Perseus

Richard Matturro

ISBN: 978-1-60489053-2 Trade paper $16.95

ISBN:  978-1-60489-052-5 Library binding $27

 Pages 160

 Excerpt From the Book:

Shower of Gold

            “A Gorgon’s head?!”

            “Medusa’s head, to be specific,” the blond young man corrected her. “It was the first thing I could think of.”

            “Oh my God,” Danae sighed. She sat down at the rustic wooden table, one of the few pieces of furniture in the spare, two-room dwelling they shared. The thick black hair that fell on her shoulders framed an aristocratic face, not always so well acquainted with poverty. She leaned her cheek on her hand. “I have only one son, and he has to be an idiot.”

            “Well, I meant it as a joke, for God’s sake,” Perseus explained. “He wanted a horse. That’s why he summoned everyone to the palace in the first place. It’s some sort of a tax so he can send a herd to King Pelops of Mycenae as a gift. A diplomatic gesture, I gather, from one Greek king to another. But how the hell could I come up with a horse? We can hardly even afford a goat. So I told him he might as well ask me to bring him Medusa’s head.”

            “And he did,” Danae concluded dryly.

            Perseus slumped his lanky frame into a chair across from his mother. “You don’t think he could be serious, do you? I mean, there is no Medusa. There are no Gorgons. It’s just a fairy tale.”

            Danae shook her head. “An idiot. Zeus had nothing better to do than to give me an idiot.”

            “Well, Mother, honestly! Polydectes couldn’t really believe in Gorgons, could he? He’s not that dumb.”

            She leveled her gaze at him. “Perseus, son of my loins—”

            “I wish you wouldn’t always say that,” he murmured, shifting uneasily in his seat.

            “Son of my loins,” she repeated more insistently, “don’t you understand? It doesn’t matter if there are Gorgons or not, or if King Polydectes believes in them. You fell right into his hands, and now he can use you to get what he wants.”

            “What does he want?”

            “Me.”

            “You?”

            “Close your mouth. You look like an imbecile.”

            “Well, I don’t understand. What would he want you for?”

            Danae put her hands on her hips and looked at him expectantly.

            “Noooo.” Perseus drew out the word, shaking his head. “That’s not it. That couldn’t be it.”

            “Oh? Why couldn’t it?”

            “Well, you’re ...”

            “Yes?”

            He shrugged his shoulders. “Well, aren’t you too old for ...?”

            She arched an eyebrow. “I’m thirty-eight, and despite the fact that I have a dimwit for a son, I still happen to be a beautiful woman.”

            “Well, of course you’re beautiful to me.”

            “You can just wipe that condescending smile off your moronic face and keep your lame compliments to yourself. You wouldn’t know a beautiful woman if she leapt up and bit you in the ass. At any rate, Polydectes has sent messages to me. It’s clear what he wants.”

            “But I still don’t understand. What does that have to do with the Gorgon’s head?”

            His mother sighed. “Son of my loins, before today everybody, Polydectes included, thought of you as an impediment to anyone’s improper designs on me. Next to a husband, which I don’t have, a grown son is supposed to be the best protection a lone woman has in the world. Heaven knows, in a real pinch you’d be about as useful to me as a second—”

            Perseus coughed and looked away.

            “Well, anyway,” she continued, “nobody but me knew how useless you were. Now, thanks to your ridiculous statement—which everyone heard—you’ve made it easy for the good king.”

            “How?”

            “If you don’t bring him the Gorgon’s head, he can have you executed. To save your neck, I’ll have to give in to him.”

            Perseus stared at her, the import of her words sinking in.

            “Understand now?”

            He lowered his eyes, his voice barely audible. “I’m sorry.”

            “Oh, hell, it’s all right. Worse things have happened to people. I suppose I can get used to Polydectes. He is an ugly son of a bitch though, with a pot belly to boot.”

            “Shit! ” Perseus exclaimed, banking his fist on the table. “Shit, shit, shit! ”

            His mother rolled her eyes heavenward. “Are you listening, Zeus? That’s your son being articulate again.”

            Perseus scowled. “Do you have to keep up that silly fiction—even now?”

            “What silly fiction?”

            “That Zeus is my father. Zeus isn’t my father. I doubt there even is a Zeus.”

            “There’s a Zeus,” Danae assured him, nodding knowingly.

            “I don’t think so.”

            “We’ve become an atheist now, have we?”

            “I’m not an atheist. I’m an agnostic.”

            “Pardon me.”

            “But I’ll tell you one thing,” he added, “I don’t believe in Zeus or in any of that whole criminal pantheon.”

            Danae glanced at the ceiling again. “Forgive him, Zeus. He knows not what he speaks.”

            Perseus pushed himself away from the table and crossed the room to the window where he gazed out at the lone she-goat in the stone paddock. After a moment he said, “I know who my real father is now.”

            “Do you? Pray tell, who is he?”

            “Someone named Proetus.”

            His mother looked at him. “Who told you that?”

            “Dictys.”

            She pressed her lips together. “Dictys would be well advised to keep his mind on his fish and his nose out of other people’s business.”

            “Then it’s true?”

            She rose from the table and went over to her son. “What else did Dictys tell you?”

            “He said this Proetus was your uncle. Is that true too?”

            “Proetus was my uncle.”

            “Well, that’s just terrific! So I’m not only the man’s son; I’m also his grandnephew. I’m both your son and your cousin, and I’m my own second cousin. Hell, I’m a whole extended family all by myself!”

            Danae snorted. “You’re the son of Zeus.”

            “Bullshit! I’m the son of some stupid old fart back in Argos.”

            “If you mean Proetus, he was no old fart, and he was anything but stupid.”

            Perseus turned to her, his eyes betraying both anger and curiosity. “What was he like, this Proetus?”

            “He was dashing, with raven hair, and he wore a bronze sword that shined like the sun. He was thirty, and I was sixteen, and we wrestled in an olive grove on an early spring day when the air was as soft as the mossy ground.”

            Perseus turned away, squeamish to hear the details of his own conception. “So that was my father.”

            Danae shook her head. “You’re the son of Zeus.”

            “Damn it, quit saying that!”

            “But it’s true. Work it out for yourself. You’re twenty and I’m thirty-eight. That means I had you when I was eighteen. But I was with Proetus when I was sixteen. He went to Tiryns shortly after that, and I never saw him again. Do you really think a skinny wimp like you required a two-year gestation period?”

            “Why should I believe you?”

            “Because I never joke about my sex life. Besides, as I told you, Proetus had black hair just like mine. How likely is it that the two of us would have produced a blond child?”

            “Oh, I see,” he rejoined sarcastically. “So you’re telling me Zeus has blond hair, right?”

            Danae did not answer.

            “Well, does he? If Zeus is my father, then you must have seen him. So what does the great ‘King of the Gods’ look like? You’re not going to tell me he looks like that dumb old statue in the temple, are you?”

            “No.”

            “Then what? What does he look like?”

            “It’s a little hard to say.”

            Perseus returned to the table and flopped back into a chair. From the dirt floor Danae lifted a jug of wine, sloshed it slightly to weigh its contents, then poured two earthen cups. She placed one in front of her son.

            “I don’t want any.”

            “Come on. Don’t make me drink alone.”

            Gloomily he lifted the cup to his lips as his mother sat down across from him.

            “Do you want to hear about it?” she asked.

            “Hear about what?”

            “The time Zeus came to me.”

            “I don’t care.”

            “You’d better care, because I’ve never told the story to anyone, and I’ll only tell it to you once.”