Odysseus: The Return

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  ‘Make love to me,’ she said as she stepped out of her gown.

  I was no longer in control of myself. And she hadn’t even touched me with her stick! She embraced me, lay on top of me, she pulled me into a whirlwind, plunged me into an abyss, held me in her thrall amid the clouds of the sky. We went on making love until evening fell. I fell asleep in her arms and when I opened my eyes again it was night.

  ‘Eat,’ she said. And there before me was a table heaped with bread, honey, fruit. Time went by. ‘Are you tired?’ she asked me.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good. Now that you’ve eaten, prepare yourself to take a journey. With me.’

  I was lost again in her look, her smell, her hands, so long and slender. ‘A journey? Where?’

  ‘You’ll see. Get up.’

  The wind rose, the leaves rustled on the trees and then the wood, the meadows, the stream, everything disappeared. We were on the battlefield. Behind us the camp and the ships, before us the city, the walls, the towers. The Skaian Gate! Chills and acute pain were what I felt.

  ‘Where are you?’ I whispered.

  ‘With you. Remember? That night you entered the walls of Troy for a second time, looking in every way like a Trojan warrior, but with a long rope coiled up, hidden in the inside of your shield. A clever scheme . . .’

  ‘It’s not true.’

  ‘No? Come. I’ll show you.’ The wind that had carried off Circe’s house, the entire island with its woods and stream, was now blowing even harder, pushing clouds of dust down the deserted streets of Troy.

  ‘Can’t you see your footprints in the dust? Only you walk that way.’

  ‘It’s not me.’

  ‘You know very well it is. You just wanted to forget and you’ve succeeded. There you are, in front of the ramp. That’s where you agreed to meet Diomedes. He entered from a side gate on the northern wall. There he is, dressed as a Trojan as well. We’re almost at the highest point of the citadel. Down there is Priam’s palace. The sanctuary is this way. Can you see it? That’s you, dropping from the roof on a rope. You climbed up on the side where the colonnade is, where the guards couldn’t see you.’

  I was split in two. I was the warrior lowering himself into the sanctuary and I was the vagabond observing the scene alongside Circe. She started to speak again and her voice was strange, distorted, because, I realized, I was hearing her from far away and long ago.

  ‘Look, you’re coming out on the rooftop . . . And now you’re using the rope to lower something to the ground . . . Diomedes is grabbing it. You know what it is, don’t you?’

  I did not answer.

  ‘You do know, Odysseus, you know very well. It is the Palladion, the statue of Athena that makes the city that possesses her invincible. You are carrying her off so that Troy can be defeated and destroyed.’

  I turned towards Circe and the metallic light in her eyes froze me. Her look was like a slashing sword. It was she who was having visions, now I am certain, those rapacious eyes were seeking out what I was not capable of seeing.

  ‘I wanted to go home,’ I said in a low voice.

  ‘And they wanted to survive.’

  ‘The strongest wins. That’s the law.’

  ‘Or is it the most crafty? Now you know why Athena won’t speak to you any more.’ Her words pierced me like a dagger of ice. ‘You committed a sacrilege against her by profaning her image.’

  I shook my head incredulously. Part of me did not want to believe what the other part of me was affirming: ‘The night of the massacre I saw with my own eyes that Diomedes was running from the sanctuary. I remember it well – he was carrying something close to his chest.’

  ‘And from that moment on, you talked yourself into believing that it was he who had profaned the sanctuary, ignoring what you knew you had done. Forgetting, you became oblivious to your sacrilege.’

  A thunderbolt exploded over our heads and we were back on the island, standing in front of each other in the middle of the night, listening to the silence.

  Circe stared into my eyes again with tremendous power. No one could resist her.

  ‘Now you know. Don’t forget what has been revealed to you. Tomorrow you will set off again on your voyage. More trials await you. Any of them can destroy you. You will reach the rocks of the Sirens. Their song is gentle and very sweet, but it carries death.’

