The Victory Without Triumph or The Tale of the Hero (Heracles)
«I defeated him! I defeated him!» I shouted with jubilation upon seeing that king with the body of a horse, but the torso and mind of a human, lying by the river. He did not stop insulting me, mentioning all the Olympian numina he could, yet I ignored most of the insults hurled by that beastly being, disregarding his ignominies, probably because it was not the first time I had shed the crimson liquid. I had become a Moira.
I had already undertaken many labors and tasks in various places, deceiving even deities that bear the globe, recovering golden apples, facing monsters deemed invincible. I would cut off one head, and three more would grow, like in everyday life, like in the movies, though it might be an anachronistic sophism. I had become one of those ladies who cut the vital thread of mortals, deciding who would continue living and who, to their infamous fortune, would visit the rivers of the underworld. I had probably become more powerful than those three ladies of the thread. So, I knew it was just a matter of the inexorable before another thread was cut, in this case, that of the centaur.
Before the beast made a pact with his fatal destiny, I managed to hear more than just curses. He swore to me, by the highest of the Uranus, that whether alive or dead, he would destroy me. It was clear that alive he no longer had many chances, and dead he had even less. He also implored my wife to approach him. I do not know what he told her, nor did I care. I only saw that she collected some of the blood of the vanquished, and that was it. Our palace and children awaited us—another soul taken by my sacred bow!
Many golden peplos passed, with all the splendor of Eos with her magical mornings and several appearances of Selene with her many wiles. I noticed that my beloved wife was drifting further and further away from me, and I, invariably, from her, from her perfume, from her being. The battles were too many, overwhelming and demanding, so I could not count on being home for long. After all, a man, after all, a hero, after all, a demigod, I was never short of lovers. Fame, gold, muscles, and lovers, reasons enough for any woman to resort to the most desperate measures to reclaim the former Eros of her husband. She, she was no exception.
The gloomy day arrived in my heart. I remember it well and read it on these pages in an inexplicable way. The firstborn of this hero arrived, with my favorite tunic, that peplos that resembled the golden mornings. He handed it to me, and then it all happened. The suffering loomed, the dark Ker covered the stars of my gaze. The centaur’s blood, poisonous, spread over my tunic and, therefore, over all of me. The culprit, my wife. The hero succumbed to the aforementioned ladies of the vital thread. Although, it is not as bad as it seems, slowly losing sight towards the port of Hades and its evenings, like a slow summer sunset in front of the Mediterranean, as the poets sang. Was this I was reading real or fantasy? Was it me or a dream? In my veins runs the blood of the father of all, the highest, the most venerated, the most beautiful. And my thirst for revenge was more than justified, revenge against my beloved.
To be continued…
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