EPISODE 74

IN WHICH HERMES BECOMES A DAD

Previously: Hermes has fallen in love for the first time and is having a beautiful romance with young Antianeira. They both desire a child, but Hermes wonders nervously whether he will know how to be a dad.

That morning, Hermes could not stay still. He pushed now one door, now another, entered the palace kitchen, came out again after having pinched a little nectar, bent down over a fountain and drank long gulps of ambrosia. Finally, he went to join his father in the great council hall. He gave a short, embarrassed cough, then asked:

“Hmm, Zeus, you who know everything, could you tell me what it is like to be a dad?” Startled, Zeus looked at his son. He had not noticed him grow up and he was astonished to find now by his side this handsome young man. “Well, well?” said Hermes, growing impatient.

But Zeus did not quite know what to answer… “A dad is, hmm, authority, a great deal of authority,” he said to him. Vexed not to have found the right words, he sent Hermes away: “I have work to do, you know, I don’t have time to chatter, go for a walk!”

Feeling rather snubbed, Hermes came across gentle Hestia in the corridor, the house mistress of the palace. “Hestia, sweet aunt, can you explain to me what it’s like to be a dad?”

But Hestia was swamped. She had a pile of laundry in her arms and merely replied: “A dad? Hmm, it’s a great deal of affection, nothing but affection!”

Hermes, getting more and more disconcerted, ran then into Aphrodite and dared to ask her his question. But the goddess of Beauty broke into a mocking laughter: “Oh look at the great clumsy ninny! I thought you were just having a nice love affair with Antianeira. You ought to know the answer… A dad is just love, nothing but love.” And she left him alone and distraught in the corridor.

“Authority, affection, love,” he muttered, “I will never know…”

At that moment the nymphs who accompanied Artemis, the goddess of Birth, came running. Hermes followed them as fast as he could. When he reached the earth, Antianeira was lying there on a bed of moss and fern. Her hair spread in a crown around her head, and the pallor of her face, the blackness of her eyes and the bright red of her lips moved Hermes deeply once more. By her side, with her back turned, stood Artemis. She turned round, holding in her hands two tiny children. She held them out to Hermes, saying: “Here are your sons!” Hermes gave a little jump: two babies! Antianeira had just brought into the world two babies! Artemis smiled and said to him: “Well, yes, they are twins, like Apollo and me!” Trembling, Hermes took the babies in his arms. The eyes of the child he was holding in his right arm sought his gaze. They found it. “He shall be called Echion,” said Artemis. Hermes then turned his gaze towards the baby placed in his left arm. The child’s eyes sought his gaze. They found it. “This one will be called Eurytus,” said Artemis. Hermes turned from one child to the other and a great lump of emotion rose in his throat. So he, Zeus’ little troublemaker, had become a father in his turn.

The two babies began all of a sudden to cry. Yet, and this was the incredible thing, their wailing was not ear-splitting, like the wailing of newborns—no, they were crying as though they were telling a story. They were crying as though they were already singing their story. Hermes knelt beside Antianeira. He delicately placed the twins in the cavity of her arms, accompanied his gesture with a kiss on her forehead and then he went away.

He needed to regain his inner calm. He needed to think. “I am a dad, I am a dad,” he kept repeating to himself as he walked. “Am I the same person? Am I someone else?” Suddenly he was seized by a great anxiety. “But from now on I am responsible for them! What life will my children have? Oh, that nothing bad may ever happen to them!” With questions rioting in his head, Hermes came before a fountain. He bent down, picked up some pebbles and threw them into the water, just as the nurse had taught him to do, in order to read what would happen in Echion’s and Eurytus’ future.

Hermes stayed for a long time bent over the fountain. When he lifted his head up again, a smile had burgeoned on his lips. He had just learnt that Echion and Eurytus would take part in one of the greatest adventures of their time, the quest undertaken by a certain Jason for the Golden Fleece. He was proud to have discovered that such a future awaited his little ones. But already he was feeling anxious for them because of the dangers they would have to face. He had truly become a dad. And who was this Jason, that adventurer whom his sons were soon going to follow? And why did he wish to seize this Golden Fleece? Hermes promised himself that he would find out.

 

To be continued…