The Tidewater Tales

by John Barth

  Nausicaa nodded, cleared her throat, and said I am.

  And is that because you love this noble bard, Odysseus pressed, beyond any pain you might cause your family? The young woman’s eyes lowered. Homer himself supplied her answer: Of course not. Nausicaa turned to face him sharply and spoke his name. From the first, said Homer, it had been perfectly clear to him that it was not “noble Homer” she loved, but his songs and stories, and in those not the art, but the images of herself and Odysseus, fixed forever there like figures on a terra-cotta vase. And this despite the likelihood that, never having seen her with his naked eyes, so to speak, he hadn’t got her quite right.

  You have me exactly right, Nausicaa assured him, flashing Odysseus a certain look. You have me down to the last detail. To Odysseus she declared then her great regret for having caused her parents pain—though for that, as they themselves acknowledged, they shared some responsibility. She regretted that her brothers were out scouting the Mediterranean for her in vain, though a journey beyond their little island would do them a world of good, as it would do her. When they learned in Ithaca, as they doubtless had done already, that Odysseus and Penelope had separated, they would be more convinced than ever that he and their sister had arranged a rendezvous. They would then hurry home to see whether the lovers had sailed away somewhere together—to the land of the Lotus Eaters, for example, which she understood to be especially pleasant this time of year—or whether Odysseus had taken advantage of their absence to relieve their noble but weary mother of the burdens of state and to reign over Phaeacia with their sister as his queen.

  Homer rolled his eyes and began humming a tune to himself.

  I have no such ambitions, Odysseus told Nausicaa. I am done myself with the trials of both administration and herohood—though I do have one last epical cruise in mind. But back to our subject: Is it your wish to remain here, in the service of this great bard?

  Of course it isn’t, Homer answered for her again. Do you think I don’t see that the girl is bored to death up here with me? She has stayed on this long because she’s ashamed to go home and has nowhere else to go—and because here she can at least reread Book Six of my Odyssey to her heart’s content.

  Dear Homer, Nausicaa protested, firmly now: You do yourself discredit. I have preferred you to all the young men in Phaeacia, an island rich in attractive young men. Don’t dishonor Homer the man by imagining that I’ve cared only for Homer the singer of tales.

  Nicely said, said Odysseus. Even Homer agreed.

  But I cannot deny, Nausicaa went on, that the latter was the former’s glory, or that in loving your Odyssey I was loving my memory of its hero.

  Pleased Odysseus then declared to Homer that in the same way, perhaps, in making love to Nausicaa, the poet had been loving the memory of a certain former mistress, whom some details of his image of Nausicaa fit more fairly than they fit the flashing-armed princess herself. In my condition. Homer replied dryly, it could scarcely be otherwise. Then back to the matter of your intentions, Odysseus said to Nausicaa. . . .

  What can I say? the young woman cried. That girl on the beach in Homer’s poem is I and not I. She’ll go on just so, my immortal self, however misrendered, while I get older like my mother. Her maids will miss that catch forever and ever, and shipwrecked Odysseus will come forth naked except for that wild-olive branch in his left hand, to approach her but never really reach her. . . .

  χρειώ γέρ ἴκανεν, Homer murmured: σμερδαλέος δ’ αὐτῃσι ϕάνη κεκακωμένος ἄλμῃ, τρέσσαν δ’ ἄλλυδις ἄλλη ἑπ’ ὴιὀνας προνχοὐσας.

  But Nausicaa stands fast, said proud Odysseus: frightened but resolute, her royal mother’s daughter.

  And there she’ll stand forever, Nausicaa sighed: neither losing her friend nor having him. She swallowed; took a breath. I wish you’d carried me off, in your ship or one of ours, and that we had loved each other even for a little while, like Dionysus and Ariadne! Even if you had abandoned me then as he did her, to grow old with my memories, at least I’d have had something to remember besides dumb Eleni’s missing that catch!

