Athena

 

‘Dear Goddess you who see clearly the secrets of a mother’s heart and the viciousness of brutal man, in everything I will follow you.  Everything changes, nothing remains the same’. 

 

The speaker looks small and timid.  She holds a replica statue of Athena between her hands runs arthritic fingers gently across its smooth surface.  She seldom buys treats just for herself but this tourist memento only made the smallest dent in the housekeeping unlike those plants her husband hates.  She justifies her extravagance as having someone to talk to beside the mirror.  ‘And so we have our new glass Acropolis Museum.  It ensures our stolen treasures are kept safe for future children to enjoy.  What do you make of it?’ Ana drones on like a small insignificant aphid  unlocking the secrets of her heart.    

 

Only a short distance away her butcher husband continues hacking his cleaver to either side of a lamb’s backbone.  He glances upwards to where sunlight floods into the agora from the rows of arched Roman windows: considers the frescos on the ancient marble and is proud of his city. He wonders if people are right when they blame acid rain for causing the paint to flake off the walls. For now, the plaza is not very busy, and the butcher can take time to look around. A sharp beep disrupts his thoughts bringing him back to the present. He takes a second-hand Virgin mobile from his discoloured coat, answers, ‘I’ve told you not to ring me at work, Ana’ and snaps the end call button.   

Blood and guts surround him. Pigs hang on gargantuan hooks and bacon is heaped in large piles. Several men are stacking sausages in huge crates.  Some of these men descend from families that have owned stalls for over a century.

The girl next door is passing. The butcher notes how her clothes cling to her body, and runs his tongue across his lips. He is hungry.’

Time passes - it always does. Think back, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries and millennia. Then too, men sold meat in the market place safe in the knowledge that the free standing, spur of steep rock above acted not only as a city fortress but also a place of worship - there temples gleamed, new as this glass museum. 

The butcher is thinking about his own, personal gods, Olympiakos CFP, the most successful club in Greek football history. ‘We Athenians have always loved our gods and our athletes’ he reflects. He thinks back across the centuries. The ancient Greeks used to hold at least 50 festivals a year to give thanks. The finest celebration was the harvest, the Panathenaia, and every four years the Great Panathenaia was held and there were games. ‘Something like the Olympic games’ the butcher thinks. He imagines himself, younger than he is now crowned with a wreath of olive leaves and the crowd chanting his name, Lykaios, Lykaios. 

 

At the end of the games the victors would participate in a great procession of priestesses, musicians, chariots and infantry who wound their way through the agora, the thriving heart of Athens and up to the Acropolis, bringing Athena a new robe draped over a ship’s mast.  

He imagines how the women would have adored him. The victors were treated as heroes but there was no such thing as a silver position. There were only winners and losers. No matter how hard the battle the young man who came in second was disgraced and slunk home where even his own mother would feel shamed to have borne him. ‘So much better than today’ the butcher thinks. He considers his own son, Rasmus.  ‘He wouldn’t even have come in second.’ He had tried to install some discipline in the boy but his wife had always intervened and look where it led to.

The city's streets are congested and horns blare. It is the rush hour and soon the butcher will be returning home to his wife. A woman approaches the stall. She is not beautiful but he knows what she sells. ‘I’ll see you later’. he says handing her some scraps of meat. They are not choice cuts, but than neither is she, he thinks.

A few hours later, Lykaios has released a notch on his belt. Ana is sitting in an armchair opposite. She had been an attractive woman before her marriage but years of constant nagging have worn her down. Her eyes fixate on a pattern on the wall as if she cannot face him. She clutches knitting needles in her hands but has paused to listen to her husband.

‘Waste of money that’s what I call it. I bet that thing cost a fortune.’

‘But it was my money, dear.’

‘Oh yes, your money. Just think what we could have done with the money you wasted on that thing.’

Lykaios begins pacing up and down the room as Ana resumes her knitting. She grasps  the needles as if for support. She gains a lot of comfort from her knitting. She used to knit a lot when her son was a little boy. She seldom sees her son now.

