Odysseus: The Return

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  And yet I had not forgotten Penelope.

  Often, when the moon rose, even while the goddess, my mistress, squeezed me between her ivory thighs, my heart escaped my panting mouth and cried out to my distant bride. When, exhausted, I would collapse onto the sand like a castaway and Calypso, naked and lunar, left me there, I would weep silent tears, turning my head towards the shadow of the night.

  At times she would disappear, without a word, without a reason, vanishing like fog when the sun rises, and I would go mad. I’d search for her everywhere, run down the beach, across the forest, through the stream, shouting her name like a lunatic. When that happened I would curl up in my old shelter at night. I didn’t dare search for the entrance to her cave, for I knew that I would never find it, no matter how hard I looked.

  My heart turned to stone, my eyes burned, the sky and the sea grew red. The birds cawed out horrible shrieking songs.

  Then, as she had gone, she reappeared. Sitting on the same smooth stone where I’d first seen her, or strolling along the stream picking flowers, or taking a small flock of sheep to pasture, dressed as a shepherdess. She would give me a look and I was enslaved again. But as time passed, as dilated and immeasurable as time had become for me, I found a way to make her understand that there was part of me that she would never be able to conquer, a part of my heart defended by a bronze wall. A part of my heart that would never let her in. I was sitting on a reef in the middle of the sea. I had swum there and I was waiting for the moon to rise from the waves. She appeared suddenly, walking on the water.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Of my wife. My son. The friends I lost, those who are buried in faraway Asia and those who sleep on the bottom of the sea.’

  She seemed not to understand my words and not even my thoughts. They were foreign to her nature, such feelings.

  ‘Forget them,’ was her answer. ‘If you saw them again you’d be disappointed. You’ve built up images in your head that aren’t true. Your wife is no longer the seventeen-year-old you left. The long wait has sapped her. Her tears have lined that lovely face, wrinkled the eyes and the mouth that once set your senses on fire. Your son is no longer that soft, babbling infant that aroused such tenderness in you – you wouldn’t even recognize him if you saw him. And as far as your comrades go, they can no longer see you or hear you. They have turned to ash, or the fish have feasted on their soft flesh; there’s nothing left but bones, nothing left to recognize. Forget them as well. What are these memories good for?’

  ‘For nothing. That’s why I need them, why I hold them so dear to my heart. For you life has no value; it has no limits, no start or finish. Nothing can affect you, nothing can change you. I know that my own life will end, sooner or later, and that’s why I love every instant of it, every puff of wind, twitter of a bird, whiff of a wild rose. Every dawn and every sunset are different, each wondrous and stupefying to behold. That’s why I want to see my son again. Even if he were awkward and ugly, he would be no less dear to my heart. You see, I begot him loving his mother when she was in the splendour of her youth, a moment as fleeting as it is precious.

  ‘I want to see my father, who lives alone, stripped of his dignity. He was Laertes the hero, shining warrior, powerful king, and now sad old age grips him and he has no one to care for him. Why do I long to see a hoary old forsaken man? Because I’m his son and I have his blood in my veins, and it is to him that I owe this life, with all its horrors and wonders, its sorrows and its crazy joys. He inspired me with the insatiable desire to see things for myself, to love and to hate and to dream, and to seek out the distant lands that lie beyond every horizon. I long to see my mother as well but I can’t – she’s dead.’

  ‘How do you know that? Mortals aren’t allowed to know such things.’

  ‘Because I called up her shade, and many others, from Hades. I travelled to a desolate place beneath the white cliff on the shores of the river Ocean that encircles the earth and there I found them. I tried to embrace her, in vain. My arms returned empty to my chest. I wept many tears.’

  Calypso was gone then, following the silver wake that the moon cast on the sea. Her transparent veils fluttered in the breeze.

