Ursule Molinaro
Fiction
Certainly I was a monster. Bull-headed, & front- hooved, with the rump, the legs, & the feet of a human male at the crest of adolescence. As adult as I’d ever be, since the moment of my birth.
But I was not dumb. The dumb beast, posthumous mythographers have called me. Calling my murderer, Theseus: my redeemer.
Perhaps he was. The way Judas or Pontius Pilate may have been the redeemer of Christ. Whom I like to think of as my grandson, in the sequence of the ages.
I prefer my death by strangulation to his lingering on a cross. Mine was faster, though no less treacherous. Perhaps redemption requires betrayal of the flesh.
I was a monster in the meaning of my time. When monster meant: Something extraordinary to behold. & to admire. One of a kind. A unique being. An “other.”
I was the bull-headed son of King Minos of Crete. Or rather of his wife Pasiphae, after she succumbed to a mad passion for a bull. Maliciously inspired by Poseidon, Ruler of the Sea. —Who must have been that very bull, in maddening disguise.
I was the “minotory” Minotaur. Animal + human, welded by divine desire. A hybr id, non-reproductive like the mule. A lover of beauty, without lust.
A trinity, like Christ, the godly Merman, who could walk on water, like my uncle Euphemos.
Like Christ, I was the symbol of my age.The Taurean age, which ended with my assassination, 16 centuries be- fore the Piscean age began with his birth.
But unlike him, I have been mythographed unflat- teringly. Posthumously villified, in word as well as image. While he is pictured as a silken-haired beauty, strolling long-robed through acquiescent landscapes —or else slowly dying on the treacherous cross of half-belief; still aesthetic in his agony, with clearly defined, unwebbed toes— I am depicted as a brutish freak. With the blown-up head of a vulgar ox, the kind that’s used to pull a plow. With stunted, brownish horns, ill-kempt, & bristley at the base. & the appended lower half of an undernourished human youth, whose clenched buttocks seem to quake above unsteady legs.
I am no longer the awe-inspiring “Other,” but a de- formity. Repulsively disproportionate. The antithesis of the asymmetric harmony I was meant to symbolize.
In life, my bovine head was finely chiseled, with the high cheekbones of that race. It was majestic, & had the subtle sheen of ebony.
My oblong, liquid eyes shone with interest in my surroundings. My mouth was a serene curve of moist, subtly purple meditation. & my horns my antennae my receptacles of divine intelligence were pol- ished alabaster. Unusually long & graceful. I had my Athenian adolescents garland them with flowers I had them gather in the many intricate beds I added to my labyrinth.
These adolescents were my creatures, sent to me each spring by the City of Athens, in yearly tribute. 14 of them, 7 of each sex.They were the age I always was & would be, & I would have liked to turn them into play- mates. Worshipful companions, who might have loved me, & understood that I was beautiful.
We might have enjoyed playing music together, as I had taught myself to drum on a hollowed-out cypress, with my delicate hooves.Which I wore lacquered. Most- ly in silver, sometimes flecked with gold. I also lowed melodiously, a dark, haunting sound that rose from the center of my being.
But they came programmed to be slaves. Or food. Deaf-mute with hostility. Blind to the glory of intricate logic that I was offering them to study, with beauty- sharpened senses, inside my labyrinth, my laboratory. Which all could enter, but none could leave. Like a Venus flytrap.
They looked upon me as their jailer, whom they obeyed abjectly, out of fear. —Fear, the antithesis of love.
Most of them spent their days & nights standing huddled near my ramparts, listlessly staring in the di- rection of Athens. Sometimes, in desperation, 1 of them would manage to crawl up the steep wall, & hurl himself or herself to a splattered death below. Or else, they’d pine away, & die of their impervious sadness. I’d make the others bury them under my rosebushes. Rotting flesh is known to intensify the color & perfume of roses.
The Death Watchers: I used to call them, unaware that I was foretelling my own assassination. That they would spot Theseus before he came into my sight, & hail him as their redeemer. Their liberator.
When I did see Theseus, I thought that he, at last, was 1 hostage come to be my friend. That he wanted to embrace me, when he placed his hands upon my neck. They were strong hands; their pressure on my throat stirred a dark, unfamiliar yearning almost pleasur- able in the lower, human part of me. It lasted, until my heart stood still.
NEVER! at any time! did I eat any of these 14 yearly adolescents. As is the claim of my sensational- ist mythographers. Who sacrifice logic to effect: How could an over-sized flesh-eating freak have subsisted on
14 bodies a year! 11/6 body a month!
I wore the majestic head of a bull; I shared, the vegetarian taste of that race. Which unlike humans has no history of cannibalism. I used to feed on aromatic herbs, which I had my Athenians cultivate along the walls of my palace. I was especially partial to the ten- der buds of almond & orange blossoms. They made my sweat smell like a costly perfume. Often I’d exert myself needlessly, just to smell my scent. In truth, I was aesthetic. I was logic, explained through the senses. Asymmetric Harmony incarnate. An apt symbol of the Taurean age.
It is true that my father Minos commissioned the Athenian inventor Dedalus to construct my labyrinth.
—Dedalus was a gnarled, mono-track survivor type, who glorified in the coordination of his brain & his hands. He had invented 2 very useful construction tools: the hammer & the saw. But when his nephew invented the plane, he killed him, out of professional jealousy. He fled his murder trial in Athens, & sought asylum with my father, King Minos of Crete.
—Bringing along his son Icarus, on whom he doted. Who was not the brightest. Who was unthreateningly mediocre.
My father was an open-minded ruler, always hospi- table to brilliant subversives on the run from other parts of the world. He had a reputation for astute fairness, with gods & mortals alike; after his death he was appointed 1 of 3 judges in hell.
