was after that weird pause that Babba stopped in front of Enorches, lifted her tail, straddled her legs and dropped on the ground the largest black-green cow-turd I’ve ever seen in my life.

“And, in the same pulse of time at which that huge dropping fell, Tis strode up to Enorches and said to him:

“‘Master, you arc holding something back from us. What is it?’

“And for answer the Priest of the Mysteries cried aloud in the hearing of them all: ‘What I am holding back can only be revealed when, once more, as formerly they confronted each other in Arima, Eurybia confronts Echidna above the sunken City of Gom!’

“Having uttered these words he begged to be helped up upon the back of Pegasos and there was none among us who found it in him to refuse.”