Notes on Chapter 36 of “Till We Have Cases”

First of all: It’s been four years since this fic updated.

That was…really NOT how things were supposed to go. And I’m so sorry to have kept everybody waiting so long.

The combination of circumstances that led to this very UN-Great Hiatus would, at the end of the day, just wind up sounding like a litany of Inexplicable Weird Shit: life stuff, family stuff, Real World stuff, all conspiring to keep me away. But at last everything quieted down enough for me to start getting back to grips with this work. (And to overcome the awful guilt for it having taken so long.)

Lest anyone wonder if the coronavirus situation contributed to this improvement in local circumstances, in terms of making more time for writing: I only wish. Paradoxically, real-life stuff surrounding the ‘Rona has conspired to make life more busy for me, not less. Yet here we are, and here is chapter 36 for you: 22.5K words, the WP program says.

(Please also note that there’s been a slight change in chapter numbers and numberings. There will now be 49 chapters and an afterword.)

And what comes next?

Well, first of all, I have no idea when the next update will occur except “soon” – later in July 2020, I hope. What I most need people to know at the moment is that (a) I have no intention of abandoning this fic – I have approximately another 80K of it complete already, from ch. 37 through to the end – and (b) that I’ll do my best to be more frequent about updates, a LOT more frequent in view of recent history, despite the depredations of the coronavirus and everything else that’s been going on nationally and internationally. This piece of work is very dear to me, and I’m as eager to see the ins and outs of how it all comes out as I assume a lot of its other readers are.

My endless gratitude goes out to those who have read it and kept reading it – what there was of it – despite its being a WIP and despite it having languished so long with no sign of continued activity. I treasure your fidelity; you are my fixed points (as the man says) in a changing world. Thanks again, so much, for sparing this tale your time. I hope so much you enjoy what’s to come.

And now back to it.

…Finally, a note imported from the chapter 35 notes, for convenience’s sake:

Nepenthe: …Nothing whatsoever to do with Edgar Allen Poe (the major reference left to the word in English). νηπενθές is a compound word: νη / ne, “not”, and πενθές deriving from πένθος, penthos, “grief, sorrow, or mourning”. It is the world’s first substance specifically described as an antidepressant…but powerful well beyond anything known today.

The drug is first mentioned in Odyssey book 4 lines 220ff, when Helen puts it in the wine for herself, her husband and their visitors (Odysseus’s son Prince Telemachos and his friendly escort and fellow-prince, King Nestor’s son Peisistratos Nestoridês) after the conversation turns rather sad. The passage says:

Then the noble Helen had an idea. While seeing to the bowl where their wine was mixed, she put in a dose of nepenthe – a drug able to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow. Anyone who drank wine that had been so mixed would feel no sadness all that day: not even if his mother and father died, not even if someone killed his brother or his only son right in front of his eyes. That was just one of a number of marvelous drugs the Queen possessed, given her by Polydamna the daughter of Thon, an Egyptian woman. For in that country the fruitful Earth brings forth all kinds of medicinal plants, some helpful and some deadly. There every man is his own doctor, and there they’ve become skilled in the healing arts far beyond the ability of most mortals; for they have the blood of Paeion the Healer in them.

There has, as one might expect, been endless conjecture over what nepenthe actually was. Various writers and analysts have tried to identify it with hashish, opium, henbane, and even coffee, but no one has any realistic idea of what Homer was thinking about. The temptation to label it “100% plot device” is strong, but it doesn’t particularly drive the plot, so that doesn’t work either.

Hypermnestra’s mention of the plant eaten by the lotophagoi, the Lotus Eaters of the Odyssey, is interesting in that many mythology-oriented botanists and historians have spent a good while attempting to identify just what plant was growing on their island. (At least one source claims that the word lotos can be translated as “clover” and suggests that the lotophagoi were early vegetarians.)

At any rate, the description in the Odyssey makes it plain that the Lotus Eaters’ plant was at the very least immediately psychoactive and intensely addictive. It has occasionally been associated with the eastern “blue” lotus, Nelumbo nucifera, as well as the Egyptian blue water lily, Nymphaea caerulea. While both have mystical associations, neither seems to be pharmacologically active, though some sources claim N. caerulea was used in Egypt for shamanistic inductions.