Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  ‘An easy name to remember.’ It came to me in a flash from the gods. ‘They call me Noman.’

  ‘And you say you’ve come all the way from Troy, wherever that is. I didn’t see your ship. Where have you beached her? Or is she at anchor?’

  I saw through the ruse at once.

  ‘That’s just the problem,’ I said, ‘we have no ship, god help us. Poseidon wrecked it on the rocks.’

  The giant roared with laughter. ‘Poseidon, you say?’

  ‘Yes, and the rest of the crew perished. We’re the only survivors, with no means of reaching home again, unless you help us.’

  The ogre was helpless with laughter now.

  ‘Of course I’ll help you. But as we’re no shipwrights, I’ll have to help you in some other way. So I’ll help you by reducing the number of your crew. Then, if any of you are left by the time I’m done with you, you can get home on a couple of logs – if Poseidon will let you!’

  And he took two more men for breakfast the next morning, ripping and snapping, rending flesh and bone, and this time gobbling them down raw. Then he left the cave with his flock of rams to take them to pasture, stopping the mouth of the cave again and promising to be back for supper, when the crew would be cut by another two men.

  He kept his promise. It was obvious he’d carry on in this way until he’d eaten us all. That’s when I hatched the escape plan and gave him the goatskin. He plunged into his drunken sleep, burping up chunks of half-digested human flesh in a flood of wine – a gruesome, stomach-heaving spectacle. But we breathed deeply and prepared ourselves for what we had to do next.

  There was a slender tree-trunk lying at the back of the cave, as tall as a ship’s mast. I needed to cut off a fathom of it to be sure of penetrating the eye, and the cutting had to be done with our swords, each man cutting in turn. When the fathom was cut, I sharpened it to a fearsome point and held it in the glowing embers until it was a lethal weapon, hardened and white-hot.

  ‘Right, you savage bastard, I’m the man with no name, and you’re just about to become the man with no eyes. Or should I say eye? Say goodbye to seeing.’

  I dragged the terrible thing out of the embers, and four of the crew gripped it with me, getting ready for the turning and the thrust.

  ‘Ready, lads? Now!’

  We drove the great glowing poker deep through the eyelid, and the eyeball burst.

  ‘Not too deep!’ I didn’t want to penetrate the brain.

  As we plunged, we twisted and turned, like shipwrights drilling a ship’s timbers, and the blood boiled and bubbled up around our scorching torch. Everything was burned to a cinder in seconds, including the very roots of the eye. I could hear them crackling and popping in the intense heat, the hiss and steam louder than when the smith suddenly plunges a new-forged axe or adze into ice-cold water to temper it.

  For a heart-stopping second I thought I’d killed him – until we heard a shriek, the like of which I never heard before, not in nine years on the killing fields of Troy. The cliff around us reverberated till we thought the roof and walls of the cave would collapse and entomb us with the beast in his lair. But he sat up and tore the stake from the still sizzling socket, and, as it came out, the socket spouted more hot blood, splashing and scalding me and the crewmen who stood closest. The beast’s skin was singed all round the wound, the single eyebrow burned away, and the coarse hair above it on fire.

  The monster staggered to his feet and barged about the cave in agony, blundering into the walls and gashing himself, half searching for us with blind fingers, half maddened by pain and groping for the milk-pails to pour on cool relief. I kicked them over, dodging under his huge legs, and he cursed and clawed and shrieked all the louder.

  The screams were heard far off on the windy mountain-tops by his fellow Cyclops. They came striding across the distant peaks in no time at all and along the valleys to the shore. We heard them gathering outside the stoppered cave-mouth.

  ‘What ails you?’ they called. ‘Is somebody robbing you in there? Or trying to murder you?’

  ‘Noman!’ he bellowed back at them. ‘Noman is here! Noman has hurt me!’

  And so they went away again, the dimwits, calling back to him sagely that if no man was harming him, then he was probably mad, and his sickness had been sent by the gods. And there was nothing they could do about that, given that the Cyclops and the gods did not see eye to eye, so to speak. The best thing he could do would be to seek the help of Poseidon . . .

  Meanwhile, we still had to get out of the cave, and the mutilated monster still had to attend to his beasts. Next morning the ewes would bleat to be milked and the rams to be pastured. So while the ogre moaned, unable to sleep, I bound the rams together in threes, and under each middle beast I fastened a man, so that he was protected from detection on either side and could pass out of the cave unharmed. I fastened myself to only one ram, but he was the biggest and strongest and fleeciest of the flock. And in this way we waited for morning.

