Metamorphica Read online

  5

  PANOPTICON

  Circe was a witch and the daughter of the sun. She had the gift of prophecy. Odysseus bested her and became her lover. Medea was her niece.

  Dawn finds me on my island’s highest eminence, watching my father’s rays redden the world. The air is of such clarity and my gaze so piercing that I see every stone and blade of grass on the islands laid out below me like a map; miles away, the mainland is equally visible; through my father’s gift of prophecy, so is the future. My eyes scan over the sea and finally settle on lovely Scylla bathing her long limbs in a saltwater pool. Glaukos watches her from a cliff-top but if she sees him she gives no sign unless she moves the more languidly, aware of how her skin glows like sun on wet sand. Tomorrow, Glaukos will despair and sail to Aiaia where he’ll climb the long stairs to my high house and beg me to use my power to help him win her. My voice carefully level, I’ll ask how can she refuse him when she isn’t as fair as him, not as fair by half, at which he’ll look blank and say she smiles when he ventures to kiss her, suffers him for a moment, then runs away laughing. I’ll frown like a thunderhead and say he shouldn’t waste himself on her, for isn’t my beauty greater, and besides I’m immortal, and in any case I know all, at which he’ll stammer that he hadn’t meant to, that he’d merely intended … Before he can start the long voyage home I’ll fly through the air to Scylla’s mirror-clear pool and in secret night defile it with a dreadful poison that will make a horror of her beauty, and the burgeoning of her long necks and shrieking misery and unappeasable hunger will in some way be a prologue to the suffering of Odysseus, who isn’t yet born, some of whose men will die in her gullets decades from now as the tide of his disasters bears him toward my island. Forewarned of me, he’ll counter my witchery with moly and demand that I swear by Styx not to harm him as I watch him watching me with the tip of his sword-blade thrilling the skin above my jugular. We’ll love briefly and then he’ll go back to the sea, and though much of this will be my own doing, all of this is inevitable, and for all my wisdom I don’t know why I’ll act as I will act, or who I am.

  6

  SCYLLA

  Scylla was a sea-nymph of great beauty. Circe’s magic made her a monster. Later, she devoured many of Odysseus’ crewmen.

  I haunt the shallow waters. Glaukos is on the shore with the other youths and maidens, among whom I once was. They lie in the sun and wade carelessly in the surf. I pass long hours below the waves, watching the sun gleam on their bodies as the salt waves surge under them, lift them up, dissolve on the shore. If they see me, they think I’m a shadow on the seafloor.

  I, too, was beautiful once. So much so that every morning Glaukos hid on a cliff overlooking the sea pool where I bathed, delighting in the warm water, the horizontal light, the ardor of his gaze. I wanted him, but there was time enough, and I never let him touch me. When? he asked. Tomorrow, I said. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow without end.

  I knew I played the coquette, but it’s a short road from love to a mother’s cares, and I was jealous of my beauty. I waited too long, and now my beauty is gone (though sometimes I think it hasn’t gone but only changed, that it survives in the elastic grace of my roiling necks, in the sickle-moon gleam of my innumerable teeth).

  When I find him he’s floating at the break-line, blueness bleeding from his eyes onto his sun-burned face. I reach out and grasp him—his skin is thin, as mine was once thin, and easily pierced—and pull him toward me as the rip recedes. He thrashes, but I won’t let go. I hold him close for a long time, but he won’t speak to me, as no one now speaks to me. His luminous flesh becomes dull limbs bobbing uselessly.

  I let the current take us. We drift out to sea. The waning day, the island’s fading lights. Twilight, and the island a black smear on the horizon; the water is deep here—this is the place. I sigh, and give him the kiss he once begged of me, and let him fall into the swell, the fathoms black below him; his dead eyes watch me as he falls, and his hands reach up, as though he’s remembered some final thing, and then he’s lost in dark water.

  I lift up my voices and shatter the night with my emptiness, my heartlessness. With nothing now to bind me, the world is a hunting ground.

