“We travelled on, young Orpheus stroking his lyre as
though
it counted for more than the sails. And did he expect to
stir up
rancor in me by his proof that art may also serve morale? Then that was a difference between us. I use
what means
I can to achieve my ends; I no more resented his help than the wind’s. If the quality of acts concerns him, the
smell and taste,
the moment to moment morality of it, let him take care of those. What he’d done to show me up, make a fool
of me,
was just what I’d sought myself. So who was the fool?
But I
was Captain, and not required to give explanations.
“And so
we came to the river Lykos and the Anthemoeisian lagoon. The Argo’s halyards and all her tackle quivered as we flashed along; but during the night the wind died
down,
and at dawn we moored at the Cape of Akherusias, a towering headland with sheer rock cliffs that blindly
stare out
across the Bithynian Sea. Beneath the headland, at sea
level,
a solid platform of smooth-swept rock where rollers
endlessly
break and roar; at the crown of the headland, plane
trees rising
stretching their great, dark beams to blot out the sun.
We went in.
I watched our pilot. He was restless, too silent.
I remembered the words
of Orpheus. I took Idmon aside, younger of the seers, and spoke to him. Said: ‘Idmon, look over at Tiphys,
there.
Tell me what you see.’ He turned his head away quickly,
refused
to hear. Then he said, ‘If you’ve come for hopeful news,
you’ve come
to the wrong man. There is no hopeful news — not on
that
or anything.’ He tipped his face. He was weeping.
I frowned,
baffled again, and left him. How could I have guessed
what grief
the poor man had on his mind? We had work, in any
case—
the usual repairs, the usual gathering of wood and
leaves. …
“On the landward side, the vaulting sea-naes sloped
away
to a hollow glen, a cave with overhanging trees and
rocks,
the Cavern of Hades. From its pitchdark hollows an icy
breath
comes up each morning, covering rocks, trees, ferns
with sparkling
rime that clings three hours, then melts in the sun.
We listened.
A rumble like voices, the far-off murmur of rollers
breaking
at the foot of the cliff, the whisper of leaves as the wind
from the cave
pressed by, and perhaps some further voice, like a
voice in a dream,
a memory. We stood at the mouth of the cave looking
down
at darkness, musing. Shoulder to shoulder we stood,
peering in,
Ankaios, the boy in the bearskin; old Mopsos; wise old
Argus,
artificer; huge Telamon; Orpheus; Tiphys (his breathing was short and quick); myself, all the others…. We
stood peering in,
shoulder to shoulder, each one of us, that instant, alone, thinking of his personal dead, his private death. But
Idas
widened his eyes, leered wildly, whispering, ‘Ghosts!’
He clung
to my arm, clowning even here. I shook him free.
My cousin
Akastos touched my shoulder to calm my wrath.
“Not long
thereafter, one of our number would go down through
that door
alive, in search of his love, as Theseus had gone already for a friend, when both of them were young. It’s said
that Orpheus
willingly moved past Briareos, with his hundred
whirling arms,
moved past the terrible nine-headed Hydra and the great
flame-breathing
dragon, encountered the colossal giant Tityus, whose great, black, bloated body sprawled across nine
full acres,
and came to the midnight palace of Lord Dionysos
himself,
prince of terror, bull-god, huntsman whom nothing
escapes.
Majestically then, without words, a mere nod, old
Kadmos the Dark
granted what he asked, but after the nod set this
condition:
The harper must lead the way, and Euridike follow—
a woodnymph,
gentlest, most timid of all creatures, a heart more
quickly alarmed
than a deer’s (not two men living have ever seen her
kind:
they vanish in a splinter of light at the sound of a
footfall). She must follow,
and the harper never look back. (How like the gods,
I thought,
when I learned of it, to end his pains with a joke.)
But he agreed.
No choice, of course. Began his slow way back through
the dimness,
stepping past pits where blue-scaled snakes rolled
coil on coil,
their hatchet heads hovering, floating, the whole dark
trogle alive
with rattling and hissing and the seething of the
sulphurous pits. He listened,
harping the guardian serpents to sleep — the horned
cerastes,
the basilisk with its lethal eyes — and he heard her step, timid, behind him, and so, chest pounding, continued.
Moved past
terrors to make a man sick — much less a nymph,
coming after him,
alone. And still he gazed forward. Imagine it! Shrieks,
screams, cackles,
flashes of light, sudden forms, quick wings, sharp hisses
of air,
bright skulls (Was that my Euridike’s scream?) …
How the gods must have howled,
rolled in the dirt on their bellies. — However, he’d agreed, one capable of death, therefore of dignity, and so, solemn in the Funhouse (behind him the
beautiful woodnymph,
white arms reaching, yellow hair streaming in the
cavern’s wind,
eyes like a fawn’s), he moves past grisly shapes,
indecent
allegories—Grief, Avenging Care, and (look!) there’s Pale Disease, the back of his hand to his forehead
(woe!),
and lo, there’s Melancholy Age, his hand on his pecker,
shrunk
to a stick. Step wider, Orpheus! That’s Hunger there! Snaps like a dog! And by him, Fear, trembling, pressed
close
to Pain and Poverty and Death! So past them all they
moved,
those lovers, and he saw the first faint light of day.
They’d made it!
No more horrors, not even a spider, a hornèd ant between where he stood and the green-edged light of
freedom! He turned.
She ran toward him … and vanished. He stared in grief
and rage
and then, with a groan, remembered. And so he left the
Funhouse,
walked out into the light. He died soon after, a wreck. Go there now and you’ll see two shades together, alone on a flat rock ledge, holding hands. There are sounds
of dripping springs,
faint moans farther in, the whisper of spiders walking.
“A tale
most spiritual, most moving. And yet I’ll tell you the
truth:
He wouldn’t have done it at forty, or even at thirty.
He’d have wept
and ordered a monument for her, or started a fund.
Shall we say
hooray for youth, inexperience? Shall we grieve our