The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Then it’s well I spared him, said Odysseus. For that work he deserves my thanks. What else is in this second panel?

  That same upper left-hand corner of it, Penelope declared, shows Telemachus going through his boyhood and herself at her loom, weeping at her husband’s absence and weaving Panel One. A more accomplished artisan by then, she was able even to suggest, in the finest stitches, the contents of that first panel in its miniature replication here—a trick she could never have brought off seven years before. As for the body of Panel Two, it shows the war in Troy, first as she and the rest of the household imagined it, and then, when the fighting was over and the other heroes began to make their way home, from their reports—which young Phemius, like every other bard in the known world, turned into song.

  As he sang, said Penelope, she sewed; as she sewed, he sang. His words became her images, her images his words. There is Achilles sulking in his tent; there shameless Helen promenading the Trojan battlements, et cetera. But the focus of this panel, as of the first, is Odysseus and his several celebrated exploits. Here is shown his revenge upon Palamedes for exposing his madman act; here his capture of Rhesus’s horses, his quarrel with Ajax, his retrieval of Philoctetes’s magic bow, his theft of the sacred Palladium, and many another heroic feat—culminating, of course, in his grandest stratagem: the wooden horse.

  Said Odysseus This second panel must be a formidable piece of work, for that was a complicated and a bloody decade. The Trojans lost their city, but so many on both sides perished that to this day I can’t decide who lost the war. I say let’s put it behind us and get to the third panel of your collaboration with this young bard, this Phemius.

  People called it the Book of Homecomings, Penelope reported, for it shows the principal Greek veterans returning from the war, each to his fate as news of it reached Ithaca and Phemius turned the story into song. Six years now in the making, the panel remained still unfinished, and thus the story of it was conflated with that of Laertes’ shroud. To old Nestor, alone of all the Greeks, is granted a safe, direct, and happy return: There is Agamemnon, caught in Clytemnestra’s net and butchered in his bath; there is this one wrecked, that cuckolded, these betrayed in other wise. But there are Menelaus and Helen, the origin of all this woe, after many vicissitudes sitting as comfortably together at their Lacedaemonian fireside as if nothing at all had happened. They are shown receiving young Telemachus, in search of news of his father; wanton Helen even knits, and so skillful a weaver was Penelope by this time, she was able to show that the whole disaster of the war and its aftermath has not cost the hussy one dropped stitch.

  And down toward the lower right-hand corner, Penelope concluded, is pictured this high hall, infested with my suitors. They reasonably believe you dead and beleaguer me to choose a new husband from among them, meanwhile devouring your substance daily. Aided by Phemius’s ingenuity, I delay them with every possible pretext. We do the shroud trick not once but twice: once in fact and again in the stitches of this panel. We send Telemachus off to Pylos and Sparta, hoping that Nestor or Menelaus will have word of you. . . .

  We send Telemachus away? Odysseus echoed.

  Myself and good Phemius, declared Penelope, without whose resourcefulness I would long since have been obliged to surrender myself to the suitors. It was Phemius’s idea to send our son off traveling, so that I could swear not to remarry until his return. It was Phemius’s idea to weave your father’s shroud, a warp here, a woof there. And when I was constrained to press on and finish it, it was Phemius’s inspiration that I should plead to finish my tapestry as well before making my choice. Such a small area remained to be done, the suitors reckoned it the work of a month at most; they settled in to gorge and guzzle and make free with our womenservants till I had completed that lower right-hand corner. And it was Phemius’s device to unravel each night what I had woven by day.

  I begin to see, said Odysseus: perhaps more than I wish to. The part not yet woven is my homecoming. The suitors slain. Ourselves here in this bedroom, telling these stories.

  Not at all, Penelope replied. For even had I known as I wept and wove through the years, fearing you dead, that you were enjoying yourself for a year in Circe’s bed, seven in Calypso’s—even then I would have woven the great climax which I wove in fact: my husband home at last; the suitors slain; order restored to Ithaca. You’ll see in the morning this very scene, stitched clearly in stitches not put there yesterday but firmly in place and never loosened. For upon that scene depended our liberation from the suitors. You were our only hope.

  Our, repeated Odysseus.

