EPISODE 63

IN WHICH HERMES DISCOVERS THE EXISTENCE OF THE MOIRAE

Previously: Thanks to the power of his love, Orpheus has succeeded in getting permission to bring Eurydice back to life. But he looked at her too soon, before she had come out of the Underworld. And now he has just lost her for ever. Hermes wishes to understand who determines the fate of men and he goes back to see Pausania.

“Look at you, how you’ve grown!” said old Pausania when she saw Hermes appear at the end of the road. “So this is why you don’t come to see me any more… You already have the answers to all your questions.”

“Oh, no, good nurse,” sighed Hermes, “I always have questions which keep turning and turning in my head. The more things I see, the more I understand, and the more questions I have.”

Pausania smiled: “The day when you shall no longer have questions in your head will be a very sad day for you.”

The messenger of the gods looked at Pausania’s wrinkled face and a profound serenity settled in him. She was wisdom itself and she was going to help him see.

“Dear Pausania,” he asked her, “why are there men and women who die just as their lives have barely begun? Please, I would like to know who decides the life and the death of human beings.”

Pausania raised her hand to draw the head of the young god onto her lap, as she was wont to do to lull him to sleep, and she said: “Come, we will pay a visit to the three Moirae. You will understand.”

When Hermes reopened his eyes, he did not know where he was. This place was neither house nor cave, and yet he could not see the sky.

“Where are we?” he whispered in Pausania’s ear.

“No one knows that, my child. It is a mystery…” answered the old nurse gently. “Look!”

Very close nearby, three women were sitting with their backs turned to them. They all three wore long white dresses made out of a soft and light fabric, similar to a spider’s web. Their long, loose white hair almost touched the ground. They did not speak to one another, yet Hermes could guess that their hands never stopped fiddling about. From time to time, one of them would rise, always the same one. She would approach an immense wall on which signs had been engraved. She would indicate one of the signs with a pointed stick which she held in her hand and she would return to her seat. At that, the hands of the three old women seemed to grow restless once more. Hermes observed this strange scene for a long moment. He could understand nothing as yet, but everything about the attitude of these three women fascinated him.

“Let us approach,” murmured Pausania. When he discovered the faces of the three old women, Hermes’ surprise was immense: all three had wide-open white eyes—for they were blind. The one who stood up regularly seemed to be the youngest of the three. “She is called Clotho,” Pausania told him. “Look, the long, pointed stick that she is holding is a spindle, a spindle similar to the ones that you have seen on earth in the hands of shepherdesses spinning wool. This spindle too can serve to make yarn, but the yarn that Clotho fabricates is the thread of each man’s life.” Clotho had risen and was pointing with her spindle at a sign engraved on the great wall. Seeing Hermes’ interrogating gaze, Pausania continued with her explanations. “Here is the list of the names of every human being. Once a man comes into the world, his name is engraved on this great wall. And after that Clotho fabricates the thread of his life. She then passes the thread to her sister Lachesis. Look, Lachesis is taking the thread and measuring it with her ruler. She is the one who determines the length of each life. You see, there are some very long threads and also some which are very short.” Hermes did not take his eyes off the thin white fingers of the two sisters. He saw with great emotion the thread of a life being born, he saw it being stretched and stretched until it reached the length chosen by Lachesis. It was then that the third old woman intervened. She was the smallest of the three and yet appeared to be the eldest. Her stern face, her open eyes with their blank stare frightened Hermes. He would have preferred not to look at her any more and yet he could not stop himself from doing so, as though it were impossible to escape the eldest of the three Moirae. “This one is Atropos,” whispered Pausania in his ear. She did not have to explain what Atropos did; Hermes had just understood. Once Clotho had finished spinning a life’s thread, Lachesis measured its length and passed it afterwards to Atropos, who took her long scissors and snipped it. Each time that the cruel scissors of Atropos cut a thread too short, Hermes felt a pinch in his heart.

The air was glacially cold and Hermes shivered. He stayed there for a very long time looking at the three Moirae spinning the destiny of each man. This was where Atropos had severed with a clean snip of her scissors the so very short thread of Eurydice’s life, a thread too short for her life to continue beyond that accursed day when the snake had bitten her. Hermes would have wanted to go near the wall where all the names of mankind were engraved, but Pausania held him back. “No, don’t go! No one must know the name of a man before the time of his birth! It is time to go back now.” Before leaving, Hermes could not keep himself from reading one name in passing, that of the man whose life-thread Clotho was spinning. He was called Perseus.

 

To be continued…