Titans of Chaos

"My father is Vainamoinen, who was an old man before he was born, spending seven hundred andthirty years in his mother's womb. The Greeks called him Proteus, the First, the Old Man of theSea. The blind old women I remember are my three mothers, the Graeae, the Gray Sisters,white-haired hags from birth. They had but one eye and one tooth between them, which they hadto pass back and forth: Only one at a time could see, or could chew."

He paused and wiped his eyes, perhaps in weariness, perhaps to brush away a tear. "I wassupposed to help them. My mothers, I mean. To lead one around by the hand, when it wasn't herturn to use the eye; to moisten bread in wine for another to gnaw, when it wasn't her turn to usethe tooth. My mothers were not godlike beings, not Titans, but cripples. Handicapped, I mean."

Victor said, "Did they also share one, um... I mean, how were you born from three women?

Physically, how was it done?"

Quentin scowled. "I assume I was born in sections and joined. Plato speaks of the three parts ofthe soul: the reason, the passions, the appetites. Certainly I feel always as if my conscience, mybody, and my spirit are at odds, born of different mothers, as if I am pulled on a rack betweenopposites. I thought every man felt this way, like a fallen creature who dimly remembers he shouldbe better."

Victor said, "I don't feel the way Quentin describes. One conforms one's actions to logic. Thereare no other alternatives."

Colin belched loudly, and said, "I don't feel that way, either. Should be better? If anything, I feellike I should be worse. You know, a drunk or something. A guy who gets in fights. To live up to myIrish heritage."

I said, "That is such a stereotype!"

He shrugged. "I'm allowed, that I am. They're my people, after all. Faith and begorra!"

"But you're not really Irish. You've never set foot in Ireland."

"Lassie," he said expansively, "put a stout pint o' bitter in me good right hand, and a stout stickin me left, and put an orange Ulsterman before me, stout or not, and by Saint Patty, you'll seewhat a good son of Eire I am, and how many heads I can break, drunk or sober."

Vanity said, "None of you are Irish or Welsh or English or anything. Even I am not British. I'mGreek or Albanian or something. From Corcyra. You are not human beings."