—But it is not true that my father commissioned Dedalus to construct a maze around my private palace to keep me out of sight. Because he was ashamed of me, his freakish son or stepson who bore his own royal name, with a bullish suffix appended, in proof that the mighty King of Crete had been cuckolded by a common bull.
He may have been disconcerted by my mother’s sudden insistence on checking out their herds herself. But he certainly was not ashamed of the result.Any more than Joseph was ashamed when Mary gave birth to the symbol of the Piscean age.
& unlike Joseph, my father had a history of divine meddling with the conception of mortal women. He himself was the fruit of a divine passion. He was a son of Zeus, who had disguised himself as a bull! to seduce my grandmother. Mine was not the only bovine branch on the royal family tree of Crete.
When my grandmother Europa was still a young woman, gathering flowers along the river, back in her native Phoenicia, she became aware of a bull with a bril- liant hide, regally grazing near the water.
Her heart leapt at the sight of him. She ran to him, & began winding flowers about his horns. Then felt the urge to climb up on his brilliant back. As soon as she was seated, the bull reared up, & carried her, fast as the wind, across the ocean, all the way to the southern shore of Crete.Where he made passionate love to her.
At that time, my grandfather Asterion was King of Crete. He fell in love with my grandmother, & after she gave birth to triplets: my father, & 2 of my uncles, he married her, & adopted her 3 divine sons. Feeling hon- ored to become their father.
Why should my mother’s passion for a bull —which was inspired by Poseidon— be shameful, when my grandmother’s brought honor to her husband? Poseidon is a god as much as Zeus, although less prominent. & less promiscuous. Was it because it was she who alleg- edly took the initiative, & was already married when she seduced the bull?
Who has to have been Poseidon in disguise, not just some sturdy studding bull in my parents’ herd. Whose vulgar head I’m given, in posthumous insult. I have carefully studied animal & human husbandry, & I have found that humans cannot crossbreed with bovines. Not woman with bull, nor man with cow. Either way, the semen does not take. Except with divine interven- tion! Poseidon has to have been my father. My bovine head merely marks me as the symbol of my age.
Of course I called Minos: Father. Just as Minos & my 2 uncles called Asterion: Father. The gods don’t like it, if we personally remind them that they made us who we are.
My father commissioned Dedalus to build a maze around my palace, not because he was ashamed of me, but because he was sensitive to my interests: The intri- cacy of Logic, & gardening.
My father knew that I would spend a fulfilling life, elaborating on Dedalus’ initial layout. Adding shrewd challenges of trees deceptive curves of hedges mis- leading rows of many-colored flowers, until Dedalus himself could no longer find the way out.
My mother looked in on me while the construc- tion of the labyrinth was still in progress. With my half- sister Ariadne, holding baby Phaedra in her girlish arms.
Ariadne asked a lot of silly questions about my head, & my hooves. & why wasn’t I wearing any clothes? Did that mean that I was an animal, & not a person?
I told her: That my bovine part was the divine part of me. Which brought a far-away look to my mother’s eyes, which further confirmed to me that Poseidon had been my father.
After the construction was completed, no one came to visit me, for fear of not finding the way back to the outside world. Every once in a while, an admirer would toss beautifully colored salt licks over my walls, as a treat for me.
Basically I lived alone, morosely served by the rapid- ly aging Athenian youths. My thoughts forever occupied with adding further intricacies to Dedalus’ groundplan.
Which Dedalus resented. & took as criticism of his work. A desire to best him, when nothing was further from my mind. I was not aware that I had offended him,
& that I had become the focus of his hatred for a life he always deemed beneath his genius.
It was Dedalus who, plotting behind my parents’ back, gave my sister Ariadne the idea of the treacherous thread. 10 balls of wool, dyed a hideous red. A color I particularly dislike. Which she gave to Theseus to un- wind, & drag behind him. A hideous red trail like spilled intestines that was to show him the way back out after he finished killing me.
Ariadne had no reason to hate me. She hadn’t seen me since she was 13 years old. She barely knew me. But she had fallen in love with my murderer, & Dedalus assured her that, with that path-finding thread, she would attach him to herself for life. Which was all she thought about. She did not think of me.
At least not until her murderous lover betrayed her trust. & dumped her on the Island of Naxos, while he traveled on, with our youngest sister Phaedra pressed to his heart. Ariadne may have thought of me then, regret- ting the gratuitousness of what she had done. Thinking that: Betrayal breeds betrayal breeds betrayal, as she drank herself into oblivion. —Unaware that Phaedra would, in turn, betray the husband who had pledged marriage to her older sister, before murdering her unique half- brother.
My father was outraged by my assassination. & by my assassin’s kidnaping of Phaedra, who was only 12. & still looked androgynous. Which must have appealed to the ambiguous sexuality of a man whose first wife had been an Amazone.
With the astute fairness that later earned him his honored judge’s position in hell, my father quickly fig- ured out that Dedalus was behind both crimes. As punishment, he imprisoned the devious inventor with his dumb, beloved son in the very structure he had commissioned him to build around me. Which I had im- proved so thoroughly, that the builder could no longer find the way out.
Once again coordinating his brain & his hands, Dedalus eventually fashioned wings for himself, & for his son. He made it to so-called freedom to another exile while poor dumb Icarus flew too close to the sun, melting the wax that attached his wings. He drowned in the Sea. —It was Poseidon, avenging my death. Confirming yet again who my true father was!
My strangled body stayed amidst my trees & flow- ers, interred by time itself. Which decomposed my fra- grant flesh, powdered my bones, & wound young roots about my horns.
My labyrinth became my mausoleum. Which has preserved the memory of that unfamiliar, ultimate stir- ring of my lower senses. Rippling my posthumous serenity with images of cow-headed women with determined front hooves.
Ursule Molinaro
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