Odysseus: The Return

10

I do not know how long I spent at the mercy of the waves and the wind, how many blinding bolts struck the sea around me. I was enveloped in terror and burning anguish, knowing that I had lost all my comrades. I had watched as my perfect ship, in splinters, sank into the abyss. There was nothing around me but darkness. My salt-scorched eyes could no longer distinguish anything but masses of water surging over me, one after another, with roaring crashes. Water was everywhere outside and inside me: it penetrated into my mouth and nostrils, it cut off my breath. I was sure at every moment that I was drowning and that, sucked into the sea’s deep gyres, I was on my way to joining my shipmates in the abyss.

All at once, I saw a piece of the ship’s keel beam surfacing near me and I tied it to the mast with one of the leather stays still attached to it. Then I hoisted myself up onto that unexpected refuge and hung on to it with all my strength. I would not give up, would not surrender to the cruel blue god, my ruthless enemy. He’d have to come out of the sea himself to get me.

Perhaps the god heard my challenge because I soon realized that the current was heading towards the narrows where I had lost six of my men and this time it was dragging me into the whirlpool. This certainly meant the end for me. The fast current caught the mast and the beam that I still rode, clinging to them for dear life, and began spinning me faster and faster, closer and closer to the centre of the vortex. The water pulled at me with such force and speed that I could see all the way down to the black sand of the sea bottom. At any moment I would be dashed into the maelstrom and would become, after all my struggles, food for the fish.

And yet, as I was about to close my eyes and prepare for the end, I spotted a branch, belonging to an age-old fig tree, that was stretching out over the whirlpool. Just as the abyss was about to suck me into its depths, I rose to my feet on the keel beam and made a leap. I managed to catch the branch. It cracked. I grabbed the one next to it, obstinate in my unwillingness to leave this life. From there I tried to heave myself up onto a bigger branch but my muscles were cramping and my strength was going. I looked beneath me to see that the whirlpool had closed up. The water reversed its current and the keel beam of my ship was spat to the surface. I let myself drop and swam with desperate force until I could grab the mast and the stay of entwined leather. I pulled myself up until I was sitting astride it and seized the broken fig-tree branch that had fallen with me, using it as an oar, following the current that now, since its direction had reversed, was pushing me into the open sea.

Every time the sea let me catch my breath I cried out for help. I shouted to men, to gods, to monsters. I don’t know why but I still hoped that my goddess could make out my voice in the din of the tempest; that she would hear me and that the heart in her chest would be moved to help me.

Finally, after days and nights, a ray of sun broke through the clouds.

All around me the sea extended all the way to the horizon. Infinite, smooth. I saw nothing but water, and the wind, once again, was driving me away from my home. I don’t know how I managed to keep on top of the mast. I was cold, hungry, thirsty, there was not a muscle in my body that wasn’t hurting, but I was sitting on a piece of the ship which had faced so many dangers with me, soaked with the sweat of my comrades. I would die before I left her.

The current and the wind took over and pushed me on day after day. I was caked with salt and I couldn’t even keep my eyes open any more. The sun burned my back and my shoulders and covered them with blisters. I was skin and bones. I was sure that my time had come. I was about to die. The blue god had spared me only so he could inflict a slower and more painful death. I began to let myself go.

When I opened my eyes it was dark. I thought I was in Hades but my hands were touching sand and pebbles, my nostrils smelled the fragrance of earth.

I sat and then struggled to get to my feet. I was barely able to stand. I turned my back to the sea and could not believe what I was seeing: lush plants laden with ripe fruit, fruits that I’d never seen in my whole life. I ate and drank until I was no longer thirsty or hungry. Then I collapsed, exhausted, and fell into a deep sleep.

The rays of the sun woke me. The reflections of the water were dancing on the leaves of the trees looming over my head. A brightly feathered bird looked over curiously as he hopped along the shore, a glossy green serpent slipped slowly down the rough bark of a centuries-old tree. Where was I? In a place inhabited by men who eat bread or in a lawless, uncultivated land without villages or cities?

The sea lapped at my feet with a long, warm caress. That same dreadful, thousand-souled monster, ruthless and frothing, that had broken my ship and killed all my comrades.

The memory of them surged into my mind, their faces, their hands grasping the handles of their oars or their spears, men of infinite resources, valiant warriors, bold sailors, tireless. I had taken six hundred of them with me on twelve ships when I was leaving Troy and I would never bring a single one of them back home with me, if I ever returned myself. I would have no booty to divide up among the families who had lost their sons. I had nothing to offer to their memory. All I could do was shout out their names. I called out to them in a powerful voice so they could hear me all the way in the dark house of Hades, then I pushed the keel beam tied to its mast out to sea, my only gift for the men snatched away by the storm. I watched for a long time as it drifted away.

