Chimera (12 page)

“Right. It was a camper’s wet-dream; she stole from the lake by starlight and slipped under my cloak, her own still sopping. She was all a-shiver; I helped her off with it, up to the cowl and veil, which she’d not remove. But I was right: I’d’ve known that body anywhere—”

“Ample soft wide-hipped small breasted
blah.”

“You’re being Andromeda,” I chided Calyxa. “Sorry.” “Don’t apologize. She confessed she was the Styx-Nymph, her veil the kibisis, which she’d as leave keep on till morning if I didn’t mind. We didn’t get much done.” “You said she was Stygian, I believe?” “Stop that. She was innocent, had had only one man before, Poseidon, he left his traces, never an orgasm.” “
I
had orgasms long before I ever had a man.” “She wasn’t like you, for better and worse, but she was sweet, sweet, my lifesaver; I was grateful, she was impetuous and shy at once, I was flattered—but she
was
stiff with me, out of inexperience, and I limp with her…” “Out of practice.” “You
did
write those letters! Anyhow, she was Athene’s aide, I reminded myself, not Aphrodite’s. I was eager to see her face, which she promised to unveil when the time was right; if her neck, which especially pleased me, was any indication…”

Calyxa sat up and requested a change of subject. She was past her pout, even teasy, but would not be touched by my retumescence, inspired as it was not altogether by herself. “We all know it was the New Medusa,” she said. “Is that why she kept the bag over her head?”

“Don’t be crude. Do I ask you what the point of Ammon’s horns is, who put them on him?”

She turned sober. “I’m afraid of tomorrow, Perseus.”

I was astounded, and explained that my Styx-Nymph, toward dawn, had said quite the same thing, which I’d explain in the morning. I comforted both: assured the sea-girl that I had more to fear than she, since without Pegasus to fly me to Hyperborean Medusa, the kibisis was useless; endeavored in Calyxa’s case to change the subject to her Perseid letters, which could be said to be responsible for the narrative in hand, its source and omphalos. Had she died in Egyptian Chemmis—drowned while skindiving with Ammon in the Nile, perhaps, or been crocodiled in the deeps of love—and elevated posthumously? Or was her heavenhood a kind of prize for authorship, as Delphinus had been starred by Poseidon for his winning speeches? Speaking of Chemmis—

But she’d speak no more, only clung to me most close that night as Medusa, still mantled, was shown clinging to me on the beach in the morning’s mural. II-F, like its counterpart, was septuple, but so grander in scale that its several panels were each broader than the broadest in the inner series and could be viewed only individually. I asked Calyxa whether, in Zeus’s timetable, the whole of it might be seen that day, or we were obliged to give a week to its several panelets.

“Are you in such a hurry?”

“No no no,” I assured her; “well, yes. For one thing I can’t remember a thing after the week I spent with Medusa on Lake Triton, and I want to know exactly when and how I died. But what really interests me is the way this temple of mine is unfolding.” What I meant, I explained when we returned to bed, was that given on the one hand my rate of exposition, as it were—one mural per day—and on the other the much rapider time-passage between the scenes themselves, we had in six days rehearsed my life from its gold-showered incept to the nearly last thing I remembered. It followed that soon—any day now, perhaps—the marmor history must arrive at the point of my death and overtake my present transfiguration. What was she drawing currently, I demanded of Calyxa, if not herself and me in spirate heaven, reviewing the very murals she was drawing?

After some pause she answered: “I’m not ready to answer that tonight.” But she bid me consider two things: first, that, immortality being without end, one might infer that the temple was as well, from our couch unwinding infinitely through the heavens; on the other hand, it was to be observed that as the reliefs themselves grew longer, the time between their scenes grew shorter: from little I-B, for example (Dictys netting the tide-borne chest), to its neighbor I-C (my first visit to Samian Athene), was a pillared interval of nearly two decades; between their broad correspondents in the second series, as many more days; and from II-E to II-F-1, about the number of hours we ourselves had slept between beholdings. Mightn’t it be, then, that like the
inward
turns of the spiral, my history would forever approach a present point but never reach it? Either way, it seemed to her, the story might be presumed to be endless.

“But it’s all exposition! Where’s the real-time drama? Where’s the climax?”

Calyxa smiled seriously. “I think we’ll come to it very soon. Together.”

“Hmp.”

