Odysseus: The Return

21

I stripped off my rags and showed them that I was clad in bronze as well. I was no longer an old man, nor a beggar. I was the king of Ithaca and the beast that had grown inside me on the fields of Troy had been awakened.

Antinous was just bringing a cup full of wine to his mouth. I seized the quiver and dumped its contents onto the ground. Tens of bitter shafts bounced on the floor. I nocked one of them to my bowstring and let fly. It struck him at the base of his neck. He collapsed to the ground, blood spouting from his mouth and nose. He gave the table a kick and all the food rolled off on top of him, soaking up his blood.

The others were struck dumb. They turned to me incredulously, believing I’d made some kind of mistake. ‘What have you done, you villain?’ one cried out, and then another. ‘You’ve killed the strongest young hero in Ithaca. That’s your last try with the bow!’ ‘You’re dead, foreigner,’ came another voice. ‘We’ll chop you to pieces and feed you to the dogs and vultures!’

‘No!’ I cried out. ‘You’re wrong. The contest is over and now we’re going to start another game: shooting at live targets!’

They had still not recognized me. They were too young when I had left.

‘I’m your king!’ I shouted. ‘You thought I’d never return from the war. You’ve devoured all my wealth, you’ve plotted to murder my son, you’ve gone to bed with my slaves, you’ve threatened my wife. Dogs! You’re dead! All of you! I won’t stop until I’ve slaughtered every last one of you.’

Instinct drove them to the walls where the arms had always hung, but they found only the shadows of weapons. Green terror gripped them.

Eurymachus, the most fast-thinking among them, turned to me, drawing closer: there he was, on my arrow’s path. What should I hit? His neck, his breastbone, his liver?

‘Stop! Wait! If you are truly Odysseus, listen to my words. We didn’t think it possible for you to return after twenty years. No one could have imagined it.’ His hands were open, held out in front of him as if to protect himself. He wanted to make me take the time to reflect. ‘We insulted you, humiliated you, I can’t deny it, but we didn’t know it was you! You looked like another. We would never have acted thus had we known, you must believe me. .’

The bastard was clever — he could talk.

‘It was Antinous who thought all this up, who convinced the rest of us. We’ll pay you back, we’ll make reparation for everything we’ve consumed and much, much more. Our fathers are rich, powerful men. You know some of them, don’t you?’

He was coming closer and closer.

‘Antinous is dead. Forgive your people. We beg you, great king!’

But the arrow had already taken flight. I couldn’t have called it back had I wanted to. It went through him from front to back. He went down screaming. A man with an arrow stuck in him can suffer for hours. Philoetius put an end to his pain.

I might have stopped, then, because I’d killed the two most insolent, but I saw that the others were reacting, or at least trying to. They had only their daggers, but they must have thought they could outnumber us, and were already grabbing the tables to use as shields. Some of them were trying to drive me away from the threshold. I knew that if they were to get out the door, they would run for the city and come back in force with their fathers, brothers, relatives in tow.

No one could be allowed to escape.

Telemachus brought one of them down with his spear. Eumeus and Philoetius were used to slaughter, the wild splattering of blood. They seemed perfectly at ease.

‘Pardon your people, great king!’

Whose voice was that now? Was it Mentor’s? Athena’s? My own, perhaps? Only my own? I watched as they fell, thrashing in pools of their own blood. They looked paler to me, and much younger than they were in reality.

That image makes me suffer. I can hear their shrieks, still now, after I’ve fallen asleep. But my goddess had certainly willed it to happen, otherwise how could four men have prevailed over thirty or fifty or. . how many were there?

Telemachus ran to the armoury and swiftly returned with more spears and shields for the cowherd and the swineherd and even for me. We joined in a tight formation, one alongside the other, and we counter-attacked. The clash raged on and on, for how long I do not know.

Suddenly, as if by magic, we saw that some of them were wielding heavy weapons.

‘Where did they get those?’ I shouted. ‘If they manage to find arms, we’re all dead.’

Telemachus pounded his fist against his thigh. ‘Forgive me, father!’ he cried out. ‘In my haste I may have left the armoury door open! Someone must have got in.’

‘Eumeus, Philoetius, go there, immediately,’ I ordered. ‘If you find anyone, capture him.’

They rushed to the armoury while Telemachus and I continued to drive back the suitors from the front door. I thought of Penelope. Where was she? Could she hear the cries of agony and massacre?

I’d run out of arrows, but Eumeus and Philoetius were returning, carrying weapons they’d found in a corridor that had not been used for many years.

‘It was Melanthius,’ said Philoetius, panting under the weight of the arms he carried and his haste. ‘We’ve strung him up by the legs. He’s hanging under the ceiling beams. You’ll decide what his punishment will be when this is over.’