  Telemachus’s and mine, Penelope said. And Eurycleia’s and Eumaeus’s, and the thirty-eight maidservants who like myself held out against the suitors’ advances.

  Also Phemius, Odysseus declared.

  Also Phemius. No warrior he, Penelope went on to say, her young friend could scarcely have picked up Odysseus’s great bow, as Telemachus used longingly to do, much less have drawn it. So far from presuming to slay the suitors, he dared not so much as provoke their irritation. Every night, at their demand, he had sung for their entertainment, hoping to distract them from their lust. But his songs had been double-edged, as she knew by listening from her loom. Pretending to flatter them, he had exposed their grossness and presumption. Pretending to sing of her heart’s hardness, between the lines he had praised its constancy. Pretending to scoff at the possibility of Odysseus’s return, he had in fact kept that possibility always before them, to temper the suitors’ outrageousness and to give courage to the rest of the household. Then at evening’s end, when the unwelcome guests were besotted with Odysseus’s wine and off to bed with the maidservants, Phemius would slip upstairs, go to the great loom, and unweave all or most of what his mistress had that day woven.

  So, Odysseus said: It was not your hand that did the undoing. . . .

  Mine, said Penelope, was too weary from having woven to unweave. Once or twice an artist may unmake and remake what she has made. Ten times, a dozen—but not ten times ten times. In particular when it is not the art that she is displeased with, or not she whom the art displeases.

  I see more and more, Odysseus declared, And yet he believed his wife had mentioned that this undone corner was not the scene of yesterday, and today, and tonight? Replied Penelope It is not. In my tapestry you are home; Phemius has withdrawn; the guilty are punished; you and I have exchanged our stories. We are there as we are here—and here we are, you and I, just as Phemius foresang and I forewove. What was yet to weave, she continued, was tomorrow and the days thereafter. Many a version she had stitched in, and though the web-work every time was above reproach, if Phemius had not unstitched them she would have done so herself, for none would do.

  The fact is, declared grim Odysseus, this minstrel Phemius has been your lover for twenty years.

  Twenty years! Penelope cried, and Odysseus heard her laugh for the first time since his return. Never twenty years! Twenty years ago, she reminded him, Phemius had been an ignorant stripling boy, frisking with Melanthius’s goats while she labored over Panel One. Through the seven years of Panel Two, he had reached young manhood and minstrelsy, moved into the palace, practiced and refined the art he’d learned in the rocky highlands with none but the goats for audience. It was only in the six years past, the years of Panel Three, as the suitors had pressed and her hope and courage had waned, that Phemius became first her most loyal supporter (after Eurycleia and Telemachus, to be sure; but those two had ever been as much Odysseus’s guardians of her morals as Penelope’s confidants and friends); then her fellow tactician, her fellow artist, her closest friend . . . and, yes, finally her lover.

  Odysseus groaned.

  Though never once was he in this bed, Penelope concluded firmly, herself still sitting in that chair in the dark. The vow she had made upon her husband’s departure, she said, neither to admit another man into their marriage bed nor herself to go to the bed of another man, she had kept—though at las
t in its letter only. In her weaving room, beside her loom, was a couch piled deep with the yarns of her art. There Phemius had sat and sung as she wove, often putting by his lyre to hold between his outstretched hands the skeins she wound into untangled balls. There too they made the love that tangled them. After which, as she lay slaked and drowsy among the yarns, he would rise and gently undo what she’d done. Whether that day’s scene showed the two of them running off together to live in love and art and upland poverty, or dead at Odysseus’s hand together with the maids and suitors, or (the most frequent denouement) wife and husband reconciled and Phemius gone off to woo some other woman or his mere music—whatever the day’s version of their end, she would feel the thread of it unwarped, unwoofed. The ravelings would fall lightly upon her breasts and thighs and belly, to be refigured next day; then presently she’d hear her friend go off to his pallet belowstairs, whereupon she’d rouse herself, shake off those undoings, and come to this cold high bed to sleep alone.

