Chimera (13 page)

“I don’t know.”

She shook her head. “I can’t do scholarship. Or write or draw or anything. I’ve got this great IQ and I can’t do anything. I’d been working in Ammon’s and Sabazius’s temples to support my studies, and then Ammon screwed me, and I liked it, so I let Sabazius in too, and pretty soon I was in charge of all three temples. It’s not bad work; I meet a lot of people; I just wonder sometimes if I’m
getting
anywhere that matters. The three of you are married; Ammon and Sabazius have loads of other girlfriends. In a way, I guess, you were my last hope; when Medusa brought you here, I couldn’t help wishing…” Idly she flicked semen at the lamp-flame. Missed. “So it turns out even you’ve got a girl already.”

“Not any more,” I said. “Not even I.” But I did, if I was alive, have a wife (I regarded her—young, naked, and lovely, chained to the cliff in I-F-3), to whom I’d better be getting back. “I
wondered
why Chemmis was the only scene missing. So tomorrow’s mural—”

“Just the desert, as you’ll see on your way out. But Perseus…” Surprisingly, for I thought her vexed, or self-sorrowing, or both, she slid over and put my head in her lap. “I might as well be the bastard who breaks the news: Andromeda’s left you. For keeps.”

I’d been enjoying close-up her lamplit navel. At this announcement my heart skipped as in poor poetry, and my eyes closed without my closing them.

“Medusa told me when she fetched you from the desert,” Calyxa said. “You’re wife’s gone on to Joppa with Danaus.”

I unlapped and found my missing voice. “I’ll kill him.”

But Calyxa observed, calmly, that killing Danaus would change nothing; he meant no more to Andromeda than she Calyxa me: a mere diversion, a refreshment. Andromeda wanted rid of me, and that was that; if I examined my heart, I must see that I was finished with her as well. Such things happened. Wasn’t that the case?

I spoke with difficulty, into her stomach. “I suppose.” Now my eyes were wet as well.

“Do you love Medusa?”

“I don’t know.”

Calyxa rubbed two fingertips in closing circles where gold curls formerly grew. “If you wanted to stay on here… I mean indefinitely… I’d like that.”

We spent a sweet half-hour; then she slept imperiously as a child while I tossed the night through, galed by emotions sundry as the II-B winds. The image of Danaus abed with Andromeda one moment made me retch and sweat with rage; the next I was euphoric with relief to be at last unchained, free to be Perseus, starred or stoned as the issue might prove, but my own man. Followed grief at the lost past, my one young-manhood; then sympathy sharp as pain for my Andromeda, mine no more—so fine and dainty in the bed still (rerage at young Danaus! fresh fury!), unbearable as myself every other where. Toward dawn I went round with the guttery lamp, reviewing for the last time the first revolution of my story; lamp-oil, night, and heroic youth ran out together; I came back to Calyxa, stroked her out of dreams into drowsy liquefaction, here it comes again, climbed with her to our first full fillment. She held my face close for examination while we finished pulsing.

“I was sure you’d gone.”

When I didn’t answer she held fast yet a moment, blinked once, then let go all and turned her face away.

“I may be back,” I said. Further: “Thanks an awful lot, Calyxa. For
everything.”
I might even have gone on to say, “I really mean it,” had not a throat-lump spared her that final gaucherie. A tunic, prose-purple, hung in the passage behind I-A; I donned it, left my priestess leaking love, and tiptoed out, pausing just a moment at her final sketch (not yet graven), the second panelet of II-F. She’d blocked across it as on a billboard
PERSEUS LOVES
—––-, a slight inaccuracy. A few early tourists approached from the vast blank spaces which in time would be II-F-3 through 7 and II-G. Not having entered my story yet, they didn’t recognize its hero; and I (I recognized an hour later, dhowing down the pea-green Nile) neglected in turn to notice whether any man among them looked deserving of its artful chronicler, and my gentle, cosmic jealousy.

“Do you still feel that way?”

I shall eternally; can’t help it. Sorry.

“I didn’t ask you to apologize.”

I shall eternally; can’t help it.

“Joppa period,” I told the boatman, who proposed a Memphis rest-stop and a tour of the river’s seven mouths. On the beach at Pharos like a bearded beacon stood the Old Man of the Sea, but I had no need of navigation-aid: oriented, by falling-starlight I surely steered us east. Two-thirds of my tale was told, its whence and where; as to its whither, I knew only that I would once more and finally confront Andromeda: whether to kiss or kill, hello goodbye, her whomever, I’d known when I was II-F-3’d. Calyxa was behind; I assumed I was bereft of New Medusa too, despite her having yet again saved my life, since love and gratitude, in the clutch, had been kibisised by doubt. Don’t say it, I’m not apologizing, I told myself it was just as well: let my second tale be truly a second, not mere replication of my first; let a spell of monologue precede new dialogue…

“Okay. I’ll say no more.”

