Odysseus: The Oath

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

I sighed. It was hard for me not to weep. ‘Then, o goddess, why did you allow Paris to slip away in the thick fog, to escape death when Menelaus was ready to strangle him? I would be preparing for departure now, I would be fitting the rowlocks and stretching the stays from the mast to the pins on the railing. My heart would be singing in my chest, impatient as I pushed my ship into the sea. And instead I’m in agony, thinking of how much more distant the day of return will be for me and my companions. Why did you do this to me? Why did you dash my hopes and why do you continue to taunt me by appearing to me in disguise?’

  ‘Do you truly not understand? Don’t you know why I look like Damastes?’

  ‘Are you saying that Damastes never existed? It was you hitting me with that stick when I was learning to use my sword? And Mentor never existed either?’

  ‘I suppose you can’t hope to understand, as versatile and acute as your mind is. Take what you can from my benevolence and don’t ask other questions. I couldn’t change what happened today because it was decreed by the gods that dwell in the heavens. They don’t want the war to end; they want this deadly game to continue, for their enjoyment. Some of them help the Trojans, others help the Achaians. And so the conflict will go on without respite or interruption, for a long, long time. Accept it: mortals cannot escape the will of the gods.’

  ‘So this is why our blood has spilled, the reason so many brave souls have been crowded into Hades?’

  ‘No, not only. What happens is a mystery for us as well. Fate is unfathomable and has neither a face nor an expression, neither a reason nor a cause.’

  ‘What possesses you to help me then, if it’s all useless anyway?’

  ‘Fate is nothing more than the result of thousands and thousands of wills, an infinite number, divine and human, along with the force of the waves and the rush of the wind, the song of the birds and the movements of the stars. Like a great river, it is made up of thousands and thousands of streams and its power is invincible. I remain close to you because from the beginning of time all the way to the end, no one has ever been like you and no one ever will be. I love your fear and your courage, your hatred and your love, your voice and your silence, and so live your life, king of Ithaca, as long as you have breath. No god could ever be what you are, not even if he wanted to.’

  She left and I listened to her steps leading away from me.

  25

  FOR A VERY LONG TIME, I tried to conquer my doubt, my uncertainty, my fears. What I feared most was the madness I could feel snaking its way between us, creeping into our minds, taking possession of the weakest but also the strongest of us. Living and killing were, in reality, two distinct actions, but one was the negation of the other. At its start, my life was tied to where I had grown up: an island, with its waters, its trees, its fruits, its sounds, songs and sorrows. I came from a family with parents, a wife, a son, my servants, my dog, the herds and flocks. An almost divine equilibrium.

  And then everything changed. Before I went to war, I’d never killed, except for the animals I hunted. And now I was killing men, continuously, on the first try or sometimes not; sometimes I killed them after wounding or crippling or maiming them. I saw them in the throes of death, shaking, jerking. They were still alive when my men would strip off their armour. My right, the right of all kings. In this way, the victor could seize precious trophies that would sit proudly in the armoury of his palace once he returned, witness to his valour, his wealth and his prestige. When the spoils of war fell to me, my companions carried the booty to my ship and piled everything up at the prow.

  In the beginning it was their eyes that tormented me. The dying kept staring at me, even after I’d fallen asleep, and they gave me no rest all night long. Sometimes, in the thick of combat, in the frenzy of screaming and blood, I thought of Damastes’ words when he was teaching me hand-to-hand sword-fighting: ‘This is what they call glory.’

  As time passed, how much time?, I got used to the killing and I realized I had changed, I had become more like Diomedes. In fact, Diomedes and I had become fast friends. He too had left his beautiful young bride, Aegialia, and every night, when all you could hear was the voice of the sea that never sleeps, I would see him sitting on the shore with his head low, and I imagined he must be thinking of his distant queen. Far, far beyond his reach. He wasn’t consoled by the spoils that he carried off from the field of blood either.

  There was something that distinguished us, though: the chariot that he had and I didn’t. I wouldn’t know how to start fighting from that platform racing through the fields, mowing down men like a reaper cuts down wheat.

