Odysseus: The Return

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  She disappeared as suddenly as if she’d vanished into the air, and in her place stood a ram black as night and next to him a sheep, black-fleeced as well. I understood. The victims to be sacrificed to the Lady of Darkness at the mouth of Hades. It was time to depart. I loaded the animals onto the ship as my mates took their places on the rowing benches, ready to pound the sea with their oars, eager to start the voyage that would take us home. The ship pulled away from the coast, the prow turned towards the open sea.

  But soon a cry rang out from the shore: ‘Wait! Wait for me!’

  Polites! So great had been my comrades’ haste to set off that we hadn’t counted ourselves.

  ‘Fast, jump in!’ I shouted. ‘We can’t stop. The current is pushing us away.’ Polites dived in and swam with great vigour as we raised the oars out of the sea, using only the steering oar to keep on course. We hoisted him onboard, dripping wet.

  ‘Elpenor!’ he said. ‘You forgot about him as well. He’s dead.’

  I grabbed him by the shoulders. ‘What are you saying? Where is Elpenor?’

  ‘There!’ he shouted. ‘There, where the house is. He’s dead, he’s dead! We have to go back and bury him!’

  Eurylochus caught my eye as he awaited orders. I replied: ‘We can’t. The current is too strong. It would be too complicated to turn back. The crossing that awaits us is already difficult enough. Turn around, look at the island. See how far it is already?’

  Polites bowed his head in resignation, but there were tears in his eyes.

  ‘How did it happen?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know how it happened and I don’t know who did it,’ said Polites, still panting. ‘I was gathering up my clothing and my arms to come down to the port, since I could see from the house that the ship was ready, and I yelled out to tell him it was time to leave. He called back to let me know he’d heard me, and so I started walking. When a few minutes had gone by and he hadn’t joined me, I turned back, calling his name, but he didn’t answer. Then I found him. He was lying on the ground, dead, with his neck broken. I knelt down next to him. His face was still rosy coloured, his skin still soft, there was still a bit of warmth left in his limbs. It looked as if he were sleeping.’

  ‘Why?’ cried out my heart. ‘Why, just a moment before we went out to sea?’ Elpenor was the youngest of us all, and he’d never stood out for his courage or daring on the battlefield. A modest lad, but reliable, and dutiful. Why hadn’t I noticed his absence? The news of his death wounded me deeply. Another part of us had disappeared. The gods and destiny were hacking away at us, a little at a time.

  I shouted out: ‘Was it you?’

  Was I thinking of Athena, or of Circe? I had no answer because there was no answer, as there had not been for any of the comrades I’d lost first on the fields of Troy and then on the serpent-shaped back of the unsleeping sea. Simply, his fate had caught up with him.

  ‘I closed his eyes, but could do nothing else,’ Polites said. ‘We owe him funeral rites, so that he can enter the house of Hades. I beg you, wanax, let’s turn back. He was my friend.’ All at once I heard the cries, the growls, the roars of the animals living around Circe’s house.

  ‘We can’t,’ I replied. ‘I won’t risk the lives of the living for the funeral of a dead man.’ Polites dropped his head and hid his face between his hands.

  We continued on our route and, as my shipmates raised the sail, I watched from the stern as the island slowly disappeared. In the end all I could see was the plume of smoke rising from the house. Circe, sensuous and loving. I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing her again.

  The wind was blowing from the east and the crew was sick at heart over the loss of their friend. He had escaped years of war, the bloodthirsty cyclops, the savage Laestrygonians . . . to lose his life on a calm morning in a tranquil place on a remote island, far away from other men like us who live on bread. I feared that their despair might overwhelm them, and I realized I must speak to them before that could happen. I had never needed them as much as I did then.

  ‘Comrades,’ I said, ‘before we left, Circe taught me how to call up the shadow of wise Tiresias from the kingdom of the dead. She has urged me to go to where he is, to consult him, and I cannot disregard her words if we hope to know what future awaits us.’ I looked them straight in the eyes as I went on. ‘Look, men, the wind is blowing from the east, as if to manifest the will of the gods. That’s why we shall sail west until we reach the Ocean. There we’ll find the white cliff that marks the entrance to Hades.’

