Odysseus: The Return

22

Draped in majestic purple, covered with soft linen woven by expert hands, redolent of olive, our bed waited to take us into its folds. I recognized every stroke of my axe and my plane, every surface smoothed by my pumice. My queen had preserved it like a sanctuary, without ever losing hope in my return.

Penelope’s love. . what was it like, after so many years? Her mouth, her fiery womb, her breasts? And her black, black, black eyes? Beyond any enchantment I could have imagined in the long nights of my exile. The intimacy we had so desired enflamed our looks, our breath. I breathed in her mouth, she in mine. The light of the lantern cast a bronze reflection on her skin. She was no more than thirty-seven now, and her beauty was dazzling.

This was the privilege of a queen: she had never exposed her skin to the merciless sun, never ruined her hands pulling weeds in a field of wheat or barley. Food and pure water were always abundant on her ivory table and in her silver cup. Baths and scented oils had kept her skin soft. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, just as her gaze was locked on me. We were both incredulous at being together again and in each other’s arms.

When I pulled her close to me, the sounds of the dancing and strident singing in the hall ceased and silence fell over the house, enveloped by the night. Perhaps Telemachus or Euriclea had ordered Phemius to give up the absurd pretence. After all, who would ever be passing along the path at such a late hour? Eumeus and Philoetius had their work cut out for them. They would be at it all night, but tomorrow there would be no trace of what had happened. Not a single stain nor hint of the dense, sweet stench of death.

The frenzy of slaughter had not yet been extinguished in me; its force had not ebbed, but it flowed in a different direction. The fire was still burning, with a different energy but with the same intensity, like a river that had changed course. Only exhaustion stopped us, when the sky was just beginning to pale. We fell asleep and we forgot. The warmth of the bed and Penelope’s nude body filled me with life after the cold shadow of death had frozen my heart. Time expanded, infinitely. A wave of memories washed over me and it felt for a moment as if nothing had changed. As if I’d never left, as if our love could continue on its natural course, erasing the chasm of the years.

I felt Athena’s veil on us, protecting us. She was not jealous of Penelope, perhaps she loved her as she loved me. But would the ire of Poseidon be appeased? Or was the blue god, from the depths of the sea, meditating on more calamity for me?

When would I have to leave again? After a day, a month, a year? How would I ever find the courage to tell Penelope?

Or should I ignore the prophecy as if I’d never heard it?

How could I be certain that I’d summoned up the ghost of Tiresias from Hades, and that I’d heard those words from him? Might I have been dreaming? Might all of it have been a dream?

In that bed, next to the bride I’d desired so fervently, the woman I’d feared would become grey, worn, lifeless, wrinkled, everything seemed possible and impossible. Her breathing, soft and regular in sleep, was a music that I’d never forgotten. That breathing, along with the merest thought from me, was enough to make me forget everything, to let me believe that none of it had really happened. A dream, like so many that had visited me in my sleep over the years. But the squeaking of wheels drifted in from the courtyard. Carts being pulled over stone. Limbs hanging over the sides, the arms and legs of young men slaughtered.

By me, my son, the cowherd and the swineherd. It was all horribly real, there was no room for illusion. I begged my goddess to give me a few more hours of serenity. Then I would be able to face a thousand adventures, clashes, duels with men and gods, monsters, nightmares, dreams.

I had fallen, after our lovemaking, into a torpor, neither awake nor asleep. I would open my eyes and find Penelope’s, staring deeply.

‘I heard you crying,’ she said.

I didn’t know how to answer.

‘I understand. This is not how you imagined your return. Perhaps you thought your people would welcome you with festivities, the noblemen accompanying you to the palace where I would be waiting for you, dressed in my most beautiful gown and precious jewels. I’m sorry that didn’t happen and I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t trust me.’

‘I was wrong and I ask you to forgive me, my love. But my crying wasn’t for what I did, and not even for the bitterness I made you suffer. .’

‘I’ve already forgotten that. I made love to you like a girl, I slept in your arms, I felt your heat after so many years. You can’t imagine how that made me feel. . Why were you crying, then?’

‘Because I’ll have to leave again.’

She looked as if she’d turned to stone.

I couldn’t stop. I had started talking. I had to say it all.

