Monsters of Greek Mythology, Volume One (40 page)

It happened one stormy day that a ship was driven onto shore and split upon a rock. The Cyclopes, who had become magnificently strong swimmers, dived in and hauled out the drowning sailors. But the swim had made the Cyclopes very hungry, and the day was still too stormy for hunting.

“They'd have drowned anyway,” said Polyphemus. “Look at 'em. They're half-dead. We'll just finish them off and have us a hot meal.”

He took a sailor in his huge hand and twisted his neck like a chicken. The others did the same, and grilled the sailors over an open flame.

Now this ship's crew had come from an eastern land where olives grew, and dates and figs. They were young and plump and had a delicate, oily flavor. Polyphemus ate greedily and waited for the next shipwreck.

But the wind stayed fair; no ships were driven onto the rocks. His hunger grew and his temper became so savage that the other Cyclopes began to avoid him. He squatted on the headland and waited for a sail … and waited … and thought to himself: “Can't wait forever. I'll have to push things along.”

The next time he saw a sail in the distance, he swam to the ship, capsized it, and swam back to the island with his pockets full of sailors. This happened again and again until word spread around the ports, and ships began to avoid those waters altogether. Polyphemus had to go without human flesh for a year and a day.

By this time, men had grown civilized enough to fight wars, an activity that the gods found immensely entertaining. They took sides, bet with each other on who would win, arranged ambushes and hand-to-hand duels, and pulled every trick possible to help their favorites, puzzling the warriors, who in their ignorance gave the name luck to this god play.

Now the biggest and bloodiest of these wars had just ended, leaving the gods very bored. One goddess in particular was not only bored, but angry. She was Artemis, twin sister to Apollo and Goddess of the Moon. She and her brother had wagered heavily on the losers. One moonlit night, flying over the Middle Sea in her swan chariot, she spotted a ship that looked familiar. She flew down closer.

“It's Ulysses!” she said to herself. “It's that slimy trickster who did more to defeat my Trojans than anyone else.”

She immediately began to plan a disaster, something she could do well, for it was she who swung the tides. “What shall I do?” she said to herself. “Guide them into a riptide and sink their ship? No, drowning's too easy and there are no sharks in the area. I want something slow and painful for Ulysses. I want him to suffer just as he made me suffer watching my Trojans being tricked by that accursed wooden horse, watching that beautiful city being sacked and burned. Let me think of something really foul.”

Her hair and bare shoulders were one color, silver brown, moon-brown, as she leaned out of her chariot to swing the tide on a silver leash and guide Ulysses to the island where the Cyclopes dwelt.

Now during the time when Polyphemus was happily capsizing ships and eating their crews, he had dug a fire pit in his cave and hung a turnspit over it, for he liked his meat browned evenly on all sides. Crouched at the pit was a curly-haired cabin boy whom Polyphemus had not eaten because he needed someone to tend the fire and turn the spit. He also liked to wipe his greasy hands on the boy's curls. But by this time, he so hungered for human flesh that he had decided to have the boy for dinner this very night.

He lifted him by the nape of his neck and held him in front of his face. The terrified lad saw the huge round red eye glaring at him, and tried not to look at the great wet mouth with its yellow fangs. “Only skin and bones,” snarled Polyphemus. “Can't roast you; there won't be anything left. Well, bones make soup. Go ahead, useless, fill the pot with water.”

He put the boy on the floor and went to the door of the cave—and couldn't believe his eyes when he saw meaty-looking men climbing the hill. It was almost evening; the light was fading. He pivoted the door of the cave, which was an enormous slab of stone, casting a faint glow of firelight upon the dusk. Then he went back inside.

He didn't have long to wait. The men were cold and hungry; they broke into a run when they saw the inviting glow. Ulysses tried to stop them, but they paid no heed. They raced up the hillside and into the cave. Ulysses drew his sword and followed.

His heart sank as he saw the great fireplace and the enormous soup pot, for he realized that whoever lived in this cave was very, very big. He heard a rumbling sound and raced back to the door of the cave, only to find it blocked by a boulder. There was no way to get out.

