Chimera

"If ever."

I shrugged. "In any case, Medusa came at last; there was the moment to discover her." "Yes."

"Yes."

Yes. "But I didn't, merely held her fast until I fell asleep. Next morning she was gone; I woke alone. ." "Perseus?" "Yes?" "It's after midnight. I'm twenty-five and scared. Will you make love to me?"

I did; she did; there is a surfeit of sex in the story; no help for it; we verged on much and didn't cross the verge. No more my merry priestess, Calyxa solemnly sat up and by the light of the altar-lamp watched me drip from her to the spiraled spread.

"I like my life," she said, as if addressing the little puddle. "I come and go as I please. It's a free, independent life. I wouldn't be tied down to any man. You and I don't really relate. I can't turn you on. We'd probably drive each other crazy if we stayed together. You're not in heaven, Perseus. Neither of us is."

One finger was permitted to touch her thigh. "Chemmis?"

She nodded.

"And alive, then." "Yes." Pause. "I wondered how it was you could have a birthday."

Pause. We both watched her flex to stop my flow from her, in vain for all her able musculature. "When you stopped here on your way to Joppa the first time, it was my fifth birthday," she said. "They let us out of summer kindergarten to see the gold-skinned flying hero who'd cut off the Gorgon's head. You only took a drink of water from the public fountain and flew off, but all through school we studied you and the other Greek heroes, along with Ammon and Sabazius and our native ones." She sat cross-legged on the spermy point, her tears running too. "I could stop this if I closed my eyes and legs," she declared, and didn't. "At first the town council put a little bronze plaque on the water fountain; Ammon and Sabazius were local favorites. Later on, when I thought I might like to be a scholar, I wrote a thesis on the three of you: my heroes." She smiled, sniffed, fingered the pudlet. "In fact, that was my thesis: that since of the local heroes only Perseus was technically a hero, and a first-rank one at that, whereas the others were technically gods, but secondary ones, you were as deserving of a temple as they were. It was a stupid essay."

"I don't know."

She shook her head. "I can't do scholarship. Or write or draw or anything. I've got this great IQ and I can't do anything. I'd been working in Ammon's and Sabazius's temples to support my studies, and then Ammon screwed me, and I liked it, so I let Sabazius in too, and pretty soon I was in charge of all three temples. It's not bad work; I meet a lot of people; I just wonder sometimes if I'm getting anywhere that matters. The three of you are married; Ammon and Sabazius have loads of other girlfriends. In a way, I guess, you were my last hope; when Medusa brought you here, I couldn't help wishing. ." Idly she flicked semen at the lamp-flame. Missed. "So it turns out even you've got a girl already."

"Not any more," I said. "Not even I." But I did, if I was alive, have a wife (I regarded her — young, naked, and lovely, chained to the cliff in I-F-3), to whom I'd better be getting back. "I wondered why Chemmis was the only scene missing. So tomorrow's mural — "

"Just the desert, as you'll see on your way out. But Perseus. ."

Surprisingly, for I thought her vexed, or self-sorrowing, or both, she slid over and put my head in her lap. "I might as well be the bastard who breaks the news: Andromeda's left you. For keeps."

I'd been enjoying close-up her lamplit navel. At this announcement my heart skipped as in poor poetry, and my eyes closed without my closing them.

"Medusa told me when she fetched you from the desert," Calyxa said. "You're wife's gone on to Joppa with Danaus."

I unlapped and found my missing voice. "I'll kill him."

But Calyxa observed, calmly, that killing Danaus would change nothing; he meant no more to Andromeda than she Calyxa me: a mere diversion, a refreshment. Andromeda wanted rid of me, and that was that; if I examined my heart, I must see that I was finished with her as well. Such things happened. Wasn't that the case?

I spoke with difficulty, into her stomach. "I suppose." Now my eyes were wet as well.

"Do you love Medusa?"

"I don't know."

