Alphēus & Arethūsa

In mud our tale is shaped; in the waters it comes to its end.

…

From the mud the beauty of Arethusa was unveiled, enchanting seductress of the river Alpheus, in whose waters the nymph bathed, unfolding her virtues.

He, stirred by the wonder, became man to possess her; she, to escape him bodily, turned into water and sank away into the deep.

Alpheus reached her, water once more, overflowing into Ortygia, where Arethusa, already a spring, received him.

Together not in form, but in element. Twins, primordial and distinct.

Never did they merge, so that they might still exist as two, symmetrical and complementary. Forever glimpsing each other in that infinite, vanished, perpetual instant which beholds them blending into the glitter of the sea and into all the rest, now matter and oblivion.

Alpheus was there. The silt of his depths he loomed over and crushed, yet by it he was always confined.
Not at the source, where memory began, nor at the mouth, where it ended.
A wide region he flowed through, life and refuge he gave.
Arethusa set out from the earth, into the wind.
Aimed at, and drawn towards another, at last she let go.
Breath came all at once, abundant. Patiently she awaited it, still and outstretched.
Unlike the coming of man, bloody and impulsive, Arethusa arrived slowly, holding tight.

Her mud-caked face was enough to deny her.
She drew near the clear waters, first with one foot, then with one hand, then two, and these up to her face.
Traveller, wherever you come ashore, greedy for fresh water.
Her garments of mud slipped away; she immersed herself, uncovering her perfect image.

It was the mask that stirred Alpheus, a negative of beauty.
Swaying down to rest in the depths, it brushed against him, whispering of the beauty it had kept.
Alpheus turned sharply about. In a flicker, he swept back across the surface of the water, far and wide.
At last he pooled into longing and, waiting for something, began to hope.
Unable to sense what might unfold, he swallowed himself, while the mask fatefully surrendered within him, dissolving its own likeness.
He had wondered, in the past, what forms beauty might take; never had he conceived such marvellous contours.
He chose to forget the excess for a neighbourhood of time: never before had anything happened to him.
A transparent silence darkened the waters of the river.

Then, as suddenly, a playful stirring of water, tickling unaccustomed curves, awakened him.
An immense blanket whose geometries he commands, flowing along its margins and pressing within them, Alpheus felt the whole bed of the river.
In that sudden moment, the splashing and tugging of the waters did not interest him; it vexed him.
He came to the heart of the throbbing and there beheld the unheard-of beauty, a whiteness by which the waters shone.

— Arethusa! —

Alpheus named her.
A river quenching its thirst.

— Fair Arethusa! —

But she did not yet sense him, only the waters, in a single gesture restless, strong, enveloping beyond measure.
The voluptuous rivulets she had just been playing with were turning into menacing tentacles.

— Do not go! —

Alpheus burst out, powerless, so that she would not recoil from the trembling embrace of the innocent waters she had entered of her own accord, in grace and gentleness.
What fault, and yet whose, if the absence made manifest in her cocoon of mud had kept him distracted.
Here and now, she known again, he thunderstruck, frightened she burned to flee.
Alpheus wept, from grief, from rage, from fate, as she tore herself out of him.
He called upon her, biting, to the very last word: he the master, she the stranger.
And still more: varied, twisted enticements from the brief, rushing distance.
Alpheus pleaded against his own mute insubstantiality.
He prayed, Alpheus, he who had never known desire.
He loved, Alpheus, until he longed to swerve towards another form.
He stormed the banks of mud that held him back, and became flesh.
Wholly contemplating his new shape, he hurled all of himself towards her. Soon he had the better of her.
Arethusa trembled in her garments regained, made of portentous clouds.

— O Arethusa. —

He said to her, his breath and anguish spent.
Quietly he encircled her from afar. Slowly Arethusa grew calm.
He seemed able to feel her beneath that mantle of cloud, drawing near little by little, close to her, to her alone.
He tasted her breath, caressed her limbs, deflating, then swelling again; but the tighter he held her in his arms, the tighter she held herself in.
He was left dismayed when, her breath still echoing, his limbs closed upon themselves in the bosom of the cloud.
There was no time to wonder at anything, pervaded and struck by the same fluid stirring that had once led him to her.
His body mortified without pain, he wound himself into a whirl, surrendering to becoming.

A wonder beyond the places he had belonged to, Alpheus rose again as water, in Ortygia, where Arethusa, already a spring, received him.
Together not in form, but in element. Twins, primordial and distinct.
Never did they merge, so that they might still exist as two, symmetrical and complementary.
Forever glimpsing each other in that infinite, vanished, perpetual instant which beholds them blending into the glitter of the sea and into all the rest, now matter and oblivion.

Daniele Marranca