The end of the cave was dark. Far above him he saw what looked like a huge red lantern, and then he heard a loud, grating voice. “Welcome. Welcome. You're invited to dinner, all of you.” Something splayed out of the darkness toward him. Fingers! As big as baling hooks. He felt them clamp around his waist, felt himself rising toward the great lantern.

The lantern was a huge, bloodshot eye. Under it was a great, grinning mouth with yellow fangs. Ulysses shuddered in the stinking gale of the monster's breath. But he never panicked. The greater the peril, the better his mind worked.

“Good evening, sir,” he said. “We are honored to accept your invitation.”

“Good. Good. You understand who will be the main course, don't you?”

“I do,” said Ulysses. “But you know, my men and I have just finished ten years of war and faced death more times than I can count. So we are not easily frightened.”

“Glad to hear it, captain. Brave men taste better. Cowards don't have much flavor.”

“All I ask, good sir, is that you put me down again. I will explain things to my men, and we shall prepare our souls for the journey to Hades.”

“You're a tough old buzzard, aren't you?” asked the Cyclops. “Too tough for roasting, probably. You'll do for the soup pot, though. Meant to use the turnspit boy, but he has to go to work again. I'm starved! I need an appetizer.”

He stooped suddenly, snatched at the floor with his other hand, and hauled up a sailor. Ulysses watched, horrified, as the struggling man was lifted to the great wet mouth. He had to keep watching as the monster ate the man raw, clothes and all.

“Don't really like 'em that way,” said the Cyclops. He belched and spat buttons. “Like 'em well seasoned and browned on all sides. Down you go, captain. Speak to your men. I'm going to pick herbs: rosemary and sage, garlic and thyme. We'll do things right tonight, we will. And if you make your men cooperate—not try to hide and make me chase 'em all over the cave—why, I'll be considerate, too. I'll wring their necks nice and gentle first and not roast them alive, even though that improves the flavor.”

“I agree,” said Ulysses.

Polyphemus set him down, went to the cave door, slid the slab aside, then back, and Ulysses was alone with his men, who were on their knees, whimpering like frightened children.

“Up!” cried Ulysses. “Stand up like men or you'll be devoured like chickens. Up now, up! He'll be back soon. Get yourselves out of sight and stay hidden until I call.”

The men vanished into the shadows. Ulysses waited, thinking hard. Something nagged at his mind—a splinter of a tale heard long ago. He began to search the vast, cluttered attic of his memory. As a boy, he had devoured the legends of heroes, gods, and monsters. Ambushing every traveling minstrel who had come to his father's castle at Ithaca, he had demanded more stories, and more, and more. No minstrel could resist the fox-faced, redheaded lad who seemed to listen with his eyes.

Like a tree fledging itself out of the mist, a tale began to take form—an old, old tale told by a green-clad bard—of a river nymph and her monstrous lover. He remembered! The old tale became a new idea, urgent, giving off light and heat as it turned into action. Swiftly shuffling options, he began to work out his plan.

Too soon, he heard the slab grating open and shut. The Cyclops appeared, carrying an armful of greenery. “Where's that boy?” he roared. “C'mon, runt, start chopping.” He hurled the herbs at the lad. “Where are your men?” he said to Ulysses.

“Saying their prayers.”

“They'd better say 'em fast. Now you, captain—what's your name, by the way?”

“I'm called … Nobody.”

“Well, Captain Nobody, why don't you strip? You're going into the soup pot.”

“I have something very important to tell you, Polyphemus. I am a surgeon.”

“What's so important about that?”

“It's what I can do for you.”

“For me?”

“I fix bodies. Cut off arms and legs when they go bad. Sew up wounds. Mend broken bones. Battlefield repairs, you know. Useful in a war. You have anything that needs fixing?”

“I have this feeling of hunger, doctor. But I know you have a cure for that.”

“Wait!”

“I've waited long enough. Hop into the pot.”

“In your own interest, my friend, you really ought to save me for later. Give me a chance to fix that eye of yours.”

The Cyclops's bellow of rage blew the turnspit boy off his stool. Before he could rise, Polyphemus drew back his foot and swung his leg in a mighty kick, lifting the boy off the ground and sending him into the rock wall. He fell and lay still.

“What do you mean
fix
my eye?” roared the Cyclops. “Something wrong with it?”

