Odysseus: The Return

2

What were the men on the other ships thinking? That I’d made a mistake? That the king of Ithaca didn’t know how to get them home?

My heart was burning in my chest like a firebrand. I would talk to them when the moment came, after we had landed. The position of the sun soon told me that we were heading south, fast. I had never navigated in those waters before and I had no idea what to expect, but the wind raged on, swelling the sails, ripping them to shreds at times. We had to change them time and time again. Black clouds galloped through the sky and pelted us with heavy rain. No one would have been able to change course, not even by striking the sails and manning the oars. The sea rushed tumultuously in a single direction, her high, grey waves boiling with foam.

‘Land!’ shouted Perimedes. ‘To starboard!’

‘Cythera,’ said Eurylochus. ‘I’ve seen it many times. The wind is pushing us further away.’

And so it was, unhappily. No force could have challenged the wind and the waves. We sailed in this way for nine days and nine nights of tempest, without ever stopping. My comrades could not fish as they had become accustomed to doing, by throwing out nets or casting out lines with barley kernels soaked in water as bait. We had very little food left. I was eating my heart out with pain, rage and despair.

On the tenth day, the wind dropped all of a sudden and the sea calmed until it became a shiny bronze plate. Slivers of light slipped around the ships, their dark profiles beaded in the deep blue.

I hoisted the signal for assembly and the ships gathered together, all within reach of my voice.

‘Have you lost any men?’ I shouted.

‘No, wanax!’ replied the commander of the second ship.

‘No, wanax!’ replied the commanders of the other five, one after another.

‘Neither have we!’ I said. ‘We’re all still here and this is good luck indeed after such a storm. Now put your backs into the oars and we’ll forge on. Land is surely close by. There are birds in the sky and you can smell it in the air.’ An odour of unfamiliar herbs. But we could see nothing. A thick mist had risen in front of us and we were surrounded by water on every side. I signalled to the helmsman to head into the mist that hovered above the sea. The others followed us.

Never before and never again have I felt the way I did at that moment. Alone, afraid, cold and my heart was empty, as if my blood and every other humour had been drained from my body.The way a man feels when he collapses to the ground pierced by a spear or the sharp tip of an arrow, as his life escapes, streaming, out of the wound. How often I’d seen it! I seemed to be caught in a dream, of the kind that fills you with anguish. One knows that the visions of the night are false imaginings, insubstantial, and yet the suffering they inflict on your heart could kill you. I called out to my comrades: ‘Eurylochus! Antiphus!’ Why couldn’t I see anyone? Could I be alone on my ship? Who was at the oars, driving it on? I could see the prow slip forward, cleaving the water which fell to either side without making a sound. I could see myself running back and forth in the mist and yet I knew full well that I was standing still at the bow, scanning the impenetrable fog. What was that disc of pale light fluttering in the mist? The moon? The sun? Shrieks. Birds scattering, terrified. Splashing. Who, what, had fallen into the still water? Was this a portal into some other place? Was I alone? The other ships, where were they? Elpenor! Antilochus! Euribates, where are you all? Answer me, it’s your king who’s calling! I could see someone passing by. . a shadow nearby, slipping away, walking. Who are you? He didn’t turn. I turned. He disappeared. Athena, where are you, where are you? You’re hiding! Why won’t you come out?

How much time passed? I don’t remember. Hours, days. . Waves lapping, water whispering. Suddenly a shock to my heart, like the blow of a dagger. I shouted so loudly that my throat bled and then. . I was out!

Land before me, sea behind me and the wall of fog, thick and smoky. The waves then, finally, the lapping at the shore, the scent of earth, tongues of sea lengthening onto the glittering golden sand. Now I could see my comrades rowing, striking the sail. Hadn’t they heard me shout out? Couldn’t they see my mouth bleeding? I washed it out with seawater. My throat burned.

‘We’ll moor aft!’ I ordered. ‘Drive the stakes into the ground, drop anchor forward! Antilochus, on me!’

He ran over: ‘Wanax, look!’

One of our ships was emerging from the fog at a certain distance. It looked like it was coming from Hades: half was in the light, the other half invisible. The men looked like ghosts.

Another, further east. Both spotted us and joined us. Then no more. We waited and hoped for a long, long time.

‘Where are the other ships?’ I asked Eurylochus.

He looked bewildered.

‘Where are they?’ I insisted. ‘They were so close. We all made it through the storm, all the ships had assembled, I spoke to the crews. You all heard me.’

‘We heard you, king.’

‘Then how could we have lost four ships with all their men?’