I built myself a shelter for the night using the knife that was still buckled to my belt, an excellent bronze blade crafted by a smith of Corinth for my father. I cut the trunks of young trees and made stakes to drive into the ground, and I used palm branches to make a roof. I even made a small door so that wild animals could not enter while I slept.

The next day I set out to learn what I could about this place, walking along the coastline so I would never lose sight of the sea. When darkness overtook me, I spent the night in the shelter of a rock with my knife at my side, ready to jump to my feet if I had to. Years of war had taught me to feel the slightest movement of the air. I saw nothing recognizable about that place — it was the same sensation I’d had on Circe’s island and in the land of the cyclopes. The sea, I guessed, had carried me far, far west, perhaps not far from the point where it mixes with the waters of the river Ocean.

I walked on for many hours but my exploration was still not complete. I stopped to light a fire and to eat some of the numerous birds’ eggs I’d found at the edge of the forest. I was getting stronger, but with every step I took one thing became clear to me: I would never get over the loss of all my men. No joy, perhaps not even embracing Penelope and Telemachus, could ease the distress I felt, that deep sorrow that still pains me today. The words of Laertes would never leave me: ‘A king is the father of his people.’

The next day I crossed the northernmost area, where I found wild rabbits and tubers, along with fruits and nuts of different kinds that I’d never seen before. I wouldn’t die of hunger. I would cut myself a fishing pole, and make a line by braiding my own hair. The curved thorns of a plant I’d found with beautiful yellow flowers could be used as hooks. I would craft a bow for hunting from a pliant branch. Plant fibres could be stripped and twisted to fashion a bowstring and I could make arrows by sharpening the slim, hard reeds that grew on the shore with my knife. I spent the second night and the third in makeshift shelters: caves and crevices that I happened across. I never saw a hut or any object crafted by human hands, I never met a woman or a man. Nonetheless, every now and then, I sensed an invisible presence as if someone were watching me. It wasn’t my goddess, surely. I didn’t get that sensation of a chill that made me shiver.

How would I be able to build a boat so I could set out to sea again? Certainly not with my knife alone. I needed something more like an axe or a saw. Difficult, but not impossible. The only thing I wasn’t lacking was time.

At the end of my journey, as the sun was setting on the fourth day, I ran across the shack I’d made. In my heart I had hoped that that would never happen. I’d hoped that I was on part of a larger land mass, not a prison surrounded by the sea. I had met no one on my travels and had seen no trace of a human presence, but I wasn’t ready to give up and I decided I would go inland to see if there were any inhabitants to be found. In the following days I scoured the island from different directions. I saw no trails that had not been made by animals, no villages, no buildings of any kind. Not a human footprint.

I was alone.

That had never happened to me before, in my whole life. Those days taught me that it is better to face dangers, worries, even suffering, while surrounded by friends and comrades, than accept the inertia and tedium of complete solitude. At that point, I had no one but myself to count on, on my strength and on my wits. I would have to find a way to build a boat, load it with food and drinking water and then wait for a westerly wind to take me home. It was said that the blue god would go off to the land of the dark faces when the weather worsened in our lands and on our seas. I would have to decide which was the greater danger, taking to the sea alone or risking Poseidon’s wrath once again.

Perhaps fortune, or Fate, or my goddess, would guide a ship to the island where I found myself. . I would ask to be taken on board, I could offer water to drink, food and nourishing plants in exchange. But I’d never sighted another ship since I had crossed the wall of fog — I’d only ever seen the ghost of one and I wasn’t even sure of that. In any case, I would not sit and wait, I know what it means to have no one to talk to. One way or another, I’d go to sea.

Some time later, returning to my shelter after having visited the last unexplored part of the island, I found the shack almost destroyed. The palm branches were scattered everywhere, only the bare stakes remained. And yet there had been no strong wind or other signs of a storm. The weather was fine, it always was; the sun shone but it didn’t burn. It had only rained once, at night. I’d listened to the raindrops pattering on the palm leaves, but I hadn’t got wet at all. As I was falling asleep I felt like I was in my own bed among the olive branches with Penelope, under the covers smelling of sweet lavender, listening to the rain on the roof.

It must have been some animal.