  So you would have, Odysseus said tenderly. I share that wish of yours—all but the part about abandonment. He wondered aloud what she would think of the voyage he now proposed to undertake: a voyage so unlikely of accomplishment that he dared not even bring along his faithful crew. It was not for Ogygia or Aeaea he meant to steer, but for somewhere no one he knew had ever sailed, if the place truly existed at all.

  Aha, said Homer, and fetched up his lyre and struck a major chord. On his odyssey, Odysseus continued, he had managed to sail right off the charts, to where East and West mean nothing, nor North nor South; to where sleek Circe rules and the spirits of the dead abide. . . .

  I can’t imagine wanting to go there, Nausicaa said. Nor I wanting to return there, Odysseus assured her.

  Homer struck another chord. This time, said Odysseus—but then corrected himself, declaring that time was the wrong word. Where he proposed to sail for was a place that Circe herself had spoken of during their final night together: a place where East may be East and West West, but where Past and Future disappear. As he had sailed before out of charted space, he aimed now to sail right out of measured time, to a place called The Place Where Time Stands Still.

  That’s a song I’ve heard before, said Homer, improvising a light cadenza. Did sleek Circe give you sailing directions to that famous place?

  Unruffled Odysseus replied that the course was neither a secret nor a problem: One steered a touch more to the north or south, depending on the season, but always to westward, directly for the setting sun. If that’s all there is to it, Nausicaa said, why doesn’t every mariner go there and spare himself the pains of old age, which I gather is what this journey is all about? If it’s so easy to sail out of time, why are there any ancient mariners?

  Homer nodded approval and struck a chord. The fact that the bearing is simple, Odysseus responded, doesn’t mean that it’s generally known: Many a great puzzle has been found to have a simple key—once that key has been found. In this case, however, he added, the heading was not the problem. Homer sounded another chord. The problem was time. Three chords more. As Circe had explained it to him, and Calypso had subsequently confirmed, The Place Where Time Stands Still does not stand still; it recedes to westward at exactly the speed of the sun itself, a speed no ordinary vessel could hope to approach. And if by some bewitchment one could match that speed—flying through the pillars of Hercules and across the River Ocean so swiftly that the sun hung fixed upon the far horizon—even then one would draw no nearer; one’s distance off would merely not increase. To reach The Place Where Time Stands Still, one was obliged to sail so fast that the sun would appear to reverse its course and rise in the west. Evening would then become afternoon, afternoon morning; the sailor himself would actually grow somewhat younger!—until he overtook that fleeing, flowering shore. Which, once attained, would carry him and his vessel along, with no further effort on his part. Neither ship nor sailor would thenceforth age; he might cruise those flower-girt waterways forever, never tiring of them, for what stales our pleasures is time, and there he will be out of time.

  Well, now, said disappointed Nausicaa, who had hoped to hear a more practical romantic proposal: That is a fancy worthy of our friend here. But it seems to me that your ship, fast and seaworthy as it doubtless is, is after all just another boat, which by your own acknowledgment took a great while merely crossing from Ithaca to here. How do you expect to overtake the sun in it?

  Such a feat, Odysseus admitted, was out of the question. Nor in fact did he have any idea at all how to get where he wanted to go, determined as he was to get there. But the experience of his original odyssey had taught him that the solutions to such problems are seldom to be found by sitting on the beach; that was why he had come to Phaeacia rather than racking his brains in Ithaca. He had pondered the matter the
re as thoroughly as he could and had made what preparations he could imagine for the voyage (given its nature, those preparations were more spiritual than physical). Then he had set out, trusting to fortune and his own wits to show him as he went along what could not be seen from shore.

  If I may say so, Homer put in from the bed edge at this point, I approve of your method, which I have more than once employed myself—though it can be recommended only to the most knowledgeable practitioners of any art. He ran a deft arpeggio. Tell us, then: What trick have fortune and your wits disclosed, to drive a mere sailing vessel faster than the setting sun?

