Weight

by Jeanette Winterson

  The globe and the tram were my companions, and the certainty of them, their unfailingness, made bearable the smell of sour milk, and the high bars of the cot, and the sound of feet on the polished lino, feet always walking away.

  I am good at walking away. Rejection teaches you how to reject. I left my hometown, left my parents, left my life. I made a home and a life elsewhere, more than once. I stayed on the run. Why then, did the burden feel intolerable? What was it that I carried?

  I realise now that the past does not dissolve like a mirage. I realise that the future, though invisible, has weight. We are in the gravitational pull of past and future. It takes huge energy – speed-of-light power – to break that gravitational pull.

  How many of us ever get free of our orbit? We tease ourselves with fancy notions of free will and self-help courses that direct our lives. We believe we can be our own miracle, and just a lottery win or Mr Right will make the world new.

  The ancients believed in Fate because they recognised how hard it is for anyone to change anything. The pull of past and future is so strong that the present is crushed by it. We lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behaviour. The burden is intolerable.

  The more I did the more I carried. Books, houses, lovers, lives, all piled up on my back, which has always been the strongest part of my body. I go to the gym. I can lift my own weight. I can lift my own weight. I can lift my own weight.

  I want to tell the story again.

  Private Mars

  Atlas was watching Mars.

  Mars has no life. It has an atmosphere of a kind, thin and volatile, and its surface is home to dust storms and hurricanes.

  The surface of Mars has no soil; it is covered in something called regolith – a mixture of dead rocks – some boulders, some pebbles. They formed valleys and causeways and there were signs that water had once flowed through them, aeons ago.

  There is no water now. At least not on the surface. Underneath the surface is permafrost a mile deep. Below that are aquifers of brine with a freezing point of minus twenty centigrade.

  Some afternoons, on Mars, the weather is as sunny as Australia. By night, the carbon dioxide lies in mists of dry ice in the bottom of the arid valleys.

  What would it take to melt the ice and free the water?

  What would be needed for a single plant to grow?

  Atlas, the gardener, sometimes imagined himself smashing deep wells into the unconscious frost, and reviving life on the sun-abandoned planet. He would shovel away the regolith and bring in fertile soil. Soil is the active surface of a living planet. He would lie in the dirt and dream.

  His dreams were always the same; boundaries, desire.

  In the limitless universe of his imagination he would not be punished for wanting the impossible. Why did the gods insist on limits and boundaries when any fool could see that these things were only rules and taboos – customs made to keep people in their place? Rebellion was always punished like this – by taking away what little freedom there was, by encasing the spirit.

  He thought of the East and all those geniis in jars. Dangerous things have to be contained. He was a dangerous thing and his body was held prisoner so that his mind should not escape.

  They had got it the wrong way round, of course. His mind was always escaping. They had captured his body, but not this thoughts.

  Yet he had made a garden, and his occupation now was imagining another garden, difficult and fantastical, made from nothing and brought to life. He would wall it just as he had walled the Hesperides, and he knew that his happiest time was inside those self-made walls.

  True and not true.

  His walls, his door in the wall, and always half open when he was inside. Only locked when he had gone. He jealously protected his boundaries from intrusion by others – that was why he had gone to war against the gods in the first place – though they would say he had invaded what belonged to them. Demarcation, check-points, border controls. And all in the name of freedom. Freedom for me means curbing you.

  Atlas knew, because he was not stupid and because he had all the time in the world, that something was missing from his argument. He had known it that day with Hera when he picked the apples. He had known it as something growing inside him ever since.

  Boundaries. Desire.

  He turned over the words like stones. The words were stones, as dry and inhospitable as the Martian regolith. Nothing grew out of those words. It was these he would have to break open and crumble into good soil. It was these he would have to water and watch and sleep beside for the first sign of life.

  His own private Mars. That was where he lived now. The garden was gone.

  Hero of the World

  Heracles often thought of Atlas …

  Atlas, lonely, aloft, holding up the Kosmos, like a boy with a ball.

  Heracles never visited Atlas again, some combination of shame and fear kept him away. He had cheated to win, he knew that, but how could he blame himself? Blame Hera. Blame the gods for setting him impossible tasks; tasks that any other man would have failed.

  Time faded the insult. The thought-wasp hardly stung him at all now. Only sometimes was there that buzzing discontent that made him want to tear his head off and discus it into space.

  He had other things on his mind now. He was getting a new wife.

  * * *

  Deianeira was the kind of woman everybody wanted. She was the daughter of Dionysus, and had all his extravagance. She had a body like a feast, skin as smooth as wine, an appetite for pleasure, and she could go all night. She was perfect for Heracles.

  He wooed her in his usual way with a lot of bragging and a few tricks with his biceps. He promised to take her travelling with him. He needed a wife and he had no legitimate children left alive. The ones he hadn’t killed himself by mistake, others had killed for him. Besides, it was prophesied that if he did not die within the next fifteen months, he would live out his days in quiet happiness.

  It was time to settle down.