‘What I’m about to tell you is unbelievable, I know, but in my ship I crossed the wall of fog that separates our world from a place where anything is possible. I reached the ends of the earth, I ventured into the waves of the river Ocean. I went beyond the jagged cliffs and the rocky towers that are the sentinels of the world of the dead. I sacrificed to the infernal gods and called up the shadows of Hades. Thousands of them came to me.

‘The Theban prophet Tiresias was among them. He drank of the blood of the animals I’d sacrificed and he spoke to me. It was a dreadful sight to see, but worse was to hear what he had to tell me. He predicted that I would return, here, to Ithaca, late, a broken man, on a foreign ship without a single comrade. He said that I would find my house invaded by pretenders plaguing my wife and that I would have to kill them all. He said that when I had done this, I would have to leave again, to journey in a single direction away from the sea, carrying an oar on my shoulder. I would have to continue on until I found myself among people who do not know the sea, who do not season their food with salt, who have never seen a ship. Until one day I would find a man who would ask me whether the oar on my shoulder was a fan for winnowing grain.

‘“This is the sign,” Tiresias told me. ‘“You can’t mistake it. You will plant the oar into the ground and offer a bull, a boar and a ram in sacrifice to Poseidon: only then will you be able to return and reign among happy peoples. Death will come to seek you only when you are exhausted by serene old age. She will come for you softly, from the sea.”’

My wife’s tears gleamed like pearls on her cheeks. The night was never-ending, beyond any limit that I had ever known. Perhaps the spirits of the dark wanted to allow me a little more time for my night of love and sorrow.

‘He said nothing of me?’

‘You are always in my heart. But the prophecy must be fulfilled. I challenged a god and have paid dearly for it already. This is the last thing that remains to be done: to end the impossible contest of a mortal against an invincible god. Once and for all.

‘The first part of the prophecy has come true in every way, why shouldn’t the second as well? When Tiresias named the three animals I would have to sacrifice, I remembered something that happened when I was just a boy. The first time I ever went to the continent was to visit my grandfather, Autolykos, for a hunting party. My mother gave me a message for him, and when he’d seen it he asked me to name three animals, but to be very careful with my answer, because those three animals would mark my future.

‘I said without hesitation: “The bull, the boar and the ram.” The same as Tiresias. I cannot escape my destiny. It was all foretold. I know that I’ll make you suffer by leaving again, but I have no choice. If I don’t bring this conflict to an end, I’ll never have a hope of living the last part of my life in serenity, with my family, on my island.’

Penelope held me tightly, curled into my arms. I caressed her face, her body, sought out her black eyes in the darkness. I was thinking, perhaps, that her love could keep the restless shades of the murdered suitors away from me.

‘The gods are deceitful, they play with our lives pitilessly,’ she cried. ‘You are their toy. A little man armed only with an oar who must take on first a bull and then a boar with frightful tusks and then a curved-horned ram, in some remote, solitary place. As they sit on their shining thrones, enjoying the spectacle from the sky.’

‘I don’t believe that. Tiresias was telling the truth. No one tells lies in the kingdom of the dead.’

She turned away, sobbing softly. I felt like crying as well. And yet, wretched as we were, we made love again and again, locked in a fierce embrace, weeping, each of us breathing in the other’s pain. In the heat and the bitter taste of tears, from that total intimacy of soul and body rose a challenge to the sky, more defiant and powerful than any that could be fought with a sword or spear: the call of two mortal creatures who loved each other desperately, enmeshed in a moment of extreme emotion and suffering, beyond anything they had ever experienced. A heartbroken passion whose infinite power no god, no demon, could remotely imagine.

The light shifted over our faces and our bodies, and my goddess, perhaps, instilled the thought in my heart of what might happen as soon as news of the suitors’ deaths spread. I jumped to my feet, washed and dried myself off, put on a tunic taken from my chest, which Penelope had kept closed all these years, and went to the armoury to don my battle gear: shield, spear and sword.

Telemachus, Eumeus, Philoetius and some of their most trusted companions were already waiting for me, armed to the teeth.

Telemachus spoke, the excitement of combat, his first, still evident in his voice. ‘Atta, perhaps it’s best that we immediately go to King Laertes, so we can join forces with him and be ready if the relatives of the dead men decide to attack. I don’t think the palace, or my mother, will be in danger. It’s us they’ll be after. When they learn that their sons and brothers are dead, they will either resign themselves to fate or decide to exact revenge. In either case, the corpses will have to be returned to the families.’ My boy had already reasoned it all out, and he was acting with the wisdom and foresight of a king.

