Chimera (18 page)

“ ‘Tell us how it’s going to turn out!’ Deliades demanded, as would have little Isander had he heard this far. He would if he could, Polyeidus replied, but concentrate as he might, all he came up with were the images of two odd beasts: a lovely white winged stallion who had just that moment been born into the world, and a vague monstrosity in three parts, obscured from clearer view by the smoke of its own respiration. What these had to do with me and Glaucus, he couldn’t say.

“Curling my lovely lip—how well I see me!—I said, ‘A stallion would
have
to have wings to get into our stables!’ Where, remember, there had been none since my conception—a policy I opposed as contrary to nature and conducive to nervousness in the mares. Deliades, as fond of horses as myself, was enchanted with the notion of a winged one; he wished Dad had it for the chariot events in the Argonauts’ Funeral Stakes, to be run that night. Here I make a three-part digression…”

Over my dead body. Yes. We’re
in
a three-part digression already, sinking in exposition as in quickmire! The Deterioration of the Literary Unit: yes, well, things are deteriorating right enough, deteriorating; everything is deteriorated; deterioration everywhere. God knows
I’m
not what I used to be; no help for that. But never for want of words! Too much to say, that’s
my
complaint: everything to get said, and all at once or I’ll forget it. Already I’ve forgotten half what I’d in mind to write; pen can’t keep up; I make mad side-notes, notes of notes for notes; each phrase begets two more, four; I can’t sleep for them; my joints are stiff; it’s cold and damp here; this moment I should be lying with my warm young friend; instead it’s scribble scribble the night through, red-eyed, dizzy: fine shape I’ll be in at tide-turn, when the long ebb ends! What was I saying? There, gone. Digression from digression will not lead to the main stream; it’s the wrong way out of the swamp. “Float with the tide,” I’m told. By whom? My mistress? Monstrous. I know who sticks in my throat.

“The Corinthian succession,”
I press on: “Over that we teasily disputed, Bellerus and Deliades, mocking the arguments of the
polis.
Deliades had been born first, by an hour or so, but as we were twins, primogeniture struck most people as a technicality. The issue more often hassled in the Corinthian bars and byways was the issue of legitimacy. No one denied that we had different fathers, whether because they accepted it that all twins do, or because our demeanors were dissimilar, or because the royal quarrels on that point were common gossip. What one might call the conservative position was that since Glaucus was King of Corinth, his legitimate son was his legitimate heir, regardless of who had been born first; on this view, the only question was which of us was legitimate, and as was established pages ago, nearly all inclined to Deliades by reason of his verdigris eyes. The more radical position was that if one of us had been sired by Poseidon, biological legitimacy and primogeniture were both superseded, or should be, and the proper problem was how to determine which if either of us was a demigod. Here the larger following was mine, though as the Glaucus-Deliades faction was fond of pointing out, popularity is not proof. Moreover, what was true in most such cases (Heracles and Iphicles, for instance)—that one twin was immortal and the other not—was not true in all; both might be either; therefore the experiment proposed in jest by Polyeidus and taken up seriously by others, of throwing us both into the Gulf of Corinth, say, and seeing who survived, was opposed as inconclusive as well as repugnant, since at best it would kill the King’s legitimate son, and at worst terminate the dynasty without settling the dispute.

“These positions were fueled and complicated by political, historical, even logical considerations: the mare-cult itself, for example, was held to be a survival from a bygone matriarchal era, dating from the days before men realized that copulation, rather than magic, was the cause of pregnancy. The more militant votaries of the cult denied that even Glaucus had been the rightful king, and urged Eurymede to a coup d’état. Few favored an outright duumvirate of twins, but several groups called for joint rule by annual alternation, citing various actual and mythical precedents, as a peaceful resolution of the question. Even such apparently irrational expedients as the toss of a coin were seriously put forward: since only the gods knew whether one of us was a demigod and if so which, let the gods decide who should rule Corinth, et cetera.