  ‘I’m not afraid of any rocks. I’ve come back from the mouth of Hades.’

  ‘It’s not the rocks that can destroy a man like you.’

  ‘What, then?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘Which truth?’

  ‘The one that can kill you.’

  In the bottomless silence that surrounded me, I heard the shrieks of a griffin: the sun was about to rise.

  Circe spoke again: ‘Then your ship, the last one remaining to you, will have to pass through the narrows. On one side and on the other deadly perils await you. You will have to decide. Whatever choice you make will mean death for your companions.’

  The tears which I had been barely holding back welled up and poured, hot, from my eyes. How much more would I have to go through? How much pain, how much anguish? I had crossed the threshold of the gates of Erebus – what could be worse? Or had my daring to walk among the dead provoked even greater ire from the dark powers?

  ‘I have nothing more to tell you.’ The light in her eyes went out like a flash of lightning vanishes from the night sky, but as the glow of dawn spilled into the house, colour and life and feeling flowed back into her gaze.

  ‘This is truly the last time, son of Laertes. When you have crossed the threshold of this house, I will never see you again, but you will remain forever in my eyes and my heart. Of all those who the sea has cast up onto these shores, of all those who audaciously landed their ships here, you are the only one I will remember in the long silence of midday in the summer, on springtime nights laden with mystery, on those sad autumn evenings when the cranes abandon their nests and fly off to distant lands, in the whistle of the winter wind that raises white foam on the waves. Only the sound of your name will live in my heart, Odysseus of the myriad thoughts, patient and fearless, small, indomitable mortal.’

  She looked at me with infinite tenderness – mistress of wild beasts, enchantress, most beauteous among the women of the earth and the goddesses of the heavens. And she wept.

  I LEFT WITHOUT a kiss, without a caress, mindful that I would never have the strength to go back to my shipmates had I lingered a moment longer. I crossed the threshold and began to hear the cries of the animals inhabiting that place – souls in torment. I returned to my comrades and saw that they had completed the burial of our worthy friend Elpenor, sad spirit of Hades. They had raised a high mound over his ashes and into it had plunged the oar that had been his to grip when he would sit at the rowing bench and hasten our ship on her journey to the unfaltering beat of the oarmaster’s drum. Ten times we shouted his name, trusting that our voice would reach him in the nether world, land of the blind, among the pale heads. The wind carried it away, far away, over the cresting waves.

  WE TURNED the prow west and a steady, stiff wind sped us on our way. Once the sail had been hoisted, the men rested, after pulling the oars on board and laying them out under the benches, along the bulwarks. Only Perimedes was sweating as he manned the steering oar, keeping the ship true to her course, even with the glare of the sun in his eyes. In the afternoon, the shadow of the sail covered him and he was able to enjoy the sea breeze. All we could see was water in every direction, no matter where we trained our gaze, but I would have been a happy man had not so many thoughts been occupying my mind. Circe’s words nagged at me. I had no way of knowing when the time would come for danger to raise its foul head. How close were we to the Sirens’ lair? My eyes fell upon a finely crafted wicket basket full of the combs left behind after all the honey had been squeezed out of them. Only the wax remained. An idea suddenly occurred to me: perhaps I would be able to brave the voice of trut
h without it killing me.

  We sailed for days and nights with fair weather and a hot sun – the rigging hummed in the wind like the strings of a lyre. There were times when I told myself that Circe had certainly been mistaken, or that she had said those words to persuade me to stay with her and give up on my stubborn plan to return. This was my most ardent hope, although it didn’t help to distract me from her predictions.

  What tormented me the most was the notion that I had profaned the image of my goddess and that I had vexed and offended her. The very thought was poisonous to me. It made me feel completely alone and defenceless against treacherous, even deadly forces. But I had no way to go but forward. It was like when my ship was being pulled to Circe’s island: I realized that I had no choice and no power to avoid any of the trials that she had foretold.