We threw ourselves back into the fray. I was relentless, unstoppable, striking down one after another. The princes fought recklessly, with a strength born of desperation, but none of them knew what it meant to measure himself against the fury of a real warrior in the thick of battle. None of them had ever seen combat. They must have known they had no hope. It was only a question of time. Although they still greatly outnumbered us, they had lost their cohesion and were like crazed animals in a slaughterhouse. One of them tried to jump up towards a loophole that promised to get him outside, but Eumeus nailed him to the wall with a blow of his axe. He sank to the floor with a thud.

More screams. Cries of utter agony. They were trying to make themselves heard so that someone outside, anyone, would run to the city and sound the alarm.

A groan.

Eurymachus. . could he still be alive? Hadn’t Philoetius finished him off?

Ghosts, shadows, were already flitting amongst us. Mentor. . was that Mentor? Had Athena transported his semblance all the way here, to my house? What remained of my old counsellor? He vanished, just as a swallow swooped between us (was it him, her, a swallow?) in frenetic, syncopated flight, showing first the white of its belly, then the black of its back. It went to perch on the main beam supporting the ceiling. From there it let out shrill cries. I could see it gasping with its beak open.

The princes tried time and again to unite, using their improvised shields to wall themselves off, shouting to brace themselves: ‘All men to the front! We have to push them out the door. If we can get out we can run for help! We’re dead if we don’t. Move it! Get on with it!’

But their companions continued to fall around them, pierced by spears, hacked by axes, run through by swords. The whole floor was steaming with blood. I’d already seen that scene. I knew it from my nightmares. When I had called up Agamemnon’s shade from Hades, this was how he described his shipmates, massacred in his own palace. Was I avenging them as well?

Telemachus was mercilessly wreaking vengeance on the suitors for every humiliation suffered, every jeer, offence, insult. My eyes fell upon Phemius, the singer. His hands plucked away at the lyre strings as though they were moved by their own energy. Each finger was a creature acting on its own, while his gaze was lost in the mists of terror.

I found before me Leodes, the soft-hearted suitor, least odious among them all. I had heard him invoke death for not having attained the goal of his life, the winning of Penelope, but now that the Chaera was looming over him and darkness was about to descend, he scrabbled to escape. He let his weapons fall to the ground and threw himself at my feet. He implored me to spare his life, trembling, declaring that he had never disrespected the queen, that he had always tried to convince his fellow suitors to follow his example, but I didn’t let him finish: with a blow of my sword I took off his head. His moaning had not touched me.

We continued in our work until every last one of them lay lifeless on the floor.

I had reconquered my home, avenged my honour and that of my family, taught future generations a terrible lesson.

Phemius was still alive: was it his turn? He had, after all, gladdened the arrogant suitors during their banquets. He had never rebelled. There he was, shaking, leaning against one of the pillars that stood around the hearth and supported the ceiling. He heard my footsteps drawing closer and he came out into the open. He threw himself at my feet and embraced my knees. ‘Have pity,’ he said, ‘my king!’ And he burst into tears.

How distant were the days of my childhood, the days in which the cool water of the fountain was enough to wash my innocent hands, and the adventurous stories that Phemius told me were enough to set me dreaming. He was trembling like a leaf and weeping. A long sigh pulled the last of my fury out of my mouth, the last poisonous exhalation from my chest. We stared at one another in the red light of dusk and tears glistened in my eyes and his. In his gaze I saw the days and nights of times past, peaceful images of my island and my family, celebrations and feasts. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but a voice rang out in my heart: ‘No one can raise his hand against the poet. He is sacred, because his song brings relief for all mortal anguish.’

Phemius walked away from me. His head bowed and his shoulders curved, he made his way across the bloody floor. The house turned dark, blackness descending all at once on my house, on the atrium and the courtyard, over the whole island, just as Theoclymenus, the murdering prophet, had foretold.

I called Euriclea, and she came down from the women’s quarters with a lantern in hand. When her eyes took in the massacre, the bodies strewn all over the floor, she gave a whoop of joy. She took to dancing, with her lantern in hand, as if prey to delirium.

‘Stop that!’ I shouted. ‘You cannot dance on the dead! These youths do not deserve to be derided. They have paid for their offences with their lives. Respect them.’

Euriclea stopped and her head dropped in shame.

‘I need you, mai. Call the maidservants and order them to carry out the corpses. Have them laid side by side outside under the courtyard portico.’

Euriclea called the women, who had been upstairs closed up in their rooms. At the sight of the massacre they burst into tears. Sobbing, they dragged the bodies out, and when they saw the black sun sinking towards the horizon, that unreal darkness, they cried even harder. It must have felt like they were taking the dead straight to Hades.