  My shipmates were staring at me in green, unreasoning terror.

  ‘I’ll make my way there alone – you’ll wait for me on the ship until I come back,’ I continued. ‘And that will be the start of our return. I promise you. Men, prepare your hearts to be strong and patient. A grim place awaits us, covered with shadows by day and by night, in the summer as in the winter. A cold wind blows constantly – the earth and sky resound with sighs and groans. But you must not despair: you will have accomplished a deed that only the greatest heroes can boast of. Few are permitted to explore the extreme confines between life and death.’

  I’m sure they were thinking that I’d completely lost my mind. They were weeping as if I’d condemned them all to death. I tried to light the spark of courage in them, I swore by the earth and the sky that I would bring them back to the land of the living. And in the end I convinced them to accompany me on that endeavour, the most arduous and exhausting that I would ever face in my lifetime.

  We sailed west for days and days, crossing the entire sea, until we reached the current of the river Ocean that surrounds all lands. From there we pushed on, following the coast as we drew nearer and nearer to the kingdom of darkness. The passage of time lost all meaning, for the days were ever shorter and the nights longer and darker, until daytime was nothing more than a dim, leaden prelude to dusk. The stars hid from our sight and only the dark line of the shore continued to guide me towards the realm of the dead.

  We finally spotted a tower, high up on a cliff surrounded by jagged pinnacles. Dismembered wrecks were lodged on the algae-green rocks below. We’d reached the land of the Cimmerians, as Circe had predicted. They were the guardians of nothing. Their city was built of black stone on a desolate, craggy mountain surrounded by gusts of billowing fog. We sailed past the cliff and the menacing tower and once again we found ourselves manoeuvring amid rocks as sharp as keenly edged bronze while the sea churned around us. We thwarted many a fatal crash by using our oars to push free of looming rock ledges. Finally, after a long struggle, from the top of the mast one of my men signalled that he had sighted the tall white cliff. Soon we could see it as well: steep, rugged, plunging into the sea. A ghost in the fog. I had my men strike the sail and we rowed in towards the coast. Our path was still strewn with reefs and cutting rocks, grey as iron, but our line of approach finally became wider and the swelling of the waves diminished until it had vanished completely. I led the rowing then with a slow rhythm, so the keel would not fracture if we struck a rock. We finally touched ground and the prow glided into heavy black sand. I jumped onto the shore. I had my cloak and my sword and nothing else. My men handed over the victims to be sacrificed, lowering them alongside the ship: the black-pelted ram, a huge animal with great curving horns, and the black-fleeced sheep, both destined to be offered to the divinities of Hades.

  I walked along a muddy path. Fetid vapours rose all around me, the dank breath of Erebus. I reached the top of a rise and, before descending the other side, I took a look back at my ship: all I could see was the mast, swaying in silence. The sea was quiet as well, and very still. Before me opened a dark, barren, flat, desolate valley. Then, as if out of nowhere, the path filled with footprints, hundreds, thousands, a myriad of children’s, women’s, men’s tracks left by an infinite army, all of them defeated by the Chaera of death. I had found my way.

  I followed it for . . . I don’t know how long. I was cold, getting colder and colder, my thoughts condense
d into small gasping puffs. All at once, an enormous cavern welled open before me: it descended into the bowels of the earth. I had reached my destination.

  I knelt, and used my sword to dig a hole one cubit wide and one cubit long. I seized the ram by its horns and cut its throat, and then did the same with the sheep. I let their black, steaming blood flow into the hole. The moment had come. I called up, with a long song, the pale heads of the dead. And they came to me: mothers who held in their arms the babes who killed them in the struggle of being born, old men with vacant eyes, young men in bloody armour, dead before their time, done in by a sword or a spear or a bitter arrow. The sadness in their eyes was infinite. I was gripped by icy terror. Although I had prepared myself to meet with the dead, what I saw was unbearable: the purest, sharpest despair.

  I recognized a youth: a purple mark crossed his forehead.