  And thus one day, I can’t remember which, we came within sight of a little archipelago made up of small islands. Nothing apparently grew on them, nor did they seem to be inhabited. Bluffs of bare rock, with a few bright-green pine trees. One of these was enormous. The roots snaked down through cracks in the rock, and great birds perched upon it, still as death on the gigantic branches. A distant melody, soft and unutterably sweet, drifted towards us from the cliffs steeped in the sea. Sirens! No one else could live on such barren crags in the middle of the sea. The wind, that had accompanied us so far without ever faltering, dropped all at once and anxiety flooded my heart. We passed close enough to one of those small islands for me to make out heaps of skeletons and corpses half devoured by animals and seabirds, a horrid sight! I had no doubts.

  I picked up the basket with the wax and kneaded it in my fingers until it became soft and easy to shape. I was already talking to my men. ‘Listen to me!’ I shouted. ‘The ordeal that awaits us will be terrible to endure, but it is one of the last. I’ve been warned by an oracle: these are the islands of the Sirens. The bones and bodies you see on those rocks belong to sailors who were drawn in by the melodious, enchanting song that no mortal can resist. They ended up dashed against the cliffs and now their bones shine white on the bottom of the sea and on these rocks. They will never see their families or their homes again.

  ‘I will not let you run this risk. I will put this wax into your ears so that you will not hear them. But then you will have to lash me to the mast. I have to listen to their song! I have to hear everything the Sirens say. It may be crucial to knowing what awaits us. My mind may crack. I may beg you to untie me, order you, even, to loosen the ropes that bind me to the mast. You must not obey me. On the contrary, you must tighten the knots that hold me. Do not be moved by my tears or frightened by my screams, no matter how heartrending they are. My voice may change, and my face as well. Do not listen to me. Do not look at me. It won’t be me you are looking at, but some dark force speaking to you through my mouth. Row, row with all your might, make the foamy sea boil, get as far away as possible and only when you recognize me again as the man I am will you untie me.’

  My comrades obeyed. They allowed me to stop up their ears and then they lashed me tightly to the mast using the knots that seamen know. Inextricable. The ship continued to advance with Perimedes at the steering oar, keeping us on course. I could feel the twist in the hull in the tremor of the mast base under my feet and I could see the archipelago nearing on my right, the crags and pines rising from the frothing sea. The melody became more audible as the ship was slowed by a strong cross-current which I could sense from the increasing pressure of the mast against my back. It was a subtle, penetrating song, sweet at first but then sharpening into an intense, agonizing tone. As the voices came closer, they turned into a chorus, winding around each other like the threads that form a rope. Finally, when the giant pine tree was bending over us, the voices became a single voice.

  The voice of my wife!

  It was Penelope singing, among those threads of song, a melody of infinite melancholy, one I knew well: ‘End the sting of nostalgia, bring him home to me!’

  I did not bend. I knew it was my own heart singing and no one else; the voice of my longing to rest in the arms of my queen after so much suffering. But then the song splintered and other voices accompanied Penelope’s. There was Circe, and Helen . . . and the voice of a woman I had imagined dead: poor, tortured Andromache . . . and two more voices that I would not know, and love, until much later. They were sublime. Each was clearly distinct but they joined into a single sound, something I knew was impossible. I began to understand the song: it was the song of my adventure as a man, a king, a husband, a father, a friend, a son, an enemy, a hero, a coward. It was the song of my past, present, future life . . . and what I understood was so painful that it tore shrill screams from my heart. I wanted to kill myself. I begged my companions to untie me, to loosen me from the knots that kept me bound to existence, much more than merely to the mast of my ship. I saw myself as I am now! Now that I walk in the deep snow talking to myself to keep my soul clenched between my teeth. Now that I suffer unspeakable, cruel, infinite sorrow. Now that I taste bitterness without end nor limit . . . I who saw the pale heads, I who spoke to the ghosts of great Ajax, of Achilles, of Agamemnon, I who shed scalding tears before the grieving shadow of my mother.

  I wanted to die.

