but in strength and spirit he was hardening up like a
three-year-old bull.
He feinted a little, seeing if his arms were supple after
all that
rowing, the long hot span in the calm. He was satisfied, or if not, he kept it hidden. The old man watched him,
leering,
eager to smash in his chest, draw blood. Then Amykos’
steward,
a man by the name of Lykoreus, brought rawhide gloves, thoroughly dried and toughened, and placed them
between them, at their feet. “
“ ‘We’ll cast no lots,’ old Amykos said. ‘I make you a
present
of whichever pair you like. Bind them on your hands,
and when
I’ve proved myself, tell all your friends—if you’ve still
got a jaw—
how clever I am at cutting hides and … staining them.’ ” With a quiet smile and no answer, Polydeukes took
the pair
at his feet. His brother Kastor and his old friend Talaos
came
and bound the gauntlets on. The old man’s friends
did the same.
“What can I say? It was absurd. They raised their
heavy fists,
and the gibbous old man came leering, all confidence,
drooling in his beard,
his eyes as wild as a wolf’s, and went up on his toes like
someone
felling an ox, and brought down his fist like a club.
Polydeukes
stepped to the right, effortlessly, and landed one
lightning
blow Just over the old king’s ear, smashing the bones inside. The crazy old man looked startled. In a minute
he was dead,
twitching and jerking in the wheat stubble. We stared.
No match
at all! We hadn’t even shouted yet—neither we nor they!
‘The Bebrykes gave a wail, an outraged howl at
something
wider than just Polydeukes. They snatched up their
spears,
their daggers and clubs, and rushed him as if to avenge
themselves
on the whole ridiculous universe. We leaped up, drawing our swords, running in to help. Kastor came down with
his sword
so hard that the head of the man he hit fell down on
the shoulders,
to the right and left. Polydeukes took a running jump at the huge man called Itymoneus, and kicked him in
the wind
and dropped him. The man died, jerking and trembling,
in the dirt.
Then another came at him. Polydeukes struck him with
his right,
above the left eyebrow, and tore the lid off, leaving the
eyeball
bare. A man struck Talaos in the side—a minor wound—
and Talaos turned on him,
sliced off his head like a blossom from a tender stem.
Ankaios,
using the bearskin to shield his left arm, swung left and
right
with his huge bronze axes, and the brothers Telamon
and Peleus,
Leodokos and I behind them, jabbed through backs and
bellies,
limbs and throats with our swords. They scattered like
a swarm of bees
when the keeper smokes them from the hive. The
remnants of the fight fled inward,
bleeding, spreading the news of their troubles. And
that same hour
they found they had new and even worse troubles. The
surrounding tribes,
as soon as they learned that the fierce old man was
dead, gathered up
and flooded in to attack them, no more afraid of them. They swarmed to the vineyards and villages like locusts,
dragged off
cattle and sheep; seized women and children, to make
them slaves;
then set fire to the barns. We stood and watched it all, almost forgetting to snatch a few sheep and cows
ourselves.
The ground was bloodslick, the sky full of smoke from
the burning villages.
We watched in shock. Who’d ever heard of such
maniacs?
We walked here and there among them, rolling them
over on their backs
to pick off buckles, swords with bejewelled hilts, new
arrows,
and, best, the beautifully figured bows that no one can
fashion
as the craftsmen among the Bebrykes could do, in their
day.
A splendid haul.
“But Polydeukes sat staring seaward—
black waves quiet as velvet, under a blood-red sky— brooding. He pounded his right fist into his flat left hand again and again. I touched his shoulder. ‘Stupid,’
he hissed,
never shifting his eyes from the sea. ‘God damned old
clown!’
‘Ah well,’ I said. ‘And all that talk!’ he said. ‘—Free will, survival! I ought to have taken his big black teeth
out one
by one! I ought—’ ‘Ah well,’ I said. His eyes were as
calm,
as ominous green as the sky those days when the air
went dead.
‘If Herakles were here,’ he said, ‘you know what I’d do?’ I shook my head. ‘I’d kill him,’ he said. ‘Or try.’ He
grinned,
but his eyes looked as crazy to me as the eyes of the
man he’d killed.
‘He wouldn’t approve. You’re supposed to be his friend,’
I said.
‘I’d smash in his brains for good. “Defend your head
or die!”
I’d tell him. And no mere joke. Because I am his friend.’ I let it pass. Boxers are all insane, I thought.
Like everyone.