  7

  NOCTURNE

  Elpenor sailed with Odysseus.

  The solitude was balm to him. The other soldiers had never been kind; the camp had been unbearable, even worse than the enforced intimacy of the ship.

  Here, all was starlit and silent. He lay sprawled on the roof of the stone house, the slate still warm, as it was always warm, and kept watch on the blank, murmuring ocean. Now and then he heard women’s voices in the rooms below but they never approached.

  * * *

  Restless, he clambered down the house’s rough stones and set out into the island’s empty hills. Somewhere in the wood a wolf fell into step beside him, its ears flicking at every creaking branch and groaning trunk, and he was glad of the company. Finally it yawned, sniffed the air, and padded off into the brush.

  High in the hills he found the jagged teeth of a broken wall around the remnants of a city. The ruin seemed watchful, as though it were contemplating the sky, lost in long architectural thoughts. He stopped to listen to the wind surge through the trees and vales and then fall off, as though gathering itself for a final blast that never came.

  From a hilltop he saw a distant river. He thought he saw men’s silhouettes on the water’s reflected luminance. The river never seemed to come closer but then he came out of a mist and it was right before him. A blind old man sitting on a stone looked up at him with sightless eyes and said, “You’re lost. Go on, my dear—your way lies there,” and pointed across the river into the dark. He stood there considering the black water, but the wind-troubled night oppressed him, and finally he turned back.

  It was still dark when he saw the house again, but he couldn’t remember when last he saw the sun. Among the trees and shadows behind the house was a body long dead, the flesh long since turned to leather, the chiton rags and dust. He pitied this hapless victim who lacked the rites of burial and must wander as a restless ghost, but the emotion was abstract and the dust he lifted slipped through his fingers, so once again he picked his way up over the rough stones onto the high roof, the smooth slate familiar under his hands, and perched on the edge, knees clasped to his chest, drinking in the silence.

  8

  AJAX

  Ajax was a Greek hero who fought in the Trojan War. He was as strong as Achilles but less brilliant. The gods didn’t love him, but no man could beat him, and he survived the war unscathed.

  Salamis burned as I ran through the streets roaring like the flames and calling out every man I saw but they receded before me like a fading bad dream and my spear was like a stone in my hand. Morning found me sitting alone in my city’s smoking ruin.

  Days and nights came and went and the rain cut pale streaks on my blackened hands. I stared up into the night without blinking and watched white stars slide over the sky. When a sail nicked the horizon I hoped that my foe-men had returned for their fallen, but it was only Agamemnon, who saw me and the bodies and the burn and the ruin and his eyes wondered but he asked nothing, saying only that it had come to war, in Mycenae, and I was needed. He started in on a story about a wanton woman fleeing far over the wide water but I sighed and stood, spear over shoulder, and walked down the steep beach to the waiting black ships.

  We sailed to Troy beach and saw the surf bursting beneath the white walls of the city and the soldiers teeming black on the shore. The other Greeks scattered from their welcome of arrows but I lifted my shield and stood braced on the prow; the swift arrows sang a high death song around me and only fell silent when the keel cut sand. I jumped into the swell and was first up the white beach and the sword-web of battle felt like coming home. I felt fear in the foe-men as my spear dowsed for heart’s blood, and as I made wretched widows I was ready to die, but no blade would bite me and soon they went running and I leaned on my spear as kit
es blackened the sky. They said I’d been screaming over the great din of battle but I remembered no more than the silence behind the clash of weapons and the faces of the men I’d killed. They built a beachhead as the fallen were gathered and the blackness that had lifted came back and remained.

  That night I gulped raw wine from great jars while others sat talking, then left for the strand and stared at the waves. The hard crash of the salt sea meant as little as Helen, but the war waged to win her would give shape to my days. No clouds in the fading sky, and I thought of the rain, come late to my country, how hard the ground was when I dug my wife’s grave, how she’d made a game once of mocking my grimness, and perhaps would again when I saw her in Hell.