  Now and then, as the days became shorter and the wind of Boreas descended shrieking all the way to our blissful island, she would take me with her inside the cave, where there was always an abundance of food and wine. She had me lie next to her in the bed that changed with the changing seasons: it was big now, and soft, with warm covers of purple wool. We clung to one another, watched as the surf crashed at the mouth of the chamber and listened as the rain beat down on the rock that covered the entrance, filling the crags with puddles and soaking the sand. Her lips were tender, her skin warm, her breasts soft against my chest. At times like those an infinite sweetness surged in my heart, sad memories vanished and so did my longing for distant Ithaca. Only the present counted. That was how a god lived: there was no past, no future, just an infinite, continuous present, like a sky that is always clear, a sea always calm, rippled only by tiny whispering waves.

  ‘I thought,’ I said, ‘that the weather was always fine here; that it could only rain at night to nourish the earth and to water the thirsty plants and trees.’

  ‘That is so,’ replied Calypso, ‘but I know that you mortals also need the storm, the raging sea, the screaming wind. It’s only thus that you appreciate clear skies and a soft breeze.’

  ‘So it’s you moving the waves? Raising spray to the heavens and dashing the breakers against the cliffs?’

  She smiled. ‘It’s not difficult for one like me. But Poseidon, the blue god, can do much more. He could uproot the entire island with a single blow of his trident, if he chose to.’

  ‘Does he know I’m here?’

  ‘Certainly, and he knows about you and me. Many creatures see us and we cannot know who they are. Not even I can. He gets his news from them whenever and wherever he wants.’

  ‘Poseidon . . . is my implacable enemy. Aren’t you afraid he’ll take out his anger on you? It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  A bolt of lightning sent a blue flash into the cave and into her eyes; they were closed. ‘For now he’s content to know that you are a prisoner here in my arms. He knows you have no way of crossing the sea.’ Thunder exploded.

  ‘Why don’t you kill me and bring an end to all this?’ But even as I spoke, I thought with terror of the blind, eternally wretched world of Hades.

  ‘Because that’s not what’s destined. Even we have to obey Fate.’

  Whenever she was near me, I watched the light in her eyes and the expression of her face closely, looking for signs of feeling, for a skip in the beat of her heart. Had I truly been given the fortune of living with an immortal goddess? Would it feel this way to be close to Athena? Would she have the same unchanging scent, the same silvery lilt to her voice, the same perfect skin?

  One night, while she was sleeping, I lay my ear on her chest, between those magnificent breasts. I wanted to hear the voice of her heart. It was deep and powerful as the thunder that rumbled over the distant mountains, yet her breath was like the breeze on a spring night and smelled like violets. When I lifted my head I saw that her eyes were open and looking at me.

  ‘What makes you different from me?’ I said. ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘If I have a heart like yours? What runs through my veins? If I could live without breathing or without sleeping? Is that what you mortals want to know about us?’

  I did not answer. I felt confused, sad, discouraged.

  ‘We’re very similar to you. We have everything that you’d like to have but can’t. I can’t tell you any more than that; it’s not allowed. Perhaps the sirens would have told you had you asked them, but they told you other things instead, didn’t they?’

  I nodded. Other things.

  ‘The only way to understand is to become one of us. Only then will you know. I have thi
s power. I can give you immortality, stop your time, now. Think about it. I would like to live with you forever and ever . . .’

  I DON’T REMEMBER when all this happened. Whether months or years passed between one night and another; whether I became older in all that time or if my limbs grew stronger and more flexible. I know that my heart became heavier and heavier as the scars multiplied on the trunk of the wild fig tree.

  Then, one day, I saw her sitting alone inside the cave. A beam of light caught her in its glow and an orichalch pitcher beamed like a star on the little table in front of her. I turned to the sea because I thought I’d heard the beating of powerful wings. When I looked back at Calypso, sitting at the opposite side of the table was the youth with the sun in his hair; he had appeared out of nowhere.

