Et cetera. All that's another story, of no great concern to the characters in this, which Melanippe will wind up now, seal in an amphora, Bellerophon supposes, and run down the Thermodon on the tide, into the Black Sea, Propontis, Aegean, past fell Heracles's pillars, across Oceanus, et cetera. He likes to imagine it drifting age after age, nudged by great and little fishes, under strange constellations bobbing, bobbing, while the generations fight, sing, love, expire, et cetera. While towns and statues fall, gods come and go, new worlds and tongues swim into light, old perish, stuff like that. Let's see. Then it too must perish, with all things deciphered and undeciphered — no no, scratch that: it mustn't perish, no indeed; it's going to live forever, sure, the voice of Bellerus, the immortal Bellerophon, that's the whole point.
So, welclass="underline" their love, Bellerophon's and Melanippe's, winds through universal space and time and all; noted music of our tongue, silent visible signs, et cetera; Bellerophon's content; he really is; good night.
2
"Good night is right," Melanippe said when she read Part One. "I can't believe you wrote this mess."
I asked her, hurt, how so; I thought it not half bad, considering.
"Because," she cried. "It's a lie! It's false! It's full of holes! I didn't write any of it; you did, every word. And you make out that I'm all emancipated and no hang-ups and immortal and stuff, and that's crazy. Content my ass! Content is a death-word in my book; if I were Medusa and I asked Perseus if he was happy to spend eternity with me and he said he was content, I'd spit in his eye! Okay, you got the Amazon business pretty straight, but I'm amazed at your picture of me: you know very well I'm not immortal except in that special way I told you about: the 'Melanippe-self' way. I'm on the verge of my Full Moon, and I feel every lunar month of it: just in the time it's taken you to write these pages I've gained ten kilos and aged five 'years.' That very first night in Tiryns, I told you how my nurse Hippolyta in Corinth told me that my mother was a crazy Amazon deaf-mute who killed herself when I was born, and my father a hero on a white horse who'd left her on the stable roof one night. Why pussyfoot around about it? I not only look young enough to be your daughter; just possibly I am your daughter, and if that doesn't bother me, it shouldn't bother you. I never held a grudge against you; I took it for granted you didn't know you'd made my mother pregnant. Even when I learned (from you) that she'd been the hottest prospect in Amazonia until you raped her, and I decided that that was what drove her crazy and made her kill herself, I excused you. But I don't fool myself about my reasons: I'd heard a lot about you in Argolis; I admire heroes and had never met one; I was disgusted with Stheneboeia, and I wanted out of Tiryns. I don't mean anything vulgar like screwing my way to the top (I never let Stheneboeia sleep with me); I really did fall for you, in a hurry. I honor and respect you, as you know. I even love you; you're the gentlest, sweetest lover I ever had, if not the most passionate, and the difference in our ages doesn't matter to me at all except when it takes the edge off your enthusiasm because you've done everything once already. Like getting married and having a family and building a house and buying furniture and stuff. If you want to know the truth, I think we're bogged down more than immortalized: you scribble scribble scribble all day, morning noon and night, and honestly, I believe it must be the greatest thing in the world to be a mythic hero and be immortalized in the story of your life and so forth — I really do appreciate that — but I love activity, you know? Philonoë was more your type — I mean that perfectly kindly. She liked books and myths and needlework and all; I'm used to an active life, and we never do anything! I'd sort of hoped we'd go down to Lycia after you'd got yourself together, not that I'm eager to be a queen, but just so we'd be doing stuff. It drives me crackers that we've got this winged horse right here to take us anywhere in the world, and all we do is spin around the saltmarsh after mealtimes — then back to your scribbling scribbling while I make dinner and twiddle my thumbs. I hate to say this, but I guess I'd be happier with less of a hero and more of a regular man. I don't mean that sarcastically. I'm tired of Amazoning; I'm tired of being a demigod's girlfriend, too, if it means hanging around this cottage till I die. But I'm also tired of bopping about with different lovers; what I want is a plain ordinary groovy husband and ten children, nine of them boys. Call me a cop-out if you want to; I ought to find some swinging young Gargarensian M.D. or lawyer next mating season who'll think I'm the greatest thing that ever happened to him, instead of just the recentest, you know? I might not love him as much, but I bet I'd be happier. I don't want to be around when my hippomanes doesn't work for you any more, Bellerophon; either you'll leave me like the rest or we'll both sit around wishing we were dead. You thought that that Pattern Polyeidus gave you for your Second Flood predicted three women, but by my count I'm the fourth: Sibyl, my mother, Philonoë, and me, right? But you said yourself that everything comes in fives in the
Betterophoniad, so maybe you ought to start looking for that next one and get on with your career. Maybe this Chimera has turned into a pretty girl again, like Medusa in the Perseid. You should check and see if she's It, and if she isn't, kill her for real this time and see if that gets you where you want to go. Anyhow I know I'm not It for you, and you know it too, only you don't want to admit it. You're not getting any younger; neither am I: lots of Amazons look younger than they are because we don't count years, and it's the distinctions people acknowledge and condition themselves to look for that usually show, in my opinion. But the more I think about it, the more I'm sure that tonight's full moon is going to end my First Quarter, and you'll think I've aged fourteen years in one night. Will you still say I'm 'frisky and lean and tight' and so forth? I get tired too, you know; dead tired; sometimes I feel Last Quarter! Maybe I shouldn't go on like this; I know it's getting near my period, and that always makes me blue and a little bitchy. But I swear, this isn't immortality: it's suspended animation. Which brings me back to your story: despite all those clever things you have me say in it, the truth is I know zero about writing; but if I were to find this washed up on the beach and read it through, just as a plain story, I'd sure be pissed off that you never tell what happened to Polyeidus and Philonoë and Anteia and your mother and your kids, especially that ring business when you left home; and you don't say what the rest of Sibyl's letter said, or clear up that episode with the Chimera — whether she was real in the first place and whether she's back again — or explain all that fudging about your brother's death, et cetera. You even call it 'Part One,' but I don't see any Part Two. There are nice things in it, sure, a lot of nice things, once you get past that heavy beginning and move along; but if your immortality depends on this piece of writing, you're a dead pigeon."