Odysseus: The Return

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  When our hunger had been somewhat satiated, some of the men began to sing. It was the hour of remembering. Distant images, forgotten for years, came to lap at our minds like waves reaching across the beach. The man that I’d lost sight of, in so many years of war’s din and bloodletting, was coming alive in me again, with feelings, emotions, hopes. But I knew well that our journey was not yet over: what still lay ahead was a treacherous passage, fraught with difficulty and danger.

  Cape Malea!

  ‘Let’s sleep now,’ I said. ‘A difficult day awaits us tomorrow.’

  I stretched out in the shelter of a rock, covered myself with my cloak and tried to rest. At my side, the sword of Troy reminded me that the past never dies, and can return to strike at any moment. All night, the wind rushing through the bushes and the high boughs of the trees kept me half-awake. I rolled first to one side and then to the other while sleep eluded me. Finally, just before Dawn lit up sea and land, I was able to find some rest. My aching limbs relaxed and I dreamt that I was alone on a deserted beach. The place was immersed in silence. I could hear neither the roar of the sea that never sleeps nor the shrieking of seagulls. But all at once I heard barking and saw a dog running towards me. He jumped all over me, whimpering with joy.

  ‘Argus, Argus!’ I shouted, ‘it’s you!’ And I petted and caressed him, my heart swelling with affection for my faithful friend. He hadn’t forgotten me.

  Then I woke up.

  The men had found blackberries among the bushes, ripe cane apples, pine nuts and almonds, along with a great number of enormous asphodel bulbs which they’d roasted over the embers. We ate them all, because we knew they would completely abolish our pangs of hunger.

  The time to set sail had come. We got onto the ships and turned them south. Mine was the first to reach the open sea.

  I knew of the hazards that awaited us in the narrow passage between Euboea and Andros. The speed of the current and of the wind, already very high, would only increase in the strait. I had the sail taken in and the oars lowered into the water to better manoeuvre the ship and check her speed. The sun was already high when my vessel exited again into the open sea. I counted the ships behind me as they moved forth on their skewed line like a herdsman counts his heifers when he brings them back to the fold from the pasture. They were all there, and I was greatly relieved. I had my crew raise the sail again and watched as this manoeuvre was repeated in the same way by the rest of the fleet. By dusk I could see Cape Sounion, but I didn’t approach the land for fear of the reefs. Had Menestheus already arrived at Athens? Had he already gone to the sanctuary to thank Poseidon by offering a sacrifice? Perhaps he was up there watching our passage over the foaming sea . . . We continued south as the sun began to decline on our right over the mountain peaks. The wind was freshening again. I rushed to the ropes with Eurylochus, Perimedes and Antiphus the helmsman. We had to control the speed and direction of the ships and calculate the time that separated us from the most difficult passage yet to come. Was it best to seek a place to land before it got dark and set off again the next morning, or proceed at a faster clip, continuing through the night, in order to get to Cape Malea and double it as soon as we could, leaving the obstacle behind us once and for all? I thought this was the better strategy. We would navigate by night with the braziers lit, watching the stars to stay on route and taking into account the strength of the wind and its direction. We would shorten the sail by half. The others, behind us, would only need to follow our example. As soon as we came within sight of the cape we would dismast and pass beneath the high promontory by the strength of our oars alone, then come back up the other side.

  It was a well-conceived plan and I could already see it happening in my mind’s eye. I could almost feel how the speed of the wind would drop off as soon as we passed the cape, how the air temperature would become milder, the waves of the sea calmer. Our next stop would be Pylos, that sheltered, welcoming bay. Nestor would greet us and have a great banquet served up . . . I was beginning to let myself think of Penelope: was her heart still faithful to me? Did she love me still? Ten years seemed a terribly long time . . .

  But the wind, instead of dropping, increased in intensity. The sail ripped and we had to replace it, with enormous difficulty. None of us slept all night. We didn’t move from our posts. We kept scanning the heavens and consulting each other about the decisions to be taken. All at once, the sky became covered with high, thin clouds and the stars disappeared. From that moment on, our eyes were fixed in the direction of the shore, straining to see a light, a farmhouse, a shepherd’s shack, to reassure ourselves that land was indeed close and that we weren’t being blown off course. But all we could see was darkness, all we could hear was the voice of the sea that never sleeps. I trained my gaze to the east, then, to our left, awaiting the first sign of dawn with growing anguish. The only sight that comforted me was when I looked back and saw, in that utter darkness, the braziers of my ships tracing an oblique red line of fire on the water.

  When the sky lightened, it held no stars nor moon. Above us was only a pale void. The wind was colder and stronger: we were in the middle of a storm. I was seized with dread: the gods were pushing me away from my destination!

  I was shaken by the voice of Antiphus, full of sadness. ‘Wanax,’ he said, ‘where are we?’

  No matter which way we looked, we saw nothing. The headland of Cape Malea, which must still have been out there somewhere, was invisible, distant, lost to us. I had hoped, dreamt, for so long of my island my house my family. They felt so close I could have touched them. I was reminded of the day that my father had taken me out into the open sea, to the point where all lands vanish. The sea had stretched out before me then, extending infinitely in every direction, while the sun pounded down on us, its rays calling up sprites of light that danced on the still waters.

  The sea, all around us, was empty.

  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 fr
ont 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 al
ongside 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.