The Odyssey: A Stage Version
Page 7
ODYSSEUS
What?
CIRCE
Your spasm’s force need not bring oblivion.
ODYSSEUS
And my wife?
CIRCE
My cold lips will be Penelope’s.
ODYSSEUS
Ah!
CIRCE
We’ll re-create the gendering of your son.
ODYSSEUS
No ‘home’ and no mercy. The white harbour. The heat.
(CIRCE lifts the bedsheet.)
CIRCE
After rough seas, rest. From this tangled linen, calm.
ODYSSEUS
To lie on my olive-tree bed, sun crossing its sheet.
CIRCE
Rest your head on the length of this ebony arm.
(She licks his body and rolls over. They make love, then sleep. ATHENA enters as a servant. She draws a circle around their bed, sprinkling it with flour, hides. CIRCE leaps up.)
ODYSSEUS
What’s wrong? You just leapt out of bed like a whirlwind.
CIRCE
Someone was here.
(She rises, paces, distracted.)
ODYSSEUS
The sheets are all soaked with your sweat.
CIRCE
I heard: ‘You’re a monstrous bitch. You’ll pay in the end.’
ODYSSEUS
Who?
CIRCE
A green-eyed goddess. You’re her favourite.
ODYSSEUS
Who was she?
CIRCE
She sprinkled it round this bed. White sand.
ODYSSEUS (Tasting it)
It’s not sand, it’s flour.
CIRCE
That girl crept back in here.
ODYSSEUS
You heard her whisper something? I didn’t hear a sound.
CIRCE
We’re ringed by an owl’s cold eye. Death is its centre.
ODYSSEUS
The forest is thick with branches where wild owls brood.
CIRCE
And they are her heralds. Maman de l’Eau. Athena.
ODYSSEUS
You’re cold as a corpse.
CIRCE
A vision has iced my blood.
ODYSSEUS
Then change my men back.
CIRCE
A white owl with lids of stone.
ODYSSEUS
So, an owl flew in. Not all owls are an omen.
(ATHENA exits.)
CIRCE
She hides in a waterfall’s cascading curtain.
ODYSSEUS
Maybe she wants you to turn your swine back to men.
CIRCE
Her words kept bubbling like a pool’s cold basin.
ODYSSEUS
Muttering nonsense.
CIRCE
That you were her chosen man.
ODYSSEUS
What about my men?
CIRCE
Remorse will change them from swine.
(She huddles in a corner, moaning.)
ODYSSEUS
Don’t huddle there like a little girl, please; don’t moan.
CIRCE
A RIVER OF FIRE, A RIVER OF LAMENTATION!
ODYSSEUS
Wake up! You were dreaming.
CIRCE
You must go down to hell.
ODYSSEUS
Child! Hell is the shadow of imagination.
(Points to the window-curtain billowing.)
CIRCE
Look! Look at that curtain.
ODYSSEUS
Now it lifts like a sail.
(CIRCE looks under a pillow for a pack of cards, spreads them, holds one up in fear.)
CIRCE
Let me trace your palm’s rivers. Sit; open to me.
ODYSSEUS
I don’t believe in that hoodoo, or in this card.
(He shows his palm. CIRCE reads it.)
CIRCE
A cock to Shango or sombre Persephone.
ODYSSEUS
Some plumed rooster like Ajax strutting in your yard?
(CIRCE kisses him.)
CIRCE
Love, in this world where my body was your compass.
ODYSSEUS
Where I’ve spun for twenty years without my true north.
CIRCE
Enter the magnetic earth through which our souls pass.
ODYSSEUS
Why?
CIRCE
Eternity’s lost. My mouth leeched to your mouth.
(She kisses him again.)
ODYSSEUS
Suppose it wasn’t prophecy but a bad dream?
CIRCE
No.
ODYSSEUS
You’re trembling. Come, I’ll lift the cloud of your hair.
