The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

XI. Helen Ruins My Life

After a time I became more accustomed to my new home, although I had little authority within it, what with Eurycleia and my mother-in-law running all domestic matters and making all household decisions.

Odysseus was in control of the kingdom, naturally, with his father, Laertes, sticking his oar in from time to time, either to dispute his son’s decisions or to back them up. In other words, there was the standard family push-and-pull over whose word was to carry the most weight. All were agreed on one thing: it was not mine.

Dinnertimes were particularly stressful. There were too many undercurrents, too many sulks and growlings on the part of the men and far too many fraught silences encircling my mother-in-law. When

I tried to speak to her she would never look at me while answering, but would address her remarks to a footstool or a table. As befitted conversation with the furniture, these remarks were wooden and stiff.

I soon found it was more peaceful just to keep out of things, and to confine myself to caring for

Telemachus, when Eurycleia would let me. ‘You’re barely more than a child yourself,’ she would say, snatching my baby out of my arms. ‘Here, I’ll tend the little darling for a while. You run along and enjoy yourself.’

But I did not know how to do that. Strolling along the cliffs or by the shore alone like some peasant girl or slave was out of the question: whenever

I went out I had to take two of the maids with me

I had a reputation to keep up, and the reputation of a king’s wife is under constant scrutiny—but they stayed several paces behind me, as was fitting.

I felt like a prize horse on parade, walking in my fancy robes yhile sailors stared at me and townswomen whispered. I had no friend of my own age and station so these excursions were not very enjoyable, and for that reason they became rarer.

Sometimes I would sit in the courtyard, twisting wool into thread and listening to the maids laughing and singing and giggling in the outbuildings as they went about their chores. When it was raining I

would take up my weaving in the women’s quarters.

There at least I would have company, as a number of slaves were always at work on the looms.

I enjoyed weaving, up to a point. It was slow and rhythmical and soothing, and nobody, even my mother-in-law, could accuse me of sitting idle while

I was doing it. Not that she ever said a word to that effect, but there is such a thing as a silent accusation.

I stayed in our room a lot the room I shared with Odysseus. It was a fine enough room, with a view of the sea, though not so fine as my room back in Sparta. Odysseus had made a special bed in it, one post of which was whittled from an olive tree that had its roots still in the ground. That way, he said, no one would ever be able to move or displace this bed, and it would be a lucky omen for any child conceived there. This bedpost of his was a great secret: no one knew about it except Odysseus himself, and my maid Actoris but she was dead now and myself. If the word got around about his post, said Odysseus in a mock-sinister manner, he would know I’d been sleeping with some other man, and then he said, frowning at me in what was supposed to be—a playful way—he would be very cross indeed, and he would have to chop me into little pieces with his sword or hang me from the roof beam.

I pretended to be frightened, and said I would never, never think of betraying his big post.

Actually, I really was frightened.

Nevertheless our best times were spent in that bed. Once he’d finished making love, Odysseus always liked to talk to me. He told me many stories, stories about himself, true, and his hunting exploits, and his looting expeditions, and his special bow that nobody but he could string, and how he’d always been favoured by the goddess Athene because of his inventive mind and his skill at disguises and stratagems, and so on, but other stories as well how there came to be a curse on the House of Atreus, and how Perseus obtained the Hat of Invisibility from Hades and cut off the loathsome Gorgon’s head; and how the renowned Theseus and his pal

Peirithous had abducted my cousin Helen when she was less than twelve years old and hidden her away, with the intent of casting lots to see which one of them would marry her when she was old enough. Theseus didn’t rape her as he might otherwise have done because she was only a child, or so it was said. She was rescued by her two brothers, but not before they’d waged a successful war against Athens to get her back.

This last was a story I already knew, as I’d heard it from Helen herself. It sounded quite different when she told it. Her story was about how Theseus and Peirithous were both so in awe of her divine beauty that they grew faint whenever they looked at her, and could barely come close enough to clasp her knees and beg forgiveness for their audacity.

