Weight by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page B

limitless universe of his imagination he would not be punished for wanting the impossible. Why did the gods insist on limits and boundaries when any fool could see that these things were only rules and taboos – customs made to keep people in their place? Rebellion was always punished like this – by taking away what little freedom there was, by encasing the spirit.

    He thought of the East and all those geniis in jars. Dangerous things have to be contained. He was a dangerous thing and his body was held prisoner so that his mind should not escape.
    They had got it the wrong way round, of course. His mind was always escaping. They had captured his body, but not this thoughts.
       
    Yet he had made a garden, and his occupation now was imagining another garden, difficult and fantastical, made from nothing and brought to life. He would wall it just as he had walled the Hesperides, and he knew that his happiest time was inside those self-made walls.
    True and not true.
    His walls, his door in the wall, and always half open when he was inside. Only locked when he had gone. He jealously protected his boundaries from intrusion by others – that was why he had gone to war against the gods in the first place – though they would sayhe had invaded what belonged to them. Demarcation, check-points, border controls. And all in the name of freedom. Freedom for me means curbing you.
    Atlas knew, because he was not stupid and because he had all the time in the world, that something was missing from his argument. He had known it that day with Hera when he picked the apples. He had known it as something growing inside him ever since.
    Boundaries. Desire.
    He turned over the words like stones. The words were stones, as dry and inhospitable as the Martian regolith. Nothing grew out of those words. It was these he would have to break open and crumble into good soil. It was these he would have to water and watch and sleep beside for the first sign of life.
    His own private Mars. That was where he lived now. The garden was gone.

Hero of the World
     

    Heracles often thought of Atlas …
    Atlas, lonely, aloft, holding up the Kosmos, like a boy with a ball.
    Heracles never visited Atlas again, some combination of shame and fear kept him away. He had cheated to win, he knew that, but how could he blame himself? Blame Hera. Blame the gods for setting him impossible tasks; tasks that any other man would have failed.
    Time faded the insult. The thought-wasp hardly stung him at all now. Only sometimes was there that buzzing discontent that made him want to tear his head off and discus it into space.
    He had other things on his mind now. He was getting a new wife.
    * * *
    Deianeira was the kind of woman everybody wanted. She was the daughter of Dionysus, and had all his extravagance. She had a body like a feast, skin as smooth as wine, an appetite for pleasure, and she could go all night. She was perfect for Heracles.
    He wooed her in his usual way with a lot of bragging and a few tricks with his biceps. He promised to take her travelling with him. He needed a wife and he had no legitimate children left alive. The ones he hadn’t killed himself by mistake, others had killed for him. Besides, it was prophesied that if he did not die within the next fifteen months, he would live out his days in quiet happiness.
    It was time to settle down.
    Some time after the marriage, the two of them were travelling together, happy and intimate, when they came to a fast-flowing river. As they were wondering how to cross, the centaur Nessus galloped up and offered to carry Deianeira on his back, while Heracles swam across.
    Carefully, Heracles lifted his wife onto the centaur’s hairy back. Instead of plunging into the water, Nessus made off with Deianeira, and took her into his woods where he intended to rape her.
    Heracles chased in pursuit, and stringing his bow, shot Nessus in the chest from half a mile away. The centaur was on his forelegs over Deianeira’s