other adjectives—
“Pretty,” I suggested. “Sexually adroit …”
She stopped my mouth. “But I happen to know men and women quite superior to me in all these things, and not only wouldn’t I dream of calling myself their equal, I happen to prefer them to myself and my equals. You reminded me once that you’re a mythic hero, but you keep forgetting it yourself. Were you always psychosexually weak, or is that Andromeda’s doing?”
Truly I wished to withdraw, and being at least her muscular match, managed to. She grinned and bussed my forearm.
“No man’s a mythic hero to his wife,” I said. But Calyxa took spirited issue: no woman remained a dream of nymphhood to her husband either, she daresaid, but real excellence in any particular should be excellent even qualified by comparison, long familiarity, and non-excellence in other particulars. That permanent relationship was fatal to passion was perhaps inevitable, and as she preferred to love passionately she would never marry; but having been more than once abused by those she loved, she knew for a fact that her admiration of their excellence was invulnerable. “Ammon’s a real bastard, often as not,” she said; “but I’d die for him tomorrow if he asked me too. I’m good, but he’s great. Who does Andromeda think she is?”
I’d hear no more such criticism. “My question to Athene,” I said, “was Who was I ? I made proper sacrifices, prayed she’d appear and counsel me how not to turn to stone. If there was a new Medusa, let a new Perseus be resickled, -shielded, -sandaled, and the rest, to reglorify himself by re-beheading her. It wasn’t Mother Danaë wanted rescuing now, but Danaë‘s son.”
Calyxa snugged against me with a kind of fond exasperation. I went on to recount how, as I’d recounted to Athene my apprehensions, a hooded young woman had appeared beside me at the altar, whom I took to be a fellow-suppliant until from the corner of my eyes I saw a radiance from hers—which, however, like all her features, were cowled from view in the temple dusk. And when she said to me, “Your brother was right: there is a New Medusa,” I recognized the voice as no mortal’s: Athene had come to me, as was her wont, in suppliant’s guise. I reminded her I had no mortal kin, only scores of divine half-siblings like herself, got by Zeus upon his scores of bedmates.
She touched my arm and softly undeceived me. “Dictys and Danaë were closeted a long while in the Seriphos temple before you rescued them. But think again, Perseus, what Polydectes was saying: it wasn’t the theta of N αῷ ’A θἠνηϛ , but the sigma of N αῷ ’A φροδίτηϛ . He really did lisp, and your mother’s shelter was Love, not Wisdom…”
In short, she said, young Danaus my rescuer and current rival was half my brother! And fortunate it was—she went on at once, to check my flabbergasted ire—King Dictys and my mother had chosen Aphrodite’s shrine instead of Athene’s for their besieged amour, since Athene would have sorely punished them for sacrilege. Such exactly ( I could not get in my outrage edgewise!) had been innocent Medusa’s original sin: was I aware of the circumstances of her Gorgonizing?
I surrendered.
“Me too,” Calyxa said.
She’d been a pretty young girl, went on the cowled apparition: a daughter of the sea-god Phorcys and thus kid-sister to the grim Gray Ladies and cousin to the pretty Nereids. She’d been well brought up by her mother Ceto, was in fact as proper a sea-nymph as ever swam: discreet of her person, pretty as the April moon, a regular churchgoer and comforter of the drowned. Her only failing, if it could be so called, was a maiden’s pride and interest in her budded beauty—in particular her naturally wavy hair, proof against sea-salt and so comely withal that it fired the passions of the admiralty-god himself, her Uncle Poseidon…
“Uncles, I swear,” Calyxa said. “That’s three in this story. And
“Pretty,” I suggested. “Sexually adroit …”
She stopped my mouth. “But I happen to know men and women quite superior to me in all these things, and not only wouldn’t I dream of calling myself their equal, I happen to prefer them to myself and my equals. You reminded me once that you’re a mythic hero, but you keep forgetting it yourself. Were you always psychosexually weak, or is that Andromeda’s doing?”
Truly I wished to withdraw, and being at least her muscular match, managed to. She grinned and bussed my forearm.
“No man’s a mythic hero to his wife,” I said. But Calyxa took spirited issue: no woman remained a dream of nymphhood to her husband either, she daresaid, but real excellence in any particular should be excellent even qualified by comparison, long familiarity, and non-excellence in other particulars. That permanent relationship was fatal to passion was perhaps inevitable, and as she preferred to love passionately she would never marry; but having been more than once abused by those she loved, she knew for a fact that her admiration of their excellence was invulnerable. “Ammon’s a real bastard, often as not,” she said; “but I’d die for him tomorrow if he asked me too. I’m good, but he’s great. Who does Andromeda think she is?”
I’d hear no more such criticism. “My question to Athene,” I said, “was Who was I ? I made proper sacrifices, prayed she’d appear and counsel me how not to turn to stone. If there was a new Medusa, let a new Perseus be resickled, -shielded, -sandaled, and the rest, to reglorify himself by re-beheading her. It wasn’t Mother Danaë wanted rescuing now, but Danaë‘s son.”
Calyxa snugged against me with a kind of fond exasperation. I went on to recount how, as I’d recounted to Athene my apprehensions, a hooded young woman had appeared beside me at the altar, whom I took to be a fellow-suppliant until from the corner of my eyes I saw a radiance from hers—which, however, like all her features, were cowled from view in the temple dusk. And when she said to me, “Your brother was right: there is a New Medusa,” I recognized the voice as no mortal’s: Athene had come to me, as was her wont, in suppliant’s guise. I reminded her I had no mortal kin, only scores of divine half-siblings like herself, got by Zeus upon his scores of bedmates.
She touched my arm and softly undeceived me. “Dictys and Danaë were closeted a long while in the Seriphos temple before you rescued them. But think again, Perseus, what Polydectes was saying: it wasn’t the theta of N αῷ ’A θἠνηϛ , but the sigma of N αῷ ’A φροδίτηϛ . He really did lisp, and your mother’s shelter was Love, not Wisdom…”
In short, she said, young Danaus my rescuer and current rival was half my brother! And fortunate it was—she went on at once, to check my flabbergasted ire—King Dictys and my mother had chosen Aphrodite’s shrine instead of Athene’s for their besieged amour, since Athene would have sorely punished them for sacrilege. Such exactly ( I could not get in my outrage edgewise!) had been innocent Medusa’s original sin: was I aware of the circumstances of her Gorgonizing?
I surrendered.
“Me too,” Calyxa said.
She’d been a pretty young girl, went on the cowled apparition: a daughter of the sea-god Phorcys and thus kid-sister to the grim Gray Ladies and cousin to the pretty Nereids. She’d been well brought up by her mother Ceto, was in fact as proper a sea-nymph as ever swam: discreet of her person, pretty as the April moon, a regular churchgoer and comforter of the drowned. Her only failing, if it could be so called, was a maiden’s pride and interest in her budded beauty—in particular her naturally wavy hair, proof against sea-salt and so comely withal that it fired the passions of the admiralty-god himself, her Uncle Poseidon…
“Uncles, I swear,” Calyxa said. “That’s three in this story. And
Similar Books
