‘Why were you so hard to recognize?’
‘Because you were almost always on the sea or on islands surrounded by the sea, where Poseidon, my father’s brother, has immeasurable power. I didn’t want him to see me or hear me. Who would have been left to help you if he found me out?’
‘But we’re in the middle of the sea here and you’ve never appeared to me like now. You’ve never spoken to me so clearly.’
‘It’s different here,’ she said, flashing her green eyes at me. ‘Here we’re behind the wall of fog. Here everything returns to how it was before the storm carried you away. That’s not saying it’s better.’
‘Why?’
I was talking to my goddess, after such a long time, as if I were talking to a friend and I couldn’t really believe it. Was I still asleep, and dreaming?
But she continued: ‘You can’t go home looking like that. Your house has been occupied by arrogant young men who are devouring all that is yours. There are many of them, and they are well armed. They want to oblige Penelope, who has remained faithful to you, to marry one of them and they plot to murder your son.’ I was shaking with rage. ‘Easy, I’m protecting your boy. And now . . . off with this opulent garment that makes you look similar to a god . . .’
I found myself covered in rags like a beggar. The sack I carried was soiled and greasy and hung off my shoulder on a piece of worn rope.
‘We’ll have to hide those warrior’s arms and those powerful thighs . . . and let’s add a few wrinkles to that face of yours and more white to that head of hair; it’s too dark.’
I felt myself aging as her hand swept over me.
‘There,’ said my goddess, satisfied. ‘That’s much better. You can’t stay here, too much coming and going. Take that path up that way, it’ll lead you to crow’s rock and to the shack where Eumeus the swineherd still lives. He’s never stopped awaiting your return; you can trust him. Farewell.’
She disappeared.
She’d left me a walking stick.
I REACHED the path and started climbing the steep slope. The sun had risen high in the sky and was causing me to sweat profusely. When I was high enough I turned to contemplate my homeland. I could see where I had disembarked: it was the secret port, hidden between two tall promontories. There was Same, directly in front of me with her beautiful cliffs and woodland. At one side, the cave of the Naiads where I used to go to make sacrifice. So many things were returning to mind! At the end of the channel I could see tiny Asteria, little more than a rocky outcropping. I started to climb again, using the stick to help myself along. When I was nearly at the mountain’s top I turned again. On the horizon, I thought I saw a tiny white sail. Could that be the ship that had brought me home? No, it couldn’t be. By this time it would have travelled much further away and wouldn’t be visible from here.
If Scheria were to be found at just a single night’s voyage from Ithaca, my father and I would have gone ashore there on many occasions. Alcinous would have been our neighbour and guest and we his. So that was impossible, as were many other events that I’d experienced on the other side of the wall of fog. Had my helmsman crossed it in the middle of the night while I was fast asleep? Just how fast could that wondrous vessel travel, a ship that could find its own way without even a steering oar! Perhaps in a single night it had sailed a distance that would have taken a common craft ten or twenty times as long.
I had reached the high plain, which was covered with oaks. I could see how much they’d grown in my absence! If I had any doubts that I’d truly landed on Ithaca, that vision alone would have dispelled them. And there was crow’s rock . . . how often I’d climbed it as a boy! I’d been ordered to by Damastes, to strengthen my arms and toughen my hands. Now I had to find Eumeus’ house. Would he recognize me? No, not in the state I found myself in, not even my mother would have recognized me, not even my nurse, mai. I walked along the path, which had narrowed into a goat track, up the final incline, and found myself at a short distance from the stables and pigsties.
As I was approaching, I remembered how one day long ago Eumeus had shown me how a boar mounted a sow and that helped me to understand a lot of things in life. Great gods, I was little more than a child and my father was a hero at the peak of his strength. I’d been away so long! My whole world had changed in the meantime, and I doubted that I’d be able to recognize it.