Eurylochus shook his head: ‘You know as well as I do. We were in a dark place.’

We disembarked. What land was this? Who lived here? What language did they speak? There was a wide sweep of tall grass and patches of sand here and there. Towering palm trees swayed in the morning breeze. In the distance, a grove of tamarisks. And creatures we had never seen before. They looked like little hairy men, with tails. Shiny eyes, piercing and unsettling. They squawked, they screamed, they jumped from one branch to another.

‘Monkeys,’ said Eurylochus. ‘Among all animals, the ones that resemble us most. Disagreeable things. Clever, bold and rude. I sailed as far as Crete once to buy some terebinth oil and an old beggar had one.’

‘Send out men to look for water and food,’ I ordered. ‘A party to the east and one to the west. Tell them to come back as soon as they’ve found what we need. The others will drop the nets and try to fish. In the meantime, start a fire. Everyone will keep his arms at the ready.’

They all fanned out and I stayed close to the ship. As I looked around, I realized that nothing looked familiar: the air was different from the air I’d always breathed, the rays of light appeared to be shed by a different sun. The atmosphere was close, suffocating and time seemed to stretch out immensely. The thought of the ships and comrades I’d lost was unbearable.

A shout startled me and I saw Elpenor making wide gestures from up on a sandy rise at the end of the long beach, to the west. I ran towards him.

‘Wanax, look!’ he said when I was close enough to hear. I turned around. In the distance, perhaps a thousand paces from us, were the rest of our ships. Beached stern to, all four of them.

‘Follow me,’ I ordered. ‘But don your armour first.’ Elpenor and the group of men with him set off with me on foot. I sent one of them back to warn the others not to move. They were to wait for us where they were until we returned.

When we reached the ships we found no one inside. We searched them one at a time without finding any signs of violence or disorder. The oars were in their rowlocks, the sails had been taken in, the steering oars tied to the rails. The trunks full of Trojan plunder at the prows were undisturbed. The only sound to be heard was the sea pounding untiringly against the keels and the wind whipping the shrouds. The rest was silence.

‘But. . where are they? Not hunting or looking for water, they would have left someone on guard. They haven’t fallen into the sea because the ships have been left in perfect order and secured with their anchors forward just as they should be.’

I saw terror in the men’s eyes. They could face any kind of danger, but the unknown or unexplainable filled them with fear. Had our comrades been kidnapped, carried off? By harpies, by fog demons?

‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing like what you’re imagining. Here the ground is rocky, but if we go inland it’s grassy. We’ll search for traces of their footprints and follow them until we’ve found our mates. Keep your weapons at hand. We don’t know what land this is or who lives here.’

As I was speaking, the man I’d sent off to the ships came running back. I told him about what we’d found and that we would soon be setting off to search for the missing men. He was to go back and tell his comrades to put out to sea, bring the three ships around to the stretch of beach where the empty ships were at anchor, and moor them there. A single set of guards would suffice for all of them.

The man, a fellow from Zacynthus who had always fought bravely under the walls of Troy, replied: ‘I will do as you say, wanax, but if there’s someone else who can carry out your order I’d prefer to come with you.’

‘No,’ I replied, ‘but I appreciate your courage and your loyalty. Next time you’ll be at my side, but go now and do as I’ve asked.’

As he ran off again, we started up the path leading inland. On our left stood a hill topped by a high plain. Its slope was crossed by a stream of clear water that flowed through a luxuriant green field on which animals with pointed, doubly curved horns were grazing peacefully. The coats on the beasts’ backs had black stripes. The other creatures I could see lumbering in the distance looked gigantic, truly frightening in size.

I’d never seen anything like them, and never would again for the rest of my life. I was beginning to understand why I’d had to cross that mist. I felt that I had crossed an invisible threshold and entered a hidden, secret land where everything would be different, where anything could happen. Although my heart was heavy with thoughts of our missing comrades and our failed return, my eyes were wide with astonishment upon seeing these wondrous creatures. I understood how big and how marvellous the world was, and I was sure that my adventure and that of my companions would be no less exciting than the voyage my father King Laertes had undertaken with his comrades on the Argo.

We marched all day, following footsteps that were evidently those of our men, who wore boots. The other footsteps had been left by bare feet.

‘They’ve been taken prisoner by savages!’ mused Antiphus.

It was difficult to believe that. If they were walking alongside men who were barefoot, perhaps these were people unfamiliar with the arts of cultivating the soil and melting metals, who lived on what nature gave them. How could such people capture men who fought clad in bronze, armed with spears and swords? What’s more, our men were numerous. From the footsteps, more numerous than the others.