Not till the epilogue; may its hour hasten. My scruffy boatman, next morning when we landfell Joppa, pointed out the cliff where fair Andromeda had been snacked for Cetus till mighty Perseus et cetera. She wasn’t fair, I corrected him. One in every boatload, he rejoined, I having paid him in advance for the night’s journey: had I been there, as he had? To preserve my anonymity I let the seedy salt run on; even when he described, in lewdest terms, my bride-to-be’s nakedness, to ogle which he claimed had been my motive for going down, I didn’t dagger him—only vowed to post Calyxa this further hair-thing in my history, thitherto forgot: how I’d thought Andromeda a marble statue till the sea breeze stirred her hair. The seaman mistook my smile for smirk and reported what he said was coastwise knowledge: that that same Andromeda was currently whoring it in Joppa with a new boyfriend; that one Galanthis, said to be Cassiopeia’s gigolo, was out to hump her as well; that the elder queen was so smote with jealousy she’d hecatombed Ammon to send another Cetus, which remonstration would permit her to re-sacrifice her roundheel daughter; that—but that
that
was the last he thatted: passivity be damned, I dirked and sharked him, dhowed to port alone.

That day I prowled the town in hopes of reconnoiter, hooded like my desert darling—till I recollected her advice, near on to evening. I doffed my mantle then, went straight to the palace gate, told the dusky guard I was King Perseus, out of my way, strode into the court, where I sat on the nearest bench to let come what would. Came, from behind the hedge behind me where old Cepheus grew his greens, his antique voice, I knew it.

“Good evening, good evening, I believe. I presume there’s someone there? Eyes and ears aren’t what they used to be…”

I went through the hedge. “It’s I, old man.” Much shrunk with years, Cepheus sat on the vegetable ground, not addressing me after all, but as it were the sprouts themselves, and went on as if I weren’t beside him.

“Seems to me I’ve been here forever. I make a kind of circuit of our fields, I guess; rotate like my crops; after a while one’s much like another. Pity, that. Caught me nap—”

I’d tapped his shoulder.

“I was about to say,” he said, “you caught me napping, as one night Perseus will…”

“Sir, I
am
Perseus! Perseus?” My eyes welled up; his blanked on through me.

“But I wasn’t really asleep, only drowsing. Old folks don’t need much sleep; the night ahead keeps us awake. I, I’m always first one up, never really go to bed, prowl house and grounds the night through, napping and nibbling. O I fret about the wife and kids, national debt, salad garden; talk to myself, go round in circles…”

I squatted before him. “Old fellow, are you blind and deaf?”

“Excuse me,” he said. I gripped his arm. “Used to be,” he said, “I’d have a lackey do the introductions when I held an audience. No need now, I can start the story anywhere; it goes right along, you’ll see, hangs together like a constellation if you know the stars, how to read them. My name’s Cepheus—the Ethiopian king? My wife’ll be along presently, Cassiopeia; she’s down washing her hair. Andromeda, too, Perseus, all the rest, they’ll come by, you’ll see them.”

I moved my hand before his moveless eyes.

“To be king of Ethiopia, you know, it isn’t easy; to be husband to a queen and father to a princess, that’s harder yet; but to be father-in-law to a gold-haired conquering hero is hardest of all. Myself, all I ever craved was a quiet life: to mind the traffic, keep the books, pacify the gods, make a decent marriage for my daughter, tend my shrubbery, play with my grandchildren, leave Ethiopia no worse than I found it. Too long a list.”

Except that her stonework never wept, I was fixed as by the first Medusa.

“But I never was a king,” Cepheus said, “only consort to a queen. Cassiopeia, her majesty, that’s the whole story; that’s why we’re all here, for better or worse. By heaven, she is beautiful! I can remember as if it were yesterday the first time—I forget. Andromeda? It was your mother! I forget.” He frowned, seemed about to clear his head. “No, I remember, I remember! Zeus Ammon, it comes together!”

“You know where you are now, Cepheus?”

“Minding my business,” he said, but in not just the right tone. “Out in the gardens, sure, late summer, grapes and tomatoes setting nicely, beans need another rain. I fret about Andromeda, why she and Perseus split up after all these years, what Cassiopeia’s brewing.” Now it was he took me by the shoulder, but blank as ever, confiding as if to a royal crony: “Children, I swear, you think you’ve got them settled at last and bang, home they come with a clutch of new grief. Not that I wasn’t glad to see my girl, even with her new young man in tow—”

I groaned. “Where are they, Cepheus?”