Calyxa rubbed two fingertips in closing circles where gold curls formerly grew. "If you wanted to stay on here. . I mean indefinitely. . I'd like that."

We spent a sweet half-hour; then she slept imperiously as a child while I tossed the night through, galed by emotions sundry as the II-B winds. The image of Danaus abed with Andromeda one moment made me retch and sweat with rage; the next I was euphoric with relief to be at last unchained, free to be Perseus, starred or stoned as the issue might prove, but my own man. Followed grief at the lost past, my one young-manhood; then sympathy sharp as pain for my Andromeda, mine no more — so fine and dainty in the bed still (rerage at young Danaus! fresh fury!), unbearable as myself every other where. Toward dawn I went round with the guttery lamp, reviewing for the last time the first revolution of my story; lamp-oil, night, and heroic youth ran out together; I came back to Calyxa, stroked her out of dreams into drowsy liquefaction, here it comes again, climbed with her to our first full fillment. She held my face close for examination while we finished pulsing.

"I was sure you'd gone."

When I didn't answer she held fast yet a moment, blinked once, then let go all and turned her face away.

"I may be back," I said. Further: "Thanks an awful lot, Calyxa. For everything." I might even have gone on to say, "I really mean it," had not a throat-lump spared her that final gaucherie. A tunic, prose-purple, hung in the passage behind I-A; I donned it, left my priestess leaking love, and tiptoed out, pausing just a moment at her final sketch (not yet graven), the second panelet of II-F. She'd blocked across it as on a billboard PERSEUS LOVES —---, a slight inaccuracy. A few early tourists approached from the vast blank spaces which in time would be II-F-3 through 7 and II-G. Not having entered my story yet, they didn't recognize its hero; and I (I recognized an hour later, dhowing down the pea-green Nile) neglected in turn to notice whether any man among them looked deserving of its artful chronicler, and my gentle, cosmic jealousy.

"Do you still feel that way?"

I shall eternally; can't help it. Sorry.

"I didn't ask you to apologize."

I shall eternally; can't help it.

"Joppa period," I told the boatman, who proposed a Memphis rest-stop and a tour of the river's seven mouths. On the beach at Pharos like a bearded beacon stood the Old Man of the Sea, but I had no need of navigation-aid: oriented, by falling-starlight I surely steered us east. Two-thirds of my tale was told, its whence and where; as to its whither, I knew only that I would once more and finally confront Andromeda: whether to kiss or kill, hello goodbye, her whomever, I'd known when I was II-F-3'd. Calyxa was behind; I assumed I was bereft of New Medusa too, despite her having yet again saved my life, since love and gratitude, in the clutch, had been kibisised by doubt. Don't say it, I'm not apologizing, I told myself it was just as welclass="underline" let my second tale be truly a second, not mere replication of my first; let a spell of monologue precede new dialogue. .

"Okay. I'll say no more."

Not till the epilogue; may its hour hasten. My scruffy boatman, next morning when we landfell Joppa, pointed out the cliff where fair Andromeda had been snacked for Cetus till mighty Perseus et cetera. She wasn't fair, I corrected him. One in every boatload, he rejoined, I having paid him in advance for the night's journey: had I been there, as he had? To preserve my anonymity I let the seedy salt run on; even when he described, in lewdest terms, my bride-to-be's nakedness, to ogle which he claimed had been my motive for going down, I didn't dagger him — only vowed to post Calyxa this further hair-thing in my history, thitherto forgot: how I'd thought Andromeda a marble statue till the sea breeze stirred her hair. The seaman mistook my smile for smirk and reported what he said was coastwise knowledge: that that same Andromeda was currently whoring it in Joppa with a new boyfriend; that one Galanthis, said to be Cassiopeia's gigolo, was out to hump her as well; that the elder queen was so smote with jealousy she'd hecatombed Ammon to send another Cetus, which remonstration would permit her to re-sacrifice her roundheel daughter; that — but that that was the last he thatted: passivity be damned, I dirked and sharked him, dhowed to port alone.