“Late that night, when the Argonauts
were all sitting in a crowd on the beach, gazing at the
fire,
Orpheus sang a song of the wonderful skill and power of Polydeukes’ fists. He sang of the age-old hunger of
the heart
for some cause fit to die for, some war certainly just, some woman certainly virtuous. He sang the unearthly,
unthinkable joy
of Zeus in his battle with the dragons. Then sang of Hylas, gentler than morning, gazing at his father’s
killer
with innocent love and awe. As he sang, the hero of his
song,
Polydeukes, rose, bright tears on his cheeks, and left
our ring
to walk alone in the woods, get back his calm, we
thought.
That was the last we saw of him.”
10
Then Jason told
of Phineus: spoke like a man in a dream. The sea-kings
listened,
leaning on their fists. Not a man in the hall even
coughed. They sat
so still you’d have thought some god had cast his spell
on them.
Old Kreon stared into his wine, blood-red in its jewelled
cup,
and even when Jason’s tale scraped painful wounds—
the fall
of Thebes, the tragedy of Oidipus—the king showed
nothing.
His daughter Pyripta twisted the rings on her fingers
and sighed.
Surely the chief of the Argonauts must be aware, I
thought,
how queer the tale as he told it now must seem to them. The Asian, fat Koprophoros, smiled. He did not mask his pleasure at seeing the Argonaut show his quirky
side.
Athena leaned close to the left shoulder of Aison’s son, warning him, struggling to guide him, her b
eautiful
gray eyes flashing;
Hera leaned close to his right, her lithe form moving
a little,
weaving like a snake. The story was not what they’d
hoped for at all,
this version turbulent with unresolved doubts, key
changes not
familiar, chords that clashed, a version of well-known
tales
gone crooked, quisquous, trifling matters better off
forgotten
blown up out of proportion, and matters of the keenest
interest
dropped, passed over in silence as if from obsessive
concern
with moments that made no sense. That was no way
to win
a throne. Not even Paidoboron, indifferent to thrones, would wander off like that. Athena and Hera looked
flustered,
losing control. Sweet Aphrodite, fond, dim-witted, hovering over Pyripta, was close to tears—so filled with pity for the hero as he teased the story of his life
for meaning,
she dropped all thought of Medeia, for the moment, and
charged the heart
of the princess with tender affection, innocent
compassion for the man.
He said:
“At dawn we stowed the ship with our booty, loosed the hawsers, hauled up sail, and pushed toward Phineus’
land,
riding the swirling Bosporos, driven by wind. The day was ordinary except for this: around mid-afternoon a wave came in out of nowhere, and even Tiphys,
who knew
the ways of seas and rivers like the back of his hand,
was amazed,
watching it come, a gray wall high as a mountain,
sweeping
clouds along. It hung, full of menace, directly above our sail, and we dived for hand-holds—all but Tiphys—
and waited
for the end, the shriek of the ship breaking up. We
felt—nothing!
no change, the great wave rolling on south, and behind
it the river
calm, as quiet as a pool. ‘What happened?’ I yelled
at Tiphys.
Our hearts were pounding like sledges. He said he had
no idea.
‘Impossible!’ I said. ‘You know the sea like your own
mind.
A prodigy like that, there must be some good reason
for it!’
But Tiphys could tell us nothing. ‘Perhaps some god,’
he said,
pushing his long yellow hair back. ‘Maybe some joke.’
He shrugged.
Mad Idas grinned, showed all his twisted teeth, and
farted.
“The next morning we put in across from Bithynia; anchored offshore from the mansion of Phineus the
seer. He had
the greatest prophetic gift of anyone living, a man who knew not merely by flickers, an insight here and
there,
but knew by steady intuition—or so men said—as much as Apollo knew, who knew all Zeus’s mind. He won great wealth by it, but also unspeakable misery.
“We’d heard, before we landed, nothing of that. We
went up,
eager to visit with the prophet whose reputation
stretched
farther than merchants travelled, to the ends of the
earth. The old man
felt our presence before we came. For days he’d felt us coming. He rose from his bed—none saw it but one
aged raven—
groped for his staff of olive wood, and, feeling his way by the sootblack wall, his old feet twisted and shrunken
beneath him,
he hunted his door. He trembled—age and weakness—
and his head
kept jerking, twisting to the side, then up, his horrible
blind eyes
searching. At the door he fell, siled over and tumbled,
banging
his bald, bruised head on the steps, and down he went
like a corpse
to the bottom, all without a whimper, because he’d
known he’d fall.
He lay awhile unconscious. He had no friend, no servant to care for him; not even a dog would live in the same
house with Phineus.
