My Name Is Daedalus
A Memoir
by Danko Antolovic
The narrator of this memoir speaks to us from a mythical past, not from a historical one. He and his contemporaries are figures of legend whose world might have plausibly been that of the Aegean in the late Bronze Age, between 1500 and 1200 BC; the legends themselves were first told to us at a much later time.
The narrator would have been born in a walled city, in the place that was perhaps already called Athens; his mother tongue would have been a distant ancestor of what we today know as Greek, and he would have possessed highly refined skills of a Bronze Age craftsman.
His fictional — rather than mythological — insights into the ordered structure of the labyrinth and the problem of flight are insights that an educated and inquisitive mind of that time could have achieved.
Chapter 2: Pasiphae
I stepped ashore in the Poros harbor, a little distance north of Knossos, the royal capital. It was noontime; the sun was beating down, brighter and hotter than in my native Attica, and the land also seemed drier and more intensely sun-baked.
A multitude of ships were resting in the harbor, most of them merchant vessels of various sizes and ports of origin, but I also saw several large warships of the famed Cretan navy. Crowds of people were milling about on the shore: Hellenes, Egyptians, Sicans, Phoenicians... Many languages were to be heard, dresses and complexions of all kinds were to be seen in the crowd, and the people appeared busy, well-provided and happy under Crete’s blazing sun.
Having no means of my own, other than the meager savings which I had succeeded in retrieving before fleeing Athens, and no baggage either, I made my home for a day or two in the most modest inn that I could find and began looking for ways to survive in the new land.
I noticed that people were friendly, easy-going, and accustomed to strangers in their midst. I also noticed that there were few soldiers to be seen about, or war chariots and grim fortifications that were so common on the Hellenic mainland. Crete was protected by the sea and by her mighty navy but, in time I came to understand that she was also protected by her way of life as a trading land.
Most Cretans had a fair and decent share in the wealth of their land, and one did not see much destitution or discontent among them. Yes, Crete was worldly, wealthy, confident and tolerant; she provided a good life, and her people thought this a land and a life worth defending. Would-be raiders mostly stayed away.
There was much to do for a skilled young man in Crete. Cretans had many good shipbuilders, but fewer stonemasons, so I quickly found work with builders of homes and palaces, and my skill brought me more work.
I made some friends among the shipbuilders and carpenters as well, and we traded the knowledge of the craft as it was practiced in Crete and in Athens. As it happened, some of them had visited Athens and recognized my name; what reputation I had as a craftsman followed me to Crete, and nobody apparently knew — or cared about — my reason for being here. I soon received my first commission from the royal court in Knossos, to help design and build some temple or other.
The island of Crete was ruled by King Minos, the man whose name was known in every corner of the Aegean and beyond. I first saw him in person after I had been working on that royal temple for a few months; he was of medium height and stocky figure, with a strong masculine face framed by short, black hair and a trimmed beard. He had the unadorned, forthright demeanor of a warrior king, more at home on the battlefield than in royal ceremony, and his public appearance matched his demeanor. He wore a simple head ornament, a kind of light crown — very finely crafted, I observed — and his garments were unassuming and tasteful. Later, at the court, I noticed that he rarely bothered with royal insignia in the course of daily affairs.
King Minos traveled frequently around his realm, accompanied only by light guard. He was confident of his authority and his good standing with the people of Crete, and in that confidence he was not mistaken. Minos brooked no outright disobedience; he had as much blood on his hands as any king, but he was not arbitrary; he invited and listened to reasoned counsel. Every so often, he would issue laws, with the approval of a sacred oracle high in the mountains, and the laws were written down and proclaimed throughout the land. People of Crete knew what to expect from their king, and they knew what, in turn, was expected of them.
This, then, was the ruler at whose court I came to spend ever more time, until I became something of the court artisan. My work for the King was mostly public and military in nature: I designed new buildings for him, and I worked with his trusted Cretan artisans, devising better weapons and building faster ships. It was because of this work that the King came to trust my advice on undertakings that depended on insight and skill for their success.