I was very close now and I prepared to enter the pen. It was well made, a wall of stones topped with bundles of thorns to keep the wolves out. All at once I heard furious barking and two dogs ran out at me. I backed up against the trunk of an oak tree and raised the stick, but I didn’t need to fight them off. The swineherd came and, shouting at them and throwing stones, managed to call them off. He called out to me:
‘You’re lucky, old man. If I hadn’t been here they would have ripped you to shreds. Come on, come inside, I’ll get you something to eat. Where are you from? I’ve never seen you around these parts.’
Eumeus . . . my heart leapt in my chest. My old servant! He hadn’t changed so much. I could still see that it was him. His hair was thinner and he’d lost a tooth, but he still had those enormous hands, those wide shoulders and big dark eyes. And those bushy eyebrows!
I made up another story. I was used to it by now. ‘I come from the continent. I found passage on a ferry. I hear say that there are many princes at the palace and a banquet to be had every day. I was hoping to pick up some alms.’
‘Then I wish you good luck! Those aren’t there to give, only to take. They eat a whole pig every day and they drink as much wine as they can get poured for them. And when they leave at night, my master’s house looks worse than this pigsty. I hardly ever go there myself. I always send one of the hands, I can’t stand to see such havoc. It’s a terrible shame.’
I entered the pen as he went on grumbling and complaining. The dogs had come back in the meantime but, at seeing me talking to their master, they sniffed at me and went on their way.
‘Why does your master allow such a thing? Why doesn’t he throw them out of his house?’
‘Because he’s not there. He’s dead.’
‘He’s dead? Did you see him die yourself? How did it happen?’
His voice seemed to tremble. ‘No, although I wish I had. To close his eyes, render the honours he deserved and raise a great mound over his tomb. You see, he left many many years ago for the war, and he never came back. By now he’s on the bottom of the sea, if the fish haven’t finished eating him yet, or dead in some foreign land, slaughtered by a tribe of savages. He left with a whole army and none of them ever came back. Damned war. Damned war took my master.’
‘He was good to you?’
‘Good to me? He treated me like one of the family. I would have died for him. Once I had finished as his swineherd and trained another to take my place, he would have given me a fine woman for a wife, tall and shapely, and a house where I would have raised a family . . .’ he sighed. ‘But I’m happy you’ve shown up, old man, I’m happy to have your company. Know what we’ll do now? We’ll take a couple of little piglets and put them on a spit. We’ll toast some bread over the embers, down a glass or two of good wine and to hell with these sad thoughts.’
His eyes were bright with tears. Good old Eumeus . . .
‘Oh, don’t go expecting the best though, that goes to the princes. We’ll take a couple of runts, two of the skinny ones that got the last teats, but once they’ve been nicely seasoned and roasted they’ll do just fine.’
‘That’s even too much for me, my friend. When I’m lucky I get thrown a chunk of dry bread.’
Eumeus tossed some wood onto the fire. ‘It’s starting to get cold at night,’ he said, ‘and we’ll need the embers to roast our pigs.’ He treated me like an old friend and we had just met. At least, that’s what he had reason to believe.
I helped him to place the piglets under the sows for suckling and to herd the hogs and the barrows into their separate pens, while he began to cook a
couple of small piglets. They looked scrawny, but soon the fragrance of their meat roasting made my mouth water. At least I felt that I had earned my keep.
We sat near the fire and waited for the meat to be done and the bread to toast. The wine was ready and Eumeus poured it into two cups, and then took the spits from the embers and cut off portions for both of us, without skimping. It tasted delicious. I hadn’t eaten since I’d woken up under the olive tree. When we’d finished we took the bones out to the dogs, so they could enjoy it as we had. The evening was still young; we poured more wine and went on talking.
‘But who was your master?’ I asked. ‘And what was that damned war you were talking about earlier?’
‘Everyone around here knows about the war,’ replied Eumeus. ‘It’s the war that Agamemnon of Mycenae and Menelaus of Sparta declared against Troy. It was all because of Helen. My master had just married, he had an infant son and he didn’t want to go, but he was forced to. His name was Odysseus.’