  Every time I walked over the white sand toward the shining Trojan host I thought, Perhaps it will be today. There was an eerie calm on the battlefield, and the Trojans’ spears and swords seemed to move slowly, wounding only the air as I slipped aside and like a good craftsman I worked through their lives. When I felt the Greeks waver I’d call them all to me and we’d fight on as brothers as I pushed through the fray. Death, I knew, was close at hand, and I called him out, but he never came.

  In the beginning of the war I sat at other men’s fires and tried to be one of them but there was a lightness in their raillery I could never match and my silence was so deep they lost their words and sat staring till I rose and went away. I heard them talking about me, how they valued my strength but thought I was brutal, a spreading black stain on the bright dream of war, and after that I stayed inside my tent, the walls snapping and shivering in the wind, and never took off my armor. When I looked inside the shadows of my helm in my dented bronze mirror I saw only a void and a darkness, which I recognized as my true face, obscured till I’d learned to live solely for strife.

  Years passed, and the war wound on, ranks of soldiers rising and falling like the crashing white waves, and every day was the same, and some men died, and others stopped caring. Life had the texture of a nightmare unending but I’d embraced the horror and it made me untouchable. The others thought I was bad luck because I laughed at odd times, and sometimes I forgot where I was, and sometimes on the field I thought I was in some other battle, any battle at all.

  I was nearby when Achilles disappeared. I heard the ecstasy in the Trojans’ voices and came roaring through the churning white dust to find his empty bronze armor rolling on the ground. I threw myself against the Trojans and held them at spear’s length while Odysseus seized the armor, and, finding it heavy, dragged it away.

  It had seemed the war would last forever and I’d be fighting for the rest of my days but the death of Achilles shocked events into motion and it wasn’t long before Memnon had drunk deep of death and silver-tongued Odysseus had smuggled us into the city in his creaking invention and then it was just hours till Troy was burning and I was running through the streets with a sword in each hand, mute, beyond myself, killing everyone, and even the other Greeks fled from me; the world was the color of blood and the last thing I remembered was pressing Cassandra’s face into Athena’s marble altar as I pushed my sword into her neck.

  I woke in the morning in the ruins of someone’s bedroom, sticky with blood, still clutching a sword, and walked back toward camp through the burned-out city. Everything was over, and nothing was left. Every morning for weeks I went and stood alone in my armor on the abandoned field, staring up blankly at Troy’s ruined walls. Once I saw Hector’s ghost among the dust devils, and called out to him, but he was looking out to sea, and when I approached he dissolved on the wind.

  The allies soon left us, and then the other Greeks were loading their ships and it was time for last things. We stood in a circle as Agamemnon praised our valor and distributed spoil to the strongest in war. The little men got the horses and tripods but the great prize was Achilles’ armor, god-forged and golden, doomed to go home with the best warrior of all. When it was the only prize left I stepped forward to claim it but Odysseus looked at Agamemnon, who said the choice lay with the men.

  After me the best of the Greeks were Odysseus and Diomedes; Diomedes spoke first. “Fleet as the gods am I,” he boasted, “and relentless as water. Joyful I run to the red strife of war.”

  I said, “Strongest of soldiers, I hold hard the long line, and make heroes run headlong who do not yearn to die. Fleet are the fearful who flee from the war-fray; to walk will suffice for a man seeking war.”

  Odysseus shook his head and said, “What speed and what strength—you two are truly incredible! I won’t even try to compete with such paragons, for, beggar that I am, I have no better gift than wisdom, and who but a fool would see fit to try? The simple truth is that I honor you both, as a chess-master honors chess-men, whose mute, simple courage is the heart of the game.” He went on from there, likening himself to an architect and us to his workmen, or his donkeys, and the men laughed, and then I stopped listening until they started applauding and I looked up to see Achilles’ golden helmet in Odysseus’ soft hands.

  No one slept that night, and the camp was full of quarrels and drunken shouting as I sat thinking of my city’s ruin across the bitter cold sea. I needed a war but Greece was exhausted, the men keen to return to fields gone rank. I fell asleep thinking of weeds sprouting among my city’s wrecked walls and fallen towers, and doubting I’d live long enough to see them remade.