Ulysses knew the monster might kill him on the spot if he answered directly. “Oh, well,” he thought. “I'd just as soon go quickly as be soupmeat.”

“I asked you a question.” growled Polyphemus. “Is something wrong with my eye?”

“Well, to start with, you have only half the usual number. And the one you have is in the wrong place.”

“Wrong place?”

“Haven't you noticed?”

Ulysses saw the monster stalking toward him, opening and closing his huge hands; he tried to retreat but his back was against the wall.

“Wait! Wait!” he cried. “What I'm trying to tell you is that I can fix that eye.”

“Shut up!”

“Ever hear of Asclepius?”

“No.”

“You should have. He's an important part of Cyclopes history.”

“I hate history.”

“Listen … listen. Asclepius was a son of Apollo, and the best doctor who ever lived. He was the one who brought the Cyclopes back to life after Apollo killed them.”

“What history does is make me hungry. And I was hungry to start with.”

He looked down at the sprawled body of the boy and turned it over with his foot. “Is he dead, doc? Don't bother looking; he is. So I won't be able to roast anybody because I have no one to turn the spit. Question is: am I hungry enough to eat you raw? Answer is: yes.”

“Wait!” shouted Ulysses. “Let me make my point. I am a cousin of Asclepius. Apollo's half brother, Hermes, is my great-great-grandfather. And this is the point: I have inherited the great doctor's skill. I can give you a new face.”

“Nobody can do that.”

“You'll be absolutely gorgeous.”

“Gorgeous. Someone called me gorgeous once in the dark.”

“When I get through with you, they'll say it by daylight or moonlight. No nymph in the world will be able to resist you.”

“Won't they?”

“With your physique? Without that inflamed hole in the middle of your forehead? With two glowing, tragic eyes right where they should be? Naiads and dryads will swarm like flies.”

“What exactly can you do?”

“Divide that one gross eye in two and put them in the right place.”

“Will it hurt?”

“You'll be asleep. You'll feel no pain. I'll fill you full of unwatered wine.”

“I've never drunk wine. We drink only ox blood and buttermilk here.”

“All the better. It'll knock you out faster if you're not used to it.”

Ulysses unslung a flask of wine from his belt and passed it to Polyphemus, who poured it down his gullet in one gulp. Ulysses watched him closely. He saw the great red eye misting over, as when a furnace is banked and gray ash sifts over the coals. But the eye did not close. The Cyclops was awake—blurred but awake.

“Tastes good,” he muttered. “Still awake, though. Sure'd feel it if you started cutting.”

“You require stronger medication,” said Ulysses.

He stepped in back of the seated giant, grasped the haft of his great hammer and tried to lift it. It was too heavy. But his life was at stake, and the lives of his men. Calling up every ounce of his strength, the last tatter of his will, all his desire to get home, all his wish to live—and thinking, “Hermes, grandfather, help me now”—he lifted the mallet, raised it high above his head, and smashed it down on the Cyclops's skull.

Polyphemus fell heavily.

Reports of what happened next in the Cyclops's cave differ widely. Some say that Ulysses kept feeding the monster unwatered wine until he passed out, then heated his sword in the cook fire, took the red-hot blade and stabbed it into the monster's eye.

Another tale says that Ulysses, convincing himself that he really was a surgeon, borrowed needle and thread from his sail-maker and sewed the eye shut as the Cyclops lay in a drunken sleep.

Still another story says that he did indeed practice surgery, that he took a knife and cut the eye out of the Cyclops's head and tossed it into the soup pot.

Of all these tales, it is the sword version that seems most likely, for we have the exact words that Ulysses spoke to his crew: “Six of you stand at one ear, six of you at the other—and hold his head still so I can strike true. I shall try to stab right through his eye into his brain and finish him off. But if I don't, if I only blind him, be aware that he'll arise in agony and thresh about the cave trying to kill us all. If that happens, get yourselves among the goats as fast as you can.”

The men took up their positions at each ear. Ulysses pulled a rock to the giant's head, climbed up on it, and looked down at the huge eye, which stared glassily up at him. Ulysses raised his sword in both hands and, murmuring “Hermes, give me strength,” stabbed down, driving the red-hot spike into the eye.