CIRCE
I saw black Acheron fuming, that stinking stream.
ODYSSEUS
But those who cross to its bank can go no farther.
CIRCE
Their faces will turn to meet yours. Enemy, friend.
ODYSSEUS
I shall greet the dead?
CIRCE
Dig this trench. Long as your arm.
ODYSSEUS
You’re mad!
CIRCE
You’ll see a blind man shawled in a black wind.
ODYSSEUS
I thought only pigs saw the wind. In your pig farm.
CIRCE
You’ll sprinkle this raw trench with wild barley and milk.
ODYSSEUS
Persephone’s rites. You know what my nightmare was?
CIRCE
What?
ODYSSEUS
To drown in this oblivion of scented silk.
(He yanks off the sheets.)
CIRCE
Drown? Didn’t the rustle of linen please your ears?
ODYSSEUS
Carried far from my coast on pillows of lace-foam.
(He tears open the pillows.)
CIRCE
Go home, then!
ODYSSEUS (Barking)
Yap, yap! Licking your feet like a dog.
CIRCE
Finished?
ODYSSEUS
Clicking your fingers. ‘Come when I say “Come!”’
CIRCE
But I loved you, my pet.
ODYSSEUS
Good. Unleash him. Your dog.
SCENE XIII
A yard. DRUMMERS, SHANGO DANCERS in white, with candles, a sacrificial rooster swung by the neck as a circle of chalk is drawn on the ground by PRIESTS, and ODYSSEUS, in an admiral’s uniform under his great-coat, is given a sceptre and a wooden sword, as CIRCE leads him to the centre of the chalk circle.
CELEBRANTS (Chanting, dancing)
Shango
Zeus
Who see us
Man go
Name Odysseus
Go down
Go down
Ogun
Erzulie
Go down to hell
Sprinkle water
Erzulie
Athena
Maman d’l’Eau
River Daughter
Shango
Zeus
All who see us.
CIRCE
Your soundless sword will divide not only the air.
SHANGO PRIEST
Severing this world of light from one past knowing.
CIRCE
Where buried Persephone glides for half the year.
SHANGO PRIEST
Till helmets of gold crocuses shoot with the spring.
CIRCE
As this blade divides the world from the underworld.
SECOND SHANGO PRIEST
So the hairline of one breath keeps body from soul.
CIRCE
O world halved by absence, by Time’s exacting sword!
SECOND SHANGO PRIEST
While both worlds keep yearning to make each other whole.
CIRCE
Go, where the chosen of gods alone can enter.
SECOND SHANGO PRIE
ST
This crack in the heart-broken earth, here you descend.
CIRCE
Tell green-eyed Athena I’ll never offend her.
ODYSSEUS
And my crew?
CIRCE
Restored. Our life ends in a black wind.
(ODYSSEUS’ eyes are wrapped in a black cloth.)
FIRST SHANGO PRIEST
You dig a trench. This long. (Showing an arm.)
CIRCE
You must wound the ground.
ODYSSEUS
With what?
CIRCE
This sword. It’ll open. A woman stands there.
ODYSSEUS
Who?
CIRCE
A phantom on a platform. An iron sound.
(Sound of huge door opening.)
FIRST SHANGO PRIEST
Earth’s stomach.
CIRCE
A widowed phantom. Your dead mother.
ODYSSEUS (In tears)
You swine!
(He swings the wooden sword.)
CIRCE
To see her, enter this divided stone …
ODYSSEUS
Why this heart-breaking vision? Why not another?
CIRCE
A station, echoing arches. And her, alone.
(ODYSSEUS draws an ‘L’ on the earth. The CELEBRANTS and CIRCE withdraw. The earth opens.)
SCENE XIV
The Underground. ODYSSEUS removes his bandage, enters the turnstile. A machine with a mirror. Then, behind him, a woman in a coat, hat and scarf: his mother, ANTICLEA.
ANTICLEA
Is it running late? These days they’ve been running late.
