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  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6616",
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  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 6616,
    "subject": "Short Story 89: The Nebraskan and the Nereid",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2014-08-12T18:06:38+00:00",
    "last": "2014-08-12T18:06:38+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<CAF1072wYKJgCTJkshpkDMhr5We=TLGxJjN+jNXCJ5_GDCX-ZCQ@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Marc Aramini",
        "address": "marcaramini at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2014-08-12T18:06:38+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth)  Short Story 89: The Nebraskan and the Nereid",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
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          "text": "The Nebraskan and the Nereid\n\n“The Nebraskan and the Nereid” first appeared in *Isaac Asimov’s Science\nFiction Magazine* in 1985. It is collected in *Endangered Species*.\n\nSUMMARY: The Nebraskan, Dr. Sam Cooper, is a university employed folklorist\nvisiting the Saronikos Kolpos in Greece.  On the coast, he catches a\nglimpse of a naked woman before she disappears into the Sea. He quotes\nKeat’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” and imagines himself as\n“Stout Cortez” and describing his adventure in the faculty lounge when he\nreturns.  He sees a tall, angular woman approaching him who calls herself\nDr. Thoe Papamarkos, an archeologist from the University of Athens, who\ngreets him with a regal gesture.\n\nShe says she is looking for Saros (see the discussion of the concept of\nSaros and King Saron below), a city ancient in the time of even Pericles\nand Plato. She thinks they should know and possibly assist one another as\nwell.  He identifies her as “an old maid school teacher” and reveals that\nhe is tracing the history of the Nereids.  He denies their reality, and she\nsays that she seeks out the temple of Poseidon, and adds that the mermaids\nor sea fairies were the ladies of his court.\n\n She says, “You do not want a drink of my water, I hope.  ? I have a nose\ndisease. — I must take my medicine to breathe, and my medicine makes me\nthirsty. — Do you wish for some?”\n\nDr. Cooper reviews the types of mermaids in and expresses curiosity that\nonly the Nereid lingers in Modern Greek stories (which is accurate).  Dr.\nPapamarkos speculates that they might be the only kind left.\n\nHe returns to his inn, and “stopped its dumpy little maid of all work and\nmustered his uncertain Greek to ask her about Dr. Papamarkos”.  He wonders\nif the naked woman he saw earlier was Dr. Papamarkos, but determines the\nwoman had been “younger, smaller, and — um — rounder.”\n\nHe returns to the spot that he saw both Dr. Papamarkos and the naked girl,\nand sees a laughing face circled by dark floating hair.  After about ten\nminutes the doctor reappears, and she has an ancient Mycenaean cup\nencrusted with marine growths.  It represents a bearded man and a fish, and\non the back, beside a trident (no doubt psi) appears the letter pi, which\nDr. Papamarkos claims is for Poseidon. After the Nebraskan recognizes its\n“deft energy” despite its crudeness, Dr. Papamarkos says, “Sailors prayed\nto him, and captains.  Also to Nereus, the old sea-man who knew the future.\nNow it is to Saint Peter and Saint Mark.  But it is not so different,\nperhaps . The fish, the beard, they are still there.”\n\nThoe says that talking with him led her to think that perhaps the coast has\nchanged over time, and that the temple of Poseidon and the city of Saros\nwhich she sought had been submerged. She had “no diving equipment” but\nstill found it. She does not let him accompany her back to his camp, and he\nsays, “I’ve seen a Nereid, Thoe- or somebody’s trying to make me think I\nhave.”\n\nShe says it is a Greek girl fooling him, and encourages him, since he knows\nhow to swim well, to explore the caves with underwater entrances along the\ncoast.  She does tell him that “If you are truly a good swimmer, you know a\nswimmer must be wary.”\n\nOn his third attempt he enters the caves and finds a cave with air, and “as\nhe climbed from the water, two small arms encircled him.”  They make love,\nand she sings a lullaby about a child safe in a rocking boat to him.\n\nWhen he goes to the inn, he thinks of a song about a mermaid losing her\nmorals down among the corals and is upset that his bed hasn’t been made and\ncomplains to the innkeeper.  The next morning he finds a body in the sand\nand recognizes her as his mermaid from the cave.\n\nDr. Papamarkos arrives and says, “She was the maid at your inn — She loved\nyou.  