Stone Blind(70)
If you were waiting for me to feel guilt, you will be waiting a long time.
And now, Perseus has followed the shepherd’s directions, though he gets lost and has to retrace his steps many times. I wonder if this will be a lesson for him: to be careful who he kills, because he may need their assistance later. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of young man who learns lessons, however. And even from inside the bag I can feel the air grow cooler as the sun drops. Perseus eventually accepts that he must spend another night under the open sky. He puts the kibisis down so carefully that I almost laugh. Perhaps I do laugh, in fact. We have yet to ascertain whether Perseus ignores the sounds I make or whether he cannot hear them when the bag is closed. But he has decided he doesn’t want to antagonize me. Or perhaps he has decided my value to him is so great that he must take care not to damage me. I wonder if the irony is lost on him. I imagine so.
*
The next morning, he is full of hope that the king will receive a wandering hero with every kind of celebration. And perhaps he would have done, had Atlas not been a fearful and suspicious king. But he is and he always has been.
Atlas owns many beautiful things in his expansive kingdom. He cherishes each of them, from his lovely flocks to his wonderful orchards. He probably even cherished the shepherd, but he doesn’t yet know the man is dead. He especially loves a grove of trees that produce the most remarkable fruit, golden apples.
Atlas considers these apples to be the most perfect food imaginable. He can eat whatever he chooses whenever he likes (he is the king, after all), but it is always the apples he waits for each summer, like a child. He employs men to watch the trees and nurture them all year round. If the weather threatens to disrupt them, he makes offerings to Aeolus, lord of the winds, to send the offending cold spell elsewhere. As the summer days lengthen, he goes to visit his trees first thing each morning to examine their burgeoning fruit.
Atlas has never feared invaders would steal his crops or damage his trees. He lives without aggression from neighbouring tribes for one reason: he is a Titan, one of the old gods from before the Olympians, before Zeus. What mortal would be so foolish as to pick a fight with a god? Well, I’m sure you have already guessed the answer.
When Perseus arrives at the enormous dwelling, he is bad-tempered from the night he spent sleeping under a tree. He still doesn’t blame himself for killing the man who could have guided him here more quickly. He is briefly chastened – I feel the hesitation in his step – by the size and grandeur of the palace he now sees. But he raises his chin and tries to convey his heroic stature that way. I am mocking him from inside the kibisis, of course. He continues to be unaware. A steward is standing by the gates and Perseus asks if he may meet the king and discuss matters advantageous to both. A child could see through this ruse, and the steward is not a child. He explains that the king is occupied elsewhere and will return at an unspecified time. Perseus, aware he is being dismissed, tries another tack. Tell him it is the son of Zeus who asks, he says. And at this, the steward disappears: I hear him scurrying away down a long corridor, his footsteps echoing.
As he listens to the man retreat into the deeper recesses of the palace, Perseus assumes he has done something right. He has impressed a stranger with his heroic connection and he has asked for shelter as a hero might, by offering something in return. He has not yet worked out what it is he could offer that Atlas might find advantageous, but it doesn’t matter because there is something else (one of many things, as I’m sure you have noticed) that Perseus doesn’t know.
Atlas did not always live here in this wide-reaching kingdom. Once he travelled across Greece with his Titan siblings. He retreated here after the arrival of the Olympians, once Zeus had waged war on the Titans and gained power for himself.
Atlas was not an ambitious god so he was only too happy to withdraw to his palace and his flocks and, above all, to his orchard. But he did retain one connection with his old life, which was a fondness for the goddess Themis, who was highly gifted in the arts of prophecy. Themis had once told Atlas that he would one day lose the gleaming fruit of his tree to a son of Zeus. Atlas had remembered this ever since. At first, because he assumed its meaning was metaphorical and he would have a son who would die at the hands of a demi-god. Latterly, he had come to realize the prophecy was literal and his beloved trees were at risk.
So the one thing he has told every servant, every subject he has is that they must beware the son of Zeus and bring any news of such a creature to him. The shepherd, had he lived to discover his murderer’s identity, would have run across the land in the darkest hours of the night to tell Atlas that the man whose coming they all feared had finally arrived. And now the steward is doing the same thing: better late than never, he thinks, as he rushes through the colonnades.
And when Atlas hears that the son of Zeus is right outside his gates, demanding an audience and pretending he has something to offer in exchange, he is horrified. Does he dare kill the child of his ancient enemy, one who exceeds him in power in every way? But if he does not, will the man steal the apples, the golden apples that Atlas so cherishes and loves? He paces up and down as the steward watches anxiously. What should he do? How can he preserve his beloved trees?
Atlas spends a great deal of time thinking; Perseus has almost given up on any hope of food or shelter. He has refilled his water bottle three times and he now sits in the shade, leaning up against one of the palace walls, with me beside him. Eventually, Atlas sends his men to guard the orchard, assuming that this is where Perseus will choose to attack. Perseus – of course – has no idea the orchard exists, and if he did he would be unlikely to visit it. He has no interest in the natural world that I have noticed: he seems unmoved by birdsong, he doesn’t slow his pace when faced with a beautiful vista. He is keen to complain about his aching feet and shoulders, his hunger and his thirst. But when all these wants are satisfied, there is no corresponding enthusiasm for any of the sights and sounds he has witnessed since he created me.