  As to his means, Odysseus replied, fortune and his wits remained as mute as ever they’d been in Ithaca, except to confirm by his recent journey that his boat and crew were of no further use to him in the project. He might perhaps sail on with them to Aeaea and seek further advice from Circe; after that his men would return with the boat to Ithaca. As to his end, however: Only that very night, there in that room, speaking with the Princess Nausicaa, hearing her story while admiring her beauty and then telling of his private plan, had he seen what he ought to have seen before: how lonely that timeless place would be for the singlehanded sailor who found some way to reach it.

  The princess brightened and shifted in her seat. To sail alone is one thing, Odysseus said: Sailing through solitude has its pleasures. But to sail to solitude is another matter. What good is eternal youth, alone? What I therefore propose, Nausicaa—

  I accept with pleasure, the princess interrupted, holding out her white right arm to him while pressing her tunic to her chest with her left. Odysseus protested that she hadn’t yet heard his proposal. Living with this poet, Nausicaa replied, has taught me narrative navigation. From a story’s heading and position, I can reckon where it’s bound.

  And from its pace, Homer added with a sigh, its Estimated Time of Arrival.

  What you propose, Nausicaa went on, is that I return home, make peace with my noble and sorrowing mother, and ease her burdens while you and your crew sail off to Circe for advice. You propose that if you survive that voyage, and if Circe knows in fact how this magic country can be reached, and if you can persuade her to tell you that secret (which she wouldn’t likely do if I were with you), and if she then permits you to sail back here with that information, and if you survive the return voyage as well, which you only barely did before; and if, having managed all that, you still feel as you feel tonight—why, then you’ll propose that I risk that crazy westward journey, in hopes of sharing with you its improbable reward. And if I feel then as I feel now—and if indeed I myself, on that who-knows-how-distant day, am still alive and well, rather than wrecked by disease or accident or war or mere despair—then, my friend, with all due respect to good Homer here, I shall accept your proposal with great joy.

  Very well spoken, Homer applauded. You have the makings of an ironist.

  Odysseus declared himself duly chastened by her words. But how else was he to proceed? It was quite true, as the princess had implied, that shrewd Circe would not likely proffer advice without recompense. One knew further to what sort of recompense she inclined, which she would not likely demand or he tender if Nausicaa were with him; powerful and dangerous the woman was, but neither wicked nor perverted. He regretted as keenly as Nausicaa the length and perils of a round-trip voyage from Phaeacia to Aeaea, when what he most wished was that the two of them could step directly from Homer’s cabin into The Place Where Time Stands Still. But a boat is but a boat; otherwise they could set sail for that place this very night.

  Your wits, man, Homer muttered, tinkering with a melody on his lyre. Use your famous Odyssean wits.

  Unless, Odysseus said, putting a forefinger to his brow, as it now occurs to me might be possible, my Aeaean voyage could be shortened by a faster boat, like the one that once carried me from here to Ithaca as if across the street. . . .

  I thought he’d never get around to it, Homer confided to his chord progression.

  Now at last Odysseus took Nausicaa’s hand. Persuade your mother to lend me a boat like the one your brothers are racing around in, he said to her, and I’ll be back in two days instead of two years.

  If Circe lets you go, Nausicaa reminded him, regarding their clasped hands. And if you don’t come to prefer her to me as your sailing-partner, once you’re back in bed with her.

  Homer strummed. Odysseus assured the princess that it was she alone he hoped to sail out of time with: not a goddess already timeless like Circe or Calypso, but a mortal woman, as he was a mortal man. He hoped further that she wouldn’t begrudge his going back to sleek Circe to learn the secret of super-high-speed sailing; that was the ticket price for their voyage together.

  So it seems, Nausicaa said. And not the only price, either. There’s another, which I’ve already paid.

