Ganymede of the Thames
by JoSelle VanderhooftOf course, I teach him everything he knows. But being a thing, as it stands, of flesh, and twine, and dust, he turns his pride a little to the meat inside his head and credits it instead.
I suppose - suppose I should be angry. A Whirlwind would howl, you know; a Desert would kick her sands at heaven and his eyes; and my cousin - the pale North Sea - would lie like a mirror, cold and deadly, before blasting him with a gale. So do we geniuses recoup from men when they do not acknowledge our hard work.
But I am not so fierce as I may seem. Indeed, I am a gentle genius. For when he sits upon the bank and parts me like a curtain, I kiss his hands.
"Hello, dear Will." I greet him warmly, even in the frost when I am.
frosted like a cake, and brittle in his palms.
"Good den," he says, doffing his hat. "How does the Genius of the River Thames?"
"Indifferent," I say, still in my glassy skin. "The Genius' banks are high, and flows he to the where the 'Ford and the 'Bridge knit like the primitive church with no scholastic heresy to rend them East and West."
"And do you so?" he asks, sitting him down. Today he wears the breaches I like well, the ones that line the inside of his leg and bind him like a glove. I watch his knees settle against the blanket of the weeds, and quite forget myself.
"I pray your pardon, sir, but we have lost the subject," says good Will, recalling me to time and consequence.
"Indeed, we have, but only art remained, for I have told the matter," I reply. "I am indifferent, high in this spring, yet thick with offal, silt and those small barks that minnow-like cross me thrice each day, for your red flags, your white flags and your black. But that contents me, sir. For it means you prosper. And in your prospering, I am content."
"My favor to yourself, good genius," says my good Will. "But will you sit beside me on the bank?"
I never know how he gets me to do it. Were he a goodwife with her laundry box, I'd watch her come and go without a word. Were he a ferryman with boat and oar, I'd grumble on his paddle and his sides, and hold no speech; were he a Goodman boy, smooth stones in hand and devil-take-the hindmost I'd yawn inside my ripples. But, alas, he's none of these, and the smile above his beard would bid me overflow my banks in sun, in snow, in frost that falls like leaves. And in the summer's heat, slide I outside my banks.
In repose - in repose, I am a thing most terrible to see. A thing that, being sighted, would raise up all the arms of Londontown, from Westminster to the gates. The ferrymen would hack their oars to pikes and none would dare to cross me e'er again could they but see the truth that lines my sides. So too, the puritains would call down fire, naming me devil, tempter and Original. So too my Will, for all his courtesies. And so I wrap me in a pleasing form - at least I hope it so.
A man of water, steam and residue, I lounge beside him in the grass. My beard is cut, my cape set at a rake, a rapier at my side.
"How like you this today?" I ask my friend, hands on my hips so to display this self I have put on like a shift.
"I like it very much," and oh, his eyes on me are bright, and I must turn my head to hide the apples in my face! But I am river through and through, and know how to conceil my depths.
"How fairs the globe today, sir?"
"As the four loaded corners," laughs the brown-eyed poet, "for sir, I feel I've born him on my back from the age of Solon to this present time of clay."
"What plays today?"
"My Midsummer," he smiles, and he is like to summer as my banks are like to push up reeds. "And though you cry your modesty, dear friend, I've you to thank. Nay, do not stop your ears," he laughs and taps my shoulder. "Temporal man may not wait on the fairy folk and tell the tale without immortal help."
"Will, Will," I laugh.
"Will me, nill me, I would not know but midwives' tales of Oberon and Puck did you not cup my ear and sing the lay of Aphrodite's favorite bloom and Titania's madness."
"Speak of it not," I tell him cautiously. If the fairies of the air and storm knew of this trespass - I shudder but to think. "Tell me, good Will, what do you come about today? What is't, Will? What is the matter."
"Why but the matter," my friend replies, eyes casting down like stones. "The argument," he taps his balding pate, "is here, and yet confused."
"The lark's awing, the fish are in the flood, and still you cannot wax?"
"Aye, there's the rub," he sighs and grabs his pen. "Look you, each night I take up quill and ink when the wick points like a spire; each night it burns before I've writ a word."
"And so will Argues with his argument?"
"Indeed, 'tis so," he sighs a drop of blood.
"Then Will must tell his friend what is the matter," I say at length. "What whips Will's conscience so that he may not find words inside his light?"
"Nothing but love, love, Oh dear Genius, love!" the poet sighs again. I tremble in my lines.
"Oh. This thing unseats you."
"Marry, sir!" He grabs my hand and wrings it so I fear it will be water soon again. "Is it not thing enough?"
"Will, you're hurting me."
He releases and says sorries to the grass, and from toe to temple I am torn.
"Who is it that Will loves could bind his hands and empty out his parchment."
"Rosalind, oh Rosalind," he smiles. "Know you that I'm beguiled by two red lips, charmed in a lover's lock and wrapped inside a coil nonpareil!"
