“But you see, Nurse dear, what makes it so hard for me to tell you all they say is that they keep contradicting each other as if they were speaking as ambassadors from opposite camps. For instance what the fly says is that the real reason why our great goddess Athene has withdrawn ‘pro-tem’ into herself is that she is waiting to hear what Zeus will do if certain rumours that have reached her from Italy are correct, namely that at a special place in Italy where there are seven sacred hills the descendants of Aeneas the pious ally of Priam have already begun to build a new Troy.
“The moth, on the other hand, swears that Athene has gone to visit the blameless Ethiopians to find out for herself whether it is true that Persephone has quarrelled with Aidoneus and helped Teiresias to bring back from Hades the weeping Niobe, the First Woman, together with her husband Phoroneus, the First Man.”
Long before the insects had ceased revealing their discoveries to the undulations of the knuckles of his now weakly and wearily extended hand, the inspiration proceeding from the virginity of the old maid who had nursed him ceased to give him the clue to the small creatures’ sign-language.
He gazed helplessly at her, while a wave of tiredness and the feeling of being a hopeless fool engulfed him. “What do you make of it all, Nurse?” he murmured feebly.
“It is clear enough, Nisos,” commented Petraia, “that a female moth and a male fly are bound to be on opposite sides in the great ‘old battle’.”
“What old battle, nurse darling?” enquired the boy, contemplating the insects on his knuckles with re-awakened interest.
“Between males and females, silly!” There fell a dead silence between them with the weight of a heavy stone: a silence that was broken at last by the old maid herself. Her voice rang out with something of the prophetic resonance that had belonged to that twin-sister of hers who was a neophyte of Egeria, the Nymph in the Cave in the Italian forest.
“Didn’t I always tell you, forgetful child, how Apollo and Artemis persecuted Niobe, the First Woman, whose husband Phoroneus was the son of a Melian Nymph? Didn’t I tell you how that pair of murderous deities — holy Athene guard me from them! — between whom and our great Goddess there has always been war since, like that dangerous Cyprian Aphrodite, they took the side of the Trojans and may the golden Sun, Helios, and the silver Moon, Selene, shake off such intruders! — didn’t I tell you how that murderous pair killed the children of Niobe the first woman? And how they wouldn’t even let their neighbours bury those beautiful maidens and heroic youths? Haven’t I told you all that?
“And now this liar of a house-fly is trying to make out that our great goddess has lost herself in some kind of trance when the pillars of the world are shaking. O you male creatures, what infants you are! Children of women and nurselings of women, it is your mothers, your mothers, always your mothers, who are to blame! It is only from us, the unmarried ones, the childless ones, who have never known a man, that you ever hear the truth! That is what my sister always used to say. That is why she went to that forest of Aricia, which in Italy must be like the Nemean Forest in our main-land, and a little like our Arima too, only much bigger. Lucky, yea a thousand times lucky, are we in Ithaca to serve a Virgin Goddess!
“The mothers of men are the worst traitors to the cause of women. I tell you, boy, from the beginning of all things women have been betrayed, exploited, enslaved, insulted, perverted, depraved, debased, by men!”
Petraia drew breath at this point, while Nisos, feeling a little uneasy, since he still assumed it was in direct answer to his prayer that his old nurse had appeared on the scene, stared at the black fly on his knuckle with the vague idea of finding an excuse if not a justification for the wickedness of men in that big black head supported on those gauzy wings.
But the indignant old maid went on in mounting emotion, until her indictment soon became so detailed in its survey of the wrongs of women and so crushing in its denunciation of their corrupters, that all he could do was to rub his knee with his free hand while one method of defence followed another in mute succession through his bewildered brain.
“Petraia,” he thought, “must have gone down to Hades like our King Odysseus for she can’t have seen all these things happening round here.” And then as his attention wandered a little from what he was hearing he became aware of an extremely unexpected and very curious experience. He found himself in fact whispering to the fly and being whispered to by the fly in a language of which he was absolutely ignorant. It was like a dream, though he was fully awake. The fly was a boy among flies as he himself was among people. And with this other boy he was now making fun of everything.
“But it’s our great goddess — it must be—” he told himself, “who in answer to my prayer has arranged this meeting with Petraia and has helped me and the fly to make friends! She is a Divine Being, therefore she must herself understand the language and the thoughts of all the animals, birds, reptiles, insects and even plants, that walk and fly and creep and grow around her temple.”
He had begun to call the fly “Kasi”. “Kasi-kid,” he said, “isn’t this whole business just like a game of Blindman’s Buff? Don’t you think so, Kasi?”
The old midwife at his side went on with her arraignment of all males; but he kept his attention fixed on the fly, for it had become a deep joy to him to feel that they’d really made friends. “Kasi” was an abbreviation of the Hellenic word for brother and it was the old class-mate expression that all the younger boys of Ithaca had made use of between themselves in the Island’s preparatory-school.
As for the fly, it was natural enough that since it had got older considerably faster than his new friend it was as gratified at being called “Kasi” as Nisos would have been if he had been treated like a young comrade by one of the heroes in the Trojan war.
“Blindman’s Buff?” cried the Fly. “It’s as if we were all buzzing round a new-dropt cow-turd of Tis’ s old Babba, all warm and steaming! But this lady-moth here keeps giving me a flap with her left wing to remind me that I promised to escort her home; so I’m afraid I must say ‘cheire!’ for we must do what the ladies tell us, is it not so?”
“It is indeed the sad truth, Kasi,” admitted Nisos. “Ta-Ta! till the next time!” shrilled the Fly. But when the insects had commenced their flickering and wavering departure in such close colloquy that the all-seeing sun, whether ruled by an Olympian or a Titan or by nobody but his flaming self, couldn’t decide whether to turn them into one darting jewel or into two darting jewels, Nisos found that Petraia had fallen silent and was regarding him with a look that was a palimpsest of different expressions. It had reproach in it. It had a grievance in it. It had mischievous amusement in it. It had a puzzled pity in it.
But in place of any sad, weary, resigned, disillusioned acceptance of fate it had a gravity that was faintly whimsical. “Those finger-nails that disgusted and disquieted you so, my dear,” she remarked at last, “show me who cracked that image of Themis. And now listen to me, child; and lay to heart what I tell you; for I am not speaking only on my own authority. I am speaking to you, Nisos, you Babe that I took from your mother, as an unwedded mortal on behalf of an unwedded immortal, for I tell you, boy, that at this very moment I can feel her presence inspiring me and teaching me exactly what to say and exactly what not to say to you, Nisos, child,” and Petraia’s voice quivered with emotion, “the greatest event, and by far the best event, that has ever happened in the history of our terrible world is now happening.