  To die so completely that not even an empty image wandering around the blind world of Hades would remain of me. I wanted to be no one, nothing.

  Nothing did they spare me, those beautiful, alluring voices. The sharper the dagger is, the deeper and more deadly the wound. I understood, in that extreme, wondrous song the whole meaning of the curse contained in my name.

  Then my comrades unbound me.

  9

  ‘WHATEVER CHOICE YOU MAKE will mean death for your companions.’ These were the first words that surfaced in my mind when my men untied the ropes that kept me lashed to the ship’s mast. Circe, announcing the narrows that I would have to navigate, with equally deadly danger on both sides. Where were they? When would we meet with them? Many a narrows had I passed in my day: between fear and duty, love and honour, friendship and gain, the world of the living and the world of the dead. I’d passed between jagged cliffs, unassailable walls . . . but those awaiting me would be the most terrible. I could feel it.

  The sun shone high in a clear sky. A seagull was perched on top of the mast and the wind ruffled his feathers. There were no signs left of what we’d been through. The men had taken the wax from their ears and their eyes darted out over the glittering blue waves as the wind urged the ship south. Only I felt a tremendous weight, a welling sadness that wasn’t coming from nowhere. It was coming from the voices ringing inside my heart. I hadn’t dreamt them; they were real.

  We sailed all that day and the whole night as well, keeping the brazier alight at the stern and all eyes alert at the prow. The moon rose from the horizon as the second watch was beginning and it lit our way for a while with the wake of silver it cast on the water, before being veiled by thin clouds. It was the middle of the night when I thought I heard a slight whisper of oars and I saw, or perhaps thought I saw, a ship much larger than mine passing silently in the other direction, no more distant from us than the flight of an arrow. A dark but perfectly clear shadow, the ghost of a torn sail fluttering in the air, the white foam curling at the prow as it sliced through the waves. Then the ship was swallowed by the darkness. Who was passing in the night?

  On our entire journey, we’d never crossed paths with another ship. We’d seen only wrecks, ships foundered and crashed against reefs. We had always felt alone and abandoned, as if we were navigating the sea of a strange and unreal world. Never, after crossing the wall of fog, had we found a city inhabited by men who eat bread, with a port, a market square and a sacred enclosure dedicated to the gods. Never had we seen a single emporium crowded with merchants of many races intent on selling and exchanging their wares. And I had never again felt the presence of my blue-green-eyed goddess . . . now, after what Circe had told me, I despaired of ever finding her on my path again. I mou
rned her and tortured myself for having lost her.

  We sailed on for many a day and night without ever encountering anyone or anything. Only once, in the dark, did I see a mountain looming, edged at its top with a sinister red light. A low rumble seemed to come from deep within it and it flashed streaks of fire. My world seemed further and further away, while anguish seeped into every corner of my heart. One day, before dawn, Eurylochus turned the helm over to Euribates, one of my strong Cephalonians, and came over to me.

  ‘You were the only one among us to hear the song of the sirens. Is it something you can tell me about?’ my friend asked.

  ‘No. I can’t. Don’t ask me to summon up its memory. I’m trying to banish it from my mind because it stops me from thinking, from deciding, from hoping. All I can tell you is that their song was very sweet. Sweet enough to drive you mad with the cruelty of its words. A contradiction that was, that is, insufferable. Heart-breaking. The only hope I still hold is that it wasn’t true . . . or that it wasn’t the only truth.

  ‘Listen to me, comrade. I believe that once we reach familiar waters, everything will change. We will win back the power to bend fate, to ward off bad omens with the force of our minds and our arms. Here, in this strange world we’ve stumbled into, everything is difficult, harsh, hostile. I’m afraid that terrible trials may still lie before us, but you must help me. If, when it comes time for the final test, you support me and convince the others to obey me, perhaps we can still save ourselves. We’ll finally be able to point the prow east, towards home, and stay on course. The ship will obey the helm and the oars, distances will let themselves be measured and we’ll be able to count the days that separate us from land. From our land.’