  Deep in the night I opened my eyes when I realized there was a war for the taking, and right at hand. I armed myself in silence; the muddy roads through the camp glowed white in the moonlight and luck must have been with me because I met no one on the way to Odysseus’ tent. In the absence of his eloquence, I thought, the army will support me, and if they don’t, I’ve always meant to have my tomb here.

  At first I thought it was a warrior standing before his tent but then saw it was a woman, though very tall, leaning on her spear and glaring at me, her armor ancient, her helm glittering like the sea. I was going to brush past her but saw the hell-light in her eyes and from the way she held her spear I knew she could use it. I dodged her first thrust by instinct and with joyful disbelief realized that here at last was a worthy enemy, better even than Hector; we faced off in the moonlight, spears poised, waiting, watchful of openings, achingly aware of the empty space between us. A noise from Odysseus’ tent and I felt her concentration waver, but my spear missed her heart and I realized she’d been drawing me in, and as I twisted away from her riposte I lost my balance and blundered into the tent. Entangled in its folds I felt something pierce my side, and when I finally threw off the enveloping cloth I found myself on the steep sandy bank of a black river in flood.

  * * *

  The undulating black hills never reach the sea, but just keep going on, and the sun never rises, and even the next hill seems indefinite, no more than a suggestion of dark mass and curvature.

  There are others on the slopes, staring into the distance, but I approach no one until I see my wife standing on a hillside. I crush her shoulder in my hand and she turns and looks up at me but nothing moves in her face as I say, I missed you, and I needed you, and I moved upon the earth to little purpose after you died. Finally my words seem to register and she smiles faintly but it soon fades and her gaze slips away into the distance.

  There’s nothing left then, but I keep walking, and time passes, and passes, and then someone is polluting the shadows with his breath and hot blood. “Ajax!” says Odysseus, who is still, it seems, among living men. He says, “Is it you? My friend, it’s good to see you, even in this dismal place, though a bitter fate found you. Tell me—how did you die, and what is news of the land of the dead?” but I turn away and walk on into the dark.

  9

  CUMULUS

  Odysseus visited many cities. Some said he never stopped wandering.

  The brightness blinding Odysseus’ eyes resolves into banks of incandescent thunderheads. He blinks, and averts his gaze from the noon glare, his eyes sliding down over the glowing cloud mass that grades imperceptibly int
o the battlements of white towers and curtain walls that rise above weather-vanes, the red imbricated tile, the wrought-iron balconies looming over the mazy turns of the street where he stands as strangers rush around him.

  There is a temple before him, rippling as though in a heat haze. He peers within but its gods’ shining faces are strange to him, and even as he watches the temple dissolves, its domes, pediments, pillars melting and flowing into another order, and now there are alcoves where altars were and the capitals support a frieze showing gods pursuing nymphs becoming stags, stones, trees, wells, water.

  Odysseus accosts a passerby and says, “O stranger, speak plainly to a man without a home, and tell me the name of this city.”

  The stranger says, “Know, O wanderer, that this is the city where islands of apparent order are ellipses in an endless flux, where the elements of architecture forever dissolve and recombine. As it is with the city, so it is with the citizens—even heroes. Once the sea brought a master mariner, whose mind was like a city full of twists and turns; he’s long gone now, but survives in the sporadic flights of eloquence one hears in the market-place, and in the labyrinthine complexity of our streets. Sometimes one still hears his name—Odysseus.”

  10

  ARACHNE

  Arachne was an artist of great talent. She was Athena’s only female protégé. When they fell out, Arachne hanged herself.

  When the rope tightened and the world turned grey I expected to see nothing, or perhaps Death’s opening white hands, but instead Athena was there, lifting me up to relieve the pressure on my neck, and she’d become a giant, so vast she held me on the palm of her hand. I looked up into her face and saw pity, but then the image fractured into elements without meaning, a fissure where her mouth had been, her eyes blue suns.