  The chariots distinguished the great kings from the less powerful ones, like me or Ajax Oileus, who was bold and ferocious and feared nothing, not even the gods. Or like Ajax the son of Telamon, the gigantic prince of arid Salamis, an island that was perhaps even poorer than my own. Great Ajax was a fortress on his own, so massive that nothing and no one could move him when he stood there wide-legged, one foot forward and the other behind. He towered over everyone. The spear he brandished was cut from the trunk of a young ash tree and was impossible to crack, with a tip that was nearly a whole cubit long. The shield he wore covered his whole body; it was so huge that it covered Teucer as well, his half-brother, as they were born to different mothers. Teucer was a formidable archer: he would come round the edge of the shield, let fly and then duck back behind quickly to nock another arrow to his bowstring.

  Nestor, the wise lord of Pylos, was perhaps the most tranquil of us all. Only once, to my immense surprise, did I see him in the midst of his warriors and servants in battle. What a bitter, anguished-filled day that was. Perhaps he wanted to feel the thrill of combat again after so many years, or maybe he’d decided that was the way he wanted to face death: headlong, sparing himself a long, sad decline. In the same way, I often saw him ordering his men to bring some pretty young woman seized in plunder into his tent and into his bed; to see if her soft thighs and smooth breasts would reawaken some desire in him.

  In those clanging, ear-splitting years we fought anywhere, under any skies. Not even a sudden cloudburst, with thunder and lightning, could rend that monstrous tangle of men and horses, could make itself heard over the roaring metallic din. It was in those moments that yes, I felt different from any human being. I realized that exploring the extreme limits of what a man can feel and withstand in the course of his existence, makes that man different and incapable of going back to what he had always considered a normal, desirable life. There is no return from the extreme confines of our world, of our mind. And when a man has understood this, he is gripped by a kind of dizziness that makes him feel similar to the gods, both those of the heavens and those of the Underworld. Accompanied, unhappily, by an infinite melancholy. What sailors feel when they are leaving the land they love, where they were born, where their wives and their children are, because they know in their heart of hearts that they will never be able to return.

  I understood why those who had taken part in certain exploits – if destiny or the gods allowed them to return – felt the need to seek each other out, to talk, to hunt, to eat, to take pleasure from beautiful women, together. Or even just to sleep under the same roof, in the same place. Together. It was only then, while banqueting, hunting, visiting, that they felt surrounded by other men like them. Alone they were only prey to anguish.

  There was no point to what we found ourselves doing, except that of pushing ourselves beyond every limit and every imagining in inflicting fury and suffering, on a field where every day, when the sun rose, we could measure the width and length with our own eyes. It was as if the reapers woke up every morning, took their sickles in hand and went to the fields to cut down the blond stalks, bending their backs under the scorching sun, wearily returning to their homes at night to consume their dinners. That’s what we did. Every day we went back into the field to mow down men.

  And I learned how many ways there are to die, all of them infinitely painful.

  I saw a youn
g Trojan jolted out of his chariot by a spear hurled by Diomedes. The blow was so powerful that his body was flung backwards. He’d been hit square in the chest and the spear had pierced him straight through, ripping into his heart. His driver, terrified, had tried to wheel the steeds around in order to flee, but Diomedes threw another spear that entered through the nape of his neck, cut off his tongue and ended up sticking out between his teeth. As his servants were releasing the horses from their yoke so he could take them back to the ships, he let another spear fly and this one penetrated a warrior’s buttocks and exited from his stomach, dripping blood and urine; it had pierced through his bladder.

  Another time I saw Diomedes strike such a cleaving blow on one of the Lycian warriors who had managed to get in his way that he cut off the man’s entire shoulder, detaching it from his neck and his chest, revealing the cavity within and all the organs it contained, as life escaped from that horrible gash. I saw all this as though there were another looking through my eyes, because I and my formidable Cephalonians were pressing forward against the enemy ranks and I had to use all my wits so as not to get hit myself by one of the thousands and thousands of spears flying around me, or slashed by any of those innumerable swords.