I looked out and my own heart trembled in my chest to see that darkness so long before nightfall, and so different from the night. It was as if a black veil had fallen upon the sun. It obscured the light but did not put it out entirely. The moon was still visible, as were the most luminous of the stars. No one was laughing about Theoclymenus’ black vision any more. And there was still so much to do. ‘Mai,’ I ordered, ‘have them take up the broken plates and wash the floor down, first with brushes and then with sponges, until it is perfectly clean. They’ll do the same with the tables. When they have finished, you will pick out those who sided with the suitors, betraying their queen, and separate them from the others. Have them stand in a row outside, in the courtyard.’

The maidservants trembled upon hearing those words, imagining what was to come.

When they had finished their work, Euriclea had all of them line up outside in the courtyard. The sun was back, once again illuminating the island, but its light was dull, dense, bloody. They were wailing their hearts out and shaking in terror as Euriclea raised her finger against them: ‘You, you. .’ They knew that that brief word meant a death sentence.

The red sun of twilight had been stripped of its veil, but there was little left of its downward course towards the surface of the Ocean. I turned to Eumeus and Philoetius then, and told them to stretch a sturdy ship’s rope from a column of the portico to the pillar at the courtyard’s entrance gate, high above the ground, and to tie a number of knots along its length. One for each of the unfaithful, traitorous handmaids: there they would hang, with their hands tied behind their backs. The line was high enough so that none of their feet could touch the ground. When they were finally abandoned to their destiny, dangling from the rope that stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other, they kicked up their heels as their toes strove instinctively to touch ground, but not for long. They soon stopped moving and swung lifelessly from their nooses. All their energies had fled from their bodies and their shades had already descended to Hades, chasing after those of the suitors who had preceded them. I could almost hear their sighs.

‘It’s Melanthius’ turn!’ exclaimed Eumeus. ‘Let’s go and get him.’ He ran off, followed by Philoetius. When they returned they were dragging the goatherd with his hands and feet bound. He screamed with pain at every yank. His arm bones had popped out of his shoulder joints as he hung from the ceiling beam and his face was already a mask of pain, but the worst was yet to come. The punishment for a man who betrays his king, in the full consciousness of what he is doing, was well known. Eumeus and Philoetius cut off his nose, his ears and his genitals and tossed them to the dogs. Then they threw him onto the dungheap, where he would bleed to death.

I called Euriclea again and asked her to bring me fire and sulphur so their fumes could cleanse the hall and courtyard of the stink of death, purge the clotted blood. My house must bear no trace of the desecration.

Euriclea called out all the surviving handmaids and the servants who had remained closed up in their rooms during the massacre. She invited them to recognize me and render homage. I was moved by their words and gestures. They surrounded me, kissing my hands and my head, they knelt at my feet and embraced me, many of them weeping with emotion at seeing me again or perhaps with relief at having escaped death themselves.

I could not believe that I had restored the law in my home and had reconquered the throne. But the bottom of my heart was filled with profound bitterness, because I had never before had to wield arms against my own people. My own blood. The victory I had so longed for had turned into poison. My homecoming had brought nothing but great, unending grief. Not a single one of the companions who followed me to war had I brought back to their families, to the heartsick fathers and mothers who had yearned for their return, scanning the sea day after day for a sign of them. And now there was fresh grief to be borne. Yet, a goddess had chosen to fight beside me, the gasping swallow on the ceiling’s main beam: reason was on my side and legitimized everything I had done. Justice had been served, and this was a king’s most sacred duty. This I had accomplished. Now I could think of my feelings.

Penelope.

Night had finally fallen. Phemius, the singer, crossed the hall like a ghost. He passed next to me without looking at me, his eyes staring at images that only he could see. He crossed the threshold and his dark figure stood out against the last faint red glow of the darkling sky. I stopped him. ‘Can you stay here for a little while?’ I asked him. Someone was lighting the lanterns in the hall and courtyard.

‘If you like, wanax.’

‘Yes, I would. We used to be friends once. . long ago.’

‘Yes, we were.’

‘Then don’t go yet, I need you one last time. Inside. Then you can leave.’

Phemius turned and walked back into the hall. He sat on a stool next to the wall and put his lyre on his lap. Then he bent his head and wept hot tears, and I felt a knot in my throat. I wanted to weep with him and let out the bitterness that oppressed me, but my heart was made of stone.

I watched as Telemachus entered from the courtyard. His armour and face were covered with blood. My boy, innocent and unseasoned until just a short while ago, had wounded and killed with sword, axe and spear. He had crossed a line and he would never be able to go back again. I realized that I must look much the same as him, if not worse. We regarded each other in silence: one the mirror of the other.

