Nisos himself, who had no chair and had begun to feel a fool as he stood alone by the side of the table like a child who has crept down from its nursery, had just got one of his bare knees into some sort of a kneeling position upon the edge of a high four-legged footstool, a position he endeavoured to render more secure by pressing his hand in the side of the table. He was unlucky in both these supports; for the footstool had once been covered by some sort of ancient rug, and an unpleasant knot left in its weaving chafed his knee to distraction, while at the precise spot where he pressed his hand on the table’s edge there happened to be two or three brass nails that hadn’t been properly hammered into the wood and one of these nails behaved as if it were trying to bite at the fleshy part at the base of his thumb.
Had Tis’s little sister been present in this dining-hall just now instead of being carried on a crazy rampage on the back of Pegasos along with Arcadian Pan and that pair of appalling Phantoms, whose eternally-whispered wrangle seemed destined to be transferred from Arima to the drowned towers of Atlantis, she would no doubt have drifted to Nisos’ aid.
Pontopereia, the daughter of Teiresias, who was present, was far too shy to speak to a soul except the punctilious Herald to whom she finally confessed her longing to climb up to one of the high windows under the roof of this great chamber and persuaded him to help her in this achievement.
While our friend Nisos was contending with knots in rugs and nails in boards there were other personalities in that hall, quite apart from the Herald and Pontopereia, who seemed to feel that the moment had come for the old little lady Atropos to draw near and give destiny a new turn. Among these other personalities were individual hairs in the beard of Odysseus: for though, like the branch of a tree, a beard, whether of a goat or a man, has its own general individual being, its separate hairs like the leaves on such a branch have identities of their own. Thus the king’s beard in its general personality was not surprised to hear its separate hairs disputing.
“A spiritual impression has reached me,” began one of its smallest hairs, addressing itself to one of the largest; “that before darkness covers the earth today you and I and every other hair in this beard may be homeless.”
“May I be permitted to enquire,” returned the big hair to the little hair, “upon what authority you base this somewhat startling prediction?”
“There’s not the least reason why you should put on that patronizing tone just because you are a little older and a little thicker than I am,” retorted the other. “The important question is whether we shall or shall not both be thrown into a bonfire of rubbish and there burnt up into invisible nothingness!” And as he spoke the smallest hair made a faintly fluttering motion, like a minute dandelion-seed, or some still more simply constructed airborne vehicle, towards the smouldering fire in the centre of the room that still contained a few red embers and a few wisps of grey smoke, and as he made this gesture he shuddered visibly through the whole length of his being; “burnt to nothingness,” he concluded. “Go,” said the biggest hair in the king’s beard to an extremely active though almost invisible insect, “go and discover for the benefit of all of us whether there is still enough life in those smouldering embers to reduce even the scurf on the navel of a wood-louse to nothingness.” The resonance of so commanding a word plunged all the hairs into silence.
“I would dearly like to see myself, Odysseus,” began Nausikaa suddenly, “some of those golden pieces of armour, just a single shin-piece perhaps, or one of the lighter sort of thigh-pieces, if your treasury is handy, of the armour of Achilles, which by the adjudication of the Olympian gods was bestowed on you in preference to Ajax, the son of Telamon.”
The bowsprit-shaped beard of the king was raised with a jerk at this demand. “Tell somebody, tell Arsinöe,” the old man commanded, “to bring up here to show, to show to the Princess any of those pieces she finds herself strong enough to carry!”
“Yes, my lord the King, certainly, my lord the King,” replied the stentorian Herald, scrambling back not only to the floor of the hall from the high window-ledge whither he had helped the daughter of Teiresias to find an uninterrupted refuge for her shy and unwordly mind, but to the reality of his own role in life from which he had been snatched by a sudden amorous illusion, “I will certainly see that the lady Arsinöe brings up at once all that in her heart the Princess covets to behold.”