  Some time after the marriage, the two of them were travelling together, happy and intimate, when they came to a fast-flowing river. As they were wondering how to cross, the centaur Nessus galloped up and offered to carry Deianeira on his back, while Heracles swam across.

  Carefully, Heracles lifted his wife onto the centaur’s hairy back. Instead of plunging into the water, Nessus made off with Deianeira, and took her into his woods where he intended to rape her.

  Heracles chased in pursuit, and stringing his bow, shot Nessus in the chest from half a mile away. The centaur was on his forelegs over Deianeira’s naked body, prick dripping on her belly, when the arrow hit him. He fell down on her and as he died he told her that to make amends he would offer her a charm. Collect his semen, mix it with blood from the arrow tip and use it to keep Heracles faithful forever. That’s all she had to do. He was sorry. Goodbye.

  Deianeira recovered her wits and the mix of fluids, just before Heracles came thundering up to yank Nessus off her body and pitch his corpse into the bushes. He was so upset at his wife’s naked condition that he made love to her himself, his head buried in her shoulder, her hair over his neck.

  Deianeira lay with her eyes open, feeling him and looking at the fast-moving clouds. Heracles could never be still. There was always another woman; a fling, a whore, a mistress, a bar-girl, a prize, a ransom, a spoil from a fight, a farmer’s daughter, a goddess. Heracles had never promised to be faithful. It was neither his nature nor his inclination. Deianeira had assumed she wouldn’t care. They were married, he honoured her publicly, he was the father of her children. He liked her. Yes, they got on well, which was new for Heracles, and surprising for Deianeira. She could handle a chariot, she was good on a horse and she could partner him at target practise. He admired her. He could talk to her. This was the best ever for Heracles. He thought she knew that. He thought it was enough.

  In a way it was enough, but when she looked at herself i
n the watery mirror, it was age she feared. How could she keep him when her body was no longer like a flowing stream? In a few years, other men would no longer want to violate her, they would hardly notice her. Heracles would rid himself of her the way he rid himself of anything in his way. Deianeira did not know of the prophecy. She did not know that she was the one.

  She was the one.

  Some time later Heracles went to collect a bet.

  Heracles never forgot or forgave an insult. Before he had met Deianeira, he had hoped to marry Iole, daughter of King Eurytus. He had won her fair and square in an archery contest, but her father had refused to give her up. Heracles, married or not, regarded Iole as his.

  It was a typical day in the life of a hero. He took Deianeira tea in bed, gathered his army, and went to lay waste to Eurytus. Soon the city was burning, the inhabitants had been put to the sword, and Heracles stormed the royal palace, where he began to slit the throats of all Iole’s family. Everytime he caught one, male or female, he held a dagger to their throat and shouted ‘Iole! Say you’ll be mine and this one lives!’

  Rather than yield to Heracles, Iole watched her entire family being murdered. Then while Heracles was gutting her last remaining brother, she fled to the top of the city walls and flung herself off.

  Heracles dropped the half-dead body and ran out to see what was happening. Instead of hurtling her body to ruin, Iole was drifting gently down the ramparts. Her skirts had made a parachute of her fear. Heracles caught her in his arms as she reached the earth, one hand moving straight between her legs. As he carried her over his shoulder, his prick bursting, he massaged her cunt with his dirty bloody finger, and made her wet. She had never felt anything like this before, and by the time he threw her onto his couch on the boat, she was kissing him as passionately as he kissed her. She was tight and ready and he loved it. This one he was going to keep.

  * * *

  When Deianeira got to hear of his doings, she felt pity and not resentment for Iole, but when she heard that Heracles wanted to bring Iole to live with them, her pride burned.

  Iole was much younger than she. Iole was in love with Heracles, or thought she was. Heracles was besotted with his new toy. Life would be intolerable for Deianeira, and if she complained, well, Heracles would ignore her or leave her.

  Message came that Heracles wanted to sacrifice to Zeus before returning home. He asked Deianeira to send him a new shirt to wear for the sacrifice.

  This was her moment. She remembered the words of Nessus, and locking the door to her room, she took his potion out of her secret safe in the wall.

  The square of wool was still as soaked and wet as on the day she had used it to collect the blood and sperm. There was no smell or heat to it. She had every reason to believe she had been deceived, but it seemed like her only chance, and so she rubbed the cloth carefully over Heracles’s new shirt and left it to dry.

  Heracles was in bed with Iole when the shirt arrived. He left the girl sleeping and went outside in the cool clear morning, which seemed strangely precious to him that day.

  He built a vast altar to Zeus and rounded up twelve bullocks which he killed with his bare hands and prepared for the sacrifice.

  He would go home after this. He would reconcile Deianeira to Iole. He would be happy. A wife, a mistress, plenty of children, plenty of wine, a reputation, and at last some peace. He might even build himself a garden.

  He suddenly thought of Atlas, star-silent. For a second, the buzzing started again, in the usual place, by his temple. He hit his head. The buzzing stopped.