“These arguments grew more heated every year, and more inextricable from political power-alignments. Glaucus, though he took no open measures against me and made every show of treating us equally, could not conceal his jealousy and alarm, especially after Polyeidus, pressed, admitted the risks involved in ‘fathering’ a demigod. Eurymede, for her part, loved both her sons and took no stand on the issue of succession; even in the matter of my paternity she was shrug-shouldered by comparison to Deliades. But on one point she brooked no question: that it was Poseidon and no other who had climbed her in the surf.

“ ‘A woman knows,’ she would say firmly, and Glaucus tear his hair.

“On our thirteenth birthday”—shades of my sons, forgive me!—“asked by our parents what we wanted in the present-way, I requested the usual hunting gear, racing mares, new tunics; Deliades, secretly coached by Polyeidus, surprised the court by demanding our pedigree-papers. Glaucus blushed: ‘They’re blank. You know why. Ask for something else.’ ‘I want Polyeidus to fill in the blanks,’ Deliades declared: ‘Bring out our papers and make him turn himself into the answers.’ Glaucus glowered at his seer. Eurymede sharply asked Polyeidus whether he could in fact make such a transformation; if so, why hadn’t he long since, to quiet the country? Glaucus protested that any such stunt would amount to no more than another man’s opinion, on the vexed question, which opinion, if Polyeidus had one, he could as well state plainly without recourse to the sort of circus tricks he famously disdained. Polyeidus nervously began a lecture on what he called the proto-existentialist view of ontological metamorphosis: within certain limits, everyone’s identity was improvisable and responsible; man was free to create himself et cetera. A willful lad, I drew my sword: ‘Fill in the blanks or die.’ Polyeidus blinked, grunted like a costive, disappeared. Deliades kissed me and showed gleefully to the court a scroll that popped from nowhere into his hands:
son of Glaucus and Eurymede,
it read beneath his name, and under mine:
out of Eurymede by Poseidon.
“Thus ended, not the quarrel (which was fired additionally thenceforth by accusations of forgery and fraud), but Polyeidus’s influence in the palace, at least with Glaucus; only the good offices of Eurymede, who was pleased with both her sons’ behavior on this occasion, kept him on as our tutor. It was also the end, so far as anyone knew, of his ‘animate’ transformations, and the first of his documentary. It was not, however, as some allege, the invention of writing, though to Polyeidus rightly goes the credit for having introduced, some seasons earlier, that problematic medium to Corinth, where it never caught on. Writing itself, he told us in the Q & A after his act, would be invented some generations later by a stranded minstrel pissing in the sand of a deserted Aegean isle, making up endings to the Trojan War. It was the seer’s limited capacity to read the future that enabled him to borrow certain ideas therefrom prior to their historical introduction. Why didn’t he make use of this powerful ability to take over the world? Because knowledge, not power, was his vocation; he did not agree with Francis Bacon that the two are one; on the contrary, his own experience was that the more he understood, the less potent he became; the semantic and logical problems alone, to look no further, posed by such a stunt as stealing from the future, were a can of worms that no sane man would stir up unnecessarily. Et cetera. No one understood. ‘Put it this way, then,’ he grumbled: ‘when I look back at the history of the future I see that Polyeidus in fact never capitalized on this trick. Since I didn’t, I can’t; therefore I won’t.’ ‘Thanks for the present,’ I said to my brother. ‘Many happy returns,’ he replied—not knowing, as he couldn’t see seer-wise, there’d be but five.”

The eyes of Melanippe’s lover are gray-green: explain. Directly. Happy birthday, dead Hippolochus; happy birthday to you. Digression won’t save them, dear Bellerophon; do come to it. Your eighteenth birthday. Sibyl. Chariot-race scene. The curse of God upon you, Polyeidus, snake in the grass, whom even as I bored kind Philonoë decades after with this tale I didn’t know to be its villain!