ODYSSEUS
Don’t you recognize me?
ANTICLEA
Who are you?
ODYSSEUS
Mama, I’m your son.
ANTICLEA
Odysseus? You’re now one of our bodiless freight?
ODYSSEUS
No. I’m not dead. Now I pray that I will be soon.
ANTICLEA
Well, one’s no worse than the other.
ODYSSEUS
When I look in a mirror …
ANTICLEA
Yes?
ODYSSEUS
I see the skin wrinkling at my throat now; like yours.
ANTICLEA
If I looked in a mirror there’d be nothing there.
ODYSSEUS
Not the ‘you’ that I find in me over the years?
ANTICLEA
Is that how I smiled? Did I toss my chin like that?
ODYSSEUS
Every mirror echoes it. Your mannerisms.
ANTICLEA
Including this one? ‘Boy, I’ll give you a big clout.’
(She pretends to strike him, smiling.)
ODYSSEUS
My tears multiply you as if they were prisms.
(He weeps.)
Why’re you here alone? Why’re you waiting around?
ANTICLEA
It’s my station. Under the bed of the river.
ODYSSEUS
How many more stations are there in the Underground?
ANTICLEA
You never get off. The train goes on forever.
(BILLY BLUE, as a blind vagrant with his guitar, belongings and a stick, stops and puts out a palm.)
BILLY BLUE
Two coins for these white eyes, sir, and I’ll prophesy.
ODYSSEUS
You live here?
BILLY BLUE
Correct. Sleep most nights under the bridge.
ODYSSEUS
Homeless?
BILLY BLUE
No more than you, sir. So far as I see.
ODYSSEUS
How far’s that?
BILLY BLUE
The future.
ODYSSEUS
I doubt.
BILLY BLUE (Shrugging)
Your priv’lege.
ODYSSEUS
I’ve no money. Time has broken me at great cost.
BILLY BLUE
Yeah, but the word ‘home’ swirls in the caves of your ears.
ODYSSEUS
Grief added to my fortune the mother I lost.
ANTICLEA
Just give him one coin. He hustles his prophecies.
(A train flashes past. ODYSSEUS pays BILLY BLUE. TIRESIAS enters.)
ODYSSEUS
My comrades screamed in the window behind the glass.
TIRESIAS
Right. Heard what they were saying?
ODYSSEUS
No. Not a sound.
TIRESIAS
They were the open mouths of your crew. More will pass.
ODYSSEUS
When do they stop?
TIRESIAS
Their station. Wherever they sinned.
(ELPENOR appears on the opposite platform, in a midshipman’s uniform, with a bag, his head bandaged.)
ODYSSEUS
There, across these, what are these?
TIRESIAS
Tracks.
ODYSSEUS
I’ll talk to him.
ELPENOR
I couldn’t bear to face you. I’m sorry, Captain.
ODYSSEUS
Dear boy, my other son! I still haven’t reached home.
TIRESIAS
Wait, he’s on the other platform, it’s not your turn.
ELPENOR
I got drunk. I fell. The blades of the propeller.
ODYSSEUS
Elpenor, you precede me, but I’ll come over.
ELPENOR
No! No, sir, not yet. Forgive that drunken error!
(A train arrives. ELPENOR walks quickly towards it, not turning.)
ODYSSEUS
Then his body swirled away from us like an oar.
TIRESIAS
In that alphabet of souls, Ajax to Zeus.
ODYSSEUS
This ‘O’ will be nothing that is Odysseus.
ANTICLEA
No. Your house waits beyond the foam-shouldering seas.
TIRESIAS
Make it two coins. Two eyes for the fate of others.
(ODYSSEUS pays a coin. THERSITES passes.)
ODYSSEUS
Thersites?
TIRESIAS
Yes. His useless sword on one shoulder.
ODYSSEUS
Didn’t he find peace?
TIRESIAS
Too much. His true home was war.
