Journey to the Isles of Atlantis and Other Fanciful Excursions

by Brian Stableford

  “Well,” I said, “Since it’s thus, listen. A wise man like you must know that such a woman isn’t so easily sated. On the contrary, for the appetite increases in eating, if one can believe the doctors of my homeland. If I go, do you think she’ll leave it there? Not at all. She’ll need four lovers to replace me, so you’ll be cuckolded fourfold instead of one. You won’t gain anything. Add that perhaps her gallants might not be good fellows like me. They might rob you, mock you, and publish your misfortune in the city. Abandon your plan. Take me as a substitute. No one will know and everything will be for the best.”

  “Young man,” said Katodispa, smiling, “Your reasoning is faulty. Helena has already had a great many servants. I’ve prevented her from getting strongly attached to any of them by making them disappear, one after another, by persuasion, bribery or suppression. Don’t force me to have you killed.”

  “I’ll go, then,” I cried, “but don’t revoke your benefits and leave me your safe conduct.”

  “Certainly,” said the pontiff. “I’ll conserve my protection for you, and know that, in addition, I’ve received fourteen silver talents for you. The collection was copious and worthy of us. Agurthes alone has given three thousand drachmas. I’ve sent a small sum on your behalf to old Agathos, whom you mentioned to me. You can take all the cash you can carry. The rest will be given to you by a money-changer in Atlantopolis on presentation of this letter.

  “These are my decisions: I’ll grant you tonight to say your adieux to Helena. At first light a servant will come to find you on my behalf. He’ll give you two bags, one full of money and the other of food supplies. The slave will explain to you the route to follow to reach the capital and will accompany you as far as the gate of Thalantide. You’ll march without looking back and without taking a single step that would bring you closer to our city. Otherwise you’ll perish. Go on foot; it’s the only way of not being remarked while traveling. Only make use of the safe conduct in case of extreme danger. If, in spite of its office, you find yourself in peril, have me notified, and I’ll help you.”

  He fell silent, embraced me paternally and left the room. Helena immediately emerged from her faint. Although unconscious, she had heard the entire conversation. At first she sobbed like a little fountain. That did not last long, and she fell into accord with me when I showed her the necessity of taking full advantage of our last night.

  The first indecisive light of morning had scarcely filtered through the curtains when someone knocked on the door. I got dressed, and kissed dear Helena a hundred times; she was in tears because I would never see her again. She had wept with the same abundance on the departure of my thirty-three predecessors, her lovers. I learned five days later from a traveler that a one-eyed judge and a market porter had shared my succession and fulfilled my prophecy.

  I went out and found the slave. He was carrying the agreed two bags. We traversed the sleeping city silently, the roofs and highest walls of which were gilded by the rising sun. We went up the hill as far as the fortified gate from which the road to Atlantopolis departed. I looked at the sea and the city one last time through the white mists of dawn.

  Then the servant said: “You must go straight ahead until dusk, through two large towns and seven villages. You must not stop anywhere, except in bare country, to stop and eat. You must not speak to anyone and must respond evasively to any questions. My master will know everything you’ve said and done. If you don’t slow down you’ll arrive around nightfall in a small town, Arkaios-Prourion. You can stay there for a while if you wish. From there, continue your journey as you wish, but don’t think of returning to Thalantide.”

  He gave me my light baggage, which I hooked over my shoulders by means of leather thongs. Then he bid me adieu and remained on the road to watch me depart.

  I cut a branch from a bush, carved it rapidly, and made a staff adapted to my stature. Finally, I started walking, singing in order not to weep.