  And we learned to ignore pain, if we weren’t already inured to it. I myself saw Diomedes have his charioteer Sthenelus pull out an arrow stuck in his shoulder. He clenched his teeth so he wouldn’t scream and was growling like a wolf as he grabbed a spear and hurled it at the man who had wounded him. Another time I saw Teucer wrenching an arrow from the thigh of his brother Ajax.

  In the insane fury of battle, in the unbearable commotion of smashing bronze and snapping limbs, I could often hear, above all the rest, the song of the poet, the one I heard that night in the port of Troy. The same who led me to my meeting with Antenor, which in my mind would have ended the war. The song was a long wail, a desolate sigh . . . and yet its intense, sublime melody welled up above the other noises, so different was it from the screams of war and of death. What it was I’ll never know. Perhaps my heart conserved its echo, or perhaps the poet was a god who had the power to sound such unique notes in my head: the wailing of mothers, of fathers, of wives, a music of the heart that drowned out everything else.

  Many times the Trojan champions challenged our most fearsome heroes and the clashes were terrible to see. All the men would stop to watch how Prince Hector, Aeneas the commander of the Dardanians, and Deiphobus, Hector’s brother, could stand against our most valorous warriors. But none of them ever dared to face up, alone, to Achilles, knowing that challenging him would mean certain death. His attackers would join in compact ranks, shield to shield and shoulder to shoulder. They surrounded him all together, but never stepped forth alone. It was the only way to prevent loss after loss. It was the same strategy shepherds used if a lion got into the sheep’s pen. They would band together closely and wave pointed pikes in the air until the beast backed away or escaped from the pen with a single leap; none of them would ever press forward on his own unless he wanted to be slaughtered.

  Achilles believed that he would die young; he had made his choice. He wanted his fame to make him immortal, and make immortal all he had touched: his weapons, his friends, the enemies he had killed. They would all be remembered. But if Achilles died, how would we be able to win? Wouldn’t it be futile to go on? I couldn’t find an answer to this question, not even when I spoke with him. ‘We’ll make it back,’ I’d tell him. ‘We’ll make it back together.’ He would smile, but never answer. What struck me more than anything else was that smile, and the calm, almost serene look in his eyes when we sat in my tent or his, drinking wine and talking. But when he put on his armour and got into his chariot, he was a man transformed. His eyes glittered with an evil light behind his sallet, his hand clutched the shaft of his spear like a claw, his voice sounded inside his helmet with a deep, cavernous rumble. His flesh and his bones rang like bronze.

  There seemed to be an unspoken agreement between the two mightiest champions, Achilles on our side and Hector on the other, not to attack each other in combat: too much was at stake and the risk wasn’t worth it. Better for each of them to earn immortal glory by annihilating scores of enemies incapable of withstanding their power.

  THE WAR dragged on and on, for years, and we all changed. I don’t know whether we got better or worse, but we were different. And given that the changes were more or less the same for all of us, the differences among us remained the same as they had been at the beginning of the war. The most important thing, every day, was deciding on an objective.

  How I longed to talk to my father! I was certain he’d never had a similar experience, over such a long time with such a great number of men, with such forces facing each other. Not even the exploits of the Argonauts could be compared to ours.

  I was a special friend for Achilles, unique, I believe, and yet he couldn’t understand me.

  ‘I don’t understand why you’re always so far away from me on the battlefield,’ he complained.

  ‘Maybe because I have a wife and a son?’ I replied.

  He smiled, as he did when he talked about death.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ I asked.

  ‘You know why. You saw him yourself. I have a son, too, but no wife. He must be twelve or thirteen by now.’

  Twelve years old already . . .

  That evening I’d come back with wine from Thrace. I’d gone out with my men, we’d crossed the sound that separated us from the coast opposite our camp, and we had loaded up two of our ships with tall jars of red wine, sweet and strong. It was keeping us company now.