‘Why do you keep saying “was”? Couldn’t he still be alive?’ Eumeus pulled his stool up close, leaned over and looked me straight in the eye. ‘Listen up, old man. My master is dead. Hear that? Dead! And even if he isn’t, it’s as if he was. Twenty years have gone by. That’s too many. Don’t get it in your head to go to the queen up at the palace and start telling her stories: that you’ve seen him, that you’ve heard he’s still alive. She’s already heard it from every beggar or tramp who happens by here, hoping to get himself something to eat or to cover himself. Everyone knows that the queen refuses to marry because she hopes that Odysseus is coming back and so these vagabonds take advantage of that and tell her what she wants to hear. I have the feeling that for some new clothes or even a cloak a bit better than that rag on your shoulders you’d do the same.’ His eyes shone as he repeated in a tired voice: ‘My master is dead . . . dead.’
I had no words in the face of those tears.
‘I loved him more than I ever loved my own parents. Not that I ever knew them. Phoenician merchants carried me off when I was just a child and sold me on the slave market.’
At that point I couldn’t stay quiet. His loyalty deserved some consolation. ‘Now you listen to me,’ I said, without moving my eyes from his. ‘Odysseus is coming back. Soon. I can promise you that. He’ll return before the new moon. At the end of this month or the beginning of the next.’
He regarded me even more suspiciously.
‘Listen, we’ll make a bet,’ I told him. ‘I’m willing to wager a new tunic and cloak that I’m telling you the truth. To prove that I’m sincere I don’t want them now. You’ll give them to me when you see your master back here at home.’
Eumeus shook his head. It had become dark and the only light in the house came from the hearth. He threw another piece of wood onto the fire.
‘That won’t work with me, old man,’ he said. ‘You can’t play games with me. You’ll never earn that tunic and cloak. You’ll have to find some other way to get what you need. You aren’t bad with the pigs and I could use a helper . . . I have too many problems of my own to sort out. Telemachus, my master’s son – a lovely boy, as good-hearted and generous as his father – has got it into his head to go off looking for him. By now he should have arrived in Pylos, Nestor’s kingdom.’
‘King Nestor is famous for being a just and generous sovereign. I’m sure the boy will be treated well.’
‘It’s not him I’m worried about – it’s these wretched bastards who are occupying the palace. They want Penelope to choose one of them as a husband. They’re plotting to ambush Telemachus in the channel as he’s returning home. He’s the last heir of the house that reigns over Ithaca and the islands and they mean to murder him. His mother suspects as much and is desperate. But there’s nothing you and I can do about it, is there? Let us set such sad thoughts aside and trust that Zeus will protect him. We can’t always allow anxiety and grief to rule our lives. Tell me about yourself, old man. Where are you from? And how did you fall so low?’
He poured me another cup of wine. The north wind whipped the cloths covering the windows like sails in a storm. My loyal old servant was yearning for a good story, a long one, full of adventures, and I was happy to satisfy him. It wasn’t hard to do. All I had to do was weave together bits and pieces of the events I had experienced myself. A difficult return from the war, no more than a month with my wife and son, the impossibility of staying put in a place that may have been my own country but one I didn’t recognize any more. An adventure in Egypt, a defeat, a long absence, seven whole years! An escape, a shipwreck, days and nights hanging on to the ship’s mast for dear life before being cast ashore in Thesprotia, where the king himself swore that he’d seen Odysseus with his own eyes and that he still had all the treasure he’d piled up in Troy. The king had given him a ship and directed him towards Ithaca. And that was that and here was I, nothing but a sorry beggar at the end of it all, but happy to be warmed by the fire with a cup of good wine, resting at last after fleeing cruel persecutors and plain bad luck. The stars outside followed their courses in the night sky, where a thin sickle moon glittered low on the horizon, casting its pale light on crow’s rock.