  XIV. The Beginning of the Journey

  I walked all day, sad and anxious, paying no attention either to the countryside or the towns. I pressed my pace, even running at times, because I was in such a hurry to reach Arkaios-Prourion. I resembled a gnat fallen into a spider’s web, to whom the hope has been left of getting out of it, on condition of making haste. Katodipsa’s voice, still resonating in my ears, frightened my heart and gave me legs. I thought about Lot fleeing Sodom consumed by the fire of Heaven, dreading to turn round, like me. I knew that the High Priest was powerful enough to make of me, not a statue of salt, but a cadaver bleeding in the dust, floating in a stream or hanging from some thick branch. In all passers-by I found a suspicious manner, and every peasant seemed to me to be an attentive spy or a disguised executioner charged with putting me to death.

  Toward midday I sat down under an elm distant from any habitation. I opened the bag of food and lightened it as much as I could. I did not delay long and resumed my course precipitately.

  Short before nightfall I reached the end of that stage of my journey. Delighted to find myself in a place where I would be more at liberty, I stopped and considered the locale at length. It was a sizeable town on the bank of a river. A military acropolis bearing a crown of fractured ramparts surmounted by old towers rose up in an amphitheater on the sides of a hill. That ancient ruin, dominating the houses from a great height, seemed still to be protecting them, reminding them by its wounds of the history of ancient sieges and great battles.

  In the distance, eyesight perceived nothing but hills covered with vines or forests. The river ran from valley to valley, describing a thousand harmonious curves in which the sky and the clouds were reflected.

  I followed an avenue shaded by tall trees, traversed a populous outlying district and passed over a humpbacked stone bridge. There, fishermen were casting their lines and children were leaning over, contemplating a pinnace that was going upstream with a slow majesty.

  Further away, on the quay, stood the statue of a man, standing up and leaning on a pile of books. He was looking at the most distant horizon, like the bronze portrait of Admiral Ruyter in Flessingue in Holland. Without the volumes depicted on the monument, I would have thought that he was a great man of war, so bellicose did the individual seem. Perhaps, instead, he was some roaring prophet, once celebrated, born in the vicinity.

  As I was standing still, in profound reflection, a man approached and spoke to me.

  I am the ordinary prey of the tiresome. An excessive politeness prevents me from driving them away, even when they are annoying me excessively. I could hardly take a step without being embarrassed by some tedious old man or a dogged talker. This ne, although still young, was the most enraged I had encountered

  “You see there,” he cried, “the state of Chrenes, the great Chrenes. You certainly know him. Doubtless you’ve read his works? An admirable man, Chrenes; I would say very admirable, more admirable than any other.”

  “No,” I replied, “no, I don’t know this Chrenes at all. I’ve never read his works. But I believe that he’s admirable, since you say so.”

  “Is it possible?” said the loquacious fellow, more surprised than if he had seen a donkey on a roof, “to be unaware of such an individual!”

  “I’m traveling for my education,” I murmured, “and I’d be annoyed only to see things already known to me. I consider as a benefit an encounter with any new object. In addition, I’m not a scholar...”

  “Poor man!” cried the city-dweller. “Know that Chrenes was a great writer of past centuries. He composed, it’s said, many excellent works. I can’t talk about them, never having read any. As for that effigy, I can tell you that it’s fine bronze and dates from three hundred years ago. The sculptor was a skillful artisan, as you can clearly see by the beauty of the work. It isn’t maintained and cleaned as it ought to be, but the money is lacking for that.”

  “What are you complaining about?” I said. “In my homeland there are public gardens in which statues are put in such great quantities that
they’re almost touching, but in the trees and the nearby lawns, a quantity of pigeons, turtle-doves, large sparrows, magpies, blackbirds, ducks and other fowls are nourished, whose role is to idle continually on the simulacra of stone or bronze, so the poor great men are encrusted like the ladder of a hen-house. That makes us think that there’s no honor without admixture. And our people, philosophical and fond of allegory, see in that ordure the image of that which pretentious historians spread over the most illustrious and most respectable memories.”

  “Good, good,” said the bore, annoyed at being interrupted. “Let’s pass on. I want to show you the old castle. Don’t fear importuning me. You want, I believe, to educate yourself. I’ll take charge of that. You’ll know everything I know, unless I run out of saliva. In any case, we’ll have a drink, if you like.”