  ‘You know that my father, Peleus, had sent me to spend some time in the court of Lycomedes, the king of Scyros, to learn about their different customs and habits, and so that I might experience life in a rich, refined palace, so different from our bleak fortress up in the mountains,’ Achilles reminisced. ‘I was thirteen, and the king had six or seven daughters who were ten to fifteen years old. One of them, Deidamia, was very pretty and I liked being with her, playing with her. No one paid any attention to us because we were just a couple of kids, but we were not children any more. One winter’s night I slipped into her bed and she welcomed me, without any reluctance. She said it made her feel protected, and that the warmth of my body comforted her and gave her pleasure. It started as a game. Our caresses became bolder, and more intimate, and when I entered her we were enveloped in the most intense heat we’d ever felt, swept away, inebriated, the way this wine is making me feel now . . .’

  ‘And she became pregnant.’

  ‘That’s right. But no one had even been close to imagining it. I was so blond and slender, with such a gentle face, that I looked like another girl. You wouldn’t have been able to pick me out.’

  ‘Oh, I certainly would have. I would have flushed you out instantly.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The way I did with your son, remember? I would have come bearing gifts! Embroidered dresses, dolls, hair bows and then, a miniature suit of armour, finely crafted, with a sword and a spear. One of those little girls would have jumped at it. You!’

  ‘A fox is a witless creature compared to you!’ exclaimed Achilles, laughing.

  ‘Did you ever see her after the child was born, apart from that time we went to the island together?’

  ‘No. As you can imagine, the king hates me. He was furious when it happened and he summoned my father to come and take me away, immediately! But it was winter by then, and that spring was very windy as well. Perhaps my father couldn’t leave his kingdom so suddenly and risk such a storm-tossed sea. Anyway, by the time he arrived, my son had been born. With hair the colour of fire, and that’s why I call him Pyrrhus. I wanted that to be his name. They gave him a different name, Neoptolemus, but for me he’ll always be Pyrrhus, hair of fire. Lycomedes told my father to take us both back home, me and my little bastard, as he called him. But his mother, my sweet, sweet friend, wanted to keep him with her, and nurse him like a real
woman.’

  ‘All right, you have a son, but it’s as if he didn’t exist, for you. I wanted Telemachus, just like I wanted his mother Penelope.’

  ‘You’re wrong. I often think of him, try to imagine what he must be like now. He knows I’m his father and he talks about me all the time; he says he’s going to come and fight here at my side. He’s a real lion cub!’

  ‘With the way this war is going, he may very well succeed. But when the time comes, no one will be left here. The two armies will have devoured each other completely.’

  ‘No,’ said Achilles. ‘We’ll win, and Troy will be razed to the ground, wiped off the face of the earth.’

  When he said that his eyes blazed up with that grim, restless look that he got when he leapt onto the chariot with his spear in hand.

  Sometimes he liked to sing. He had brought a lyre with him, the work of a skilled craftsman, inset with ivory, and he had a beautiful voice, strong and high-pitched. When he was on the field, it inspired raw green terror in the enemy, but when he sang it was harmonious and resonant, with a touch of melancholy.

  Patroclus was his shadow, his lieutenant on the field, a kind of older brother off the field, privy perhaps to the secrets of his soul. He was originally from Opus, but he’d taken refuge at Peleus’ palace after he’d murdered a man over a dice game; the killing had been accidental, but no less serious for that. The victim’s parents did not believe his testimony and had refused the blood money that his father, Menoetius, had offered; they had sworn to go after him no matter where he tried to hide. Patroclus knew he was a dead man outside the confines of the kingdom of Achilles’ father Peleus, who had simply believed his story, and this made him exceedingly loyal to the throne and ready to give up his life for the king if necessary. Patroclus and Achilles had grown up together, although Achilles was a few years younger, and they’d always trained together. No one knew Achilles’ style of combat better than Patroclus: the way he struck a blow, his feints, his dodging and lightning-quick reactions, and his friend knew he could never compare. He just didn’t have Achilles’ brutal ferocity and devastating power, the swift pounce and amazing speed on foot that guaranteed that, even weighed down as he was by his armour, his prey would never get away.