You sound like her; please don’t be critical. The evening was, I sensed: for one thing, Calyxa announced then, at first augustly, that next day, the ninth since the sun’s entry into Leo, was the twenty-fifth anniversary of her birth and the twentieth of another red-letter day on the calendar of her life, which she’d tell me about tomorrow. By way of celebration, it being presently by her estimate an hour or so from midnight, she suggested we reverse our usual order and enjoy narration before copulation, so that she might arrive at the quarter-century mark in my arms. I was much touched—and troubled by another implication of her news—but I observed to her that the gloss on II-F-1 would be malapropos and anaphrodisiac in those circumstances, since, as she knew, that morning’s scene had represented my tryst with Medusa. Should we not just skip it? Game of backgammon? Hour’s nap?

“No,” Calyxa said positively. “I’m okay now. I want to hear it.”

“Okay, I guess she
is
okay. I’m still jealous, but I won’t be critical any more.”

Good. She
was
okay, certainly, that night, as I told the tale. I hope she’s okay now. “It was in the morning,” I told her, “Medusa told me she was Medusa. We’d tried again, not a whole lot better; she’d drawn up hind-to to me—please don’t turn over—still wearing the kibisis alone, and bade me not turn her over till she’d told her tale. First came the story of her life, part of which she’d exposed to me in Samos: her pretty girlhood, Poseidon’s rape, Athene’s punishment, her ignorance of her Gorgonhood and mistaking me for her lover instead of her destroyer.” Very difficult to tell this part, especially with you listening.

“But do, please. You owe it to me.”

Very well: “Her eyes had been opened, she told me, by my sword at her neck, and her last sight had been her reflection in my shield—the same she’d set her hair by in Athene’s temple. It so mortified her she was pleased to die; she knew no more until Athene had scalped, rebodied, and revived her—whereupon her first request was to re-die at once if she was Gorgon still. An odd thing was that, once brought back, she could recall all her dead head’s doings, and did so with mixed feelings. To be perfectly frank, despite my having killed her she still loved me, and had lived, during her death, for those moments when I raised her by the hair and she withered my enemies with a glance. This declaration moved me; I begged her to unbag and let me kiss the pretty head—she
had
said it was pretty?—I’d so ill-used to such good effect in its former state.

“But she stayed my hand with a recital of the hard conditions of Athene’s amnesty: first, should she ever again look at her reflected image, she’d see a Gorgon, not a girl; second, should she show her face to anyone, she’d instantly return to Gorgonhood.”

“That’s not fair,” Calyxa said. “For all she could tell—”

“Exactly. But there was one compensation and one escape-clause. Athene granted her the power to juvenate or depetrify, just once, whomever she gazed uncowled at or whoever uncowled and gazed at her; but the conferral of this boon on the beholder must be at her own cost, since by the earlier stipulation she’d be reGorgoned.”

“Ay,” Calyxa said. “Your sister doesn’t give anything away free.”

“She’s not the goddess of justice. I asked Medusa what the escape-clause was, but for a time she wouldn’t say. I believe I mentioned she was shy; what I’ve told here in two pages took me days to coax from her. Between confessions—which I prompted by confiding my own troubles, at an exchange rate of seven to one—we strolled the beach, swam and fished, talked about life in general.”

“And made love,” Calyxa said.

“And tried to make love. She was pleased enough; Poseidon, that time in the temple, had been rough on her; you know how gods are.” “Yup.” “Nobody’d ever done the forepleasures with her properly, or showed her what to do with herself…”

“I promise not to say anything critical,” Calyxa said. “I kind of like Medusa now. But I thought most of those things were instinctive.” “Nope.” “Well… hadn’t she
read
anything? You know.”

“Reading was what she did most,” I replied, “especially the old myths and legends; it was what we mainly talked about. However, as you may have noticed, myth isn’t reality: it was agreeable to teach her how love is made, but her inexperience was as off-putting in its way as your expertise. What’s more, I was naturally concerned over Athene’s stipulations, as I learned them…”

“In short, you were impotent, like with me a few days ago.” “Yes.” “Not the whole time, I hope? I’m on Medusa’s side now.”

“Did she really say that, Perseus?”

She really did. “Just the first few times,” I answered. “We got a bit better each night, just like us. It turned out she was afraid I wouldn’t want her when I learned she’d been a Gorgon, and been raped by Poseidon, and given birth to Pegasus.” “Hear me not saying anything?” “But I told her, honestly, that those things didn’t bother me at all. The fact was—no other way to say it in a first-person narrative—Medusa really loved me, her first experience of that emotion, and I realized I hadn’t been loved since the old days with Andromeda. What’s more, she truly was a kindred spirit; we had jolly conversations…”

“Don’t beat about the bush,” Calyxa said. “Did you love her or not?”

