The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man: Essential Stories

THE SILENCE OF THE SIRENS

PROOF THAT BASIC, even childish, methods can sometimes save you:

To protect himself against the sirens, Odysseus stuffed wax in his ears and had himself shackled to the mast. Of course, every other sailor before him could have done the same thing—except for those the Sirens had managed to seduce from far away—but the whole world knew that doing these things wouldn’t help at all. The Sirens’ song could pierce anything, and the passion of those they seduced would have burst through more than just some chains and a mast. But that’s not what Odysseus was thinking of, even though he’d presumably heard about it. He entrusted himself completely to a handful of wax and his chains, and sailed towards the Sirens full of innocent delight with his little trick.

But as it happens, the Sirens have a weapon even more terrible than their singing, namely their silence. It may never have happened, but it is at least conceivable that someone could save himself from their singing; not so from their silence. The feeling of being able to overcome them with your own strength and the consequent reckless hubris would overwhelm any restraint on earth.

And in fact, when Odysseus came, those terrible singers didn’t sing, whether because they believed that their opponent could only be reached by silence, or because the sight of the joy on Odysseus’s face as he thought about his wax and his chains made them forget all about their singing.

Odysseus, however, if I can put it like this, didn’t hear their silence; he believed that they were singing and that he alone was being protected from hearing them. At first, he saw their throats straining, their chests rising and falling, the tears in their eyes, their half-opened mouths, and thought that this was all part of the arias dying away unheard around him. But soon these things faded from his sight as he fixed his gaze into the distance; the Sirens all but melted away before his determination, and at the very moment when he was closest to them, his mind was already on other things.

But they—more beautiful than ever—stretched themselves and turned to follow him with their eyes, letting their gruesome hair blow in the wind and relaxing the grip of their claws on the rock. They didn’t want to seduce him any more, all they wanted was to gaze on Odysseus’s bright face for as long as they could.

If the Sirens had had a consciousness, that moment would have annihilated them. But as it was, they stayed there and Odysseus was the only one who ever escaped them.

A short postscript to this story has also been handed down. Odysseus, they say, was so cunning, he was such a sly fox, that even the goddess of fate couldn’t see into his heart of hearts. It’s possible—even though it goes beyond human understanding—that he actually did notice that the Sirens weren’t singing, and put on this whole performance as a shield against them and the gods.