Disdaining Fire
You dig up funny things sometimes, like this story written 24 years ago while skipping lectures. For some reason, it seems to reference many things of the present. Maybe nothing has really changed, as the protagonist eventually shows.
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Disdaining Fire
He woke, as usual, a little after midnight, the old dreams running from his mind like water, like horses of the night. The last fleeting darkness was of women: "From Dawn to dewy Eve," the poet had said, unknowing. Indeed had he fallen, mused the careless man to himself, though both were lovely girls. So many of us, so many dreamers dreaming; those were wondrous days indeed.
He stretched, rose, thought. His raiment was pale blue and appropriate; his eyes were darker, Mediterranean; his slightly curly hair and athlete's body were oddly lustrous with a brown that had the radiance of fallen gold. He sensed nothing in the air around him, felt comforted. What does the old man do now, all alone on the high mountain? Does he care?
He decided not, with a twinge of distant irony. He remembered laughing as Old Clubfoot was cast away, taken from the metal of fallen stars and made to work at copper in reminder of his disrespect. Fallen stars indeed; hah, now, they were all cast down alike, for an old man's paranoia. The light of his countenance could no longer be lifted up, and the careless man had long since passed Regret over in favour of Acceptance.
Is there anyone left to check the bridles, the bits? Do the golden horses wonder where their master is? The men of science, as they walk around my cell, they speak of a warming Earth, of holes in the Aegis of Zeus. Can it all be true?
The careless man asked himself a lot of questions each day. The thrill was not in answering them, but in the asking. In the old days, people had asked him questions, and he had received them all with gladness, happy at the varied flavours of every query, distinct and unalloyed.
He walked around, felt the warm cladding of his recent prison. No fixed abode, they'd said. He had wanted to laugh, tell them with a straight and honest face, hey, we are all wanderers. But something of his ancient cunning had stopped him, reminded him: hey yourself, don't you need a secure place to hide?
They had brought him to a place of lights and warmth and soft inquiring voices (he had enjoyed that familiar sensation), where men in blue worked with men in white, as in the temples long ago.
What's your name? the gentle man had asked.
Ask him if he's got any relatives, the stern woman had hissed.
The gentleman had tried English (insipid stuff), Spanish (rather entertaining), Italian (mellifluous, but spoken badly); in the end, he had decided to answer to Greek (not the jagged style of his youth, though).
The careless man felt Memory tug at him. O Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne, how art the flighty fallen! Releasing his recollection for a while, he fell back into the eternal past. There had been giants in the earth, then. He began to hear the ancient tongues. Why, he realised with some surprise, modern tongues are nowhere as elegant, nowhere as artfully crafted! So much for the intellect of man. They've given up communion for games.
Carefully, he disengaged Memory's fingers, came back to the immediate past with her hand lightly held in his. Yes, the gentle man had spoken in halting Greek, and he had answered. My name? Aristopoulos. A-R-I... yah. Yes? Oh, I was antique dealer... par don? No, I look quite young, yes. My family, they all look young on my mother's side. Yes, I have father and mother. Where are they, you ask me? Father still in Greece. Mother living somewhere else.
The stern woman looks at the paper where the gentle man scribbles. She whispers harshly, Ask this hard-luck kid what he does for a living now, what happened to his job.
Oh, recession nowadays. Not easy to live. Nobody afford antiques, now no money. I also no money. No place to live. Go unemployment office. (He smiled, remembering his imitation of a bewildered immigrant Greek youth.)
And then the gentle man had said, Mr Aristopoulos, we will give you a place to sleep in tonight, OK? and he had replied, Please, yes.
He spent the night in a barred room, a prison cell. And then, he had scented the Seeker behind the walls. It had walked into view, also dressed in blue, but a darker blue, wearing emblems of authority. Of course, it looked exactly as it was supposed to. The Seeker had walked straight to his cell as he ducked into the corner, hoping it was a mistake, and knowing it was not.
The Seeker unlocked his cell, looked at him as he sat in the corner.
Come, said the Seeker, and the steel-barred gate had begun to open (oh, slowly, creakily—needs oiling—and slightly grittily. Time was sluggish, and he needed it all. He would not be taken, would not go home even if the old man begged, threatened, commanded. A loud scream, blood, commotion. Shit, he killed the lieutenant!
Lieutenant? Hah, that thing hadn't even been human.
Then, weeks of incarceration, stupid tests (look at this black picture, what do you see; tell me about your father; why did you kill the lieutenant), measuring of his bodily functions. He had taken care to be completely mad, and they did not dispute it.
Now, they had locked him up, fed him through a door guarded by burly men each day. And he was happy with the walls painted in thick, cheap, peeling lead paint, for they hid his aura. He was marginally unhappy with the creature comforts (especially the abominable lack of good music; muzak, forsooth!)
But the time was upon him. Six-seventeen, today. He was prepared, waiting in the confines of his new locus. Soon, the Atlantic seaboard would receive the waves of the stormy sea, and he would hear 'old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn'.
In the distance came a booming so faint that no mortal heard it above the noise of the cosmos. Yet, it reached through the interstices of the void, trickled through his ears to trigger the ringing in his cochlea, the striking of an ancient hammer against an anvil of bone. The summons to obey his ancient duty, to bear his share of the long burden of his distant brothers, had arrived. Time. No time. And where, called the careless man, O where, Lord Helios, are the golden destriers of the sun?
Skyclad and powerful, in the dark just on the edge of dawn, Apollo smiled. Disdaining fire, he reached out with the immortal fingers of his soul, and, as in every other day in his handful of millennia, brought the sun to life.