Perhaps you do not think it possible. — I promised to help her if I\ncould.  This is all the help I can give her now, to make you understand\nthat once you were loved.  When you record love stories from the lips of\nold people, remember it.” She instructs him to go tell the innkeepers that\nhe has found the body, but knowing that his Greek his insufficient he\nreturns to see Thoe undress and unbind her hair and dive into the sea,\nleaving a symbol beside the dead girl’s body traced in the wet sand: ?it\nmight have been a cross with upswept arms, or the Greek letter ?.  He\nsniffs the canteen Dr. Papamarkos left behind, and as he expected it is\nfilled with sea water.\n\nCOMMENTARY:\n\nThis story of the Nebraskan is dripping with irony — he is looking for a\nNereid, and finds one almost instantly, but thinks of her “an old-maid\nschool teacher”.  The naked woman whom he sees at the start and to whom he\nmakes love remains unidentifiable to him, as he notices only a “dumpy” maid\neven as he is thinking of her naked body as being rounder than that of Dr.\nPapamarkos. (We here have a maid pretending to be a mer-maid).\n\nHis interaction with the maid when she is not unclothed is to ask about the\nother woman and to complain to the management about his sheets being unmade\n(because she was too busy making love to him in the cave to make his bed).  He\nhas travelled all this way seeking stories of Nereids and cannot recognize\nanything as it truly is until he finally surmises that Thoe Papamarkos was\nhis real target all along.  He doesn’t even speculate as to the origin of\nThoe’s first name until the final scene, when he finally calls her by it,\nthough he is a folklorist.\n\nThoe seeks the city of Saros and the temple of Poseidon, as even to her, it\nis ancient history, and, if we take her at face value, talking about her\nown folklore caused her to truly think about what happened to the city. A\nsaros usually implies an 18 year cycle of lunar and solar eclipses in\nastronomy, but at one point it could also mean 3,600 years; a “sar” is an\nancient Mesopotamian measurement.  The early Mycenaean cup that Thoe finds\nwould probably be between 3,600 and 3,900 years old. The Saronic Gulf\n(Saronikos kolpos) is found along the eastern side of Corinth.  The origin\nof the name comes from King Saron, who drowned at the Psifaei lake.  This\ngulf was also reputed to be an entrance to the Underworld, and note the\nsomber warning that Thoe gives to Dr. Coooper when she suggests he explores\nthe cave — swimmers must be wary there.\n\nThere is some confusion over two symbols given for Poseidon, as Thoe\nscratches a psi into the ground beside the maid’s body. Insofar as pi is a\nsymbol of Poseidon as she first said when displaying the cup, it is only\none which indicates the first letter of his name: ????????. The later Psi\nthat Thoe actually leaves beside the body is the real symbol of Poseidon\nand later Neptune, and the trident mentioned as appearing next to the pi on\nthe cup is of course a stylized psi.\n\nPoseidon’s symbol is probably the best explanation for that psi, though the\nstory of King Saron involves his drowning at Psifaei Lake, and the\nWolfe-wiki speculates that psi is a symbol of Psamathe, the goddess of sand\nbeaches, but clearly the real association of the psi symbol is Poseidon,\nwith pi merely indicating the first letter of his name and not being a\n“true” symbol.\n\n(I rather fancy the reason for this is simple letter symbolism: the pi\nsymbol is an approximation of Poseidon but does not contain his essence, as\nthe maid at the inn only parades as a mermaid, while the real Nereid knows\nthe true symbol of power, the psi, and is genuine). In other words, there\nare many ways to represent concepts such as Poseidon and his Nereids, some\nmore accurate than others.  The maid attempted to capture the imagination\nof the American visitor by putting on the symbolic allure of the mermaids\nand swimming in the sea naked, while Thoe hid her true form behind the\nimage of an aging university professor.\n\nThe syncretism between Poseidon and St Peter and St Mark is typical of\nWolfe’s work with mythology — a blending of myths over time, as if these\npowers represented something that was an intermediary between God and man\nor at the very least ultimately served a higher power as well, though they\nare “different” than humanity.\n\nThe name Thoe is of one of the Nereids from Greek myth, the daughters of\nNereus and Doris who accompany Poseidon, and they are especially associated\nwith the Aegean Sea.