“After a while the seer came to
and groped around in the dust for his staff, and at last
found it
and painfully climbed back up it and onto his feet,
trembling,
jerking his head, and then, moving slowly, inch by inch, labored toward his gate and the two stone steps that
opened
on the road. There too, as he’d known he would, he fell.
And there
we found him lying with his face in the dirt, his legs
twisted up
like a child’s knot. There were trickles of thin, pink
blood in his beard
where he’d broken his teeth. My cousin Akastos rushed
up to him
and meant to lean over him, listen to his heart, but then
drew back
with a look of disgust. And now we too were near
enough to smell it:
vultures’ vomit, the stink of death on a hot day, blunt as the kick of a mule. We stood well back from
him,
gagging, breathing through our mouths, just keeping our
dinners down.
And then—horrible!—the creature we’d taken to be
dead for days,
rotting on the road, moved his hand a little—a hand
as pale,
as darkly veined as the stomach of a butchered cow. It
was caked,
like all his revolting body, with dirt. Where the hand
went back
to the dark of his filthy robe, which had fallen over it, the wrist was like two gray sticks. Then Phineus
turned his head,
opened his milkwhite eyes as if to stare straight at us, and called out: ‘Argonauts, welcome! You’ve come to
my rescue at last!’
He moved his tongue around his mouth, then wiped his
hand, spitting dust
and blood. ‘From the Harpies, I mean,’ he said. Then
widened his eyes
and let out a croak, like a man who’s suddenly
remembered something,
a source of pain and rage. We stared in amazement.
The old man’s
body shrank up, then jerked out stiff, shrank up,
jerked out,
and we thought he was dying again. But then he lay
limp, and tears
made streaks on his stubbled cheeks. ‘O murderous
gods,’ he said,
and then for perhaps ten minutes Phineus sobbed and
sometimes
pounded the road with his fists. At the end of that
time he clutched
his belly, looked furious, and spoke. ‘I’d forgotten you
wouldn’t know.
I’d forgotten I’d have to go through with you now the
whole insipid
tale. Even though it’s a fact that you people will save
me, because
it’s fated—like everything: endlessly, drearily, stupidly,
cruelly
fated—I’m forced to go through dull motions, politely
pleading,
cajoling, explaining, telling you my tedious history; and I’m forced to listen to your boring responses,
predictable even
to a man not gifted with second sight.’ He pulled
himself together
and labored up onto his knees, groping with his staff,
stifling
the angry imprecations of his swollen heart. Then: ‘Believe me, I’d far rather die, and I would hav
e died
long ago
if the will of mortals were a match for the will of the
gods. But alas!
they’ve got us all by the bellies. They throw a crumb,
a bone,
keep us alive, howling with hunger, and keep us too
weak
to raise our daggers to our wrists, crawl down to the
river … But enough.
Let’s get on with it, play out our parts! If I may forestall your question, Jason, son of Aison—’ I cleared my
throat.
He stretched out his hands to stop me. ‘Don’t ask!’ he
implored. ‘Don’t drag
it on and on and on! The answer to your question is: I’m a victim of curses. Not only has a fury quenched
my sight—
an affliction bitter enough, God knows—and not only
am I
forced to drag through the years far past man’s usual
span,
aging, withering, no end in sight—but worse than that, Harpies plague me—eaglelike creatures with human
heads.
When my neighbors, or strangers from across the sea,
come here to my house
to ask of the future, or of hidden things, and leave
me food
as payment, no sooner is the food set out on my plate
than down
from the clouds—dark, swifter than lightningbolts—
those Harpies swoop
snatching the food from my fingers and lips with their
chattering teeth.
At times they leave me nothing, at times a gobbet or two to keep me alive and screaming. They imbrue with their
sewage stench
all they touch. I would rather die than consume the stuff those Harpies leave—so I rant to myself. But my belly
roars,
tyrannical; I submit. Yet this one curse will pass, if my name is Phineus. The Harpies will soon be driven
away
by two of your number, the lightswift sons of the
Northern Wind.
It has taken place already in the mind of Zeus.’
“So he spoke.
We stared in pity and disgust. Then Zetes and Kalais,
sons
of the wind, went closer, gagging from the stench but
generous;
and the noble Zetes reached for the foul, filth-shrivelled
hand
and said, ‘Poor soul! There’s surely no man on earth who
bears
more shame, more sorrow than you! Heaven knows,
we’ll help if we can.
But first, tell us—’ Before he could finish, the old man
cringed.
‘I know, I know! What’s the cause? you’ll ask. Have I
done some wrong?
Have I rashly offended some god by, for instance,
misusing my skill?
If you help me and foil the justice of some great god,