I heard the sound of a step descending the stair and my heart trembled. I turned and saw Penelope, my bride. Behind her was Euriclea, who was pointing at me and shouting: ‘It’s him, my child! It’s the husband you’ve been waiting for all this time. He was the foreign guest begging for alms in the hall. He didn’t want anyone to recognize him.’ But my queen stood still, staring at me as if I were a stranger. She sat next to the hearth and continued to regard me with a nearly indifferent look. Euriclea, confounded by the silence, insisted: ‘I recognized him from the first, as soon as I saw the scar on his leg when you ordered me to wash his feet.’

‘Wait, mai,’ I stopped her. ‘The queen cannot recognize me in this state. Have a bath prepared for me and have me brought clean clothes, the best remaining in the chest.’

As if she had been waiting for that moment all day or all year, perhaps, she prepared a bath for me and had the maidservants wash me. Then she had me put on fine garments, the ceremonial robes I once wore at public hearings, when I reigned over a peaceful Ithaca.

‘How handsome you are, my child,’ said my old nurse, her eyes bright with tears, ‘how handsome.’

I went back to my wife then. I sat opposite her and contemplated her in silence: beautiful and proud, cheeks blushing in the warmth of the hearth. Time had done no damage to my queen.

There was a tension between us, like a thunderbolt that could not explode. Neither of us could ever have imagined that our meeting, after twenty years of dreams, desires, tears, would be like this: dead silence, mute, confused glances.

‘But can’t you see that he’s your husband?’ Euriclea urged. ‘Is this how you welcome him, after such a long time? After you’ve called out his name for so many days and so many nights?’ At the end of the hall, Telemachus watched in bewilderment as his parents challenged each other in an absurd skirmish of looks and unsaid words.

Penelope shook her head and fiery tears glittered in her eyes. ‘It’s not him, mai. Do you believe for a moment that I wouldn’t recognize my husband? The sound of his voice? The way his eyes change colour when he smiles?’

She was right. I had never smiled since I’d set foot in the house, nor sought her help. That was why she was torturing me: for not having understood her, for not having believed her. For not having gone to her first, before anyone else. For not having trusted her. ‘My name is Aithon of Crete,’ I had told her, when her soulful eyes searched my face in the darkest corner of the room. And so she had proposed the contest of the bow without saying anything to me. She wanted me to understand that she was accustomed to making decisions on her own and that she didn’t need me. I would have to be the one to adapt to her decisions, and if I failed, worse for me. I evidently was not worthy of her. I remembered how many times I’d thought of her when the moon rose on the sea, desiring her so intensely it hurt. Now I had her in front of me, and she was treating me like a foreigner come from afar to beg for a piece of bread.

The silence between us was more deafening than any clash between warriors clad in bronze. It was breaking my heart. I couldn’t bear it any longer. I was about to walk out, to the courtyard where Eumeus and Philoetius were loading up the bodies of the suitors on a wagon. But it was she who broke the silence: ‘Euriclea, if the guest tells us that he is Odysseus, go upstairs and bring down the bed that my husband is accustomed to sleeping in, so that he may rest comfortably.’

I turned to look at her and saw a slight glimpse of irony in her dark gaze. She was giving me a chance, a single chance, to win her back. ‘What are you saying, my queen? Your words cut me to the core! No one can move my bed. I myself built it among the branches of an age-old olive tree. I prepared a nest for you among its green leaves, my bride, my only love.’

She rose then. I had offered up the secret that only she and I knew, the secret of the bed where she had first given herself to me, where we had conceived Telemachus, our only child, a bed redolent of old wood, lavender and wheat. She threw herself into my arms, weeping, convulsively pulled me close, and I could feel the beating of her ardent heart, her breasts pushing against my chest. I whispered confused, crazy words as I sank my face into her hair, waves of the night sea, and we cried in each other’s arms, like a boy and a girl discovering love’s longing for the first time.

For a moment my eyes met Phemius’ dumbfounded gaze. He instantly lowered his head, waiting for me to tell him why I’d asked him to return to the hall. I left Penelope’s embrace and went to him.

‘Have the lanterns lit everywhere,’ I told him, ‘play and sing. . and you, handmaids, dance and raise your voices in song. If anyone passes by this house, they must think that a wedding is being celebrated, that the queen has decided to marry one of her suitors. No one must know what has happened here.’

They obeyed, and I remained for a while watching that macabre dance which should have been joyful and instead was pure folly. The maidservants danced as their friends swung from their nooses, the poet played his lyre and sang with tears in his eyes, oppressed by grief and dismay. He would never have thought that the house in which we had lived so serenely, dreaming of adventure, would have become the scene of a massacre. When I went back to the hearth, I saw that Penelope was no longer there. She had gone up to her rooms, accompanied by her handmaids bearing torches to light her way. They would be undressing her now, washing her body and spreading sweetly scented oil over her skin, laying her on the bed as if it were her wedding night.

In the end I went up the stone stair myself, preceded by two handmaids with lit torches.

I entered.