  There ends my story, Penelope declared; my tapestry remains unended. When Eurycleia recognized your scar and told me you were returned, I pretended disbelief, but bade Phemius good-bye and begone, both for his own protection (though it is quite like him to have lingered on and had to beg for his life) and because my loyalty remains to you, even now that I’ve learned of your year with Circe and your seven with Calypso.

  Your loyalty may be mine, observed Odysseus, but your heart belongs to this young singer, this Phemius.

  Penelope replied that her heart was divided and would doubtless remain so, for a while or forever. About her erstwhile lover she had no illusions: He was neither a hero nor a husband, but a singer of tales. He was not hard nor strong nor brave nor rich nor nobly born—though neither was he soft, weak, cowardly, destitute, or ignoble. He was handsome but not rugged, insightful but not shrewd, sensitive but not wise. If she had enjoyed him as a lover, she had most valued him as a friend, and most admired him as an artist. She had no wish to be his wife, nor any man’s save Odysseus’s—who might now do with her what he would.

  Heartsore Odysseus went to where she wept, kissed her forehead, and brought her back to their bed, where presently, despite her tears, he heard her breathe the breath of sleep. But he himself lay sleepless through what remained of that night, turning over in his mind the story of her tapestry and the problematical task ahead. Next morning, as Athene had directed, he dressed once again in humble clothing, to evade the wrath of the slain suitors’ families; he put a well-cut oar upon his shoulder, bade good-bye to his newly regained household, and set out upon his wearisome inland task—not only to appease Poseidon, but to assimilate his wife’s story and to give her time to assimilate his.

  As luck would have it, on the third night out, up in the craggy highlands behind his palace, he came upon a goatherd singing lightheartedly beside a small campfire with only his goats for audience; drawing nearer, he recognized the very fellow whose life he had spared before Penelope told her story. His heart full, he saluted the singer out of the darkness and, disguising his voice as he had disguised his appearance, asked to share that campfire for the night. The young man welcomed him, passed the wineskin, and asked who he was and why he was strolling the mountains by night with an oar upon his shoulder. Pleisthenes, a servant of Antinous, Odysseus replied at once, laying down the oar and seating himself far enough from the firelight to assist his disguise. Former servant, I should say, since my former master, the leader of those suitors for the hand of Odysseus’s wife, was the first of those gentlemen to die when that ruffian showed up two days ago and butchered the whole crew. I myself barely escaped with my life; I must now make my way back to Boeotia, my home country, with no other reward for my years of service than this oar, which I made free with as a souvenir. But I daresay it will fetch a good price in Boeotia once Odysseus’s story becomes better known, for it is the only oar in Greece from a genuine Phaeacian dark ship. And who are you, young fellow? You look to be a ready enough cocksman; What are you doing up here singing songs to the goats instead of to the ladies down below?

  Phemius laughed—and Odysseus, who had scarcely looked twice at him during their confrontation in the banquet hall, observed that he was a wiry, clean-limbed, canny-looking fellow, handsome enough in his way but mainly quick-eyed and supple-featured. He too, he said, was a fugitive from Odysseus’s halls, but for a different reason, which he could better sing than say. Do it, do it, bade disguised Odysseus. Taking up his lyre, the bard struck a few chords, retuned a string or two, and then launched into a ribald ballad about a young goatherd, Phemius by name, who learned from his billy goats how to sing to please the nannies, and from a certain noble lady how to hump like a billy goat. Then, oh then (he sang), while Odysseus plowed the wine-dark sea and Penelope’s suitors plowed their way through Odysseus’s wine, randy Phemius plowed Penelope herself. And oh he kissed the freckles on her hey-nonny-no, the pretty freckles on her hey-nonny-no!

  Now Odysseus, in telling Penelope of his year with Circe and seven with Calypso, had avoided any intimate detail; and Penelope had done likewise but for the business of those unravelings upon her postcoital skin: an inadvertence that had burned into Odysseus’s imagination like a cattle brand. Such was his rage therefore at hearing Phemius now boast so flippantly of cuckolding him, and advertise so lewdly that detail of his wife’s complexion (which he himself had recollected fondly through their twenty-year separation and kissed lovingly at last just a few nights since), he sprang across the campfire, struck the lyre from the startled bard’s hands, seized him by the throat, and set about to do what he ought to have done back in the banquet hall.