It was then that young Nisos as he leant so uncomfortably against the table was led by the King’s command and the Herald’s reply to imagine that here indeed was the voice of Atropos herself. “It’s I who will be the herald to Arsinöe!” he told himself as he hurried off. He found the Trojan captive helping Eurycleia in the task of washing the most precious of the vessels that had just been used; and taking her aside out of the riotous revelry of Nausikaa’s officers and men he explained to her just what the Princess had said; nor did he hesitate to make his own comment upon Nausikaa’s request.
“Don’t you think, my friend, that what she really wants is to re-establish something of her old link with the old man? Don’t you think that in this subtle battle between these two—and I confess, my dear, it’s a surprise to me that this complete stranger from Thebes, of whom we know nothing except what she herself tells us, should presume to make such a bold move as to try at once to link her life with his in sexual love so as to forestall any natural return of the old romantic attraction between Odysseus and Nausikaa—don’t you think that it’s our business to help Nausikaa all we can and to put as many spikes as we possibly can in the wily path of this confounded sorceress?”
Was it Atropos again who now inspired the Trojan captive with a lie worthy of the old Odysseus himself?
“I have already, Nisos Naubolides, thought of this very thing. In fact I have been spending all the twilight hours of this long and heavy evening, while these sailors of the Princess have been making such a barbaric rumpus, in carrying out to a particular tree, yes, Nisos Naubolides, to a special ash-tree in our ghostly Arima here which for years I have been carving into a faint resemblance to Hector of Troy himself, one after another of these golden pieces of the armour that once belonged to Achilles.”
Nisos stared at the woman for a second in absolute wonder, even with awe. How clever girls were! How they anticipated everything that could possibly happen, and long before it happened too! So this was the explanation of a premonition he had had for some while that something was going to happen here at home that would turn out to be more serious than any crazy excursions upon which Arcadian Pan might embark with poor little Eione, Tis’s small sister!
“Listen, you wise one!” he cried, pulling her close to him by her shoulders and putting his eager lips to her right ear, “can’t you think of some trick you and I might play upon this damned woman from Syracuse—no! from Thebes it was! And, by the gods I shall hate the very name of Thebes from now on! Yes, I shall always think of Thebes in future as a filthy city of rats, with walls of stinking rottenness, and towers and domes that are just heaps of dung!
“But tell me, Arsinöe, O please, please tell me, Arsinöe, how we can play some effective trick upon this scriggling and wriggling worm of a woman! You were so clever, Arsinöe, so divinely clever, in making an image of carved wood out of a living tree and hanging the armour of Achilles on it! Surely you can think of some device, some trick, some stab in the dark, by which you and I together could save the old man from this curst Theban Sorceress! Do, do, I beg and beseech you, Arsinöe, put your good Trojan wits alongside of my poor rocky-island ones and see what we can do! Never mind your coming from Troy. In a thing like this we are at one. Your grand old Priam would agree with me I know; and as for the noble Hector himself, why, he wouldn’t hesitate for a second! I know it, I am sure of it, my sweet Arsinöe! Ithaca and Ilium can hold together as well as any civilized pair against this dock-yard Brothel Bitch from the slave-markets of the Orient! Think, think, think, all-wise one! I swear to you that you and I, if we can only put our heads properly toget
her, can forget all that old Helen-of-Troy business and show this confounded Theban witch that she shan’t meddle with us in our gratitude to these Phaiakian sea-farers and to their brave Princess Nausikaa.
“For the gods’ sake think, my wise one, think out a cunning scheme that’ll save our old man from this infernal witch!” Nisos then became silent for a while, holding Arsinöe by the shoulders and pressing her gently against one of the walls of that long narrow down-descending passage, illuminated here and there by richly-oiled and richly-ensconced torches, and echoing at intervals, as the door at the bottom of it opened to let someone in or out, to the excited voices of the Phaiakian sailors, who, in Eurycleia’s subterranean kitchen, were enjoying her sagacious hospitality. Then, bending his head down gravely and seriously he touched Arsinöe’s forehead with his lips. And it was at this moment that the thought first flashed through his mind that he was the kind of boy who could only be really happy if he had as his wife a woman a lot older than himself.