ODYSSEUS
All his exploits forgotten, this rusted soldier?
TIRESIAS
He’ll reach for his wife from boredom and fall on her.
(AJAX strides past, visored. THERSITES exits.)
ODYSSEUS (Shouts)
AJAX!
TIRESIAS
He will not turn or unvisor his eyes.
ODYSSEUS
He will, for me.
TIRESIAS
His gaze scorches on what it falls.
ODYSSEUS
Great heart, are you still sullen that you lost that prize?
(AJAX stops, turns, lifts his visor.)
TIRESIAS
There.
ODYSSEUS
Achilles’ shield! It’s drowned!
(AJAX turns, continues.)
If that’s how he feels.
(AJAX exits.)
TIRESIAS
Even in hell he cuts inferior shadows.
ODYSSEUS
He always strode as if earth were dung to his heels.
(AGAMEMNON crosses, bleeding, in a net.)
ODYSSEUS
This one?
TIRESIAS
Towered on his mound, mourning Achilles.
ODYSSEUS
Agamemnon?
TIRESIAS
His was the saddest of their fates.
ODYSSEUS
God, look how he writhes in a net! Gaffed. A clubbed shark.
ANTICLEA
His own wife did that to him. You see how he fights?
TIRESIAS
(AGAMEMNON exits.)
ANTICLEA
Earth has its joys, though all those joys are above us.
(ACHILLES runs past, helmeted, in light.)
TIRESIAS
Achilles, lightly leaping through asphodel fields.
ANTICLEA
He’s happy that his son survived war’s victories.
TIRESIAS
Like a stag in spring, kicking flowers from its heels.
ODYSSEUS
Lucky father.
(ACHILLES exits.)
ANTICLEA
Don’t blame Troy on one fickle wife.
TIRESIAS
She was its cause, not its root. You’re under a field.
ANTICLEA
Where Time stalks circling with his remorseless scythe.
TIRESIAS
Weeding graves for generations, his sack is filled.
ANTICLEA
Being the determined gardener that he is.
TIRESIAS
With brown pods of helmets, dried ferns of warriors.
ANTICLEA
Flower-eyed Nausicaas and bristling Thersites.
TIRESIAS
Raking in those leaves that autumn held in arrears.
ANTICLEA
He felled me on earth, a tree with crippled branches.
ODYSSEUS
Couldn’t he have spared you a few extra leaves?
ANTICLEA
Why?
TIRESIAS
We don’t understand this rage of life for answers.
ODYSSEUS
Questions are in our nature.
ANTICLEA
Then end naturally.
TIRESIAS
Look through that tangled rigging of roots above you.
ANTICLEA
Through that crack of sunlight left by the sliding dirt.
TIRESIAS
A figure, whose sorrow is to blindly love you.
ANTICLEA
From dawn to the moon’s white motion. Can you still doubt?
(Roots dangle, then a shaft of light.)
TIRESIAS
No. There through those roots that let in the light of earth.
ODYSSEUS
A woman sobbing under olive trees, alone.
TIRESIAS
Wait, till the leaves shift.
ODYSSEUS
I can’t see clearly enough.
TIRESIAS
Now?
ODYSSEUS
Unh!
TIRESIAS
Your wife.
ODYSSEUS
Each tear thuds my chest like a stone.
ANTICLEA
Son…
ODYSSEUS
How many seas before my sail slides its mast?
TIRESIAS
More islands, more trials.
ODYSSEUS
And more years. I’m still hers?
ANTICLEA
There isn’t a rock on your own coast more steadfast.
ODYSSEUS
Even though a long absence has earned her divorce?
ANTICLEA
Like a bridal rock she veils and unveils herself.
TIRESIAS
She’s still besieged like Troy by those roaring suitors.
ANTICLEA
She’s a rare vase, out of a cat’s reach, on its shelf.
TIRESIAS
One day his leaping claws could snatch her. Antinous!