‘There’s only one explanation,’ I replied, ‘our men followed these people out of their own free will. Look: the prints of the boots are everywhere, they’re mixed in with the others. If they were prisoners they would be in a column at the centre, with those who had captured them at the sides, in much greater number.’

‘Are you saying they simply abandoned the ships with all that plunder aboard? How is that possible? The spoils which justify ten years of war and the loss of over two hundred of our comrades? I just can’t believe that,’ replied Antiphus. ‘What reason could they have had to do such a thing?’

‘A reason worth leaving everything: the ships, the treasure, their weapons. And perhaps even. .’

‘What? What else?’

I could not answer. Too bitter would have been my reply. Sorrow choked off my voice, the word on my lips raced back to stab my heart.

We made our way in silence, warily. Late that afternoon we found traces of a bivouac, ten or so campfires already extinguished, with the remains of a meal that many men had consumed: animal bones and enormous eggshells. Eurylochus picked one up and turned it in his hands. ‘The Phoenicians paint these and sell them on the islands and. . look, down there, see, they’re laid by those gigantic birds. See them? The Cretans call them camel-birds.’

We followed his pointed finger and saw a dozen whitish-brown feathered females and a large male with magnificent black plumage. Our eyes could scarcely take in all they beheld. In that land of wonders, time had stopped at the golden age. Vast herds of animals grazed near and far, thousands and thousands of them. They belonged to no one and hence to everyone. And the trees were laden with fruit of every sort. In the distance, storm clouds rose and lightning bolts streaked from the sky to the earth as columns of rain poured down to quench it. A boundless land. . How small our own world was, compared with this! The sinking sun was an enormous globe, much bigger than ours, much redder, setting the entire horizon ablaze from one end to the other. We pushed on until late that night, when we had to stop and rest. I left four men on guard; they were relieved halfway through the night by four others. In the darkness we heard the roaring of lions, the shrieking of unfamiliar birds and other noises we could not identify. . sometimes close, sometimes distant.

The dawn was not hindered by any obstacle: no mountains, no cliffs. The light rose like a powerful breath: uninterrupted, diffuse, the colour of water. Then that infinite land awoke: flocks of thousands of birds flew into the breaching sun, the galloping of vast herds made the ground tremble beneath our feet. Even our gods felt very small and far away.

On their tracks again, we continued our long march until we came upon a line of low, rolling hills. Once we reached the top, we realized that we had arrived.

Below us a wide green valley with a small lake at its centre was surrounded by thousands of palm trees. At the valley’s edges were vast fields of crops and plots of land densely planted with flowers as red and fleshy as fruits. In the distance were hills of sand that looked like mounds of gold dust. Houses stood here and there, shacks covered with bundles of dried grasses. Ropes made of braided grass were rolled into coils at the edges of the fields. Children swam in the lake and splendid dark-skinned women walked by completely naked, with high hips and slender legs.

Almost all of the men were assembled at a vast space at the side of the village, grouped around a red stone monolith. They were playing instruments, flutes and drums, and singing.

And there were our comrades.

‘What shall we do?’ asked Eurylochus, who never left my side. ‘I say we attack. We’re slightly outnumbered but we’re well armed and they’re not. If they have weapons, they’ll be inside their houses. We’ll free our men and return to the ships.’

‘No. There’s no need for arms,’ I replied. ‘We’ll leave our shields hanging on our backs, as they are now, our swords in their sheaths and the spears pointed downward. The most difficult thing will be to convince, or force, our men to leave.’

Eurylochus nodded and we made our way down the hill. We were noticed almost immediately because there were so many of us, a small army, but no one seemed frightened. They only stopped singing. We were careful to show no signs that we intended to use force against them.

I smiled and bowed towards them, turning to seek out the one who might be their chief. Then I greeted my own: ‘Hail, men.’

‘Hail, Odysseus,’ they replied. They were calling me by name as if I were one of them, an equal.

‘We found your ships empty and abandoned. We imagined that you were carried off by force and we came searching for you, but I can see that’s not what happened.’

‘No,’ one of them admitted. ‘We weren’t dragged off by force. They convinced us.’

‘They don’t seem to speak our language,’ I observed.

‘We had no problems understanding them,’ said another.

‘How?’

He took one of those red flowers from a basket: ‘Taste this and you’ll understand.’

I shook my head. ‘I’m glad that no ill has befallen you. We’ll go back to the ships now and return home.’