Eumeus was moved by my retelling of these fictitious events, so similar to what I’d gone through. He was a good-hearted soul. He said: ‘You’ve certainly seen suffering, much more than I! But why try to make me believe that Odysseus will return soon? No, my friend, I know what happened to him. It isn’t hard to imagine. We’ve heard rumours over the years. He was the one who found the way to end the war, but he didn’t die in combat. Had it only been so! He would have died a hero, the Achaians would have raised an enormous mound, as they have for all the heroes who fell so far from their homeland, and his glory would have illuminated his son as well. No, he’s not coming back. He died because the gods didn’t love him enough. The ghosts of the tempest spirited him away and carried him off to some dark death, robbing him of glory.
‘And me? Here I remain, among my pigs. If guests arrive, the queen never summons me to the palace. She’s tired of hearing me warn her about swindlers and beggars like you. She’d rather be deceived into believing that her husband is still alive, even if it’s just for a moment. But when she does invite me I’m happy to go and speak with her, or just look at her, beautiful as she is, so noble and proud. I understand that you’re miserable, old man, but you can lay off with your tall tales now. There’s no tricking me. And that’s not why I’ve welcomed you under my roof, or why you’re warming yourself by my fire, drinking my wine or eating my bread. I’ve taken you in because I pity you and because I know that any poor man in tatters seeking shelter may be a god in disguise, putting us mortals to the test.’
The wind picked up and it started to rain hard. We could hear it pelting down on the roof. I asked him for a cloak to cover myself, because I’d be cold with the rags I was wearing.
‘Here,’ he replied, tossing me his own, ‘but you’ll have to give it back tomorrow, I don’t have another.’ Then he threw a cape made of sheepskins over his shoulders, girded on a sword and picked up a spear.
‘It’s nights like these that robbers go roaming under the cover of darkness. They imagine that we’re slumbering peacefully alongside the fire, but they’re wrong. I’m going to sleep out by the pigsty, with the dogs. There’s a spot that’s sheltered from the rain. I’ll see you in the morning.’
I watched as he left, pulling the sheepskin tight. The wind slammed the door against the jamb several times before he secured the latch. I was alone, in the silence of the hut, with the crackling of the dying flames and the patter of the rain on the roof for company.
Then, in the middle of the night, a shepherd’s flute warbled its solitary tune. My goddess was letting me hear her voice.
16
THE NEXT DAY, AT DAWN, Eumeus came back into the hut. I could hear him stamping his feet on the ground to warm them, and rubbing his hands.
‘The mountain peaks on the mainland are covered wit
h snow,’ he said. ‘That’s why it was so cold last night.’
Then he blew on the embers and added a small bundle of dry sticks, and the flames were rekindled. At this point he threw a big piece of olive wood onto the fire; it was slow-burning and would last much longer than a softer wood. I got up and walked towards him. ‘If your master could only see this, he’d certainly be happy with you. You care for his property and his pigs as if they were your own.’
‘I do it because it’s my duty. It’s the property of Telemachus and the queen I’m preserving,’ he answered. ‘Who knows where my boy is now?’ he added with a sigh. ‘It’s terrible not to be able to warn someone who’s in danger. But what can I do? Send out a ship? Where to? Will he choose to sail along the coast or between the islands? Anyway, if I were to leave from the port on a ship, everyone would know about it in no time. A swineherd fancying himself a sailor wouldn’t go unnoticed, I’d wager.’
A flute echoed in the distance. I strained to hear: ‘Did you hear that?’ I asked Eumeus.
‘Hear what?’
‘A flute?’
‘No, I don’t hear anything. You’re imagining it.’
But I could hear it quite clearly. A single note at first, followed by others, lower and deeper, and then by more highly pitched ones, and finally the single, tense note again: like a signal. My goddess was close and wanted me to know it. I needn’t worry. No one would touch my boy.
‘What’s he like?’
‘What’s who like?’
‘The prince. Telemachus. What does he look like? Is he a good sort of lad?’
Eumeus peered into my eyes as if trying to make out the thoughts that flitted through my heart.
Odysseus: The Return Page 20