\n\nLITERARY AND OTHER HISTORICAL ALLUSIONS:\n\nSince Sam Cooper fancies himself as a discoverer of new things, he thinks\nof Schliemann, who discovered Troy and married a young Greek girl, and\nthinks of Keats? poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” — which is\nKeats? response to Chapman’s translation, much different and earthier than\nthe previous polished translations available.:\n\n                MUCH have I travell'd in the realms of gold,\n\n                And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;\n\n                Round many western islands have I been\n\nWhich bards in fealty to Apollo hold.\n\nOft of one wide expanse had I been told\n\n                That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne:\n\n                Yet did I never breathe its pure serene\n\nTill I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:\n\nThen felt I like some watcher of the skies\n\n                When a new planet swims into his ken;\n\nOr like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes\n\n                He stared at the Pacific and all his men\n\nLook'd at each other with a wild surmise?\n\n                Silent, upon a peak in Darien.\n\nIn the poem, the “new” translation of old familiar material strikes Keats\nwith all the sublimity and power of which art is capable.  Though he was\nfamiliar with Homer, he had never experienced it in such a fashion, and\nthis echoes the experience our Nebraskan is about to have — familiar with\nall the stories of mermaids, he cannot tell imitation from real until he\nactually lives through his entire experience, an explorer mute before what\nhe has seen — as Cortez at the coast of a new world.\n\nAfter the Nebraskan makes love to the maid, he remembers the song “Minnie\nthe Mermaid”, and here is one version:\n\nO, what a time I had with Minnie the Mermaid,\n\nDown at the bottom of the sea.\n\nDown amongst the corals where she lost her morals,\n\nMy, but she was good to me.\n\nOh, what a time I had with Minnie the Mermaid\n\nDown in her seaweed bungalow.\n\nAshes to ashes, dust to dust;\n\nTwo twin beds and only one of them mussed.\n\nOh, what a gal was my Minnie the Mermaid,\n\nDown at the bottom of the sea.\n\nThe ashes to ashes line is fascinating in light of the maid’s fate, but\nthere are many, many versions of this song, and one that even ends with her\nbeing “a personal friend” who “does my laundry”.\n\nHe thinks of Thoe at first as Miss Minerva from Frances Boyd Calhoun’s *Miss\nMinerva and William Green Hill*, a stuffy and proper aunt who insists upon\ncorrect usage in the midst of Southern dialect, or as the self important\ntutor from the comic strip “The Katzenjammer Kids”, a first impression\ncompletely at odds with her final mythical transformation.\n\nNAMES:\n\nThe name of Thoe is obvious in its reference to a mythical Nereid, and the\nmaid is unfortunately never named, for the Nebraskan never paid much\nattention to her.  The small city in which the inn is called Nemos (Nemo in\nLatin can mean “no one” — but we are in Greece).\n\nSam Cooper’s first name implies “God has heard” or “Name of God”, while\nCooper is an occupational name for those who repair barrels.  There seems\nto be little relationship between his name and his function in this story\nexcept that a barrel can contain water, and in this text he is most often\nreferred to as “the Nebraskan”.    Nebraska means “flat water”, so perhaps\nthis relates to his interest in water faeries in this story.\n\nUNANSWERED QUESTIONS:\n\nSince Sam sees the maid as “dumpy” and complains about her not fixing his\nbed even though he is the only guest, has he cost the maid her livelihood\nand prompted her suicide?  Has enough time passed between the morning he\ndiscovers her body and the time he complains to the innkeepers for her to\nlearn of his displeasure, or was she merely incautious in the strong\ncurrent, as Thoe warned against? The coast is reputed to be a mythological\nentrance to the Underworld. Suicide might be the more likely answer, in\nlight of how she might feel over his complaints about her service, failing\nto realize that he never recognized her.\n\nCONNECTION WITH OTHER WORKS:\n\nWolfe would write several other Nebraskan tales, and there is a very close\nrelationship with the more science fictional stories of Anderson in “The\nWoman Who Loved the Centaur Pholus” and its sequel, though Anderson seems a\nbit more perceptive and erudite than Dr. Cooper, especially in this opening\ntale.  The syncretism between paganism and Christianity mentioned by Thoe\nis quite prominent in Wolfe’s fantasy explorations and his novel series,\nand there is even talk of “little green men” in connection with mythology\nwhich links this story directly to the ubiquitous nature of the fey folk in\n“A Cabin on the Coast.”"
        }
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