the angry imprecations of his swollen heart. Then: ‘Believe me, I’d far rather die, and I would have 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,
will he turn
on you? Say no more! I give you my vow, it’s your
destiny.
No harm will come! I swear by Apollo, by my own
second sight,
by my cataracts, by the home of the dead — may the
powers of Hades
blast me to atoms if I die! No ultion will fall on you, no vengeful alastor seek you out by decree of the gods.’
“ ‘Very well,’ Zetes said. And now the brothers backed
off from Phineus,
ready to faint from his stink. At once, we prepared a
meal
for the poor old seer — the last the Harpies were to get.
And Zetes
and Kalais took up their watch, knees bent, a short way
off
from the prophet who squatted by the steps. Before he
could reach for a morsel,
down came the Harpies. They struck and were gone with
no more warning
than a lightning flash — the meal had vanished — and
we heard their raucous
chattering far out at sea. It seemed the whole world
had turned
to stench. But Zetes and Kalais too were gone, we saw— vanished like ghosts. They nearly caught them—
touched them, in fact.
But just as their fingers were closing on the creatures’
throats, the sky
went white, and a voice said: ‘Stop! The Harpies are
the hounds of Zeus!
Don’t harm them! They’ll trouble your friend no more,
swift sons of Boreas!’
And so the brothers turned back, and the curse was
ended.
“We cleansed
the old man’s house with sulphur fire, and washed him
in the creek,
then picked out the finest of the sheep we’d gotten from
Amykos
and made them a sacrifice to Zeus. We set out a banquet
in the hall
and sat with Phineus to eat. He ate like a man in a
dream,
astounded, baffled by the sweetness of life.
“When we’d eaten and drunk
our fill, the old man, sitting among us by the fireplace,
said:
‘Listen. I can tell you many things. Not all I know, but a good deal. I was a fool, once. I used to tell people the whole nature of the universe. Deeper and deeper I plunged into things long-hidden, until for some
strange reason
(which I understand) those Harpies came, called down
from the sky
(not “sent,” mind you: called—called down as surely
as if
I’d raised my hands and cried, “Harpies, snatch away
my food!”). Since then I’ve
learned my place, so to speak, or learned my weakness,
which is
the same: my strength. As the glutton eats till it kills
him, the visionary
sees. (My father, by the way, had a truly amazing eye for omens, though nothing like mine. But I’d rather not
speak of that.)’
He glanced past his shoulder, furtive, then smiled again
and gazed
at the flames with his chalk-white eyes. ‘I could tell you
many things,’
he said again, and smiled. His corrugate hands and
cheeks
glowed in the firelight, shining with joy of life like the
eyes
of a lover. We waited. He said, ‘I knew a man one time who suffered in a somewhat similar way. He murdered
his father
and married his mother, unwittingly. It was a classic
case.
I spoke to him many years afterward. I said, “Come,
come, Oidipus!
Surely you recognized the man you killed! Surely,
in the hindmost
corner of your mind you saw your image in his face
and remembered
his shadow between your mother’s breast and you.”
The king
considered me — or considered my voice (he was
blind) — then answered,
“Doubtless, Phineus. Clearly I was fooled, one way or
another:
if not by reality, then clearly by something in myself.
There are shadows
more than we dream, in the ancient cave of the
mind — dark gods,
conflicting absolutes, timeless and co-existent, who
battle
like atoms seething in a cauldron, each against all, to
assert
their raucous finales. Gods illogical as sharks. We roof their desperate work with the limestone and earth of
reason, but the roof
has cracks: as seepages, springs, dark meres push
through earth’s crust,
those old, mad gods burst through the mind’s thick
floor, mysterious
nightmares, twitches, accidents perverting our gentlest
acts.
I’ve made my peace with them.” I saw that events had
made him
wise. I said: “Perhaps the old man was not your father, merely another of reality’s tricks.” He smiled. “Perhaps. I’ve heard much stranger things. I’ve learned that the