We set off, covering ourselves with long cloaks that concealed our weapons. Penelope was at the window of our bedchamber, watching us leave. She looked like a goddess.

‘Where is Phemius?’ I asked.

‘He’s in the servants’ quarters,’ replied Telemachus. ‘He still does not know whether you’ve decided to pardon him and spare his life.’

‘I had told him he could go wherever he liked, after he’d performed that one last service for me.’

‘But where? He has no place to go.’

‘Then he’ll stay with us.’

‘Fine. You’ll tell him when we return.’

I nodded.

The closer we got to the fork in the road, the harder my heart pounded in my chest. I remembered the words of my mother’s shadow: ‘He lies down on a bed of leaves wherever darkness catches him. There he sighs, his heart aching for you.’ Contemptuous and scornful, my father could clearly not bear to stay in a house invaded, the place from which he’d reigned over Ithaca.

‘There is King Laertes your father, Argonaut and hero,’ said Telemachus.

It wrung my heart to see him. It was him, but how he had changed! He was wearing worn, patched clothing, a goatskin cap on his head, gloves of sheepskin on his hands to protect them from thorns. This is what the king of Ithaca was reduced to. The man who had quested for the golden fleece with Jason, the man who’d given me the best days of my boyhood, the best memories of my youth, who’d filled my ardent young heart with dreams and hopes.

When he heard our footsteps, he leaned his hoe against the trunk of a pear tree and walked towards us. He recognized Telemachus: ‘Who is this man, pai? Why have you come so early in the morning to my house?’

I wished I could delay the moment of recognition. I could have told some fantastic tale, one of the many had already come to mind. But how could I think of putting my father, my king, to the test?

I threw myself at his feet, and kissed his hands. ‘It’s me, atta, Odysseus, your son. I’ve returned.’ I removed the cloak from my shoulders and stood before him in my shining armour.

‘Do you recognize me?’ I asked him then.

He embraced me, clasped me close to his chest. ‘Son, my son. .’ he sobbed, ‘how long, what a long time. . I never would have wanted you to see me in this state.’

‘Don’t say that, atta, don’t say such a thing. You don’t know the joy it gives me to hold you in my arms. Show me the trees, the ones you gave me as a gift. We planted them together, remember? Are they still alive? Have they grown? Do they bear fruit?’

‘Yes, of course, come, come with me.’ He dragged me by my hand. ‘See that pear? I was digging up the weeds around its trunk. Maybe I was still believing in your return and wanted you to see everything in order, but not like this, I didn’t want you to see me like this. .’

‘It’s all over, atta, they’re gone. The ones who humiliated you, laid waste to your house, forced you to live like a pauper. They’re all dead. I wiped them out, with the help of my son and a couple of men who are still faithful to me.’

‘You killed them? How did you manage, so few of you? And why didn’t you tell me? I would have rushed to your side! Old as I am, I can assure you that I would have sent many of them into the mouth of Hades myself.’

‘I didn’t want you to have to jump back into the fray at your age. It wasn’t necessary. I’m about to send Eumeus to the city now. He’ll tell their families to come and collect the bodies so they can be given funeral rites. Then he’ll go to the port to talk to the crews of the ships and have them transport the bodies of those who were not from Ithaca back to the continent and the other islands. Eumeus, go now.’

The swineherd left and my father insisted that I stay with him so that we could have lunch together.

It was incredible: he knew what had gone on at the palace, I’d told him, but he wanted lunch. He’d give his servants orders to prepare it and to invite Dolius, his neighbour, with his seven sons. His magnificent blue eyes shone with happiness.

I said: ‘Atta, we’ll stay. My joy at seeing you again is immense. I won’t leave you. Tell me, atta, where is Mother buried?’

A shadow descended on his eyes, like storm clouds on the sea. ‘Then you know that she’s dead. . Come with me. I’ve left an empty tomb, a wonder to behold, in the royal cemetery. Her ashes are here close to my house, and when my time comes you’ll put me next to her.’