“Eighteen, are we? On the beach? The horse race? Sibyl. Polyeidus had a daughter, who knows by whom. Sibyl. Younger than we. That summer she was our friend. Deliades adored her, she me. I screwed her while he watched, in a little grove down on the shore, by Aphrodite’s sacred well. Honey-locusts grew there, shrouded by rank creepers and wild grape that spread amid a labyrinth of paths. There was about that place a rich fetidity: gray rats and blackbirds decomposed, by schoolboys done to death; suburban wild dogs spoored the way; part the vines at the base of any tree and you might find a strew of pellets and fieldmouse-bones disgorged by feasting owls. It was the most exciting place we knew; its queer smell retched us if we breathed too deeply, but in measured inhalations it had a rich, a stirring savor. There they played, Bellerus and Sibyl, while Dee-Dee watched: no spite intended, but it cut him up. I told her to let him in too; I didn’t mind, and he was virgin. Nothing doing. I held her down for him to hump; he wouldn’t even look.

The mad child offered to relinquish his claim to Corinth in my favor if she’d marry him. No deal. ‘Bellerus can have Corinth the way he has me,’ she would say sullenly: ‘by taking it, whenever he wants to.’ I decided what to give my brother for his birthday gift that night. Now it’s afternoon: Deliades has drawn Polyeidus out on the hero-business, above, brought him to preliminary images of Pegasus and Chimera, mentioned the Argonauts’ Funeral Stakes, here we go. Ignore the myths that locate Glaucus’s death at Iolchis or Theban Pontiae on the occasion of Jason’s funeral games for Pelias: it happened at the regular Isthmian games, which in those days we called the Argonauts’ Funeral Stakes in memory of the Pelian originals. It was a big day on the Isthmus, especially for Deliades: as many former Argonauts as could make it were there, and assorted other stars; strolling through the locker rooms was like touring a Hall of Fame; Dee-Dee, ecstatic, knew the program by heart, pointed out to me everyone from Acastus to Zetes, rattled off biographies and box scores like a sports announcer, urged me to help him catch the winged horse in time for us to race as a team next year, bet his whole allowance for the lunar month on Glaucus, a very long shot, to win the unlimited chariot event.

“ ‘Not a chance,’ I said. ‘Those mares are crazy.’ Deliades agreed, but loyally put his drachmae on the line; it would break Dad’s heart, he said, to lose the biggest race on the card, which he’d placed and showed in in the two years previous and trained for all that season. We pressed Polyeidus for prediction. ‘Don’t be impudent,’ he replied. In those days I drew sword readily. ‘Your father by a quarter-furlong,’ he crossly volunteered, ‘with hippomanes and your help. I see you’re meeting my daughter tonight in the grove again, which also happens to be on the far side of the finish line.’ By full-moon-light, he declared, near the lip of the well, grew the potent herb, which only a votary of the goddess could find and pluck: a mild aphrodisiac and hallucinogen to males of several species, it had a graver effect on mares, and for that reason, though its sale, possession, and use were prohibited by law, it was much favored by the mare-maids for their mysteries. Sibyl having shown some talent, even as a child, for sniffing it out, Polyeidus had apprenticed her to Aphrodite and become Eurymede’s exclusive dealer in the weed—the supply of which, however, was so small that for some years he had been able to meet the cult’s demands only by transforming himself into an amulet of concentrated ‘hip,’ as they called it, to be sniffed by the company in turn. In order to ingratiate himself with Glaucus, he confessed, what a story, he had offered to become that amulet that night: at post time Dad would give his team a toke; the mares, long starved for love, would go mad for more; in the grove, where according to Sibyl a rare new crop had sprouted, I was to pluck it at the signal, step forth and crush it in my hands; one whiff of the fresh and the Glaucan mares would finish first. ‘Hurrah!’ cried Deliades. ‘Why me?’ I asked. Because, Dee-Dee explained, it was a symbolic surrogate for the attempted filicide required to satisfy the Pattern: the turned-on mares, Dad at the reins, would fly as if at me, but I’d have ample time to take cover with him and Sibyl in the grove. No one would be hurt; Glaucus would win handily; his gratitude for our help must overcome any residue of fear in him of me or ill will toward our tutor. Polyeidus paled, then gave my brother on the spot an alpha-plus for the semester in Mythology I.