=====
Disdaining Fire
He woke, as usual, a little after midnight, the old dreams running from his mind like water, like horses of the night. The last fleeting darkness was of women: "From Dawn to dewy Eve," the poet had said, unknowing. Indeed had he fallen, mused the careless man to himself, though both were lovely girls. So many of us, so many dreamers dreaming; those were wondrous days indeed.
He stretched, rose, thought. His raiment was pale blue and appropriate; his eyes were darker, Mediterranean; his slightly curly hair and athlete's body were oddly lustrous with a brown that had the radiance of fallen gold. He sensed nothing in the air around him, felt comforted. What does the old man do now, all alone on the high mountain? Does he care?
He decided not, with a twinge of distant irony. He remembered laughing as Old Clubfoot was cast away, taken from the metal of fallen stars and made to work at copper in reminder of his disrespect. Fallen stars indeed; hah, now, they were all cast down alike, for an old man's paranoia. The light of his countenance could no longer be lifted up, and the careless man had long since passed Regret over in favour of Acceptance.
Is there anyone left to check the bridles, the bits? Do the golden horses wonder where their master is? The men of science, as they walk around my cell, they speak of a warming Earth, of holes in the Aegis of Zeus. Can it all be true?
The careless man asked himself a lot of questions each day. The thrill was not in answering them, but in the asking. In the old days, people had asked him questions, and he had received them all with gladness, happy at the varied flavours of every query, distinct and unalloyed.
He walked around, felt the warm cladding of his recent prison. No fixed abode, they'd said. He had wanted to laugh, tell them with a straight and honest face, hey, we are all wanderers. But something of his ancient cunning had stopped him, reminded him: hey yourself, don't you need a secure place to hide?
They had brought him to a place of lights and warmth and soft inquiring voices (he had enjoyed that familiar sensation), where men in blue worked with men in white, as in the temples long ago.
What's your name? the gentle man had asked.
Ask him if he's got any relatives, the stern woman had hissed.
The gentleman had tried English (insipid stuff), Spanish (rather entertaining), Italian (mellifluous, but spoken badly); in the end, he had decided to answer to Greek (not the jagged style of his youth, though).
The careless man felt Memory tug at him. O Mnemosyne, Mnemosyne, how art the flighty fallen! Releasing his recollection for a while, he fell back into the eternal past. There had been giants in the earth, then. He began to hear the ancient tongues. Why, he realised with some surprise, modern tongues are nowhere as elegant, nowhere as artfully crafted! So much for the intellect of man. They've given up communion for games.
Carefully, he disengaged Memory's fingers, came back to the immediate past with her hand lightly held in his. Yes, the gentle man had spoken in halting Greek, and he had answered. My name? Aristopoulos. A-R-I... yah. Yes? Oh, I was antique dealer... par don? No, I look quite young, yes. My family, they all look young on my mother's side. Yes, I have father and mother. Where are they, you ask me? Father still in Greece. Mother living somewhere else.
The stern woman looks at the paper where the gentle man scribbles. She whispers harshly, Ask this hard-luck kid what he does for a living now, what happened to his job.
Oh, recession nowadays. Not easy to live. Nobody afford antiques, now no money. I also no money. No place to live. Go unemployment office. (He smiled, remembering his imitation of a bewildered immigrant Greek youth.)
And then the gentle man had said, Mr Aristopoulos, we will give you a place to sleep in tonight, OK? and he had replied, Please, yes.
He spent the night in a barred room, a prison cell. And then, he had scented the Seeker behind the walls. It had walked into view, also dressed in blue, but a darker blue, wearing emblems of authority. Of course, it looked exactly as it was supposed to. The Seeker had walked straight to his cell as he ducked into the corner, hoping it was a mistake, and knowing it was not.
The Seeker unlocked his cell, looked at him as he sat in the corner.
Come, said the Seeker, and the steel-barred gate had begun to open (oh, slowly, creakily—needs oiling—and slightly grittily. Time was sluggish, and he needed it all. He would not be taken, would not go home even if the old man begged, threatened, commanded. A loud scream, blood, commotion. Shit, he killed the lieutenant!
Lieutenant? Hah, that thing hadn't even been human.
Then, weeks of incarceration, stupid tests (look at this black picture, what do you see; tell me about your father; why did you kill the lieutenant), measuring of his bodily functions. He had taken care to be completely mad, and they did not dispute it.
Now, they had locked him up, fed him through a door guarded by burly men each day. And he was happy with the walls painted in thick, cheap, peeling lead paint, for they hid his aura. He was marginally unhappy with the creature comforts (especially the abominable lack of good music; muzak, forsooth!)
But the time was upon him. Six-seventeen, today. He was prepared, waiting in the confines of his new locus. Soon, the Atlantic seaboard would receive the waves of the stormy sea, and he would hear 'old Triton blowing his wreathèd horn'.
In the distance came a booming so faint that no mortal heard it above the noise of the cosmos. Yet, it reached through the interstices of the void, trickled through his ears to trigger the ringing in his cochlea, the striking of an ancient hammer against an anvil of bone. The summons to obey his ancient duty, to bear his share of the long burden of his distant brothers, had arrived. Time. No time. And where, called the careless man, O where, Lord Helios, are the golden destriers of the sun?
Skyclad and powerful, in the dark just on the edge of dawn, Apollo smiled. Disdaining fire, he reached out with the immortal fingers of his soul, and, as in every other day in his handful of millennia, brought the sun to life.
etched with acid at 12:12:00 am
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