But I occasionally also entertained the court with a novelty or two, such as wooden dolls with movable head and limbs, which I would cause to twitch in entertaining ways by pulling on strings that ran from the limbs to the doll’s pedestal. Queen Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, was very fond of these toys and would play with them no end.
My stay at the court of King Minos also brought about an end of my unattached bachelor’s life. There was an attendant girl at the court, Naucrate by name, quiet and unassuming, but bright and of sweet disposition. She caught my fancy, and I began to seek her company. To my delight, Naucrate looked favorably upon the young Athenian exile, and it wasn’t long before we became man and wife.
Our son, Icarus, was born one year into our marriage. Since I was still quite new in the King’s service, my work did not leave me much time for my family, but Naucrate was an able and sensible woman. She turned out to be a very good wife and mother, and so with her care and with my now ample income, our family lacked for nothing, except perhaps for an abundance of the father’s presence and attention.
* * *
Several years went by quickly, busy and fulfilling. The land of Crete was generous to me, and the future looked bright. Then, however, came the affair with the white bull, the first occasion on which I saw the King act with caprice in a public matter. The bull was a gift to Crete from somewhere across the sea, a magnificent animal accompanied by a decree of a distant oracle, which said that the bull was consecrated to Poseidon and must be given as a sacrificial offering to the god of the sea.
Minos, however, decided that he liked the bull and would keep the animal for himself, in order to improve his herds of cattle. The priests grumbled, but if Minos did not want to sacrifice the bull, he was not going to sacrifice him, and that was that. He offered a sacrifice of other prime cattle instead, kept the white bull, and the grumbling subsided. Nothing more was said about it.
A month or so passed, and Queen Pasiphae summoned me to her quarters. She seemed agitated and ill at ease, telling me that she wanted to confide in me and seek my help, but I was not to say a word about it to anyone.
“Well, my Queen,” I asked, “how can your devoted artisan be of service?”
Pasiphae said that she had been going to the pasture every day, and there she would stare at the white bull no end; she was consumed by a desire for a bodily union with the animal and could think of nothing else. She was prepared to throw herself at or under the bull, and only abject fear for her life kept her back: the animal might not understand her intentions, and become agitated and gore her or trample her to death. “Oh, it is a bitter fate,” she confided, choking slightly on her words, “this burning desire for a being so grand and strong that one must fear approaching it!”
I observed the Queen. Her broad face was ruddy with a mixture of excitement and embarrassment, and her eyes, I seemed to notice for the first time, had a slightly bovine expression. I was not very fond of Pasiphae: somewhat loud and coarse, she would have been a woman to be politely avoided, had she not been a queen. But she was my Queen, mother of Minos’ children, and she enjoyed quite a bit of respect among Cretans as the sister of the sorceress Circe and a knower of magic in her own right.
Magic did not mean much to me, but royal power was not to be trifled with, so I decided that I should help her. Besides, what harm could it do? Both Minos and Pasiphae had numerous lovers outside the royal marriage, affairs which everybody knew about, and neither of them really seemed to care. It was best to be discreet about this, of course, and I should certainly keep Minos out of it, but so what if a bull was to be thrown into the mix? At least there would be no offspring to make anyone’s life difficult in the future.
I shook myself out of my thoughts and turned my attention to the task at hand. Pasiphae was right: the main danger lay in the animal misunderstanding her intentions and attacking her. Besides, she really could not support the bull’s weight without injury to herself, even if he responded correctly to her advances. “My Queen,” I said tactfully, “we have to present the bull with something that more closely resembles his natural mate.”
The Queen agreed, and I proposed to build a wooden cow. The body and hind legs of the cow would be hollow, so that the Queen could position her own body inside, and it would have a requisite window in its hindquarters. It would be covered in real cow-hide — we could dispense with the tail — and I would arrange the lid of the contraption in such a way that the Queen could get in and out without assistance. I decided to work on the cow alone and mostly at night, because the purpose of the device would have been obvious to anyone, and I did not want the word of it to get out.