  The instrument fell with a clang; the goats bleated, leaped, and scattered; terrified Phemius found himself once again begging for his life. He had made the whole thing up! he cried. He was but a lying songster, whom Odysseus’s faithful wife had never been more than friend to! Those freckles he had borrowed from the backside of a serving-maid, who had boasted to him of that resemblance to her mistress!

  Odysseus held the fellow by the gullet. Till now, Phemius, he declared, you had committed two offenses, the second graver than the first. You made love to Odysseus’s wife: a trespass which, howevermuch it stings, I was prepared to forgive you, under the circumstances, as I have forgiven her. But then you put your private offense into public art, multiplying the felony. Don’t claim to me that you mean this song for your goats’ ears only: I know a thing or two about minstrels. For this second offense I ought to kill you, to preserve not only my own honor but my wife’s: Whatever her feelings for you, she cannot be imagined to enjoy the prospect of your publishing those intimacies to the world. And now, having dishonored me by bedding my wife and dishonored her by trumpeting your conquest to strangers, you dishonor yourself by denying that your trumpetings are true.

  Desperate Phemius then swore, with what breath he could draw, that if Odysseus would once again spare him, he would devote the rest of his career to singing his savior’s exploits and Penelope’s steadfast virtue. Odysseus scoffed: He could imagine, he said, how far such a promise might be trusted; he chose to leave the matter of his fame to bards with no vested interest in singing it. For Penelope’s sake, he decided then, and because he was weary of killing, he would for the second time let Phemius live. But should he ever hear of his singing again of that affair, he would search him out and cut his throat.

  Hardly able to believe his good fortune, the grateful bard swore never again to speak of the matter, much less sing of it; not even to the goats.

  To ensure that you do not, Odysseus said, I’ll take a measure painful enough for you but nonetheless preferable to death: a measure inspired by the example of a bard far greater than yourself, who in Phaeacia sang of the moon and the stars and of the great deeds done in Troy.

  That would be Demodocus, frightened Phemius said: a master singer indeed, who unfortunately—

  He spoke no further, because grim Odysseus clapped one hand over his mouth and with
the other blinded him in both eyes, in order that when he sang in future, however far from Ithaca, he would never be able to know but what watchful Odysseus was among his hearers.

  This cruel measure taken, Odysseus left the bard wailing in the wilderness and, with somewhat calmer heart, went about his arduous work. The oar upon his shoulder, he trekked from city to inland city until he reached a village so landlubberly that its folk mistook that oar for a winnowing fan, and there he completed his long penance to Poseidon. Then he returned to his own high hall, making livestock raids along the way to replenish his herds, depleted by the hungry suitors. With the help of his old father, his grown son, and gray-eyed Athene, he made civil peace with the families of those suitors. Penelope received him, and not indifferently: In this second separation they had each come to terms with the other’s story, and now between them as well was made civil peace. Never mind who had outwronged whom; they wisely resolved to put the passions of the past behind them, and settled down to enjoy a tranquil middle age.

  Here Theodoros Dmitrikakis falls silent; smiles; sips his retsina.

  Asks Peter Sagamore with a disbelieving chuckle That’s it? Says Katherine Sherritt I like that tapestry business, but everything’s unfinished!

  Beautiful Diana has long since joined us; instead of taking her deck chair, she sits upon the deck itself, leans back against Ted’s knees, and with the fingers of her left hand touches the fingers of his, upon her shoulder. That is just about it, says Ted.

  But not quite. After a few months, and even more so after a year or two, Odysseus found himself restless: On this, nearly all the late-classical sequels agree. He would return often to the seashore below his high hall, to the spot where the Phaeacians had put him at last ashore, and would stare out at the distant islands and the open sea beyond them. His conversation came to be of nothing but Troy and his adventurous voyage home. Without mentioning his encounter with Phemius, he hired a vagrant bard at fair salary to stay on in Ithaca and sing that story, using Penelope’s great tapestry as his cue card. For Odysseus had been shown that formidable work, and so far from being jealous of it, had been ravished at first sight. This bard, however, had no talent; his singing bored them all, and Odysseus soon sent him packing.