  * * *

  Deianiera had packed the shirt. She went up to her room and lay on the bed Heracles had built for them. The sun came through the window, and suddenly she smelt a foul burning. Looking on the floor, she saw that a tiny piece of the soaked wool had been left behind. The sun had heated it and now it had turned into a scorching, suppurating mass. Gas bubbles burst from it, and the smoke from the poison was filling the whole room.

  As Deianeira staggered out, she realised that Nessus had deceived her. The shirt would not bind Heracles to her, it would kill him.

  She summoned her fastest courier and sent him after the shirt. She vowed that if Heracles died, she would not survive him. She began to sharpen a knife.

  Heracles had made ready the altar. He lit the sacred flames and stepped back to put on clean clothes. A servant gave him the fine shirt that Deianeira had sent, and he blessed her as he wore it, vowing to himself that he would give up Iole if that was what Deianeira wanted. He realised how much he loved her and he had never loved anyone before. Iole was gorgeous, but she was just a girl. He could get another one of those.

  He stepped forward to pour frankincense on the flames, tall as towers. In his reverie he did not hear the great commotion among his servants behind him. Deianeira’s courier had arrived and was trying to break through to Heracles, while the servants held him off. There was a shout, ‘HERACLES!’ but it was too late. As Heracles turned, the flames caught his shirt and began to release the terrible poison. As Heracles roared and tried to pull off the shirt, it clung closer to him, and it was skin he pulled away, in roasting seared slices.

  No man shall kill Heracles, but a dead enemy.

  He remembered the prophecy. As he ran demented to the sea, he shouted his wife’s name over and over, and she heard him and knew what she had done, and took the knife and stabbed herself through the heart.

  And Hera, far away, smiled her ironical smile. He had killed himself after all. She knew he would.

  Woof!

  Atlas heard of the death of Heracles. It was the last thing he heard from Olympus.

  No one told him the old gods had vanished or that the world had changed through a pale saviour on a dark cross.

  Time had become meaningless to Atlas. He was in a black hole. He was under the event horizon. He was a singularity. He was alone.

  The planet Mercury takes only eighty-eight days to orbit the sun, but a single day on Mercury lasts as long as one hundred and seventy six earth days. A Mercurial year is only half a day. Time passes slowly and quickly here.

  So it was for Atlas, for whom forever and never had become the same thing. He was part of the galaxy now, part of a celestial city of millions or billions of stars, gas and dust-bound together by their gravitational pull.

  In this vast city no two clocks kept the same time. It was impossible to make an appointment. While Mercury flew round the sun in days, Saturn took nearly twenty-nine years. And there were other planets now, unknown to the Greeks. Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto made time a watchword for mortals only. A single year on Pluto counted up two hundred and forty eight of the earth’s. Pluto, Lord of the Underworld, was in no hurry.

  Atlas did not know how long he had been here.

  Then the dog came.

  She was a good dog, a faithful dog, a trusting dog, who loved her master and obeyed him when he put her inside a tiny capsule and strapped her so that she could not move. She was afraid but she believed in him. She was his dog.

  When the Russians blasted Laika into space in 1957, they knew she wasn’t coming back. An automatic hypodermic would poison her after seven days. She would orbit in her sputnik until the universe stopped.

  When they closed the lid on Laika she trembled and her mouth went dry. There was water in a tube and she had been taught to drink from it. There was food too, but she didn’t want water and food, she wanted her master, and night, and quiet, and all this not to be.

  She was patient. She would have gone to the ends of the earth for her master. Instead she went into space.

  Atlas had retreated so far into his mind that he did not notice the strange pod buzzing round him. Then he saw a little face at the thick sealed window. For a moment his heart leapt. Was it Heracles? Heracles transformed into his own thought, the only one he had ever had, the why question that he had silenced by hitting his head against as many brick walls as he could find.

  As the pod came round
again, Atlas freed one of his hands from his monstrous burden and caught it. It lay there like a lamed insect on his palm, and there was something inside.

  Atlas cracked open the sputnik and found Laika, strapped down, unable to move, partly bald with fear and covered in sweat and urine and her own faeces. With infinite care, Atlas freed the dog, and set it down safely on nothing and gave it water to drink.

  The speck-sized dog in the star-stretched universe licked the giant’s hand. At that moment the needle in the pod moved to inject its victim, but it was too late. Laika was free.

  Atlas knocked the pod aside, the silly thing of tin and wires, and Laika crawled unsteadily up his arm until she found a place to sleep, in a hollow of his shoulder under the wavelength of his hair.

  Atlas had long ago ceased to feel the weight of the world he carried, but he felt the skin and bone of this little dog. Now he was carrying something he wanted to keep, and that changed everything.

  Boundaries

  Friday, March 23rd 2001, 5:49 a.m., Pacific Ocean.

  The Mir space station came home.

  The Russians had loved Mir. They kept it up there through hardship and poverty, paying the bills with blustering loans and black market dollars. Since the days of the first Sputnik, the Russians loved space. It didn’t belong to America. It might one day belong to them.

  It was the same old story – boundaries, desire.

  When Mir crashed into the Pacific at dawn, she landed history but the dream escaped. There it is, orbiting the world, gravity free. Free as a dream should be.