John Powys - Atlantis

At this point Pontopereia, as she lowered her not very shapely leg to the floor of that lowest deck of the “Teras” and endured with a little laugh the twitching pain she got from the contact of her sandal with her bunion, believed she beheld by the feeble flame of a flickering wick floating in oil, a real, actual, round pearl of a wet tear rolling down her friend’s plain, simple, and the extreme opposite of what could be called a clever face and sliding from her retreating chin to the white hollow between her girlish breasts.

A very different dialogue was proceeding meanwhile in the cabin of the two older women. There was no inclination between those two to make the relation between male and female flesh the subject of discourse. Their talk was actuated by, and revolved round, and obstinately and viciously returned to, the intense heart-gnawing jealousy they felt with regard to each other and the old wanderer with whom they were sailing.

“You have no idea then, is that what you want me to believe, as to what you will do with me, when you and this ugly, badly built ship of yours have lured Odysseus to his death?”

“ Do with you? I don’t understand! I presume you’ll stay here on board with us until you’re tired of us? We shall, of course, when we’ve seen all we want to see of the ocean that swallowed up Atlantis, sail back to the land of my Fathers. If you think we’re going to visit Ithaca just for the sake of ending where we began you’re challenging the very mill-wheel of disappointment.

“And if you are playing with the crazy idea that you can persuade me to enter the harbour of the city of Thebes on your behalf you must be losing your head. What you ought to be asking yourself all this while is what you will do when we return to my country. I shall have no particular authority there; and if I had I doubt whether, from what I now am learning about you from personal contact, I should be particularly anxious to— What was that? The first call for dinner was it? Or was it a call for us to gather on the top deck again, before something —heaven knows what! — begins to happen?

“No, no! thanks all the same! You go on dressing; and be quick about it and stop talking! I can manage with this curst necklace if you leave me alone. Yes, you’re welcome to all the hot water in that pro-cho-os over there. I’ve got all I want.”

Meanwhile on the top deck the same sound of the same bell that had disturbed Nausikaa and Okyrhöe reached the ears of Odysseus. He had left his club propt against the bulwarks and had already begun to move, slowly and cautiously, as he always did when on board ship, from his seat of coiled ropes to the ladder leading to the oarsmen’s deck.

Over the face of the priest Enorches as he lay naked in a couple of blankets, for some kindly sailor had brought him a second one, now that the only light in the sky and on the water was moonlight, there floated an unquestionable smile of pure comfort and relief. Most onlookers would have supposed this look to have been purely due to a draught of rich Cyprian wine which another kindly sailor had brought him; but our old acquaintance the Fly who was now in a position to observe these things at close quarters knew well enough that it was his friend the brown-winged Moth, who by deliberately fanning with her wings the wine-moistened lips of the Priest of the Mysteries, had drawn from him this genial token of well-being.

As to the Moth herself, she had no sooner returned to her friend in their familiar refuge than she was compelled to listen to one of those cosmic conversations between the Sixth Pillar and the Club of Herakles which the Fly’s scientific mind always found so fascinating and illuminating.

“You must have noticed already, my dear old friend,” the Sixth Pillar was saying, “how strongly and emphatically the four elements are joining in this multiversial revolt against the authority of the Olympians? Of course there are voices abroad and I can hear them in this corridor who declare that what is now going on is a world-wide revolt of women against men rather than of men against gods or of Titans against Olympians; but with my own personal nearness to the Four Supreme Elements I cannot share these eccentric opinions.

“To me it is clear that what is happening in the multiverse at the present moment is a revolt against Zeus the Son of Kronos by every other power in the wide world! The best proof of this is the definite news that Hera and Athene who have always worked hand in hand are now encouraging Poseidon and Aidoneus to join with Zeus in some final desperate act of authority and retribution.

“What I am most conscious of now,” went on the Sixth Pillar, “is the mental awareness of what is going on by each of the Four Elements. Take the earth, to begin with, my good friend. I assure you I cannot imagine anything clearer or more definite than the vibration of sympathy with the rebels in this cosmogonic revolt which I feel — yes! at this very second as I talk to you I feel it — emanating from the earth! The vibrations I feel, you must understand, my friend, are not spoken words. They are more like the deep, dim rumblings of an earthquake! They are thick and dense and dark, and convey to me something of what animals must feel when they fall and strike their foreheads upon the ground. On the contrary the vibrations I get out of the air are like a mighty rushing wind which seems in the fanning and flapping of its vast feathers to have completely surrounded me and to be carrying me into a boundless void.

“And then what I get out of the heart of the hot black fire of the darkened sun as he travels beneath the earth, and what I get out of the heart of the cold white fire of the ghostly moon as she rides through the clouds, are two infinite throbbings that are like thunder in my own heart!

“And strangest of all is the vibration that emanates from the massed volume of all the waters of the ocean, a vibration that is in many ways more important for us in this corridor of the rock-palace of the Island of Ithaca than all the other three; for it is a vibration from an element that resembles air made palpable, air thickened out into a tidal momentum encircling the earth, grey, fathomless, immeasurable, salt with all the tears ever shed, cold and ultimate as a universal grave.”

The monotone of the Sixth Pillar’s discourse as he thus informed his friend the Club of Herakles, to whom Atropos had given the name of “Expectation” and who had always had the name of “Dokeesis” or “Seeming”, how the Four sublime elements of earth, air, fire and water responded to this world-wide revolt against the gods had scarcely died down, before there came, reverberating up from the depths of the “Teras”, the second call for supper.

It was the custom on board this particular ship for the white crew and their black helpers to enjoy their evening meal in a haphazard manner, casually, and irregularly, and in no particular order, slipping down by twos and threes to the kitchen in the hold when opportunity offered, and lingering with a friend over a flask of wine down there when the wind was in their sail and the ship was moving quietly.

At the moment therefore when the second call for the supper went forth on this particular evening our young friend Nisos, who was to have a berth that night with the master of the ship so as to give the only remaining one-man cabin to Zeuks, was already wondering whether to obey the call alone or to beg Zeuks and Arsinöe, the latter looking half-asleep as she reposed partly on the knees of the son of Pan and partly against the base of the ship’s figure-head, to accompany him.

If Arsinöe was half-asleep, Zeuks, as far as Nisos could tell, was entirely so, for his eyes were tightly closed and his face had the expression, already familiar to Nisos, that it always assumed when the man was asleep, an expression as if he were some whimsical creator of the world who had dozed off in the act of trying to suppress his amusement at his creation.