Red Thread by Charlotte Higgins

Author:Charlotte Higgins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-08-01T16:00:00+00:00

ARIADNE ON NAXOS

As soon as they arrived at the shore of Naxos the crew set about gathering firewood and collecting fresh water, pitching tents and preparing food. Some of the young survivors mustered themselves to help, as if trying by physical effort to deflect their minds from what had happened on Crete. Even the bright sea light and the fresh salt tang could not banish the memory of the labyrinth’s bleakness, its stale and fetid stench, its twining, tangling corridors. From the moment they stepped into it, it had seemed somehow alive, a breathing intelligence, a thing that moved and sighed and changed. Passages seemed to materialise where none had been before. Staircases emerged suddenly from the shadows, leading away to unseen depths or heights. And the scale of it: winding corridors opened out into cavernous hallways, terraces and porticoes. Sometimes they were obliged to crawl on hands and knees through narrow tunnels, edge through tight vestibules and clamber up the narrowest of staircases, as if in a tower; at times the ground fell away from their path into a deep ravine. Sometimes, through the dim light of the place (a ghostly illumination whose source no one could discern), the Athenians stumbled over half-ruined furniture, broken statues, frayed tapestries. On more than one occasion, they saw that the walls were decorated with faded frescoes: in one they saw athletes leaping over the body of a bull; in another, a blue monkey gathering saffron from the blooms of crocuses; in a third, a crowd of beautiful women shown in profile, bracelets pushed up over their arms and hair arranged in elaborate curls.

All this time they knew they were human bait for the monster; that in order for Theseus to battle the beast, they must first allow themselves to be hunted. At last they heard its approaching tread, its snort and bellow and roar as it came into view, emerging from a tunnel into a huge circular chamber like an amphitheatre. Imagine the most tremendous bull you have ever seen. Light dances off its shining coat, its neck is one craggy, knotty mass, its chest a waterfall of muscle. But its horns are what you notice most: they sheer outwards from the creature’s head and curve upwards to points, each as sharp as a scimitar. Imagine this bestial strength attached to the body and limbs of a man, a man built on no human scale. Its forearms, feathered in black fur, were thicker than the hero’s thighs; its legs were like oaks.

Theseus darted around it, taunting it, teasing it, enraging it. The two creatures, man and monster, seemed to dance with one another. At last it lowered its head and charged, and that was when Theseus moved in, grabbed it by one knifelike horn, plunged the sword into the thick flesh, stabbing and hacking over and over again until the innards gaped open and cataracts of blood flowed. Think of a tower block on the fringe of a great city. It is

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