‘I can’t see what’s so fascinating about a bloody plant. You’ve always been stupid about plants and what good are they? That’s what I want to know. They don’t do anything. Huh, like that son of yours, spoilt useless and why I’d like to know, because you wouldn’t let me discipline him when he needed it’.

Ana feels that Rasmus has had more than his fair share of discipline during his childhood years but she let’s it pass. Letting things pass is a habit she has grown into over the years. She resumes her knitting.

‘Can’t even serve his country’ Lykaios says.  He storms out of the house. His temper has given him a good excuse to leave - not that he would have needed one. He would never allow a woman to tell him what to do.

The time had come to take payment for the meat. The prostitute lives in one of the shabbiest quarters of the lower city in a one-room apartment that contains little beyond the most basic of necessities. Their meeting is short and brutal; the butcher prides himself on his fierce nature and has requirements that his wife will not provide. With both women he imagines that he pleasures the girl next door.

Hours later, the woman, Parthenia, stands with her back against a wall pasted with anti-conscription posters. The local alleyways are filled with them. This has not been a good night. The butcher had been drunk when he arrived his smell had brought images of her father to mind. His heavily muscled arms and chest reminds her of the carvings of half-men that she has seen on the hill above and he is just as bestial. He had even hit her before leaving, cutting her lip. The rest of the night is not good for business.

She is not welcome in the parlours that so many other girls use and her feet are killing her. She removes one of her ruby red, high heel shoes, knowing she will regret it later when putting it back on. She is in her late thirties but her skirt is cut above her knees. She has a hole in her stocking.  

 

It seems like there has always been a deep, dark hole where her mother used to be. Her father filled his emptiness with alcohol and she filled hers with whatever she could get her hands on. At first she could afford what they asked. Then the price went up, so she sold herself but her value has been going down with the years. Now she is worth a butcher’s scraps and she knows that many hunters prefer younger meat. A car slows down; a man looks out, gazes at her and speeds up again. She sighs and looks towards the Acropolis.

It is past midnight and on the hill fortress above white marble temples gleam golden under the moon and city floodlights. The Parthenon and the Erechtheum are the easiest to recognise. They are outstanding examples of the classical orders. How sad that in the 19th Century Lord Elgin, who Lord Byron claimed would be hit by the curse of the Gods, deconstructed the marble statues of the Parthenon broke them up in fragments and shipped these relics of a golden age to England.

Parthenia has always been fascinated by the controversy over the sculptures. And what with the new Museum the government has become even more focal in its desire for their return.    The three dimensional effect of the figures protruding from the temple is extraordinary. Their remarkable life like appearance is a testament to the skill of their sculptor, Pheidas, and they seem to stand free from the wall. She takes a last look towards the hill, then turns and begins the long walk home. 

 

A small stone falls from the temple wall to the ground.  Something moves in the pale light. Perhaps it is a tourist.  There are always tourists here no matter what time of the night.  With the sound of broken rock, a figure stands free from the wall but it is not a tourist … all across the acropolis statues are stirring - friezes unfrozen.

Released from their metopes and with sleek coats turned from white to black and brown, the centaurs have renewed their ancient battle with the Lapith race of humanity. They are chasing female lapiths around the Doric columns, their hoofs clattering on the stone. The years do not seem to have sobered them and they remain as brutish as they were at Perithous’s wedding - Perithous the close friend of Theseus, Perithous, King over the Lapiths of Thessaly, Perithous who foolishly invited the notoriously bestial centuars to his wedding with Hippodameia - whereon they attempted to abduct the bride.

Athena has left the second chamber of the Parthenon. She is not the 36 feet tall Phidias-crafted masterpiece, nor yet a replica; her ivory skin glows tanned in the moonlight. She glances at the half-dressed female Lapiths who stand, daggers drawn, defending their honour. A woman has caught a centaur by his long shaggy mane and her male companion slices the centaur’s throat.

 

 

Here and there a successful centuar has thrown a wriggling bundle of female flesh over his shoulder.  Athena watches them go galloping past a Japanese tourist who is taking photographs with a digital camera set on night time mode.  The tourist seems oblivious to the rape and carnage all around him. 