I rebuilt my little house, tying the branches to the stakes more securely and fixing the stakes to poles which I drove deeper into the ground. Then I turned my attention to making a bow and some arrows, along with a rough quiver made of wicker, and a bag to wear on my shoulder, fashioned from braided palm leaves. I was ready to go hunting and I set out for my first foray, which lasted a whole day. I returned that evening with a rabbit, one of those birds with the garish feathers and long tails, and three stork’s eggs. They could have been the makings of a small banquet, but I had no wine, no bread, no olive oil, nor anyone with whom to exchange a word.

Hard not to cry.

I don’t know why, but I had taken to counting the days I spent on the island by making cuts in the bark of a wild fig tree. A milky fluid seeped out, and after a day or two, a small scar was formed: one, two, three, four. . Fifty-three.

I was getting used to being alone. Sometimes, when the sea was rough, I went up on a rocky promontory and shouted to be heard over the crashing of the breakers; other times I ran along the beach and scared seabirds into flight. I’d made myself a sling and I’d learned to use it well. I had plenty of time to practise. When the sea was flat, I tossed white stones on the surface of the water, counted the skips and calculated the distance. None of those activities amused me or gave me pleasure, but they quietened my incessant brooding and shut out the thousands of images of my past life. The sounds, the screams, the clamour, the rustling. The whispers. A mortal silence would descend into my heart, while everything around me was alive and had a voice, noise, music, colour, light.

Days afterward, I discovered that the little shack I’d built had been wrecked again. But this time. . there were footprints on the sandy soil. Why now and not then? What I saw upset me and countless thoughts went through my mind. I followed the prints: they were small and quite distinct, left by the bare feet of a boy or a young woman. They vanished when they got to the smooth, sparkling beach. When I lifted my eyes, I saw a figure sitting on a flat black stone that emerged from the sea where the waves died out. But all I could see was a black silhouette against the light of the sun.

I approached slowly, a hand on the hilt of my knife.

A woman. A marvellous beauty, golden hair, eyes the colour of the sea. The veil that covered her was liquid as water, shiny as the sun.

‘Why are you destroying my house? I have no other shelter.’

‘Don’t you want to know who I am?’ Her voice was like a girl’s, fresh and silvery.

‘No mortal woman could find herself in a place like this, alone on a wild island at the ends of the earth, looking as perfect as a flower in its first bloom.’

‘You know how to recognize a goddess, then.’

‘How long have you been watching me?’

‘Since you arrived.’

‘Why, wanaxa, have you not appeared to me before?’

She smiled. ‘When you got here you were horrible to look at, thin and dirty. I waited until you had your strength back and I could see whether you were handsome or not.’

‘What about you? Are you what I see or is it a trick?’

‘I’ve chosen this semblance to be pleasing to you. I’ll be thus for as long as you’re with me.’

‘I beg you, wanaxa of this land, don’t mock me, for I have suffered long and hard, on land and at sea.’ I did not tell her that a powerful god was persecuting me — she didn’t need a new reason to reject me.

‘I am Calypso, daughter of Atlas, and I inherited this island from my father. And you are Odysseus, king of Ithaca, destroyer of cities. Your fame has reached this remote land.’

She descended from the gleaming black stone and walked towards me. The waves that were ebbing and flowing wet the hem of her gown. She took me by the hand and led me to a place I had never seen, although I was sure I’d explored every part of the island.

It was a cave in a small promontory jutting into the sea. Above the cave grew plants of all kinds, many of them blossoming in yellow, pink, white and bright-red flowers. The branches cascaded down all around the entrance.

‘This is my house,’ she said.

‘This is a trick,’ I replied. ‘It wasn’t here before. I covered every bit of this island and I never saw it.’

‘It’s always been here. It’s you who didn’t see it.’

I didn’t want to contradict her. It’s not good to contradict someone much more powerful than you.

She stepped in front of me and entered first. I followed her and was taken aback by the wonder of what I saw. The bottom was covered with dry sand, the rock walls shone with shades of red and ochre. A strange light fluttered all around, dancing on the walls. There was a little pool to one side with water so clear I didn’t notice it until it rippled as I walked by. The rock ceiling was studded with large quartz crystals that reflected the light in myriad ways and colours. At the centre, close to the pool, a square boulder rose out of the sand. It served as a table, with wicker chairs placed around it.

‘I see you receive guests,’ I said.

‘Never. It’s only to give me the illusion that I’m not always alone here.’

I thought of Circe. What destiny had befallen these perfect, incomprehensible, immortal beings? I thought for a moment that they must be the last denizens of an ancient race that was dying or perhaps the first of a new race that hadn’t yet formed.

‘Is that why you brought me here? Because you want someone to keep you company when you sit down to dinner?’