“For don’t you see, Arsinöe, my darling friend,” he went on, “don’t you see, here there has suddenly come by the very will of Atropos herself, the grandest chance that the old man is ever likely to have to realize his desire to sail over the great Western ocean, under the waves of which Atlantis lies and to discover what unknown lands and continents and peoples and cities and fields of rich grain exist beyond those furthest horizons of water! For don’t you see, Arsinöe darling, if this Princess Nausikaa can only be brought to see our old man as she saw him once when she loved him at first sight, why then, my lovely Trojan, let the armour of Achilles be left on your Image of Hector! Odysseus will be the Captain of Nausikaa’s ship; and together they will sail into the fabulous memory of all the men who come after us—and, O my dear! may the old little goddess of Fate, Atropos herself, see to it that I am with him in this venture!”
Nisos was again silent, holding her by her shoulders against that wall. And then suddenly, freeing herself from him and throwing his hands back, she held herself erect and closed her eyes.
“I think,” she said, speaking clearly and very rapidly, “that it’s his beard that puts her off. What I would do if I were you is to make someone you happen to know, someone who wouldn’t suffer the punishment you would have to suffer for such a thing in case it turned out badly, cut off with a sharp sword, or a polished knife, or a pair of shears, this teasing and intrusive and conceited and aggressive beard of the old man! Yes, Nisos Naubolides, that is what you must do! I see the doing of it clearly in the curious darkness into which at this moment the mental effort of trying to do exactly what is required has thrown around me. The thing to do is to cut off his beard!
“But one thing I know. The moment that beard of his has been cut off Nausikaa will see him as she saw him at the very first, when, while she was playing ball with her companions, he came straight to her out of the sea. Yes, Nisos Naubolides, that is the only way this witch-woman from Thebes who is already succeeding in enlarging the gulf between these former lovers, can be defeated. I swear to you I am right. I see it as if it were being done at this very moment. The love-light will come into Nausikaa’s eyes the second that beard is gone. No, it is not your king’s age that keeps them apart, now that they are together again. It is the beard. And Okyrhöe knows it very well and plays upon it. I have been watching her. She doesn’t come between them herself if she can help it. She is too wise for that. She leaves it to the beard.”
It was at this point—and, whether she was one of Hector’s many illegitimate daughters or not, she certainly had a particular kind of intense and absorbed gravity, especially when there was a frown between her eyebrows, which anyone who had ever seen Hector would have recognized as his—that she opened her eyes and laid her fingers upon the young man’s sleeve.
“Have you anyone in your mind, Nisos Naubolides,” she asked him, “who would be the best person of all persons to do this bold and dangerous thing, whether a man or a woman, whether old or young? I mean,” she went on earnestly, after a pause to let a couple of Nausikaa’s ship’s officers pass down the passage, and Nisos couldn’t help admiring the way she instinctively let her fingers slip from his sleeve to his hand and let her head droop towards her shoulder—“I mean the actual cutting it off?” And when she saw he hadn’t missed her gesture as the men passed, “Lovers, not conspirators, eh?” she added.
“Well, my beautiful one,” he said, while his mind rushed off to the dining-hall and to the animal-shaped chair in which he had left Zeuks, “I think I do know the right one for the handling of this little job. But don’t you think we ought to have two strings to our bow in so ticklish a thing? Why don’t you go down to the kitchen and drop a few tentative hints in our old lady’s ear? She’s hand and glove with Odysseus, who treats her as if she were his Grandmother. She knows his mind, I should say, better than anyone else on this earth; and we may be sure she has as little love for Okyrhöe as we have: though I admit it’s possible she’s less friendly to Nausikaa than we are! However—the immediate business for us is to outwit this bitch from Thebes.