A goddess of war, Athena feels no pity when a centaur throttles a young male Lapith. Even in the face of death, his handsome features remain stoic. What the young man’s thoughts are none can tell, for only barbarians will reveal their outward emotions.  She threads her way through the naked figures of struggling men and remembers past battles seen through a crystal pool. She can count the history of men in wars - Persian Wars, Napoleonic Wars, the World Wars, Civil Wars - and it seems to her that the Middle East has always been a battleground. She has seen them all from a distance and blanched at man’s cruelty in the name of the gentle Christ. ‘This is what they call Civilisation’, she thinks.

Athena crosses to where her father Zeus is seated at the head of a table flanked by the gods. For the moment, she does not want the ever-ready Zeus to intervene and chooses not to wake him and so they remain stone statues.  Athena knows they debate the future of mankind. She imagines the gods ...not as they are here, but as living flesh...sprawled on a grassy slope of Mount Olympus. Wild flowers, like tiny stars, are scattered by their feet and before them fields and silver streams stretch to the far horizon. Above, the mount’s snow peaks are lost in the clouds.

A feast is set before them. A large fish is placed on an intricately carved dish. Its scales glitter in the light. A goddess leans against her lover and places dark luscious grapes between his lips. A lynx lies on its back like a kitten, his paws in the air, his tongue lolling. A nymph plaits flowers in Poseidon’s beard. A vibrant butterfly settles on the nymph’s shoulder and brushes her cheek with its wings. Zeus sits at the head as befits his position as king of the gods. He holds a golden goblet and Dionysus, who pours wine from a flagon, leans towards their father, looks over to where Athena sits and says ‘I have a tale to tell...’ Yet still she chooses not to wake the likeness of Zeus. As for her Uncle Poseidon he was overly keen to take an interest in Athens.

Athena remembers how she beat Poseidon in a competition of the Gods for who should be patron of Athens. She suggested that whoever offered the most useful gift would be patron. They ascended to the Acropolis to present their gifts. Her Uncle went first. He struck the side of the cliff with his trident and a spring gushed forth. The people sighed in wonder, yet, when they drank from the spring it tasted it as salty as the sea Poseidon ruled and it was not useful. Then, Athena knelt and planted something in the earth. It was the first olive tree.  She has always been gifted with plants. 

 

A centaur begins to rear, but its young victim ducks, slashing his sword upward and across its guts. The centaur’s forefeet return hard to the earth as it clutches a large open wound. His victor turns and is knocked in the head by another’s thrashing hoofs. His skull splits.

Athena considers ‘What with all the screams and crashing marble it would not be surprising if the Caryatids all had headaches even if they were not balancing an entablature’. Is it strange that the heavy stone has not crushed their bones and split skin? Is it stranger still that these young women reach upwards with slim arms extended and lift the heavy weight from their heads? No, not when Athena supplies the strength -- and allows them to move before they are crushed. She does not want her Carytids to suffer as Samson did.

They step forward. Slender shafts topple and their capitals crash to earth...scroll-like volutes...smash like seashells on the shore. The Erectheum collapses behind them - a symbol of women’s liberation, perhaps?  And yet on this floodlit hill the tourists remain oblivious and no one seems aware of what is going on in their midst.  They continue to take photographs excited at what a tale they will have to tell when they return to their homelands.  

And what of the citizens of Athens? They slumber on undisturbed. The butcher is snuggling up to his wife, dreaming of the girl next door. And children are envisioning Easter festivals. The prostitute walks to her residence past one of the hungry homeless who were cleared off the streets in 2004, when the Olympic games came to Athens. Neither of them is aware of the tectonic battle raging on the hill.

Does all return to normal as the sun rises above the city skyscrapers?

The butcher has finished his breakfast and Ana has put on her gardening gloves and opened the kitchen door.

‘Where are you going?’ Lykaios asks.

Ana smiles hesitantly, she has some plant food in her hand.

