Atlantis (50 page)

“After this had gone on for several minutes the unfortunate Zante-man uttered one last piercing shriek, ran to the side of the ship and dived into the sea. So strong was the wretch’s
conviction
that for a neck he had nothing but a gaping bloody hole with three bloated worms hanging out of it that it infected most of us who watched his dive; so that what we saw when he
disappeared
—and nothing of him ever reappeared—was a pool of blood on the water, with what looked like a blur of red worms squirming about within it.”

“And you really and truly saw all that?”

“I really and truly saw all that,” replied Akron.

Then it was that they both saw Odysseus beckoning to them and when they reached him they were, for the twentieth time that eventful evening, impressed to the depths of their souls by the old wanderer’s self-control.

The excited priest of Orpheus, now entirely naked, was waving his long thin white arms, on which there was not a single black hair and which the moon seemed determined to turn to ivory. The madman was calling upon the whole universe to join him in his desperate incantation to Nothingness!

Not all the words of the priest’s incantation reached Nisos; but those that did so sounded to him somewhat like this:

Nisos expected that Odysseus would react in some definite way to this nihilistic incantation; but he behaved as if he had not heard a word of what the Priest had been chanting, and as soon as Enorches realized that he was totally alone in his worship of Non-Existence he clung to the mast and became absolutely silent and still.

Meanwhile Odysseus had begun a long geological rigmarole on the chemical constituents of various kinds of scoriae substance; and he did this, Nisos decided, so as to reduce Enorches to the Nothingness he worshipped.

“It is an up-thrusting, up-pointing rock‚” Odysseus
concluded
, “a rock of black basalt, or of some blue-black
adamantine
stone, Master Akron. Have you heard what I’ve been saying in all this breaking of waves and splashing of water?”

Akron, followed closely by Nisos, who gave a grave little bow
when he met the king’s glance, declared that he’d heard
perfectly
every word.

“How well he lies!” thought Nisos. “I couldn’t have done better myself. But no! He
must
have heard. What an ear he’s got!”

“Yes, O great King,” said Akron firmly. “You’ve said that we shall soon reach an up-pointing black rock, about a dozen feet inland from the island’s edge, and that it is to this rock that you wish me to make fast the ship with our newest and strongest length of rope; for it is from there when this curst moonlight—have mercy on me, Selene!—is driven from the heaven by the sun, that you wish, my king, to make your first experimental dive with the Helmet of Proteus. Have I got your command clear, my lord Odysseus?” And the king murmured that he had. It struck Nisos however that the royal voice had grown perceptibly weaker since Pegasos had come and gone; but as the old man, after haying risen to his feet for some minutes, had now re-seated himself on his pile of ropes, this change of tone may have been without any special significance.

“But how,” thought Nisos, “how
can
the old man endure all this?” And then, as in obedience to a whisper from Akron he picked up the blanket that the Priest of Orpheus had dropped and wrapt it round the fellow’s shoulders, he noticed that Enorches gave him a very queer look. All the same the priest wrapped the thing round himself with obvious relief and crouched down again, this time with his back to the mast.

“Stay and watch him for a while, will you, son?” whispered Akron. “I’ve got to go down now to the oarsmen to talk to them about this rock to which we have to tie up the ship for the night. And keep an eye, sonny, will you”—here Akron moved close enough to add this in an extremely low whisper—“on Zeuks, while I’m down below? He seems to think that as long as he’s embracing that girl he’s keeping her from some mischief she naturally will be up to the moment he lets her go! But it’s much more about himself than about that poor worried-looking waif from Troy that I’m concerned.

“You know the man a lot better than I do; in fact, as far as I can see, you’re the only one aboard our old ‘Teras’ who knows anything about him at all. He’s a funny-looking fellow right enough; and he’s got a look as if at any moment he might break out into a roar of laughter that would burst his skin! I don’t like the look of him and I don’t trust him. So keep an eye on him, son, will you? They’ll be calling us down before very long to the old man’s cabin for supper. I pray we’ll be reaching this
confounded
rock he talks about before
that’s
ready. But maybe not! Anyway I’m off now. I’ll be seeing you later. At supper, if not before! I won’t ask you now how
you
suppose the old man knew about this same ‘pointed rock’ to which we’re to moor the ‘Teras’?
He
can’t
have
been
here
before,
can
he?
Well! See you soon again, son! But keep your wits about you. I leave the old man, so to say, in your care. See you soon!”

Both pairs of ladies, Pontopereia and Eione in their cabin, and Nausikaa and Okyrhöe in theirs, were, in a leisurely, negligent, nonchalant way, preparing for the passengers’ supper in the much larger cabin dedicated to the comfort of Odysseus.

“What do you really feel, Eione darling, when you see that queer-looking individual Zeuks, holding that grave, sweet Trojan woman on his knee?”

Pontopereia held her own not very shapely left leg balanced across the knee of her other while she carefully adjusted her left sandal so that a particular wrinkle in its leather shouldn’t hurt a bunion from which she was suffering.

Eione screwed up her forehead, but gave her friend a very straight look.

“It wouldn’t suit you, my beautiful one, to feel as I feel,” Eione replied, “for you’re a clever girl from a big city and are born with an intellect of your own; and if a man began fooling about with you you’d either want him to come to the point, take your maidenhead, as they call it, and have done with it, or to let you alone and come back to listening while you explained your philosophy to him.

“But country girls like me are quite different. We’ve lived so
close to animals that we’ve sort of turned into animals. We’re fond of our own human flesh just as animals are. And we’re particularly fond of our own flesh when men are enjoying it, I mean feeling it with any part of
their
bodies. I know what I’m talking about, Ponty darling, for I’ve had an experience that doesn’t happen to every girl in the world I can assure you! I mean I’ve been, as they call it, ‘made love to’—not much ‘making’ and not much ‘love’ in it, but never mind that!—by no other than the most lecherous Being in the whole wide world, the great Arcadian god Pan, his own self!