I answered, forgive me, I was plagued by doubts about us both. “How could I be sure what was behind her veil?” I answered. “And wasn’t it likely my attraction was mainly relief after all my troubles, or mere vanity at being loved?”

“What you
really
wanted,” Calyxa said, “was to be twenty with Andromeda again. Can we get to the escape-clause?”

I was astounded by her insight. “That’s what we got to, on the fifth night. We’d finally had a proper love-making; she’d learned to let herself go a little, even felt her first bit of orgasm; it was clear we’d be all right soon enough if we kept at it, just as
we’d
be; while we clung together in the dénouement, I declared I loved her and asked what Athene’s last condition was, for I wanted very much to see the face that spoke in such a gentle voice and topped such a pretty neck, excuse me.” Excuse me. “At last she got it out: if the man who uncowled her, and on whom she laid her one-shot grace, were her true lover, the two of them would turn ageless as the stars and be together forever. But since she hadn’t known herself a Gorgon before, and couldn’t view herself now, for all she or I could know she might be Gorgon still, and Athene’s restoration a nasty trick. In short, whoever unveiled and kissed her must do so open-eyed, prepared to risk petrifaction forever in a Gorgon’s hug. ‘I’m willing, Perseus,’ she told me at the last, ‘but
you’d
better think it over.’ “

Calyxa shook her head. “I can’t remember any analogues for that motif.”

“I couldn’t either. Next day she was quieter than usual, and that evening she told me very gently just what you said a while ago: in effect, that I loved her less than she me, and was still bound with half my heart to Andromeda. I wished then I’d had a kibisis for myself, to hide my shame; I swore I
did
love her, if anyone, as much as I could, not really knowing her and all—”

“O boy, Perseus.”

“Yes, well. She wept a bit, near as I could tell; I was all cut up, yet at the same time stirred; lots of sex in this story: I touched her; she flowed at once, most womanly; I managed almost as well as with Andromeda. Medusa was in rapture; I don’t say this out of vanity…”

“I know why you say it,” Calyxa said. “But how about you, Perseus? Were you in rapture? I think about us, last night, on the very edge…”

I told her, what was true in the other case as well, I was still too preoccupied to feel rapture of the kind I’d been accustomed to with Andromeda in better days. Pleasure, yes, and some satisfaction, but as yet no rapture, quite, of the free transporting sort, nor would I likely, until we rose unfettered to the same high altitudes.

“If ever.”

I shrugged. “In any case, Medusa came at last; there was the moment to discover her.” “Yes.”

“Yes.”

Yes. “But I didn’t, merely held her fast until I fell asleep. Next morning she was gone; I woke alone…” “Perseus?” “Yes?” “It’s after midnight. I’m twenty-five and scared. Will you make love to me?”

I did; she did; there
is
a surfeit of sex in the story; no help for it; we verged on much and didn’t cross the verge. No more my merry priestess, Calyxa solemnly sat up and by the light of the altar-lamp watched me drip from her to the spiraled spread.

“I
like
my life,” she said, as if addressing the little puddle. “I come and go as I please. It’s a free, independent life. I wouldn’t be tied down to any man. You and I don’t really relate. I can’t turn you on. We’d probably drive each other crazy if we stayed together. You’re not in heaven, Perseus. Neither of us is.”

One finger was permitted to touch her thigh. “Chemmis?”

She nodded.

“And alive, then.” “Yes.” Pause. “I wondered how it was you could have a birthday.”

Pause. We both watched her flex to stop my flow from her, in vain for all her able musculature. “When you stopped here on your way to Joppa the first time, it was my fifth birthday,” she said. “They let us out of summer kindergarten to see the gold-skinned flying hero who’d cut off the Gorgon’s head. You only took a drink of water from the public fountain and flew off, but all through school we studied you and the other Greek heroes, along with Ammon and Sabazius and our native ones.” She sat cross-legged on the spermy point, her tears running too. “I could stop this if I closed my eyes and legs,” she declared, and didn’t. “At first the town council put a little bronze plaque on the water fountain; Ammon and Sabazius were local favorites. Later on, when I thought I might like to be a scholar, I wrote a thesis on the three of you: my heroes.” She smiled, sniffed, fingered the pudlet. “In fact, that
was
my thesis: that since of the local heroes only Perseus was technically a hero, and a first-rank one at that, whereas the others were technically gods, but secondary ones, you were as deserving of a temple as they were. It was a stupid essay.”