‘I suppose I’d better come with you. See you do it properly you’re bound to make a mess of it.’ he says. ‘I have to do everything around here.’

Again, Ana lets it pass. She only says ‘Yes, dear.’

Lykaios marches out of the door and leads the way across their small garden to the large greenhouse, where Ana keeps her prize possessions. She follows a discreet distance behind. Lykaios enters the greenhouse but Ana remains outside. She listens to his voice emerging from the interior as from a cave.

‘It is an ugly thing and the size of it. By God, it is actually towering above me. I can’t see why you want it. Those horrible thin leaves are like fingers. Get a grip on yourself man, if I didn’t know better, I would swear they were reaching for me.’

Ana quietly, locks the door and returns to the house. She is thinking of her meetings with Athena. How startled she had been when the goddess had answered her frantic prayers. At first she had hesitated to do as the goddess suggested but then she had thought of her son. She thinks of the temples on the hill fort above, unaware, that they are no longer bleached white ruins.

This morning, the Acropolis temples are vivid red, blue, purple, green and gold. They look as new as when Ictinus and Callicrates first presented them to Pericles. The statue of Athena stands restored – a gold and silver Phidias masterpiece 36 feet tall and at the British Museum they are asking who stole the Elgin marbles.

Now the tourists have even more photographs to take.  And yet it would have been possible to restore the Acropolis without bringing the sculptures to life. Looking down from Mount Olympus Athena runs her hand through her crystal pool. Does it seem pointless and cruel that for such a brief while men fought and died and women were abused? If asked what would Athena answer? Would she smile or show the speaker their world’s reflection?

Water trickles through her fingers and she laughs secure in the knowledge that there will be no little lambs butchered, for Easter.  Athena has returned and knows that after this miracle she will bask secure in the love of her people.

Today she will visit the lower city and the woman who called her, perhaps they will share a frappe together. Soon, but not yet, she will tell the other Gods. She has a world to explore that for too many years she has viewed through a reflecting pool. Athena wants to visit the temple of another goddess, who stands guard over a great land of spacious skies and purple mountains, like a modern Colossus of Rhodes.

Reviews

[Malenkov]

An erie story with an uneartly quality and several moving themes: the decadence and decline of modern civilisation, traces of male chauvinism and the possession of woman and perhaps the loss of innocence or a by gone age of antiquity. I found the story stirring in parts and the omniscient voice, the narrators philosophical presence helped me to understand the themes and helped bring the significance of the awakening of the Athena and the statures to life.

There are several very memorable lines, here just one example:

They are not choice cuts, but than neither is she, he thinks.

The husband is very callous and brutal and comes across here as a type, meant to make a point perhaps of male brutality, athena being a female symbol of wisdom, war and strategy.


Structure

Character
The gestures of the husband and the quietly suffering wife are memorable and sketch them vividly with little effort- you use a few strokes to set the character and so I supply the other details myself. I do feel the man was a touch, at touch too stereotypically macho, and to round him off you might think of making him a little more sympathetic or complex. Or you might be using him as a foil to the wife, who in her suffering comes across as the one trapped in a relationship.

Perhaps a little backstory needs to creep in as thoughts or feelings to show why she stays, Perhapd she is poor has no income or whatever, or implied. Thats only a suggestion as I guess it is kind of implied. It feels to me the main character is, in the first scene, the wife and perhaps you need to highlight here a bit more.

One simple tactic is to introduce her in the first para, before the main, perhaps she is in the bedroom and makes a pact with Athena or wishes for her man to die or whatever. Incidentally something along those lings would then foreshadow, the awakening of the statures and athena and so make the sudden awakening a little less startling and more believable. It did ever so slightly come across as confusing, that is unprepared for and one simple solution is to forecast. Perhaps quite bluntly, and in a stragithforward manner, (that the gods would answer her summons, is not something she would ever have believed or whatever)or hint it in a wish. The point is a line or two of early preparation prepares the readers for the entrance of athena.

