Peter Nadas - A Book of Memories

When the dawning day melts night's residual silver into gold — oh, if only I could speak of ancient mornings in such phrases! — and fingers pluck the strings, the flurry of sounds will be the beginning; with the dulcet tones of her lyre, the nymph wishes to be first to greet the new day in whose warm light the oak tree casts its pleasing shadow.

For, needless to say, it was an oak tree behind her, gnarled and to our eyes quite old-looking, probably hit by lightning once, because it seemed oddly tilted, though the wind had already ripped out and scattered the withered branches, and in their places new clumps of foliage had sprouted; this not only confirmed my sense that she had to be rather advanced in years but directly indicated that we are dealing with the nymph of the oak who, strumming her lyre in the morning, was none other than Dryope, of whom we know that with her slender body and noble mien she so aroused the passion of the Arcadian shepherd Hermes that the inflamed god spent a long time pursuing her — though let it be said in passing only long in human terms, about three lifetimes, but no more than one-third of a crow's life span — until their love was properly consummated: this was by no means an extraordinary occurrence; we might even say that the nymph, whose name suggests a female creature who turns a man into a nymphios, that is, a bridegroom confirming his manhood, did only what she had to do, as did the god himself; nevertheless, the love-child brought into the world of immortals by the beautiful Dryope could not be judged by the standards to which this poor dutiful mortal, almost human girl-mother, had been accustomed.

We don't intend to claim that Dryope was a timid, fragile, easy-to-frighten maid, of course; as we know, she was rather tall, strong-boned, often mentioned as having powerful limbs, and when pursued by amorous gods or men she didn't always flee; from time to time she would also attack, stand firm as if her feet had taken root, immovable like an oak, hiss, snarl, use her fists, and be ready to bite; when on the banks of cool mountain streams she took off her green mantle to wash away her body's sweat, her round arms and her thighs, exercised in running, showed firm muscles, filling out her pearly skin; her breasts, too, were firm, set high by their own, tense roundness; and her clitoris, as would be revealed in the moment of ecstasy, at the height of her pleasure, could grow as large as the phallus of a child awaking from sleep; therefore, it may be said that the god had good reason to wish to soften this hardness, tame this wildness, make tender this toughness; still, when she tore the umbilical cord with her teeth and in the bloody afterbirth between her legs glanced at the blinking, bawling, giggling, kicking issue, she let out a girlish scream of terror and had to bury her face in her hands; and no wonder, how was she to know that there was no cause for alarm, that she had given birth to a god, how could she have known that, seeing only what she could see? at that moment it seemed to her that she had yielded not to carefree Hermes' lust but to a stinking he-goat, for long, coarse strands of hair were growing on the infant's head, two tiny crescent horns sprouted from his forehead at the very spot where in people and in gods the bone protrudes just a little, and his feet — how horrible! — terminated not in soles like ours but in hooves, like a kid's, hooves still soft and pink that in time, we know, would harden most horrendously, would clatter and throw off sparks over stone and turn an ugly black.

Terrified by the fruit of her womb, Dryope sprang up and ran away.

Her story ends here, we know no more of her, or of how she fared thereafter, and if we should want to learn more, we must rely on our imagination.

We do know, however, that Hermes found his son in the grass, and not only did the little boy's appearance cause him no surprise but it put him in a prancing good mood; by then the boy stood on his feet, or rather on his little hooves, took a few tumbles, turned a few cartwheels, rolled around and enjoyed being prickled by blades of the dewy grass; then he chased flies and wasps, plucked flowers, tore out and munched on their petals, and with his soft hornlets butted stones and trees, his body tickled with pain; to satisfy his longing for pranks he pissed on a butterfly and shat on a snake's head; in short, creation itself seemed to function perfectly within the small creature; we shouldn't be surprised, then, that with all this, the sight of the son found favor in the eyes of the father; and since fathers tend to view their sons' lives as reprises of their own, Hermes suddenly remembered the morning of his own birth, when gentle Maia had brought him into the world and laid him in his cradle, but in an unguarded moment he climbed out of the cradle and left the cave: outside he found a turtle, fashioned a lyre out of its shell, and with the lyre set out on his wanderings; by the time that even the ears of Helios' horses had vanished in the glowing red rim of the earth — and we know precisely that this was the eve of the fourth day of the lunar month — he had killed two oxen with his bare hands, skinned them, and to roast them quickly invented fire, then proceeded to steal a whole herd of cattle to cover up his mischief before climbing back into his cradle; now he lifted up his young one, just as Apollo had lifted him, and took him up to the gods, so they could delight in him as well.

Dionysus was the happiest to see the new arrival, who was immediately named Pan, for in the language of the immortals this word covers the concept of All, Everything, Universal, and unless we are mistaken, the gods saw in him the perfect embodiment of that word.

With one hand the handsome youth sitting at the center of my picture raised to his lips a panpipe, unmistakable symbol of his panhood, and therefore, according to legend, he had to be the one who led the nymphs' nocturnal dances, and then also brought on the morning; he was a furious, spiteful god who let out his anger, especially when his midday sleep under a shady oak was disturbed; and he was also the friendliest of gods, high-spirited, generous, playful, prolific, fond of merriment, music, and noise; in spite of so many signs indicating that the figure in the picture was in fact Pan, I could not shake the doubt that perhaps he wasn't the great phallic god after all, but then who was he? A satisfactory answer seemed impossible, for not only did he hold in his other hand a leafy staff, which, according to legend, Hermes received from Apollo in exchange for his lyre, but his body wasn't hairy, his brow had no horns, and he had feet, not hooves — unless the shapely billy goat lying at his feet like a watchdog was meant to symbolize everything missing from the god's smooth, anthropomorphic body; we know there are artists who tend to represent as beautiful what is completely ugly, because they're afraid to show the creature named after the universe as hairy, hoofed, and horned — this is but an absurd human weakness, of course, but all the same, I couldn't rule out the possibility that through his laughable weakness the painter had tried, misleadingly, to prettify the history of the gods; on the other hand, one couldn't claim with any certainty that the figure was Hermes, that blasted leafy staff of his notwithstanding, for then why the pipe in his other hand? It was all a muddle, the whole thing, and I probably wouldn't have paid attention to it if sorting it out had not been part of the preliminary studies needed for my planned narrative: I pondered and probed, toyed with and tested my alternatives, self-indulgently playing for time in the process, afraid to tackle my true task, which seemed formidable, and whenever I managed to come to a final decision about something, a new idea would invariably occur to me; for instance: Very well, I mused, let's assume that this figure is neither Pan nor Hermes but Apollo himself, who was also said to have fallen in love with Dryope once and, appropriately, to have chased after her, but because the lovely oak-maid refused his advances, the aroused Apollo changed himself into a turtle and found his way into the hands of the playful nymph; Dryope placed the turtle on her beautiful breasts, where he quickly turned into a snake and under her robe united with her — but this bubble of an idea soon burst, for if that's what happened, how did the lyre end up in Dryope's hand, and the lyre, as I've mentioned before, was made by Hermes after he left the cave on the morning of his birth, which happened much later than the Apollo episode.