“And do you know what happened? We just simply made friends. I begged him not to meddle with my virginity, for, as I told him frankly, I didn’t want to be bothered with the
consequence
of that sort of thing yet! I wanted to enjoy my life before starting to be a mother and all that sort of business. Arcadian Pan fully understood what I said to him; and he fully agreed with my point of view. I told him it wasn’t fair that our mother the Earth should just use us as procreating nest-eggs for her own purposes. And he agreed.

“He said that in the act of copulation a woman got more pleasure than a man the moment the pain was over and
sometimes
even while the pain was going on. But he said he’d make a bargain with me that he’d agree not to meddle with my virginity if in return I’d let him hold me on his knees and enjoy the feeling of my thighs pressed against his thighs and the pleasure of stroking my breasts. He said that the pleasure to male flesh of having female flesh pressed against it was greater than the most delicious taste to the tongue or the palate or the most exciting bathing in water, rushing through air, burrowing in earth-mould, or brandishing blazing fire.

“He said that to deny to masculine flesh its greatest possible thrill, namely the ecstasy of being pressed against feminine flesh, was the most cruel and wicked perversion in the whole universe, and that the whole idea of refusing our human flesh to each other, when the meeting of these two sorts of flesh, the male and the female, gave to each the greatest thrill of pleasure possible to all
organic beings in the whole universe was a wicked and cruel denial to life of what life had come into existence to enjoy.

“‘Life,’ said Arcadian Pan to me, ‘life is lured and attracted out of the inert and inanimate elements into its earliest existence by the promise of the indescribable ecstasy of sexual pleasure! And so, when we have lured life out of the inanimate, to go and deny to it,’ thus spoke Arcadian Pan to me, ‘its prerogative and privilege and proprietary right, is an abominable treachery to the mysterious pressure, whatever it may be, that brought life into existence!’

“And I must tell you this also, Ponty, my true and only friend. When Arcadian Pan had taught me the ineffable, the
unfathomable
, the infinite pleasure that comes from male flesh pressing female flesh against itself—and, mind you, this has nothing at all to do with ‘taking maidenheads’, as they call it, or de-
virginating
virgins—he and I became excellent friends. I found his society extremely agreeable; and it seemed to me that he found mine the same! At any rate the result of our daily contact was that I got genuinely fond of him and sincerely attached to him as a friend; and I believe he felt exactly the same about me! That he was an immortal god and I a silly little mortal girl, doomed to perish in a few years, seemed to make no difference to him or to me! I can only tell you, Ponty dear, that if it weren’t for meeting you, and your being so sweet to me, I should miss his company so much that there’s no telling what silly things I might do. And what is more, I believe, though it seems conceited and vain to say so, that he misses me, though not of course as much as I miss him!”

At this point Pontopereia, as she lowered her not very shapely leg to the floor of that lowest deck of the “Teras” and endured with a little laugh the twitching pain she got from the contact of her sandal with her bunion, believed she beheld by the feeble flame of a flickering wick floating in oil, a real, actual, round pearl of a wet tear rolling down her friend’s plain, simple, and the extreme opposite of what could be called a clever face and sliding from her retreating chin to the white hollow between her girlish breasts.

A very different dialogue was proceeding meanwhile in the cabin of the two older women. There was no inclination between those two to make the relation between male and female flesh the subject of discourse.
Their
talk was actuated by, and revolved round, and obstinately and viciously returned to, the intense heart-gnawing jealousy they felt with regard to each other and the old wanderer with whom they were sailing.

“You have no idea then, is that what you want me to believe, as to what you will do with me, when you and this ugly, badly built ship of yours have lured Odysseus to his death?”

“
Do
with you? I don’t understand! I presume you’ll stay here on board with us until you’re tired of us? We shall, of course, when we’ve seen all we want to see of the ocean that swallowed up Atlantis, sail back to the land of my Fathers. If you think we’re going to visit Ithaca just for the sake of ending where we began you’re challenging the very mill-wheel of disappointment.

“And if you are playing with the crazy idea that you can persuade me to enter the harbour of the city of Thebes on your behalf you must be losing your head. What you ought to be asking yourself all this while is what you will do when we return to my country. I shall have no particular authority there; and if I
had
I doubt whether, from what I now am learning about you from personal contact, I should be particularly anxious to—
What
was
that?
The first call for dinner was it? Or was it a call for us to gather on the top deck again, before
something
—heaven knows what!—begins to happen?

“No, no! thanks all the same! You go on dressing; and be quick about it and stop talking! I can manage with this curst necklace if you leave me alone. Yes, you’re welcome to all the hot water in that
pro-cho-os
over there. I’ve got all I want.”

Meanwhile on the top deck the same sound of the same bell that had disturbed Nausikaa and Okyrhöe reached the ears of Odysseus. He had left his club propt against the bulwarks and had already begun to move, slowly and cautiously, as he always did when on board ship, from his seat of coiled ropes to the ladder leading to the oarsmen’s deck.

Over the face of the priest Enorches as he lay naked in a couple of blankets, for some kindly sailor had brought him a second one, now that the only light in the sky and on the water was
moonlight
, there floated an unquestionable smile of pure comfort and relief. Most onlookers would have supposed this look to have been purely due to a draught of rich Cyprian wine which another kindly sailor had brought him; but our old acquaintance the Fly who was now in a position to observe these things at close quarters knew well enough that it was his friend the
brown-winged
Moth, who by deliberately fanning with her wings the wine-moistened lips of the Priest of the Mysteries, had drawn from him this genial token of well-being.