Also on the subject of characters giving husband and wife names, as it makes them more concrete.

plot
Somthing definitely happens. And has a cause and effect relationship. While there is also a premise that seems to be in the story. Perhaps male abuse will be avenged, it may be difficult to say more clearly what the story is about, because it does sometimes soar into very general themes as in when Athena several times reflects on corruption and the gods and the centaurs. I think it might do a little to focus on the premise of the story, whatever you decide that to be and perhaps cut the material that doesnt centre around that, that will focus your story more. Making the premise as conrete as possible, specific will also help. Thats only a suggestion and it might focus the story.

Desctription / Setting
In general your description is good, it sets ton, its mood moves from the slighlty closer voice in the first part to the more omniscient or distant third in the second half. There is a clear feel that a different scene and personalities are present as a result. I do feel that as part of futher revision, you might tighten up your descrition. Heres a few examples:

[Taking] his cleaver to either side of the lamb's backbone, the butcher glances upwards to where sunlight floods into the agora from the rows of arched Roman windows. He [considers the architecture] and is proud of his ancient city. He wonders if people are right when they blame acid rain for causing the paint to flake off the walls. For now, the [central market] is not very busy, and the butcher can [take time] to [look around]. A [sharp ringing] [disrupts his thoughts bringing him sharply back to the present]. He takes a [small] mobile phone from his [discoloured coat] and answers, 'I've told you not to ring me at work, b***h.' he says [ending the call].

Blood and guts surround him. Pigs hang on gargantuan hooks and bacon is heaped in [large] piles. Several men are stacking sausages in huge crates, some of whom descend from [families that have owned stalls for over a century].

In square brackets are very and nouns and phrases I feel that while good can be made stronger and more effective by using stronger verbs and more specific nouns. For example:

E.g.
[Taking] Hacking
[considers the architecture] studies the frescos on the ancient marbelled etc
[central market] plaza
[sharp ringing] sharp beep? sudden clang?
[disrupts his thoughts bringing him sharply back to the present]. jolts him from his reverie
[small] mobile phone -. handsized Nokia mobile
[ending the call]. he snaps the end call button
[families that have owned stalls for over a century]. The medicis and Florenzis, ...

Basically use the description to advance several things at once if you can.

Perhaps your description where Athena and the centaurs are there needs to somehow be less clumped as it does tend to slow the narrative at this point compare to the immediacy of the fisrt scenes. I think you ought to add more weight to t�hose immediate scenes and especialy paint more of the wife, perhaps show her earlier invoking athena, even in a prayer. On the other hand the way you paint the violence to the prostiture I thought as especially strong.



Point of View
You switch point of view and each time maintain a distinct distance and style of voice and point of view.
Which I think is well done. theres a sense of going into a more philosophical, narrator point of view with athena which is appropriate for her divintiy and wisdom. It works for me.

Theme / Motiff
Thinking more on this and considering the two main scenes - the one with the husband and wife and the other with the awakening of athena - I suppose possession is a theme which strongly emerges. Athena fought for possesion of Athens against Poiseiden and in a sense the wife fights for possession of her own life, against her husband in which she appears to have moved from quiet acquiescence and surrender to taking "war" like steps to side with a goddess to presumably have him strangled by a plant. At least thats how I read it. So if true, possession, of the struggle between male and female, gods and mortals is proabably a theme as well as the decline and abuse of power by men. I think you wind in those motifs well and they are clearly there, in the relationship between the husband and wife to the theme athena epxresses:

"how little man has learnt during the evolution of the planet. She has heard of the survival of the fittest. "
The competitive and male maximum as it were responsible for "so-called civilisation." There are many contrats given that repeat themes of brutality - the market the buthcer works in, both the profession and place symbolic, and the prostitution of woman for men, both in the wife who surrenders her integrity for quietness and the woman who sells herself for a cut of meat. finally theres also an element of paganism or the old gods against the christian religion, which is slightly criticised her, implying the slaughtering of lambs.



Tone / style
I covered this before. I think you do present two clear tones and styles which come from your point or view and multiple shifts in charater. Perhaps you might want to unfiy the tone a touch more so the style is consistent but then you'd lose either the philosophical bent in the last scene or the immedicay in the first.