She smiled and continued to the far end of the cave. There she showed me her bedchamber. A bed of flowers. Resting there must be like lying down in a spring meadow, I thought. She took off her gown of water and sun and lay upon the flowers. I took off what was left of my own clothing and lay down next to her. At first Calypso was tender, so delicate that I could barely feel the touch of her hands, but then she became stronger, voracious. Her embrace was so fiery that I didn’t think I could bear it. But how to slip free from the embrace of a goddess? When I entered her, penetrated her womb, I felt like I was dying, being devoured, sucked of every sap of life. I felt I’d lost my words and my sight. I’d become a part of her. I had no mind or thought, I was delirium itself. In her I melted like snow in the rays of the sun. I could not perceive the confines of my body, couldn’t hear the beating of my heart. Then everything vanished.

That act of love was an act of annihilation. I understood now why Circe had wanted me in her bed instantly, and how my refusal had saved me from total slavery. But here I hadn’t happened upon that youth with the sun in his hair who gave me a warning and a magical herb to make me invincible. Here I had melted, like metal in the crucible, in the embrace of Calypso, the goddess hiding on the island at the ends of the earth.

From then on I became a single thing with her. I don’t know if it was love or what it was. I only know that the attraction between us was so strong, so intense, that it verged on violence. For years she was my only desire, my only obsession; and I was that for her. I had been transformed: never had I been so strong, so acute in perceiving what was happening around me. The air I breathed, the smell of the island — the flowers, the sea, the grass, the sand, the forest — was the scent of her. She was the island and the sky above it and the sea that embraced it. The entire island was our alcove and only sometimes did we make love in the cave, on the bed of flowers. Wherever desire seized us, the island was our bed, a drape of soft linen beneath us.

And yet I had not forgotten Penelope.

Often, when the moon rose, even while the goddess, my mistress, squeezed me between her ivory thighs, my heart escaped my panting mouth and cried out to my distant bride. When, exhausted, I would collapse onto the sand like a castaway and Calypso, naked and lunar, left me there, I would weep silent tears, turning my head towards the shadow of the night.

At times she would disappear, without a word, without a reason, vanishing like fog when the sun rises, and I would go mad. I’d search for her everywhere, run down the beach, across the forest, through the stream, shouting her name like a lunatic. When that happened I would curl up in my old shelter at night. I didn’t dare search for the entrance to her cave, for I knew that I would never find it, no matter how hard I looked.

My heart turned to stone, my eyes burned, the sky and the sea grew red. The birds cawed out horrible shrieking songs.

Then, as she had gone, she reappeared. Sitting on the same smooth stone where I’d first seen her, or strolling along the stream picking flowers, or taking a small flock of sheep to pasture, dressed as a shepherdess. She would give me a look and I was enslaved again. But as time passed, as dilated and immeasurable as time had become for me, I found a way to make her understand that there was part of me that she would never be able to conquer, a part of my heart defended by a bronze wall. A part of my heart that would never let her in. I was sitting on a reef in the middle of the sea. I had swum there and I was waiting for the moon to rise from the waves. She appeared suddenly, walking on the water.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘What are you thinking about?’

‘Of my wife. My son. The friends I lost, those who are buried in faraway Asia and those who sleep on the bottom of the sea.’

She seemed not to understand my words and not even my thoughts. They were foreign to her nature, such feelings.

‘Forget them,’ was her answer. ‘If you saw them again you’d be disappointed. You’ve built up images in your head that aren’t true. Your wife is no longer the seventeen-year-old you left. The long wait has sapped her. Her tears have lined that lovely face, wrinkled the eyes and the mouth that once set your senses on fire. Your son is no longer that soft, babbling infant that aroused such tenderness in you — you wouldn’t even recognize him if you saw him. And as far as your comrades go, they can no longer see you or hear you. They have turned to ash, or the fish have feasted on their soft flesh; there’s nothing left but bones, nothing left to recognize. Forget them as well. What are these memories good for?’

‘For nothing. That’s why I need them, why I hold them so dear to my heart. For you life has no value; it has no limits, no start or finish. Nothing can affect you, nothing can change you. I know that my own life will end, sooner or later, and that’s why I love every instant of it, every puff of wind, twitter of a bird, whiff of a wild rose. Every dawn and every sunset are different, each wondrous and stupefying to behold. That’s why I want to see my son again. Even if he were awkward and ugly, he would be no less dear to my heart. You see, I begot him loving his mother when she was in the splendour of her youth, a moment as fleeting as it is precious.