“We’ve always got on, Andromeda and I, despite the Wife. I wish she’d brought the kiddies too, they’d like the beach this time of year. Don’t forget, she’s my only child: it left a hole in the house, I tell you, when Perseus fetched her off, happy as I was to see her saved. Just me and Cassiopeia then, in this big place. I don’t know.”

Hand on dagger I made to leave; but Cepheus held my robe for the moment it took to reinstruct myself in patience.

“It isn’t the separation upsets me so,” he declared.

“Oh?”

“They aren’t kids any more; their kids aren’t even kids; I keep forgetting. And often as Cassiopeia and I have wished we’d never met… Though even at the worst we’ve stuck together, marriage isn’t what it used to be, youngsters nowadays. Faw! Andromeda’s near forty, showing it too, eyelines mainly, all those worries, got that from me. It’s like I told Perseus—”

“What’d you tell Perseus, Father?”

Again he frowned beside me. “You… you can’t have two women in the same palace.” “I believe it.”

“So do I.”

Love, please, we’re a way from the epilogue. “That’s what I told Perseus,” Cepheus said, “right after the wedding. Taps me on the shoulder, wants to know how’d it all
really
start. I took him aside, put it to him straight: ‘How does it always? Two women under one roof. Cass brags about her hair, natural curl, pretty as a goddess’s, Andromeda’s lucky to have it too, et cetera. Hundred times I’d told her: you got your natural curl, don’t make waves. Sure enough, comes word from the oracle: Nereids in a pout, somebody’s got to pay or it’s Cetus forever—and you know, Perseus, place like Joppa, once your fishery goes under, your whole economy goes.’ Something like that.”

I recalled the moment, sensed opportunity, quoted young Perseus: “ ‘Then how is it you cliffed Andromeda instead of your wife?’ ”

“There he had me,” Cepheus replied. “All I could say was, ‘It’s a choice no man should ever have to make; anyhow, orders are orders.’ But you put nothing over on Perseus, not in those days…”

I tried again. “ ‘Whose orders, Dad? Did Ammon speak to you personally, or did you take your wife’s word for it?’ ”

Cepheus almost smiled. “Thank Zeus it was just then Phineus and company crashed the party! By the time they were stoned, you’d forgot what you’d been asking.”

“I remember, I remember!” I resquatted, holding both his shoulders. “You do too, now?”

Cepheus shook his head ambiguously. “Twenty years later I’m still in misery over it, weeding out my chickpeas and cursing myself for a coward, to let history repeat itself…”

“You never were a coward, Cepheus! I-F-5, the Battle in the Banquet Hall, remember?”

“No, by Zeus,” he agreed, I hanging on his pronouns, “not quite a coward, just deadly henpecked, and there you are—”

“Perseus! This is Perseus!”

“Come to a man’s fight, I always held my own.” He let me help him to his feet; my own knees were scarcely less stiff. “I don’t excuse myself,” he said.

“Don’t apologize! You know me now?”

“You can imagine how I felt when the time came, rambling in the bean hills, tapped once again, and there stands Perseus, asking me what’s Cass cooking up this time, and where’s Andromeda, and what’s she up to, as if twenty minutes had gone by instead of twenty years!”

I squeezed. “That’s what I’m asking, Cepheus! Look at me!” His eyes were moving now, more like a frightened man’s than a blind. I laughed and slapped my gut and pate. “See? It
has
been twenty years: I’m fortier than your daughter—stout and stiff, half turned to stone…”

Cepheus closed his eyes. “Perseus… stout, stiff, or ill…” He pursed a small smile. “Is Perseus still. Night air’s
bad
for the arthritis. Let’s go in, son.”

Eyes cleared entirely, he confirmed as we limped palace-ward that Andromeda and young Danaus were there shacked up; that Cassiopeia, furious at her own Galanthis’s flirtations with her daughter, was nagging him Cepheus again with Ammon-oracles fishy as the first; that (what I hadn’t heard before) it was she who’d set Phineus to disrupt my wedding, out of general jealousy.

I was stopped cold. “Why do you put up with her, Cepheus?”

He fingered an earlobe; glanced at me sidewise; declared he’d been of course long since distressed that he wasn’t loved by the woman whose beauty he still so honored, but that he’d never reckoned himself especially lovable, and assumed it was not for no reason that women like his wife, who did not begin so, became what they became; concluded with a shrug: “You’ll learn.”