The part of the story she enjoyed the most was the number of men who’d died in the Athenian war: she took their deaths as a tribute to herself. The sad fact is that people had praised her so often and lavished her with so many gifts and adjectives that it had turned her head. She thought she could do anything she wanted, just like the gods from whom she was convinced she was descended.

I’ve often wondered whether, if Helen hadn’t been so puffed up with vanity, we might all have been spared the sufferings and sorrows she brought down on our heads by her selfishness and her deranged lust. Why couldn’t she have led a normal life? But no normal lives were boring, and Helen was ambitious. She wanted to make a name for herself. She longed to stand out from the herd.

When Telemachus was a year old, disaster struck. It was because of Helen, as all the world knows by now.

The first we heard of the impending catastrophe was from the captain of a Spartan ship that had docked in our harbour. The ship was on a voyage around our outlying islands, buying and selling slaves, and as was usual with guests of a certain status we entertained the captain to dinner and put him up overnight. Such visitors were a welcome source of news who had died, who’d been born, who was recently married, who’d killed someone in a duel, who had sacrificed their own child to some god or other but this man’s news was extraordinary.

Helen, he said, had run away with a prince of Troy. This fellow—Paris was his name was a younger son of King Priam and was understood to be very good looking. It was love at first sight. For nine days of feasting—laid on by Menelaus because of this prince’s high standing Paris and Helen had made moon-eyes at each other behind the back of Menelaus, who hadn’t noticed a thing. That didn’t surprise me, because the man was thick as a brick and had the manners of a stump. No doubt he hadn’t stroked Helen’s vanity enough, so she was ripe for someone who would. Then, when Menelaus had to go away to a funeral, the two lovers had simply loaded up Paris’s ship with as much gold and silver as they could carry and slipped away.

Menelaus was now in a red rage, and so was his brother Agamemnon because of the slight to the family honour. They’d sent emissaries to Troy, demanding the return of both Helen and the plunder, but these had come back empty-handed.

Meanwhile, Paris and the wicked Helen were laughing at them from behind the high walls of Troy. It was quite the business, said our guest, with evident relish: like all of us, he enjoyed it when the high and mighty fell flat on their faces. Everyone was talking about it, he said.

As he was listening to this account, Odysseus went white, though he remained silent. That night, however, he revealed to me the cause of his distress.

‘We’ve all sworn an oath,’ he said. ‘We swore it on the parts of a cut-up sacred horse, so it’s a powerful one. Every man who swore it will now be called on to defend the rights of Menelaus, and sail off to Troy, and wage war to get Helen back.’ He said it wouldn’t be easy: Troy was a great power, a much harder nut to crack than Athens had been when Helen’s brothers had devastated it for the same reason.

I repressed a desire to say that Helen should have been kept in a locked truck in a dark cellar because she was poison on legs. Instead I said, ‘Will you have to go?’ I was devastated at the thought of having to stay in Ithaca without Odysseus. What joy would there be for me, alone in the palace? By alone you will understand that I mean without friends or allies. There would be no midnight pleasures to counterbalance the bossiness of Eurycleia and the freezing silences of my mother-in-law.

‘I swore the oath,’ said Odysseus. ‘In fact, the oath was my idea. It would be difficult for me to get out of it now.’

Nevertheless he did try. When Agamemnon and

Menelaus turned up, as they were bound to do along with a fateful third man, Palamedes, who was no fool, not like the others—Odysseus was ready for them. He’d spread the story around that he’d gone mad, and to back it up he’d put on a ridiculous peasant’s hat and was ploughing with an ox and a donkey and sowing the furrows with salt. I

thought I was being very clever when I offered to accompany the three visitors to the field to witness this pitiful sight. ‘You’ll see,’ I said, weeping. ‘He no longer recognises me, or even our little son!’ I

carried the baby along with me to make the point.

It was Palamedes who found Odysseus out he grabbed Telemachus from my arms and put him down right in front of the team. Odysseus either had to turn aside or run over his own son.

So then he had to go.

The other three flattered him by saying an oracle had decreed that Troy could not fall without his help. That eased his preparations for departure, naturally. Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?