‘I want to see my father, who lives alone, stripped of his dignity. He was Laertes the hero, shining warrior, powerful king, and now sad old age grips him and he has no one to care for him. Why do I long to see a hoary old forsaken man? Because I’m his son and I have his blood in my veins, and it is to him that I owe this life, with all its horrors and wonders, its sorrows and its crazy joys. He inspired me with the insatiable desire to see things for myself, to love and to hate and to dream, and to seek out the distant lands that lie beyond every horizon. I long to see my mother as well but I can’t — she’s dead.’

‘How do you know that? Mortals aren’t allowed to know such things.’

‘Because I called up her shade, and many others, from Hades. I travelled to a desolate place beneath the white cliff on the shores of the river Ocean that encircles the earth and there I found them. I tried to embrace her, in vain. My arms returned empty to my chest. I wept many tears.’

Calypso was gone then, following the silver wake that the moon cast on the sea. Her transparent veils fluttered in the breeze.

Now and then, as the days became shorter and the wind of Boreas descended shrieking all the way to our blissful island, she would take me with her inside the cave, where there was always an abundance of food and wine. She had me lie next to her in the bed that changed with the changing seasons: it was big now, and soft, with warm covers of purple wool. We clung to one another, watched as the surf crashed at the mouth of the chamber and listened as the rain beat down on the rock that covered the entrance, filling the crags with puddles and soaking the sand. Her lips were tender, her skin warm, her breasts soft against my chest. At times like those an infinite sweetness surged in my heart, sad memories vanished and so did my longing for distant Ithaca. Only the present counted. That was how a god lived: there was no past, no future, just an infinite, continuous present, like a sky that is always clear, a sea always calm, rippled only by tiny whispering waves.

‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that the weather was always fine here; that it could only rain at night to nourish the earth and to water the thirsty plants and trees.’

‘That is so,’ replied Calypso, ‘but I know that you mortals also need the storm, the raging sea, the screaming wind. It’s only thus that you appreciate clear skies and a soft breeze.’

‘So it’s you moving the waves? Raising spray to the heavens and dashing the breakers against the cliffs?’

She smiled. ‘It’s not difficult for one like me. But Poseidon, the blue god, can do much more. He could uproot the entire island with a single blow of his trident, if he chose to.’

‘Does he know I’m here?’

‘Certainly, and he knows about you and me. Many creatures see us and we cannot know who they are. Not even I can. He gets his news from them whenever and wherever he wants.’

‘Poseidon. . is my implacable enemy. Aren’t you afraid he’ll take out his anger on you? It wouldn’t be the first time.’

A bolt of lightning sent a blue flash into the cave and into her eyes; they were closed. ‘For now he’s content to know that you are a prisoner here in my arms. He knows you have no way of crossing the sea.’ Thunder exploded.

‘Why don’t you kill me and bring an end to all this?’ But even as I spoke, I thought with terror of the blind, eternally wretched world of Hades.

‘Because that’s not what’s destined. Even we have to obey Fate.’

Whenever she was near me, I watched the light in her eyes and the expression of her face closely, looking for signs of feeling, for a skip in the beat of her heart. Had I truly been given the fortune of living with an immortal goddess? Would it feel this way to be close to Athena? Would she have the same unchanging scent, the same silvery lilt to her voice, the same perfect skin?

One night, while she was sleeping, I lay my ear on her chest, between those magnificent breasts. I wanted to hear the voice of her heart. It was deep and powerful as the thunder that rumbled over the distant mountains, yet her breath was like the breeze on a spring night and smelled like violets. When I lifted my head I saw that her eyes were open and looking at me.

‘What makes you different from me?’ I said. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

‘If I have a heart like yours? What runs through my veins? If I could live without breathing or without sleeping? Is that what you mortals want to know about us?’

I did not answer. I felt confused, sad, discouraged.

‘We’re very similar to you. We have everything that you’d like to have but can’t. I can’t tell you any more than that; it’s not allowed. Perhaps the sirens would have told you had you asked them, but they told you other things instead, didn’t they?’

I nodded. Other things.

‘The only way to understand is to become one of us. Only then will you know. I have this power. I can give you immortality, stop your time, now. Think about it. I would like to live with you forever and ever. .’

I don’t remember when all this happened. Whether months or years passed between one night and another; whether I became older in all that time or if my limbs grew stronger and more flexible. I know that my heart became heavier and heavier as the scars multiplied on the trunk of the wild fig tree.

Then, one day, I saw her sitting alone inside the cave. A beam of light caught her in its glow and an orichalch pitcher beamed like a star on the little table in front of her. I turned to the sea because I thought I’d heard the beating of powerful wings. When I looked back at Calypso, sitting at the opposite side of the table was the youth with the sun in his hair; he had appeared out of nowhere.