Mindful of the eagerness and impatience with which the outcome was awaited, I worked feverishly. In about ten days, the cow was completed, and I notified the Queen. I rolled the cow out of the workshop covered with a tarp, and took it as discreetly as I could to a secluded grove in the pastures, a place which we had earlier agreed would be suitable.
Pasiphae soon appeared, beaming with almost youthful excitement and, as luck would have it, the white bull was also present, grazing placidly within sight. I instructed the Queen how to use the contraption, and she entered it eagerly, with ease that appeared eerily natural, and without even waiting for me to depart.
Worries overtook me at the last moment. Will this work? Am I placing my Queen in danger by assisting her in this ill-conceived tryst? The cow stood sturdy on its wooden feet, and I had made certain that its back and sides were strong, so as to protect the Queen. Everything looked right. One last look at the cow’s hindquarters: yes, it will work. With a mixture of disgust and forebodings in my mind, I turned around and slowly walked away.
How strangely unmoored is the carnal desire! How able to attach itself to strangest things and be satisfied by strangest means. It required me, a craftsman-carpenter, a maker of tools, gadgets, and weaponry, to construct a wooden decoy in order for my Queen to gain her outlandish satisfaction, the only satisfaction she could accept. Was this to become the purpose of the artisan someday, the purpose of my calling? For the sober, diligent techne holds the promise of so many good things besides tools and weapons, but desire, unmoored and heedless of all but itself, can demand so much more. Well, I thought as I walked back to the workshop, Pasiphae isn’t asking me to provide love dolls for her chambers; not now and not ever, I hope.
During the next several days, the Queen was not much in attendance at the court, and when she was there, she walked around in a blissful daze, seemingly oblivious of everything around her. I did not ask her anything, and she did not say a word to me on her own but, after a while, her countenance returned to her usual self. Look as I may, I could no longer see the bovine look in her eyes, so I went out to the grove and burned the wooden cow.
Some days had passed, and word got out that the Queen was with child. Her belly swelled rapidly, and by the time the day of delivery came, it was frighteningly large. This was not Pasiphae’s first child, but the childbirth was difficult, and the male child that she bore was larger than any anybody had ever seen. Even though the child was strong and healthy, it was somehow strangely misshapen.
I saw it shortly after its birth, and it was difficult to say just what was wrong: its chest, shoulders, and arms seemed disproportionately large for an infant; the features of its face were dull, and the heavy-boned skull with a low forehead resembled nothing so much as the head of an ox. As I gazed at this child, hair stood stiff at the back of my neck. Gods, what did I help bring into the world?
King Minos was visibly disturbed. He, too, gazed for a long time at the newborn. He saw what I had seen, he saw what everybody saw: this was not his child, not any man’s child. Minos was the father of many healthy, beautiful children, and there was no way that this creature could be his son, a child he would lift in his arms before a joyous crowd and proclaim his own. The Queen hid in her chambers.
Before long, Minos began to look askance at me whenever the strange child was mentioned. I never quite found out how much he knew or surmised; perhaps Pasiphae confessed what had happened, or perhaps somebody spied on her and her cow in the pastures, and Minos knew that only I could have provided the decoy. I kept my silence. I trusted that the King valued my otherwise good service, and I assumed he understood that I had acted on the wishes of the Queen, but the mood at the court was strained and unpleasant.
The boy grew rapidly in bodily strength, although not much in discernment, and he came to develop a crude and frightening habit: as soon as he had learned to toddle around on his feet, he began to charge at people and things that annoyed him, striking them ferociously with his fists and his heavy head. Afterward, his rage spent, he would sit sprawled on the ground and bawl disconsolately in a deep, un-childlike, lowing voice. His nurses could do nothing to calm him down.
One day, after he had been told of a particularly ugly outburst, Minos took me aside and snarled through his teeth: “The least you can do is help me hide the accursed thing!”
Copyright © 2018 by Danko Antolovic