  ‘Elpenor! You! You’ve already arrived in the house of the dead? How swiftly you came. You got here faster on foot than I in my ship! What sorrow to see you here among the shadows of the dead!’

  I wept as I beheld him, for I could clearly see his features, the look in his eyes. I gasped as I understood that what seemed real to me was but a shadow.

  ‘How did it happen?’ I cried. ‘You so often avoided death at the hands of the enemy in battle. How did you meet with such a senseless end?’

  ‘Any death at my age is senseless,’ he replied, and dropped his head as if trying to conceal his forehead. He was ashamed.

  ‘I was drinking. I was drunk. I’d gone up to the terrace of the house where the sea breeze was cool. A grapevine had sent its shoots to cover a wide space with its shade. I fell asleep, deeply so. When my friend called out to me, I woke suddenly, my mind in a muddle. I didn’t know where I was and I put my foot forward to start walking. I fell headlong and my neck snapped.’ He was weeping as well, tears of air and cold vapour. ‘I beg of you, when you return, search for what is left of me and put it on the pyre, and when you have gathered my ashes and buried them, raise a mound on the seashore with my name and sacrifice victims to me so that the lady of this black place will allow me a little peace!’

  Drunk. He died drunk. Why? Didn’t he have abundant meat and bread, a beautiful, hospitable house on a marvellous island laden with every kind of game? It wasn’t enough, I knew that. His nightmares had never stopped tormenting him. He had tried to banish them with wine, like his lost comrades had with the red flower of oblivion. There was no escaping the nightmares of war.

  ‘I will, Elpenor. I will immolate the best animals in my herds, and I’ll burn the thigh meat as well, to appease the lady of the Underworld.’

  He fled, sighing.

  Many other sorrowful spirits were thronging around the hole where the victims I’d sacrificed were still dripping blood, but I held them all back with my sword, shouting: ‘Keep away! Keep away!’ The sword frightened them. They knew well they could not die a second time, but they remembered its power to take life.

  And it was then that I saw, among the others, the sacred prophet: spent-eyed Tiresias, the famed seer of Thebes who had revealed that his city had been suffering the scourge of the gods because its king, Oedipus, had killed his father and married his own mother.

  He neared me, sensing the smell of blood, the blood that gives life.

  ‘Pull back your sharp sword,’ he said to me, ‘and let me drink if you want to know your destiny.’

  I stepped back and thrust my sword back into its sheath. Tiresias bent down and drank deeply of the blood. Life surged into him, colouring his empty shade.

  He said: ‘You seek a smooth return, Odysseus, but the god of the abyss will render that return most difficult, for you blinded his son and humiliated him pitilessly. You will return, late, a broken man, alone on a foreign ship, having lost all of your shipmates, and you will find your home invaded by arrogant men who squander your wealth and court your wife. All of them you must extinguish, either openly, with your slashing bronze, or stealthily, with deceit. And not even then will you be able to enjoy your sweet wife and your dear son.

  ‘You will depart again with an oar on your shoulder,’ he continued, ‘and you will journey over the continent, travelling so far that you will meet up with men who do not use salt to season their food. They know nothing of the sea, nor have they ever seen crimson-cheeked ships or the oars that make them fly. This is the sign. You can’t mistake it: when a wayfarer asks you if the oar you carry on your shoulder is a fan used for winnowing grain. You will plant the oar into the ground and offer sacrifice to great Poseidon: a bull, a boar and a ram. Only then will you be able to reign in blessed peace over 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.’

  Tears streamed from my eyes. I wanted to scream, to vent my rage against the god who punished me solely for having defended myself. Why did Poseidon insist on persecuting me? Because my mind had found the way to prevail against a bloodthirsty monster, because I sought revenge for my comrades who had been slain and devoured? But I knew the truth: a mortal is never allowed to challenge a god. I implored Tiresias then: ‘I beg you, prophet, foretell another destiny for me, a better one, because this one breaks my heart and pains me beyond any comprehension. Give my comrades, at least, a means for escaping this fate!’