  “Let’s go right away,” I begged.

  “No,” he said, “I’ll take you to the castle. Afterwards we’ll visit the rest of the town at leisure.”

  My tyrant seized me by the arm and drew me through rising streets, pronouncing words without number and without consequence, to which I was no longer listening. He talked about himself, his wife, his children, his neighbors, his lawsuit, the temperature, the fish in the river and the burden of taxes. He greeted all the passers-by, and to those who stopped he said, pointing to me: “This is a seigneur I’m showing around for his education. He didn’t even know the name of Chrenes.”

  I became enraged, and would have preferred to hide on a clump of nettles. When we met young women he smiled with a malicious expression, then named their lovers for me and related their adventures. There was no end to it.

  We arrived at the ruins via a step stairway. A long oval enclosure, interrupted by crumbling towers, sustained a terrace planted with trees, where one could still see the vestiges of razed constructions.

  “Nothing known,” he cried then, “can give you an idea of the antiquity of these walls. I don’t know it myself. You see, in that building, the window with iron bars? It’s that of an ancient cell. There, the unfortunate King Theodoros was imprisoned, the next to the last of the Argide dynasty. That prince remained there for forty years while his servants reigned in his name. Death terminated his captivity. That dates back thirty centuries at least.

  “Under our feet are subterranean tunnels of infinite length. No one knows where they end. Weapons have been found there, sarcophagi and objects of great curiosity.

  “Contemplate now that immense landscape. But for those hills one could see Thalantide. It wouldn’t need much to be able to perceive the sea.”

  He named each of the hamlets, streams and accidents of the terrain for me. He discoursed about every house. My ears were buzzing, my head resonating; my eyelids closed. I was drunk, furious, terrorized.

  I wanted to finish with it. When he turned his back to me I fled at a fast run. I heard him calling me, and then pursuing me. Bounding like a tiger, leaping down steps and over ditches, I tried to outdistance him. Futile fatigue! Finally, I turned the corner of a street, threw myself into the kitchen of an inn and knocked over two cooking-pots and an old woman as I went in.

  I dined in that house and went to bed soon afterwards. My slumber was troubled by terrible dreams, in which Katodipsa always played a role.

  I got up late, asked for directions, and departed immediately. I had become joyful again, having completely forgotten Helena and lost all anxiety on the subject of the High Priest, whom I had obeyed exactly. After leaving the town I found myself in dense woods populated by multicolored birds.

  XV. Constantin

  As I was walking through the forest, following a path bordered by twisted mossy trunks, I perceived a young man walking in front of me, who seemed to be drunk or mad, or under the empire of a profound sadness. I followed him at the same time as my route, only being careful not to attract his attention by the sound of my footsteps.

  Gesticulating and shouting very loudly in a strange language, first he sat down at the foot of a large oak. Then he held his head in his hands, without moving any longer. Suddenly, he got up abruptly and tried to climb the tree. He succeeded, and sat in the fork at the birth of a rather large branch. Finally, he took a rope out of his pocket and began to knot it around the tree. I understood then that he wanted to hang himself.

  I ran forward and, with my eyes raised toward the serene and despairing man, I begged him to come down. He did not want to hear of it, and from the height of the foliage he affirmed that he found himself in such an extremity and frightful calamity that it only remained for him to die.

  To that, I replied in my bad Greek: “I’m a fellow of good breeding, and I wouldn’t want to cross the designs of anyone, but at least come down for a moment and have a drink with me, for in the article of death as in that of marriage, it gives mental strength and courage, without which one can’t pass lightly from liberty to slavery or from life to death.”

  So saying, I agitated two large bottles that I had just taken out of my bag. At that sight, the sad companion could not help smiling joyfully. Leaving the knotted rope up there’re, he slid down the trunk and presented himself to me very politely. I stopped him from talking before having sat down, and ventured the opinion that he should drink abundantly by way of a preamble. That he did, with a good enough grace.