  11

  I DID NOT GO IN. I didn’t want to disturb an encounter whose very nature excluded me. I went to sit on my reef in the middle of the sea. The tide was low enough for me to walk out with the water at my waist. I sat there watching my shadow, which the sun kept lengthening over the sea as it descended towards the horizon. How could it disappear in the west only to reappear in the east after the night had ended? And why did its path become longer and longer, only to become shorter and shorter? Perhaps because the steeds that drew the sun’s chariot ran more swiftly or more slowly on their fiery charge? Only divine horses could measure their power so perfectly that light and shadow always expanded and retracted in such a constant manner.

  I’d never asked anyone about that, neither Circe nor Calypso. Perhaps not even they had the answer. I turned just once towards the cavern as the sky was blazing with the colours of the setting sun. I saw a seagull flying out. She was still there, alone. The youth with the sun in his hair was gone.

  Calypso came and sat next to me. Her shadow stretched out on the water next to mine.

  ‘How often will I come here to watch the sea, how often will I call your name, Odysseus!’

  ‘Why are you saying such things?’ I asked as she came closer. I could feel the heat and the scent of her body.

  ‘A messenger of the gods came to visit. The great father Zeus has ordered me to let you go.’

  ‘What does that mean? I could have left whenever I wanted to. I could have built myself a raft.’

  ‘You would never have succeeded unless I let you. Didn’t you know that? But now the time has come. I had so hoped that the gods had forgotten this island and me living on it. Someone surely interceded on your behalf. These things never happen by chance.’

  ‘My goddess!’ I thought in my heart, but no word came out of my mouth.

  ‘Yes, her. She’s jealous,’ replied Calypso without making a sound. And then she made her voice heard: ‘But come now, come with me. The tide is very high.’

  She embraced me and rose in flight. She held her arm around my waist and we ascended together, turning as if we were dancing. We crossed the sea and flew over the island. I could see it all: the coves, the spiky rocks climbing towards the sky, the flower-filled valleys, the torrent that ran down the mountainside in a cascade of white foam and a mist of colours, as if the rainbow gaze of Iris the messenger were crossing it.

  ‘Was it she, colourful Iris, who brought you the message?’ I asked Calypso.

  ‘No, it was another messenger,’ and saying thus, she began to spin and our dance became closer, faster, more inebriating. I saw beneath me infinite flocks of birds seeking shelter for the night. I heard their calls as we passed through the red clouds of twilight. We cut through their swirling paths like a kite diving after its prey. I could never even have imagined such a thing. Then she let me fall. I plunged downward, the current of the air so strong it felt as though it was tearing out my hair, and then Calypso appeared close to me again. She looked into my tear-filled eyes and we rose up together. Our lips sought each other and our bodies did as well, with infinite, ardent force. We were enveloped by the ambrosial sweetly scented night. The rays of the stars wounded me like swords. And the creature I was embracing was miraculous. She let me fall again. It took my breath away, the wind whipped my tunic against my back so hard that it hurt. Then Calypso carried me up again. We soared through the leaves of the trees like the wind, the scent of the air redolent of soil and sky.

  We fell again, and she let go of me. I couldn’t feel her any more, couldn’t touch her. She would not hit the ground. Nothing was impossible for a god. I would die.

  I WAS LYING on the bed next to her. She was nude, golden, shot through with light.

  ‘We made love all night,’ she said.

  ‘I dreamt that we were flying through the sky, over the river, above the trees, among the stars . . .’

  ‘I wanted you to feel what it’s like to be immortal before you sail towards death.’

  ‘Are you saying that the gods are allowing me to leave so they can kill me at sea?’

  ‘I only want to say that you’re mortal and every day brings you closer to the end.’

  ‘How much of my time have I spent here on this island?’

  ‘Seven years.’

  ‘Seven years?’

  ‘Haven’t you counted the cuts on the trunk of the wild fig tree?’

  ‘I can’t count them any more. The scars left by my blade have clotted into a single wound.’

  Thus I had drawn closer to death. Without knowing it, without counting the days, the months, the years. The gifts of the gods, even the most beautiful ones, are always paid for in tears.

  ‘Rest now. You have a long journey ahead of you.’