“Besides I think we’re agreed, my sweet Trojan, that it would be sheer madness in the old king not to snatch at the heavenly chance of a perfect ship and perfect sailors?”
Arsinöe smiled; and having exchanged a kiss that was at once so friendly and so free from passion that they might have been brother and sister, she went down to the kitchen, while he went up to the dining-hall. He found Odysseus still sipping his wine and still keeping up a curious kind of cerebral dalliance with both the women; while from one end of the table to the other end of the table the two oldest of the Phaiakian ship’s officers argued pedantically, technically and very loudly upon certain nice and difficult problems connected with the art of navigation.
Nisos slipped as noiselessly and as respectfully as he could to Zeuks’ grotesque chair, and kneeling down before it muttered what was really a sort of extempore prayer, graver than casual listeners might have supposed, to Zeuks and Zeuks’ chair, as if they were one creature or one sacred Image. To emphasize and enhance this anthropomorphic and fetish-worshipping gesture, which was one part humorous, two parts entirely serious, and only one part theatrical, he pressed his elbows against the arms of the chair and clasped his fingers in supplication; and then, afraid lest his queer friend should think he was making fun of him, he twisted his head round, as if to make sure that his performance was not missed by those at the table.
Meanwhile, having made sure that Zeuks was not in a trance of any sort, but sufficiently attentive, he whispered to him a realistic and rather grossly-worded summary of his talk with Arsinöe, feeling all the while that what he was kneeling before was neither a chair nor a man but a multiformed malleable monster ready to embrace whatever creature sank into its lap with such a transfiguring power of metamorphosis that it and the creature received into it were transformed into a new and monstrous identity.
Zeuks made no comment upon his friend’s whispered monologue murmur save a constant murmur of the same words: “Go on. I understand. Go on. I follow you. Go on, Nisos Naubolides.”
This completely passive acceptance of our young friend’s startling revelation of what might have been described as “the Plot of the King’s Beard” reduced a little the enormity of the sacrilege involved. It was only after they had gone on like this for some time, Nisos explaining, predicting, conjecturing, anticipating, enlarging, revising, and Zeuks listening and indicating that he missed nothing of what he heard, that there was a quite unlooked-for if not especially momentous interruption to the wine-sipping at the high table.
No less a person than the midwife came up the steps from the corridor, holding by the hand her now pregnant sister.
“I have brought to you, O king,” she hurriedly announced, offering one of the empty table-chairs to her companion who sank into it with a groan of ineffable relief, “our well-known family prophetess, because they told me that there has come to you from Thebes the daughter of the great prophet Tei
resias; and I wanted my sister, who is in the state you now witness, to exchange a few thoughts with her.”
Round went the fine cranium and bowsprit beard of the old king as he looked for Pontopereia at the spot where she had recently been; but it was from quite a different quarter that her clear and unperturbed voice reached them. Tired of watching the deep and subtle struggle between the two ladies, the clumsy little wide-eyed creature, whose intellectual grasp of the whole state of the world at that juncture reduced—and how little either of those clever ones knew it!—both Okyrhöe and Nausikaa to a pathetically ordinary level of active, lively, beautiful, ambitious, practical women whose response to life completely shut out all the more cosmic reactions of the human mind, had boldly climbed into the high recess of one of the windows.
Having persuaded, and not without rousing some rather pathetic erotic illusions in that official breast, the pompous Herald to help her with his powerful arms and shoulders, the girl had succeeded in scrambling up into what was one of the most elevated of all that spacious hall’s high window-ledges. From this vantage-ground she could not only amuse herself by watching the tricks of Okyrhöe and the shrewd hit-backs of Nausikaa, but she could see between the stalks of the creepers the blackened square of ground which was all that was left of the old Dryad and her oak-tree, after Zeus’ angry thunderbolt.
“Something decisive for good and something heavy with the opposite of good are both on the verge of happening.” Thus did Pontopereia murmur to herself the prophetic inspiration which came to her straight from that blackened spot in the forest where the old Dryad had perished.
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