  In the meantime, I observed him, His aspect commanded sympathy, by which I mean that he had the external complexion of people who know how to live: a red nose, shining eyes, and strong, sensual lips. He might have been twenty-five years old.

  When he lowered the bottle in order to draw breath, I asked him mildly the reasons for his sadness. “Doubtless,” I hazarded, “you’re in love?”

  “Ah!” he said. “I see that you take me for an idiot. Do I look so stupid that I could be suspected of killing myself for a woman? I beg you to believe that it’s nothing of the sort. If I want to perish, it’s only because all means of living well have been taken away from me, and if I remained in this existence I’d see myself constrained for a long time, by virtue of the profound distress into which I’ve fallen, only to dine rarely and refresh myself with water. Isn’t the rope preferable?”

  “So it’s poverty that is driving you to suicide?” I said. “But you’re young; you could find employment; you’d still be able to drink and eat discreetly. Before hanging yourself, try to find a way of earning a living.”

  “Worthy man,” he said, “I can see that you’re not from here. On our island, no employment or labor can be exercised without one having passed examinations to that effect. The woodcutters you see in these woods have diplomas, and all emerge from a school that they entered at the age of seven, only to leave at that of twenty-three. Pastry-cooks, charcoal-burners, ditch-diggers, masons, soldiers, mariners, judges and thieves—everyone, in sum—are in the same position, qualified, decorated, hierarchized and examined in natural and transcendental sciences.”

  “Why, then,” I said, “haven’t you done as they have, and how is it that your parents haven’t directed you since childhood into a certain path?”

  But he replied: “Exactly. I’ve always shown a very marked taste for drawing. I studied or long years in the hope of one day passing the professorial examination thus finding a living. Very recently, I quit my birthplace at the other extremity of the kingdom in order to come here to present myself to the judges. During my journey, however, the program had been changed and the subject of drawing replaced by a test in swimming. It’s in that exercise that I’ve been refused, so shamefully that I’ve been forbidden to present myself again. I only have half a drachma left my mother and father are dead, no resource remains to me except death.”

  “Friend,” I said, “I like you. If you want to come with me, believe that you’ll be well treated. You’ve divined that I’m a foreigner. Without a guide I’ll have great difficulty in seeing and studying the country as I intend. For the rest, I possess sufficient resources—which leads me to think that in helping one another, we can be fortunate. />
  The poor fellow accepted without hesitation, said adieu to his rope, and followed me. As soon as we set forth he gave me the most ample details regarding himself and told me that his name was Constantin. A little later, I told him my whole story.

  XVI. The Death of the Giants

  Three days later we were traversing a profound forest of enormous trees. Constantin took me by the arm and led me to the edge of the road. There I saw a colossal rock covered with moss, on which one could still read, in ancient characters: Here the last giants died.

  My guide said to me then: “These immense woods where we are cover the territory of an ancient nation. This was once the Republic of the Giants and Dwarfs. The former were the descendants of the Cyclopean race; the others were innumerable pygmies, industrious and skillful in the labors of the earth. They harvested wheat with axes and had their little carriages pulled by dogs. The Cyclops were good, brave and formidable in battle. They governed and protected the weak race of little people. When avid or bellicose neighbors invaded their land, those Titans marched to encounter them, and always came back victorious. Many of them perished in those wars, but they did not complain, deeming that their role was to risk themselves. And from their colossal dwellings, built on places dominating towns and villages, they considered the prosperity of other people with a satisfied eye.

  “However, the dwarfs hated them. They accused them of pride. They complained of subsidizing their needs, for the giants didn’t work with their hands except in combats. Revolts burst forth. Every time, the rebels were punished. A mortal discontentment agitated the population of homunculi from then on. The fire brooded secretly for a century. Then a horrible conspiracy was formed.