  To Homer’s accompaniment, in the Dorian mode now, Odysseus supposed she meant by “another price” the leaving her mother and brothers and her native island: a price he too had already paid, in Ithaca. Your payment, Nausicaa observed, was in a somewhat different coin. Well put, said Homer. Anyhow, the princess went on, that was not the price she had in mind. Obviously, she declared now to Odysseus, she was his. Out of love for him she had spurned her worthy Phaeacian suitors, fled the palace, broken her parents’ hearts, led her brothers on a wild-goose chase, and given her virginity to a wandering minstrel, whose song of Odysseus had been her only recompense for such misbehavior. She had done all that, moreover, not because she was weary of her family, as Odysseus had become of his, but solely because she had loved him beyond reason, like one possessed.

  I see what you mean by the price already paid, said flattered Odysseus. But Nausicaa now declared that even that was not the prepaid price she meant. She removed her smooth hand from his scarred, and looked down at her fingernails. If you had said to me, she said over Homer’s new and wistful strain, Nausicaa, I love you; let’s forget about Circe and The Place Where Time Stands Still. Now that I’ve found my way back to you, let’s grow old right here together, looking after your mother, advising your brothers on the government of the island, maybe raising sons and daughters of our own: little Odysseuses and Nausicaas. You might have said to me that living out together what time we have left seems to you a sweeter fate than staking our lives upon such a far-fetched escapade as sailing out of time. Oh, my friend: If you had said that to me, I’d have felt more loved than any woman in love’s history. But you didn’t. What’s more, if I were to propose such a course to you, you would make diplomatic apologies and tactful expressions of regret and then sail off to Aeaea and from there to The Place Where Time Stands Still, either with Circe or with some other companion or alone after all, your heart is so set upon that voyage. That’s my admission price, Odysseus: the knowledge that what you want is not Nausicaa herself, but Nausicaa as your shipmate on this voyage, and the further knowledge that your interest in herohood and kingship, even in fatherhood and grandfatherhood, is behind you. That is the cost of my ticket to this perpetual retirement cruise.

  Said uncomfortable Odysseus You make it sting. What can I say?

  Nausicaa smiled and brushed her hair back with one hand. Nothing. It is a price I prepaid willingly, though not joyously, before you ever returned here.

  Peter Sagamore takes his wife’s hand and paraphrases one of her verses: She decided to pay, but not to count, the cost. His reward is a brilliant pleased flash of Diana’s eyes.

  Nausicaa then briskly got down to business. To borrow a Phaeacian ship for the voyage to Circe was out of the question: It was to punish her countrymen for just that sort of generosity that Poseidon had taken such hard measures against them already. Even though Odysseus had presumably settled his own debts in that quarter, the Phaeacians would never dare risk the sea god’s wrath again.

  Well, then, Odysseus lamented, the game is up. He had taken for granted, before, the hazards and hardships of the expedition to Circe. But having seen Nausicaa and learned wha
t he’d learned this night; having now imagined the possibility of a fast Aeaean weekend, after which he and Nausicaa could set out upon their great race together—now the prospect of an arduous, perilous two-year separation so discouraged him that he was indeed tempted, almost, to put the whole enterprise by, send his ship and shipmates back to rock-rich Ithaca, and settle down on Nausicaa’s island in the capacity she had described. Perhaps he could get interested in farming again; he hadn’t stood behind a plow since the day a quarter-century ago when Palamedes had set baby Telemachus in that tenth furrow.

  Homer’s chords turned appropriately nostalgic, and young Nausicaa began to appreciate how old her longed-for lover really was; how much was behind him; how more important to him than to her was this adventure out of time. She was not unmoved to hear him consider abandoning it, even though belatedly and in despair. I have an idea, she said then, which just might spare us your trip to Aeaea and the price of Circe’s information, if indeed she has any, and get us going very soon on this cruise of ours.

  Odysseus, Homer declared, you have found yourself a proper new partner. This young lady is as ready with inventions and expedients as you used to be yourself, back in Trojan days.