  The prophet, moved to compassion – if a ghost can have feelings, although he no longer has a heart – pronounced other words: ‘You will sail east after leaving this dark place and you will not find shore until you reach the island of Trinacria, where the herds of the Sun who sees all from above have their grazing ground. If, despite your great hunger and suffering, you do not touch them, you and your men will reach your destination. If, instead, you lay a hand on the calves, then I predict ruin for your ship and your shipmates. Even if you yourself are spared, you will arrive late at your homeland, a broken man. More I cannot say.’ He melted away like the fog.

  Tiresias had vanished from my sight, and yet I could not return to the ship and my men. I felt a force that kept me rooted there, a presence that infused my heart with thoughts and emotions that I’d long forgotten.

  ‘Mother!’ I called out suddenly. ‘Mother, are you here?’ Echo, in that moment of pain, repeated my words endlessly.

  ‘Yes, my son,’ sounded a voice in my heart. ‘What are you doing here, beneath the dark shadow? It is terrible for a living man to enter the kingdom of the dead.’ And then there she was, standing in front of me.

  ‘Mother!’ I cried, weeping. ‘What brought you to the thick gloom of Hades? Was it Artemis, who struck you with one of her arrows? Or did a disease slowly consume you?’

  ‘No, son, it was neither Artemis, nor a slow, fatal illness, but the longing for you, my beloved son. The terrible desire to see you once again took my life.’

  ‘And my father?’ I asked. ‘Is he living, still? Does he still enjoy his privileges as king? And Telemachus? Do our people respect him?’

  ‘Yes, son, your father is still alive, but he has retired to the countryside and lives alone with an old servant who cares for him. In the winter he stretches out on the ashes still tepid from the hearth, and in the summer he lies down on a bed of leaves wherever darkness catches him. There he sighs, his heart aching for you. Of Telemachus you can be proud: he is a handsome young man and well respected by his people. They all call upon him to administer justice.’

  ‘And my bride? Is her heart still faithful to me? Or has she found another man and married him?’

  ‘She is faithful, my son, but she does nothing but weep, day and night, for she suffers great humiliation in your house, as she pines for your return, and you . . . you never return.’

  I drew close, so great was my desire to clasp her to me, but my hands returned empty to my chest. ‘Let me hold you,’ I implored, ‘Mother, let me hold you.’

  I thought I saw a tired smile on her bloodless lips. ‘You cannot, child, there is nothing here you can embrace. A pyre burns
flesh and tendons, dissolves bones; the soul flies away like a light puff of air. It is only your desire that makes me visible to your eyes. Leave this desolate place, I beg of you, escape while you still have time.’ These were her last words to me before she dissipated into the dark aura, taking her place again among the multitude of ghosts of men and women mowed down by the Chaera of death.

  I fell to my knees and wept. I sobbed like a little boy at the thought of the anguish that had killed my mother. So many memories flooded my mind, from the happy days of my childhood when I would ask her to tell me about my father. As I had just now, but for very different reasons. In my mind’s eye she was garbed in precious gowns, the daughter of Autolykos. She was like a goddess when she had sat on the throne of Ithaca. Now she was nothing but a fleeting shadow, dissolving in the darkness of Hades . . . and my father, the hero Laertes: I saw him lying on a lowly bed of ashes like a beggar, and my heart split in my chest. I finally raised my head again and then, in that multitude of dead souls, my eyes, full of tears as they were, discerned other spirits, but only those that my heart desired.

  The first to appear was Agamemnon, the great Atreides, a dark frown on his face and a horrendous gash across his neck. I was incredulous; I could not believe he was dead. ‘Oh glorious Atreides!’ I said. ‘What brought you to this place of tears? Were you shipwrecked as you returned from Troy? Or killed in some hostile land where you were seeking rich plunder or women?’ He recognized me and came close. He moved to embrace me but his arms, once so strong when they swung the heavy sword and bore the great shield, had lost all their force. I could not feel them at all on my body. He was surrounded by a host of bloody ghosts: the comrades who had always guarded him, shielded him in battle; those who never left his side under even the most relentless attack. The tremendous truth began to worm its way into my mind.