We crossed the olive grove and reached a well-tended meadow, its grass freshly cut, with purple thistle flowers and rosehips red as cornelian. There was a little gravestone in the shadow of a holm oak; in front of it, on the ground, a stone cut from the mountainside. I looked into my father’s eyes and then at the stone, and the words of my mother’s spirit, the pale wraith I’d encountered at the mouth of Hades, rang in my heart: ‘It was neither Artemis with her arrows nor a malady that wasted me away, but my longing for you, my beloved son, that took my life.’

I gathered the red rosehips, the purple thistle blossoms and placed them on her tomb. A thorn on the thistle pricked me and a drop of my blood spilled on the stone.

‘Why didn’t you wait for me, Mother, why?’

I got no answer in my heart.

My father’s eyes were glistening. ‘I miss her still,’ he said, ‘even now.’

We started back, but hadn’t got very far before Eumeus ran up to us, panting: ‘Hurry, wanax, hurry, they’re coming!’

‘Who’s coming?’ I asked.

‘The relatives of the dead — their fathers, their brothers. They’re armed and they’re heading this way to get revenge. They were maddened by the sight of the corpses. They threw themselves onto the ground, onto the lifeless bodies of their sons and brothers, groaning and weeping. Antinous’ father was shrieking like a wounded eagle. He demanded that all the others take up arms and rush out to kill you. You’d lost all your ships, he told them, the whole army. You didn’t bring back a single one of the men who left with you, and now you’d come to murder all the rest. They fear that if they wait you’ll seek refuge at Pylos, in King Nestor’s palace.’ He was gasping for breath.

‘Calm down,’ I replied. ‘We’ll draw up in front of the gate. How many are there?’ I asked Eumeus.

‘A lot, but not all of them. Some have already turned back and taken away their son’s bodies to celebrate funeral rites. Quite a few recognized that you had been wronged, your house and your wife’s honour violated. I myself heard one of them say: ‘It’s not his fault if the army was lost. Wars mow down men in their prime and the sea is rife with dangers. Surely he wanted to bring all his comrades back home. And I’m afraid that what he’s done must have been the will of the gods. How else could just four of them get the better of so many strapping youths?’

We hastened to my father’s house. Dolius and his seven sons had arrived, and they armed themselves as well. In all, there were over a dozen of us. I was sorry I hadn’t thought to bring my bow. I could have struck down many of the attackers at a distance; I could already see them approaching. But when they were at about fifty paces from us, a wondrous thing occurred. Something swooped down from the sky. A bird of prey, perhaps? And just then, in the middle of the two formations, ours so small and theirs so much more numerous, appeared Mentor! He seemed to hesitate for a moment, then headed towards us. I felt a shiver run under my skin.

Our adversaries were already letting their arrows fly, and we raised our shields. A single spear flew from our side, hurled by my father, the hero Laertes. The same one he’d had when he sailed off to find the golden fleece. The massive rod rose straight and swift, and then the inexorable tip started its descent. It found its mark in Eupites’ cheek, easily penetrating the futile protection of his helmet. He was Antinous’ father. He collapsed, and his arms rattled to the ground with a dull crash.

His comrades stopped in their tracks, dumbfounded. How could the arm of an old man, sapped by years of hard labour and pain, have flung that weapon with such deadly force? Mentor was very close to us now, he shot me a searing look and I instantly knew what I had to do.

I walked towards the relatives of the men we had killed with my father at my side and Telemachus behind us. The others followed in two rows. When we were at a short span from them, Eupites lying pierced between us, we stopped. The vermilion stream flowing from his body was a line of fire between us: we were sons of the same land.

I had tears in my eyes when I said: ‘Peace.’ I plunged my spear into the ground and the others, lined up to the right and left of me, did the same.

Our adversaries followed our example.

I ordered Dolius’ sons to gather the body of Eupites — to wash it, cover it with a shroud, and lay it in a cart in the shade of an oak tree. I cried out: ‘Mentor!’ but got no response. A hawk soared high above me towards the sun, wheeling in wide circles in the sky of blinding bronze.

Together, in silence, we consumed a meal of reconciliation.

When I raised my eyes, I saw Phemius, the singer, at the end of the road, advancing slowly towards us. The wind was picking up and he was enveloped in a swirl of dust. He seemed to be floating, raised above the ground, like a ghost.