And then with one single movement of his whole body the old warrior became as motionless as the Stone of Sisyphos, had Sisyphos been suddenly saved from the undying cruelty of Zeus. And from that motionlessness, just as if some primordial vein of gold in that Cychrean hole had really uttered a cry, there rang out a challenge so startling, that any daring wanderer passing through that deserted Arima, where Eurybia and Echidna no longer kept up their reciprocal incantation, would have said to himself: “By the gods, I must get nearer to this! Something really exciting is happening in this queer place! Hush! I must creep nearer!”
And nearer such an one would have crept. And he would have been rewarded.
“A power tells me, you laughing one, that you are my dream come true! Yes, by the earth our mother, you are no servant of Odysseus! You are no farmer of Ithaca! I, Ajax, the son of Telamon, know you for what you are! You are a true son of the great god Pan! You are the son of Pan, who is the son of Hermes, who is the son of Zeus, who is the son of Kronos!”
Certainly if the person who called himself Zeuks had all along known his parentage he couldn’t have acted differently. His fate it was just then to lead the desperately old Ajax to his fantastic end; and that is what he unhesitatingly did though without the faintest idea that death was hurrying there too. Straight up to that carved image of Hector of Troy he led the greatest Achaian. Full upon that figure shone the slanting afternoon sun in a blaze of burning light and all the artistry of Hector’s own daughter flamed forth in her father’s majestic person.
“Watch your sandals as you walk, my Lord Ajax. There are snakes in the grass.”
It was because the Trojan hero heard this instruction and obeyed it to the letter that they reached the carved tree before he lifted up his eyes to see what it was that burned before him with such a flame.
“Hector!” he cried with a ringing battle-cry; and then almost querulously as he rolled over at the feet of the son of Priam, “so its you and neither the one nor the other of us who at the end has the arms of Achilles!”
CHAPTER IX
By the time the body of the white-haired son of Telamon lay still, and Zeuks, “the laughing man”, had satisfied himself that this long, lean, fleshless form, whose mighty muscles had once hurled back from the hulls and bulwarks of the Achaian ships troop after troop of Trojans and Trojan allies, was really and truly dead, the sun had begun to fall horizontally upon the golden armour of Achilles, hanging now so easily and naturally on the ash-tree carved to resemble Hector. The Image of Hector, thus blazing in its blinding splendour, seemed to be exulting over the body of Ajax, as if it had stricken down that mighty son of Telamon not from the broken towers of a darkened Ilium but from the battlements of some new aerial Troy that were now emerging victorious.
And at this moment there came over Zeuks an unusual craving to get to the bottom of the old familiar mystery of his own birth. Those particular words which Ajax had evidently uttered under the direct impact and pressure of some sudden inspiration had sunk like a lump of adamant into the mind of Zeuks. He repeated them to himself—“The son of Pan, the son of Hermes, the son of Zeus, the son of Kronos”—and he even carried this liturgical genealogy a step further, and murmured the words: “the son of Gaia and Ouranos.”
Murmuring these words like a ritualistic chant he knelt over the body before him and thrusting his arms beneath it lifted it sufficiently high as to be able to prop it up with its back against the shins and knees and thighs of the graven image of the greatest of the Trojans, still blazing like fire in the armour of Achilles.
In carving Hector’s image out of that tree-trunk his unrecognized daughter had thought more of making the man’s face resemble its original than of making his form as muscular as it actually was. So that now, when the real muscles of the tall emaciated son of Telamon were thus contrasted with the supple and pliant elegance of that sunlit golden “eidolon” of his famous enemy, there would have been plenty of excuse for Zeuks had he cried out: “Gods in Heaven! No wonder Troy was taken and destroyed if one leader was like this and the other like that!”
But the mind of Zeuks was at that moment far too full of its own private speculations to do more than place on the ground behind him his own personal weapon, which was a thick, short, double-edged dagger with a sharp point, and lifting both hands to the bowed sun-illumined white head above him that now hung down with a distinct droop towards the direction from which they had just come, that is to say towards the rocky coast where the Naiads had their cave, he began to tilt it up and thrust it back a little, so that it should be kept in an upright position by resting it against the heart of the inmost wood of the carved tree where it was supported on one side by Hector’s left knee and on the other side by his right knee; and once having got it in that position Zeuks was as careful as a woman in the considerate manner in which he closed its eyes.
The afternoon sun was now projecting such a blaze of light that the armour of Achilles reflected it from every curve, whether convex or concave. In fact the incredible and miraculous gleaming of this armour which the cajoleries of the sea-goddess had extracted from the smithy of the fire-god, was so dazzling that whether it flamed back from the closed eyes of the son of Telamon or from the golden greaves of the son of Priam it compelled Zeuks to bend down till his own head was as deeply sunk forward between the knees of the dead Ajax as the head of Ajax was sunk backwards between the knees of the image of Hector.
Thus were the three figures united, one a corpse, one a work of art, and one a living creature; and this uniting of life with death, and of life and death with a graven image of human imagination had a curious and singular effect: for there came into the already confused and naturally chaotic mind of Zeuks one of the most powerful impressions of his whole life. In embracing those dead limbs and in drawing into the depths of his being the bitter smell of the old hero’s scrotum, and the salt, sharp taste of the perspiration-soaked hairs of his motionless thighs, Zeuks completely forgot the dead man’s announcement as to his own paternity. What filled his mind now was a sudden doubt about the wisdom of his proudly proclaimed “Prokleesis” as the best of all possible war-cries for the struggle of living creatures with the mystery of life.
But was it really the best? Was this challenging and this defying of life the wisest attitude for living creatures? Zeuks had long ago found out by bitter experience that some sort of habitual life-philosophy was absolutely essential for him. But was this mood of defiance and challenge the best he could find? He began to mutter all sorts of alternatives to himself as he buried his head between the thighs of Ajax.
By degrees he felt as if he were embracing both life and death, though like a bird swimming under water he had to rise to the surface every few minutes to get a breath of air. “By the waters of the Styx,” he said, “whatever essence of living I make up my mind to embrace, it must be capable of being reduced to a simple surge of will-power and a simple clutch of enjoyment! And I must make it such a habit that I can summon it up at any moment and use it under any conditions!
“And since I’ve got to live out my destiny, whether I challenge it and defy it or simply submit to it, it seems silly to go on making this ‘prokleesis’ of mine the essence of the whole thing. No! I can now see well what the right word for my life-struggle is — not the word ‘prokleesis’, ‘defiance’, but the word Lanthanomai, or ‘I forget’, followed by the still simpler word, Terpomai or ‘I enjoy’. For by the Styx, its a question if we can enjoy anything till we’ve forgotten almost everything!