‘Have you taken a look around, king of Ithaca? Have you seen the grasslands, the animals and birds, the sunsets and dawns? Have you noticed that no one carries weapons? Do you know why? Because there’s nothing to steal or plunder. Food is abundant — there’s enough for everyone. The women are beautiful and skilled in the arts of love and the children belong to everybody; they swim and play in the lake, run happily in the fields. The men sing and dance and tell stories every night. Stories which we’ll learn to understand in time. . That’s another thing there’s an abundance of here. See? Everyone has time here. It’s never too early and never too late. You can sleep by day and stay up all night with one of these radiant beauties, the colour of burnished bronze.’

‘What about your wives? The girls who’ve been waiting for you all these years? Your children, who were still babbling when you left them. Why aren’t you thinking of them?’

‘We’re dead for them, Odysseus. Dead, understand? The girls we were betrothed to will have found other husbands, our children were too young then to remember us now; it’s as if we never existed for them. . For ten years we’ve gone into combat almost every day. We’ve done nothing but kill, wound, slaughter. Our hands are soaked with blood and the screams of the dying never leave our ears. .

‘Is it easy for you to sleep at night, brave, cunning Odysseus? Well, it wasn’t for me. I couldn’t sleep. I was surrounded by ghosts, shrieking spirits. They bit away at my heart.’

He held out the flower to me again. ‘With this you forget everything, understand? Everything.’

‘Even our homeland?’ I challenged him. ‘Her fragrance? Her forests and sea?’

‘Certainly! That as well. Do you really think that after having lived as we did for as long as we did, we can return home as if nothing had ever happened? Hoping to find that nothing has changed? Return to what? To our women, who will have gone off with someone else? To our parents who’ve grown old waiting for us? To our children, who won’t recognize us? Do you think that the blood and carnage of our nightmares won’t find us there?

‘Our land is here, Odysseus, where we’ve found peace and oblivion. Oblivion, king of Ithaca, understand? Oblivion. .’

‘Burn the ships,’ said another, ‘and join us here. We’ll be happy together, and together we can forget.’

I drew my most trusted men aside. ‘They’re under the effects of a powerful drug,’ I said. ‘How else could they forget their homes, their parents, their children and their wives? We have to get them away from here at any cost, as quickly as we can. The others, back at the ships, will already be worried about us.’

‘It won’t be easy,’ said Antiphus. ‘There are so many of them and they seem set on staying.’

‘I’ve seen many coils of rope made with dry grasses. We’ll use it to tie them up, one by one, and we’ll drag them back if we have to. As soon as the effect of the drug contained in those cursed flowers wears off, they’ll go back to being themselves again, you’ll see.’

We waited until night fell, when everyone had lain down to rest. Our comrades, who had no homes to go to, were stretched out on mats near the fire, and this made our task much easier.

‘Let’s wait a little longer,’ I said. ‘They’ve eaten many of those flowers. If we wait for them to take effect, the men will be deeply asleep.’

When their breathing became heavy and they all seemed to have fallen into a dead slumber, I signalled to my men and we began, swift and quiet as ghosts, to tie their hands behind their backs, ring the rope around their necks and then fetter them one to another.

One of them awoke and cried out: ‘What are you doing? No! No! We don’t want to go. Leave us here!’ He tried to rouse the others: ‘Wake up! Wake up! They’re taking us away!’ But by this time they were all tied up and we began to drag them away from the clearing. We’d done a good job, but nonetheless I had twenty armed warriors draw up on either side of the column. Those posted at the front drove them forward and others made sure that no one escaped at the rear.

As we began to climb the hill, we saw the dark-skinned inhabitants of that land leave their shacks to watch what was happening. The moon shed a bright glow and we were all clearly visible to them, and they to us. They did not try to come closer. Our bronze armour glittered in the light of the moon. They stayed where they were but they began to sing. A long, sad lament with two different tones: the subtle, clear voices of the women and the deeper, more intense ones of the men. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. Perhaps that was their way of saying goodbye to the men to whom they’d offered hospitality in such a magic and marvellous way, in their boundless, timeless land. They watched them being dragged away like animals snared in nooses and they wept for them. Their song became shriller and more penetrating, like a funeral wail for people who were going to their deaths. That’s what I heard, and so did my comrades, walking silently with their spears in hand and their shields on their arms. The others, stumbling along with their wrists and necks bound, seemed to understand the meaning of those voices and when any of them raised their faces to look at me I saw them streaked with tears.

We walked all night without ever stopping and all the next day, resting only to regain our strength and drink. We never said a word to our unhappy comrades nor did they ever speak to us, but I could see that they were beginning to look reality in the face again and that they were bitterly bemoaning what they had lost.