"By Rosalind? Who is this Rosalind?" I feel the waters burn inside my form. If he reveals her, I will seek her out, and -
"Why, sir, she's to be played a fortnight hence, and still I have no argument, no play, and no boy for to play her!" He throws himself up on the grass and moans into the sky.
"I see no remedy but Beaumont now. Or Webster, Marlowe. I can not write the part."
Oh. His Rosalind's a fiction. Naming myself a jealous, spiteful fool for hating a girl of stuff and dreams, I lie beside him, spreading in the grass sure as the hussif's bathwater. "And yet, you said 'twas there inside your skull. Tell me what you know of this new play, and I will help you write it."
"There is a forest," William says at length.
"Forests I know. What more?"
"There is a youth, Orlando," the poet's face is lined. "Forced by a brother fell and bitter as the winds to flee his father's land but for the peculiarity of nations."
"Aye, say on." I wonder that he does not notice as I spread close.
"There is a maid - that's Rosalind - force to escape her courtly home by her tyrant uncle. In the Forest of Arden -"
"I know the place and well!"
"Nay, you know it not, you rogue, for it is a thing conjured out of air!" he slaps me on the side and then returns to his sky-scrying. "In this place, must my two lovers meet, but river, O! What chance is here? For she must go disguised as a page but to bury her treasure."
At his wink, I laugh. "But verily, I have them at the trees, and she disguised may never speak to him, and thereby hangs the burthen on my back that threats to crush me, for sir, I am no Atlas. I must have action, or there is no play. And if no play -" his hands slice the air.
Thin as a veil 'tis, but here I see a chance. Alas, if I am careless, he will fly like the swan before the careless schoolboy's stones.
"River?" he asks, his hands now pressed in mine.
"Do not speak," I use these false-formed lips to buss his knuckles. He looks on, amazed. "If I were Rosalind, and you the youth, and I did pant for love of you - "
"Go on," he gasps, lips red and wet as mackerels.
"Disguised to world and self, I would put on another visage still. A page to world and self and you, myself would play the maid and school you, rule you." I bring my lips close and water trembles on them. "You would learn from me, this ganymede, ten thousand charms, ten thousand snares, ten thousand ways to catch and love a maid."
It's as if thunder strikes him where he stands.
When he throws his arms about my neck, I don't know what to do.
When he threads his fingers through my hair, I don't know what to say.
And when he pecks me once upon the brow, I do not know how I maintain my form.
"Now by the oaths of St. Genesius, and by his mask and drape, you are a genius, Genius." He laughs and kisses me so hard, my knees shake into water. "I'll to it now," he cries, grabbing his things. "Oh, but you've saved us all again, sir!"
"'Tis no trouble, none," I protest. But he grips and wrings my hands so hard I cry.
"I say you've saved us!"
"Saved is a heavy thing, my Will."
"And so is hunger, and I do confess upon my knee to you and to high heaven, you have pulled the quarto from the fire and blessed my hands anew." He tells me all he sees as I reform my too-wrought hands; Orlando's tutelage, Oliver's repentance, the lions and the lovers and the gods, and Jacques' malcontent that burns bright and hard as diamonds in a stream.
I lose my voice and will when he is done, for he's afire and such a thing of light that I would kiss him twice, ten, a thousand times.
"Dear William?"
"Name a thing," he pleads. "Name one, and I will grant it."
"And I do - "
And if I do. Ask him to love me, here upon this bank, naked to the sun? Uncoil my isle-encompasing tail and carry him beneath, lie him upon a bank of moss and kiss his lights free of the shining world?
I am not Rosalind, and even if he charted out my course and carved it on a thousand trees, he would not be Orlando. And even if he were, I am no Ganymede; my body would melt from me with my clothes, and show me for the dread of God and men. A serpent great and terrible to see, long in tooth in aspect dark and wild.
"What, river, should I do?"
I press his hands so tight I may press through him. "But remember me, when someday you write of the Rubicon."
He looks as if his lips might stir again, but then he smiles.
"I shall, for by my troth, you are a noble river."
I watch him as he ambles down the path. I watch him 'til he's gone. It's only then I sink into my home and take my shape. Alone along the bottom, I lie down. Along the base I curl my tail about myself until I am a coil of tooth and scale. Here, alone, I watch the light upon my skin. It shows me sun and sky. It shows me Londontown. And across the river of my body, wide as earth, it shows me the great Globe, and yet. And yet. It will not show me that which I would see.
I watch the sky until the stars pop out.
I watch until the dawn.
©JoSelle Vanderhooft
JoSelle Vanderhooft graduated from the University of Utah in 2004 and has been roaming around the United States ever since. Her first poetry collection 10,000 Several Doors will be released in July 2005 from Cat's Eye Publishing, and she is currently editing an anthology of lesbian-themed fairytales for Torquere Press. Additional poetic works can be found online at the Full Moon Review (fullmoonlm.bravehost.com), in upcoming issues of Star*LineMagazine and in the forthcoming magazine Jabberwocky. She has had several stories published in RE.