“ ‘I hate fixed races,’ I complained to Dee-Dee in the grove. ‘Me too,’ said Sibyl. ‘Yes, well,’ said Deliades. Full moon, scattered clouds, balmy; couldn’t see a thing when the moon was hid except for the beach-fires flaring from the Argonautic cookout; then, between clouds, the grove glowed phosphor-green. I made the most of each obscurity to deal Dee-Dee in, preliminary to his birthday gift: with a hand on one of Sibyl’s breasts I would put his hand on the other, or under her chiton, which she wore in the Amazonian manner…”

Even then! exclaims Melanippe. Bellerophon wonders where she’s been these several pages? Long before Anteia brought the style to Tiryns, we had real Amazons in Corinth to mind the horses after Glaucus’s decree, and the fashion caught on with the younger women. That’s why, when Bellerophon saw Melanippe among Anteia’s dykes and falsies, he knew at once that she alone was the real thing. Melanippe herself is less certain—but let it go. He begs her pardon? No, please, let it go: go back to manhandling Sibyl; you’re telling this to Philonoë?

I talk to myself. Mad Sibyl’s dead, sweet Philonoë—everyone’s dead except us cursed with immortality. Hum. “In every case,” I run on, “she knew at touch whose hand was whose. Too bad for Dee-Dee. Now let’s see. The chariots assembled down the strand. I decided we’d play a prank on Glaucus and not fix the race after all; Deliades objected; Sibyl went round about the well on hands and knees to pluck the herb, which we chewed till we were high as Helicon. I set her after more, promising to climb her in our pet fashion, stallionwise, when she was done, then whispered to Dee-Dee what I had in mind: he was to declare impatiently, for Sibyl’s benefit, that he meant to take my place in Polyeidus’s program, crushing hippomanes, while I dallied, to fetch the mares on behalf of Glaucus and his own investment; but at the moon’s occlusion it was my place on Sibyl he’d take instead, humping her so ardently hind-to that she’d be nothing wiser till too late. Stoned and love-starved as he was, the boy refused. I told him that only if he took her, as my gift, would I fix the race—which just then started with a roar. Let’s see. Hum, that stuff was strong; things went awry; Glaucus gave the mares their dose of amulet and they went crazy; Dee-Dee—damn you, Polyeidus!—Dee-Dee, let’s see, we were stoned and hot as rocks from Mount Chimera; who knew who was who. Our father—Polyeidus, viper whose wriggles these words are!—he’d, let’s see, he’d tricked us all; we’d all tricked one another; Polyeidus hadn’t mentioned that hippomanes would drive those mares carnivorous. He couldn’t lose, God curse him, howevermany of us went. Dad’s team charged crazily out front, snapping and frothing toward the grove; that hand-crushed business was a trick; we reeked hip to the heavens. All hid behind the well; stoned Sibyl, still on all fours, cried for love. I guess I—well, I guess I bared her butt just about when the horses turned on Glaucus, going for the amulet; spilled him at grove’s-edge and went at him. Sibyl made to make rescue—mad mares eat only men—but I rammed her flat into the honeysuckle. At first bite Glaucus shouted. My brother sprang to save him in my stead. The moon came out; I drove in; Polyeidus, not to be gobbled, changed from amulet-‘round-Glaucus’s-neck to ditto-‘round-his-daughter’s (and straightway lost the power of such mere spatial relocation); Sibyl shrieked ‘Bellerus!’ as I pumped home and my brother went under the hooves. The whole team crashed into the creepers then, having gutted Glaucus and battered my brother past anyone’s knowing. Sibyl, mad from that moment forward, rose up and calmed them, crooning ‘Bellerus! Bellerus!’ as they nuzzled the amulet between her breasts. But I leaped for my life into the well, so banging my head on its old oak bucket that I bear yet a crescent scar there and hear a roaring in my skull like wind or time. That blow, well, turned my eyes gray-green, let’s see, impaired my memory, hear how I falter. If there are discrepancies or lacunae in this account, you must fill in the blanks yourself. All night I trembled in the well with frogs and crawlies, would’ve gone under but for the bucket-rope, heard hubbub overhead. Toward morning, when things stilled, as I miserably watched one star wink like Medusa down my hole, Polyeidus cranked me up, stone-stiff. We couldn’t make each other out.