Nisos was struck at this particular point at once by the perfect opportunity which such a spot offered for the accumulation of filth, and by the noteworthy fact, which certainly spoke well for the crew, that those planks were so immaculately clean. As both white and black serving-boys, in spite of their trained politeness and of their evident terror of the blankets of Enorches, were pushed and jostled against him by their companions, Nisos decided that the sweat of the lads of the Greek islands and mainland had a completely different odour from the sweat of the lads from the more eastern Asiatic shores and harbours.
But he had no time to pause to philosophize now upon differences of human sweat for Zeuks had already got himself and Arsinöe into that unusual cabin crowded with people and it had fallen to the lot of Nisos to project the staring Enorches, blankets and all, into the presence of Odysseus and Nausikaa who were on their feet in that extempore dining-hall talking gravely together.
The old king and his ballad-princess of so long ago were, however, spared the discomfort of having to be polite to such a person as Enorches by the appearance on the scene, this time for just the sort of occasion Nisos had always prayed would never arise, of the super-official, super-courtly, super-distinguished, super-pontifical Herald; who at once, as a born authority in regard to all ceremonies that require magisterial handling, and as a practised expert in all those concatenations that need super-natural tact, greeted Zeuks and Arsinöe with a glance and a couple of words, and took the Priest of Orpheus under his impeccable wing.
As for Nisos, who was quite alone now, he found himself once more following Zeuks and Arsinöe with his eyes. Neither Odysseus nor Nausikaa seemed to notice him, although the king may have done so without revealing it. But the feeling that caused him to stand and gaze at the back of Zeuks’ satyrish knuckles as they presented themselves to his view, with the implication that the palm of the man’s hand was enjoying the curve of the girl’s hip, was accentuated now by an uprush of self-revelation that nearly knocked him over.
The truth of the matter now must be, he now boldly dared to tell himself, that it was this Trojan woman Arsinöe, and not either his friend Tis’s little sister, Eione, nor the prophet’s prophetic daughter, Pontopereia, whom he desired for his wife.
“Yes,” Nisos told himself, “though she must be years and years older than I am, she’s the one I want! She understands me better than anybody in the world except Tis; and I like her better than anyone in the world. I like her better than father or mother or Agelaos.”
Odysseus and Nausikaa, who now seemed completely absorbed in each other, kept moving a little nearer to him, though without taking any notice of him; and this went on till he was leaning with his back against several pieces of suspended armour and a couple of tunics woven in Ithaca but dyed in Tyre: it went on, in fact, till he began to feel, not so much hungry, as extremely sleepy.
What was indeed like a demonic teasing of him by fate than anything else was the fact that although he could just make out from where he leant, or rather crouched, behind the king and Nausikaa, the figure of Okyrhöe seated calmly, and with a face like a mask, at one of the long tables, with an empty place next to her, devouring with an absorbed and concentrated attention a somewhat over-ripe Sicilian melon, he could only just see, between the embroidered sleeve of the protective Herald and the bare neck of the protected Enorches the delicate waist and the left breast, the latter only half-covered with “linon” that specially lovely Achaian linen so dear to the ladies of all lands, of the girl with whom he now knew he was really in love as he had never been in love before.
This certainty reached his mind in close connection with those clutching knuckles of the lecherous son of Pan which he now could detect beneath that white linen and whiter breast; but it obtained its domination over him and over his destiny in connection with a secret resolve he now made that was totally different from any purpose or any vow or any dedication he had ever made before.
And with this new intention, with this new gathering together of the diverse forces of his soul into what he decided must be, from now on, one intense, strongly compressed will, a will most malleable, a will most adaptable, a will that lends itself, a will that adjusts itself, a will that conceals itself, a will that multiplies itself, a will that seeks its irrepressible level, a will like water, a will like air, our young friend made a convulsive clutch at the foot of the Heraklean club upon which Odysseus had begun to lean so heavily in his absorbed talk with Nausikaa that there was a real danger of its suddenly sliding along the floor and letting him down.
But no sooner had Nisos clutched it than the familiar tinkling voice of the scientific Fly was in his ears. “Oh how much easier it would be, this ancient language of yours,” he thought, “if only there weren’t all these accurst adverbs! It’s the adverbs that spoil it. Why can’t you sting without stinging violently or buzz without buzzing gently? Why can’t you kiss without kissing tenderly? Why can’t you even think without thinking stupidly or cleverly?”
Although he didn’t relinquish his hold upon the club of Herakles, Nisos worked himself up into such irritation over the mania for adverbs in the language of insects, that in a whisper that contained something of sheer unkindness he called the attention of the Fly to the emergence from the club’s “lifecrack”, which was just above his fingers, of the priest-enamoured Moth.
But those adoring brown wings had barely fluttered twice up and down the sweltering space between the wet hairs of the man’s blanket and the wet hairs of the man’s chest, before, in her shrinking desire to comfort the Interpreter of the Mysteries without driving her companion to any regrettably rash act she had not only darted back to their lodging but had implored the Fly to translate for her what the news was that the club was hearing from the omniscient Sixth Pillar.
“Haven’t you yet caught across that moon-lit ocean of yours, my adventurous friend,” were the startling words that were now communicated to the moth by the fly and over-heard by Nisos, “the heavy breathing of Pegasos upon the wind and the quick gasps of his long-maned companion? And I presume Odysseus is already aware that his friend Nausikaa is now the Virgin Queen of her native-land, and that not only her parents’ palace and garden await her return, but the whole country passionately wants her back?”
Nisos clutched the foot of the club of Herakles so fiercely that the force of his grip squeezed the club’s attention out of his ears and reduced his Nemean senses to the same sort of deaf, dumb, and numb condition with which they had expected, washed up upon the shore of Ithaca, the reviving right hand of a new possessor.
And it was then that, more vividly than ever aware of those knuckles of Zeuks concealing from him so much of the bosom of Arsinöe, our young friend decided that he must learn from this queer rival of his, this fantastic child of Arcadian Pan, whose whole personality resembled an unburst bubble of purposeless laughter, the trick the fellow had of repeating some logos, some slogan of conduct, some motto of behaviour, by which a person’s divided will-power could be unified and concentrated.
And Nisos then and there decided that the word he wanted was the word spoudazo. “Yes, yes,” he muttered in his secret heart—“that’s the word, that’s the incantation I want! I want the feeling of being able to pull myself together till I’m like an arrow-head of intense will-power! Yes! yes! Spoudazo is my word, but I must add to it the word terpsis, the sensation of enjoyment, and I must throw into-these words my whole self and with my whole self, I here and now must will intensely that Arsinöe the Trojan shall belong to me!”