weary wanderer in a faithless world (alas!
lack-a-day!)—
no wonder if the racket that shakes Bear Mountain to
her deepest stones,
the clatter that whisks away winds — has no faintest
effect on him!
What has the son of Aison to do with the goddess of will? — Jason, who’s gazed into the Pit!’ He cackled,
delighted with himself.
‘Are we brutes? Are we Balls on Inclined Planes? Are
we mindless? — noseless
to the stink, everywhere, of Death? Let Philosophy set
it down
that love is illusion, from which it follows, the gods are
illusion,
which proves in turn that Mother Nature, who gives
such joy,
is an old whore earning her keep!’ Then suddenly:
‘How do you feel?’
He stared, intense, his eyes so bright you’d have thought
some demon
had entered him. ‘How do you feel?’ I thought about it. I felt like a man renewed. It was completely senseless. How can the mind know all its mechanics and scoff
at aid,
cold-blooded, and yet be aided? Nevertheless, I was a man reborn. It was stupid. ‘Me too!’ old Mopsos said, cackling, doing a dancestep, lunatic joy. ‘We’ve had us some times!’ he said. We’ve done us some deeds!! Old
Hera’s in us!!!’
He paused. ‘Whatever that may mean.’ He winked,
then aimed
his staff at a tree. It was filled, suddenly, with fire.
He aimed
at a rock: it burst into feathers, screeched, flapped off.
‘So much
for the quacks on the isle of Elektra!’ he said. Then,
sobering,
adjusting his robe and beads — the robe was none too
clean—
he bowed, taking my arm. And so we returned to the
ship,
all dignity, solemnly walking in step. And so sailed on. Idmon, younger of the seers, came over to my rowing
bench.
‘Pick a halcyon, any halcyon,’ he said. He winked.
“Faith wasn’t our business. Herakles’ business, maybe. Sailing the cool treacherous seas of the barbarians …”
9
The wind dropped down to nothing. We rowed— ‘in
a spirit of friendly
rivalry,’ mad Idas said, rolling his eyes, making fun of
God knew
what. Still, that’s what we did, each trying to shame
all others.
The windless air had smoothed out the waves on every
side;
the sea was asleep. We rowed, driving the singing ship, swift as a skate, by our own power. It seemed to us— skimming the sea like a gull, a wingèd shark — not even Poseidon’s team, the horses with the whirlwind feet,
could have overtaken us.
But later, when the sea was roughened by the winds that blow down rivers in the afternoon, we wearied and
relaxed,
and we left it to Herakles alone to haul us in, our
muscles
shaky with exhaustion, throats burned raw by panting.
Each stroke
he pulled sent a shudder through the ship. His sweat
ran rivers down
his face and dripped from his nose and chin to his
wide chest
and belly, tightened like a fist. Young Hylas beamed at
him, watching,
and old Polyphemon, son of Eilatos, grinned, shaking his hoary head, and swore that not even in his prime,
when he fought
with the Lapithai, striking centaurs down with his bare
fists,
had he or any other man pulled oars with the power of Herakles. ‘It looks as if by himself hell bring us to the Mysian coast! the old man said. Herakles
grinned,
or tried to, his face contorted with the effort of his
rowing. But then,
as we passed within sight of the Rhydakos and the great
barrow
of Aigaion, not far from Phrygia, Herakles — ploughing enormous furrows in the choppy sea — snapped his long
oar
and tumbled sideways, clear off the bench. He looked
up, outraged,
the handle of the oar in his two hands, the paddle end
sweeping
sternward, away out of sight. We laughed. He was
angrier yet,
sitting up, speechless and glaring. We took up the
rowing as best
we could, weary as we were. Even now he could hardly
speak,
a man not used to idleness.
“We made our landfall.
It was dusk; the time of day when the ploughman,
thinking of his supper,
reaches his home at last and, pausing at the door, looks
down
at his hands, begrimed and barked, and curses the tyrant
belly
that drives men to such work. We’d struck the
Kianian coast,
close to Mount Arganthon and the famous estuary of Kios. Luckily, tired as we were, the people greeted us kindly, supplying our needs with sheep and wine. I sent a few of the Argonauts to fetch dry wood, others to
gather up
leaves from the fields and bring them to the camp for
bedding; still others
I set to twirling firesticks; the rest of us filled the winebowls, getting them ready for the usual sacrifice to Apollo, god of landings.
“But Herakles, son of Zeus,
left us to work on the feast by ourselves and set out,
alone—
attended by unseen ravens, the night’s historians— for the woods, anxious before all else to make himself
an oar
to replace the one he’d broken. He wandered around till
at last
he discovered a pine not burdened much with branches,
and not
full grown — a pine like a slender young poplar in height
and girth.
When he saw it would do, he laid his bow and quiver
down,
took off his loinskin, and began by loosening the pine’s
hold
with blows of his bronze-studded club. Then he trusted
to his own power.
Legs wide apart, one mighty shoulder pressed against
the tree,
he seized the trunk low down with his hands and,
pulling so hard
his temples bulged, face dark with blood, he tore up
the pine
by the roots. It came up clods and all, like a ship’s mast
torn
from its stays, the wedges and pins coming with it,
when sudden fashes
break without warning as Orion sets in anger. When
he’d rested,
he picked it up, along with his bow and arrows,
loinskin
and club, and started back, balancing the tree on his
shoulder.
“Meanwhile Hylas had gone off by himself with a
bronze ewer,
looking for a hallowed spring where he might get
drinking water
for the evening meal. Herakles himself had trained
the boy
in the business of a squire. He’d had the boy since the
day he struck down
Hylas’ father, Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. Not one of Herakles’ nobler moments. They were a
lawless tribe,
the Dryopians, fornicating with one another’s wives, maddening themselves by the use of strange distillations
and roots,
scornful of the gods. Unable to find any honest quarrel, Herakles went to the king one day when he was
ploughing, and began
an argument concerning an ox. One moment the king
was laughing,
scornful and clever, enjoying the contest; the next he
lay dead