In summary, I think there are powerful themes and vivid compelling scenes. The story gives an erie unearthly or other world quality and also gives a sense of nostalgia. I feel some themes, espcially the philopsophical might make fore a more definite focus is the theme is made more concrete perhaps. In some case, further revisions that built on this excelent piece ought to tighten up description in a few places to make it even more vivid that it is and the wife and husband might need a little more depth - served by weaving in a sentence or two of backstroy as thoughts or felling, though there is a good sense of that in the conflict over the sons military service for example. For the ending you might want to end wizh the husband walking into the plant room and perhaps something Athena said on the wifes lips to sort of bring it to a more definite conlusion and link the two parts and stories together. Just some thoughts.
But in any case another good story, on the whole well written and lots of talent evident and very imaginative.

Very well done. Do polish and make even more excellent!

[Gandré]

Vanessa, you did a great job on this. Weaving greek mythology and nowadys! It was humorous and historical and remaining strory. I enjoyed! Well written, i don' t have any suggestions to make it better!

[Memnoch]

This was really good Vanessa! I loved the description in this part.........................
"She is not welcome in the parlours that so many other girls use and her feet are killing her. She removes one of her ruby red, high heel shoes, knowing she will regret it later while putting it back on. She is in her late thirties but her skirt is cut above her knees. She has a hole in her stockings and a gap in her life. It seems like there has always been a deep, dark hole where her mother used to be. Her father filled his emptiness with alcohol and she filled hers with whatever she could get her hands on. At first she could afford what they asked. Then the price went up, so she sold herself but her value has been going down with the years. Now she is worth a butcher�s scraps and she knows that many hunters prefer younger meat. A car slows down; a man looks out, gazes at her and speeds up again. She sighs and looks towards the acropolis."
I could see all that was told in this great story and would love to read more about these people and the gods. I like how you brought the gods to life it made the story seem more real. Great story!! Thanks for sharing.
Kelley Frost

[Tawny O'hara]

I truly thought this captivating. I love all the greek mythology you have added and brought to life around the normal drab lives of those within. I think only snobs would think this only for the "educated". Like Clash of the Titans would only be for the educated. It was just great. Thanks.

[Donald Meikle]

Can't you just see her in LA or Boston's combat zone.
Nice raw piece of reality Ness, and the gods woke as
bloody as ever. Well written work,. I could feel the dirt

[Gandré]

This was truly high level writing. I wouldn't know what to suggest. It is perfect to me. It is a sensible psychological portrait as well as absorbing historically-cultural weaved one into another. Sorry that it took so long to read. I don't have computer right now only blackberry. I ll read once more later on computer. Great writing, dear.

[Poeticpiers]

Personally I enjoyed this but I think your audience appeal may be limited to those who have either a classical education or are self taught on the subject of the greek mythology. Your basic message that human nature does not change is clear cut.
However I do not think too many would appreciate the history lesson
Well written, good use of words and to me interesting

[Yira Simone]

Wow...this was veru good. I must say I adore history!!! Especially greek mythology! I felt your imagery was fantastic. I could SEE all this in my mind. I loved the way you brought the mythical creatures to life and restored them to what they were doing thousands of years ago. That was more realistic. Although, I wonder what made them come alive, and how is it no one saw them? I love how the woman is so long-suffering till the end when it seems she fed him to a man eating plant. I felt the prositute was the one who really had it bad. Poor woman. I like how you show how pompus this butcher is and yet he is less of man the son he critizes daily. I could see WHY the boy would rarely visit. I like how you kept info about the girl next door to a minimal. She remain like a dream or a fantasy as the butcher saw her as. I really could see you adding more to this. I really could see this becoming a novel. I would love to see Athena come through for the prostitue...that could be the sequel or something. Again you did a fabulous job writing this. I felt as if i was in Athens in both time periods. It shows you studied your information before you wrote this. Always a good thing I say. Thanks for sending this my way. Love, love, love this!-Catrina