John Powys - Atlantis

“It is an up-thrusting, up-pointing rock‚” Odysseus concluded, “a rock of black basalt, or of some blue-black adamantine stone, Master Akron. Have you heard what I’ve been saying in all this breaking of waves and splashing of water?”

Akron, followed closely by Nisos, who gave a grave little bow when he met the king’s glance, declared that he’d heard perfectly every word.

“How well he lies!” thought Nisos. “I couldn’t have done better myself. But no! He must have heard. What an ear he’s got!”

“Yes, O great King,” said Akron firmly. “You’ve said that we shall soon reach an up-pointing black rock, about a dozen feet inland from the island’s edge, and that it is to this rock that you wish me to make fast the ship with our newest and strongest length of rope; for it is from there when this curst moonlight — have mercy on me, Selene! — is driven from the heaven by the sun, that you wish, my king, to make your first experimental dive with the Helmet of Proteus. Have I got your command clear, my lord Odysseus?” And the king murmured that he had. It struck Nisos however that the royal voice had grown perceptibly weaker since Pegasos had come and gone; but as the old man, after haying risen to his feet for some minutes, had now re-seated himself on his pile of ropes, this change of tone may have been without any special significance.

“But how,” thought Nisos, “how can the old man endure all this?” And then, as in obedience to a whisper from Akron he picked up the blanket that the Priest of Orpheus had dropped and wrapt it round the fellow’s shoulders, he noticed that Enorches gave him a very queer look. All the same the priest wrapped the thing round himself with obvious relief and crouched down again, this time with his back to the mast.

“Stay and watch him for a while, will you, son?” whispered Akron. “I’ve got to go down now to the oarsmen to talk to them about this rock to which we have to tie up the ship for the night. And keep an eye, sonny, will you”—here Akron moved close enough to add this in an extremely low whisper—“on Zeuks, while I’m down below? He seems to think that as long as he’s embracing that girl he’s keeping her from some mischief she naturally will be up to the moment he lets her go! But it’s much more about himself than about that poor worried-looking waif from Troy that I’m concerned.

“You know the man a lot better than I do; in fact, as far as I can see, you’re the only one aboard our old ‘Teras’ who knows anything about him at all. He’s a funny-looking fellow right enough; and he’s got a look as if at any moment he might break out into a roar of laughter that would burst his skin! I don’t like the look of him and I don’t trust him. So keep an eye on him, son, will you? They’ll be calling us down before very long to the old man’s cabin for supper. I pray we’ll be reaching this confounded rock he talks about before that’s ready. But maybe not! Anyway I’m off now. I’ll be seeing you later. At supper, if not before! I won’t ask you now how you suppose the old man knew about this same ‘pointed rock’ to which we’re to moor the ‘Teras’? He can’t have been here before, can he? Well! See you soon again, son! But keep your wits about you. I leave the old man, so to say, in your care. See you soon!”

Both pairs of ladies, Pontopereia and Eione in their cabin, and Nausikaa and Okyrhöe in theirs, were, in a leisurely, negligent, nonchalant way, preparing for the passengers’ supper in the much larger cabin dedicated to the comfort of Odysseus.

“What do you really feel, Eione darling, when you see that queer-looking individual Zeuks, holding that grave, sweet Trojan woman on his knee?”

Pontopereia held her own not very shapely left leg balanced across the knee of her other while she carefully adjusted her left sandal so that a particular wrinkle in its leather shouldn’t hurt a bunion from which she was suffering.

Eione screwed up her forehead, but gave her friend a very straight look.

“It wouldn’t suit you, my beautiful one, to feel as I feel,” Eione replied, “for you’re a clever girl from a big city and are born with an intellect of your own; and if a man began fooling about with you you’d either want him to come to the point, take your maidenhead, as they call it, and have done with it, or to let you alone and come back to listening while you explained your philosophy to him.

“But country girls like me are quite different. We’ve lived so close to animals that we’ve sort of turned into animals. We’re fond of our own human flesh just as animals are. And we’re particularly fond of our own flesh when men are enjoying it, I mean feeling it with any part of their bodies. I know what I’m talking about, Ponty darling, for I’ve had an experience that doesn’t happen to every girl in the world I can assure you! I mean I’ve been, as they call it, ‘made love to’—not much ‘making’ and not much ‘love’ in it, but never mind that! — by no other than the most lecherous Being in the whole wide world, the great Arcadian god Pan, his own self!

“And do you know what happened? We just simply made friends. I begged him not to meddle with my virginity, for, as I told him frankly, I didn’t want to be bothered with the consequence of that sort of thing yet! I wanted to enjoy my life before starting to be a mother and all that sort of business. Arcadian Pan fully understood what I said to him; and he fully agreed with my point of view. I told him it wasn’t fair that our mother the Earth should just use us as procreating nest-eggs for her own purposes. And he agreed.

“He said that in the act of copulation a woman got more pleasure than a man the moment the pain was over and sometimes even while the pain was going on. But he said he’d make a bargain with me that he’d agree not to meddle with my virginity if in return I’d let him hold me on his knees and enjoy the feeling of my thighs pressed against his thighs and the pleasure of stroking my breasts. He said that the pleasure to male flesh of having female flesh pressed against it was greater than the most delicious taste to the tongue or the palate or the most exciting bathing in water, rushing through air, burrowing in earth-mould, or brandishing blazing fire.

“He said that to deny to masculine flesh its greatest possible thrill, namely the ecstasy of being pressed against feminine flesh, was the most cruel and wicked perversion in the whole universe, and that the whole idea of refusing our human flesh to each other, when the meeting of these two sorts of flesh, the male and the female, gave to each the greatest thrill of pleasure possible to all organic beings in the whole universe was a wicked and cruel denial to life of what life had come into existence to enjoy.

“‘Life,’ said Arcadian Pan to me, ‘life is lured and attracted out of the inert and inanimate elements into its earliest existence by the promise of the indescribable ecstasy of sexual pleasure! And so, when we have lured life out of the inanimate, to go and deny to it,’ thus spoke Arcadian Pan to me, ‘its prerogative and privilege and proprietary right, is an abominable treachery to the mysterious pressure, whatever it may be, that brought life into existence!’

“And I must tell you this also, Ponty, my true and only friend. When Arcadian Pan had taught me the ineffable, the unfathomable, the infinite pleasure that comes from male flesh pressing female flesh against itself — and, mind you, this has nothing at all to do with ‘taking maidenheads’, as they call it, or de-virginating virgins — he and I became excellent friends. I found his society extremely agreeable; and it seemed to me that he found mine the same! At any rate the result of our daily contact was that I got genuinely fond of him and sincerely attached to him as a friend; and I believe he felt exactly the same about me! That he was an immortal god and I a silly little mortal girl, doomed to perish in a few years, seemed to make no difference to him or to me! I can only tell you, Ponty dear, that if it weren’t for meeting you, and your being so sweet to me, I should miss his company so much that there’s no telling what silly things I might do. And what is more, I believe, though it seems conceited and vain to say so, that he misses me, though not of course as much as I miss him!”