  And so I slept there, next to her, inebriated and exhausted. I knew that my leaving would not be painful for her. The lustrous gods never weep; they are happy unto themselves. I, instead, found myself free to begin thinking again like I used to. Of the past and of the future, of food, water and the wind in my sail.

  Calypso helped me. I found logs lying on the beach, ready for me to use, cut from a tree with lightweight wood that I knew would float well, along with tools and long ropes made of palm leaves. I bound the logs together, working eagerly, sweating like a craftsman eager to finish his work before the master comes looking for it. I cut a square block of cypress wood with the axe I’d found, made a hole in its centre and secured it to the middle of the raft as a base to support the mast. Then I cut the ends off the logs in decreasing order on either side of the central one, which I left full length, and assembled them to form a kind of prow. I split other logs, fashioned planks to form the sides, and then drove wedges cut from the cypress tree between the planks to secure them in place.

  My mind went back to when I had built my own wedding bed snugly between the branches of an olive tree, to my youth and the hopes I had then, and a sadness flooded my heart, but I was not sorry about what I had done in my life. I’d experienced what no man before me ever had, I had visited unknown lands, met the shades of the pale dead heads. I had loved and hated. And yes, I had kindled tremendous hate as well, and perhaps would do so again if I survived, but I had left my mark on land and sea, I, son of a small island, son of a bitter destiny.

  Then I loaded up the supplies that lovely Calypso, who remained hidden from me, had left on the beach: water, strong red wine, foods of every sort and honey and fruits and tubers and more rope and wood and cloth. I fashioned a yard and hung it from the top of the mast, and then attached a sail woven by the goddess of the cave. I sweated for four days without ever stopping and on the fifth day my work was done.

  The time had come to say farewell.

  I found her standing before me, in all her sublime beauty. She looked deeply into my eyes and advised me to always keep the stars of the Bear and the Herdsman on my left as I sailed, without ever losing sight of them. I could not make myself meet her gaze; it was like looking at the sea from a high cliff a moment before jumping into the void.

  ‘Divine Calypso . . . it is love that I’ve felt for you every day and every night that I’ve spent on this island. If I were a vagabond, a man without ties, I would stay here wit
h you until you tired of me. You can’t understand what I feel because you are an immortal goddess and you need no one . . . but I must return, I have to see my family and my home again. My heart drives me to do so.’

  ‘I do understand. For as long as you’ve been with me, I’ve lived in your time, not in my own, which doesn’t exist. I’ve loved your eyes that change colour when you smile, your lies, even, and your marvellous stories, the words that sounded like spring rain on the flowers and on the waters of the sea . . . I would follow you, if I could, on this raft, over the crest of the wave, wherever the wind carries us.’

  I thought I saw tears glittering in her eyes and liquid pearls falling down her perfect cheeks. I know that’s not possible, because the gods do not weep. But she wanted me to believe her, and nothing is impossible for the immortals.

  THE WIND was favourable and it swiftly distanced me from the island but we kept our eyes on one another, I from my raft and she from her stone in the middle of the sea until the broad back of the never-sleeping sea rose to hide us from each other’s sight and separated us forever.

  My boat slipped over the waves much more quickly than I could ever have imagined. The sky was clear and the wind constant. I had taken my fishing line and hooks, as well as a string net that I dragged behind the boat from a rope tied to the oarlock at the helm. I pulled it in every now and then and found scores of fish wriggling inside, bright and silvery. I ate them raw because no fire could have remained lit so close to the water and the spray of the frothy waves. I always kept a firm grip on the helm, by day and night. When the urge to sleep overwhelmed me, I would lash the oar to its lock and lie down on a little platform I’d built at a corner of the raft. There I kept the covers that Calypso had given me, there I would close my eyes and rest, but only for the briefest time before returning to my place at the oar. When darkness surrounded me on the infinite, deserted sea, my gaze would turn to the Bear and the Herdsman in the sky, as Calypso had ordered me.