  The merest crack of sky glowed through the blocked entrance, but at last the stars rusted away, the east was flecked with red, and the eyeless ogre groped his way to the door, opened it, and hunkered down with outstretched arms and hands that fumbled in all directions, thinking to catch us on our way out, as if we were complete idiots. Still whimpering with pain, he called out to the beasts, feeling along their backs as they filed out and probing between their shaggy flanks. He never though to check their bellies.

  So the men got out, by stratagem. My ram came last, slowed by my weight. He addressed it affectionately and stroked its back, wondering why it was last in line today when it was wont to lead the way, first in line, proudly to pasture: first at the stream, first at the flowers, first to crop the fresh young grass, first back home again to rest and shelter.

  ‘Are you grieving for me, dear lad? Is that it? Are you sorrowing for your master, blinded by the hand of Noman? Oh, if only you had understanding and a voice, you would tell me where he is skulking right now. Then I’d smash his skull and scatter his brains across these walls and breakfast on him, flesh and blood and bones. That at least would be of some comfort to me in this torment. But on you go now, out to pasture, and I’ll stay behind and search every corner until I have found him.’

  By that time, I was out of the cave. As soon as we were at a safe distance, I untied myself and my men. We grabbed the fattest of the rams and took them with us to the ships – along with the king of the flock to shatter the savage’s heart of stone. Our comrades were horrified to hear what had happened to six out of the twelve, but there was no time for tears. We took our places on the benches and struck the white surf with our oars.

  Once offshore, I couldn’t resist a parting shot.

  ‘Hey, Cyclops! It’s Noman calling you – remember me? I’m the one who frizzled your eye out and left you the blind blundering dunce that you are now. Our ships weren’t wrecked, by the way. The only thing that’s wrecked is the rest of your life! But if your manners should improve with suffering, especially your table manners, you can thank me for it. Right now, you’re a blight on all the codes of honour and an affront to men and gods. At least I’ve taught you something about hospitality – and how a guest repays a bad host!’

  There was no answer. But the monster reached round and tore off the top of a mountain, rocks and roots and towering trees and all, and, aiming for my voice, hurled it at us with a thunderous roar. We watched it form its arc and shuddered as it hovered overhead before falling into the sea just beyond us.

  Relief was short-lived. The enormous splash created a backwash that engulfed our prow, almost swamping us, and drove us all the way back to shore. The monster heard the shouting and heaving as we pushed off a second time, and he reached for another missile. This time it struck the sea astern of us and gave us a huge push, beyond even the ogre’s range.

  Again the men tried to stop me, and I heartily wish some god had struck me dumb, but my blood was up, and I stood in the stern of the vessel
and shouted across the dancing sea.

  ‘If anyone inquires about your missing eye, tell them you were unwise enough to cross Odysseus. No man crosses Odysseus and gets away unscathed. Noman – and Odysseus. Got it? Remember both names – if you can!’

  A great groan emanated from the shore. ‘You devil! You got the better of me when I was asleep. You’re no Greek hero! You’re a puny trickster. But I’ll remember your real name now, and you’ll have reason to remember mine – Polyphemus, son of Poseidon, to whom I now pray that you never see home again. Or that if you do, you’ll be the sole survivor of all your ships and find no friendly welcome – just suffering and spears and certain death!’

  The blue-haired sea-god heard his son’s prayer – and granted it. The sea was to become my worst enemy and strike me at every opportunity. For now, however, we were safe. We reached the little island where our comrades awaited us, and we told them all that had happened. We lit fires on the beach and dined on Polyphemus’s fattest rams, well washed down with good red wine; we also washed down all fears of Poseidon and the monster’s promised revenge. Only afterwards, when our bellies were full, did we sit down on the sands, the sea in our ears, and weep bitterly for our dead friends.

  We wept and slept on the beach that night, the ocean whispering through our heads. And when dawn drew the curtains, fingering the east, we rowed out once more, onto the grey waters, stained pink by yet another sunrise.

  FORTY-TWO

  For nine days we sailed without a hitch and with a gentle west wind at our sterns, nudging us slowly home, and on the tenth day we saw Ithaca on the skyline and the spires of smoke going up. We came so close we could hear the bleatings of sheep and the bells tinkling from the fields. I could even distinguish from those tinklings which sheep were mine. The sounds of home – so sad, so fresh, so terrifying. A dreadful depression came over me, a sudden crushing weight on the cranium. I couldn’t shift it, couldn’t understand it. Everything was the same, nothing changed. The war we’d fought, all those men dead; it meant nothing here, it had nothing to do with home. The adventure was over. My legs buckled. Home is so sad. I wanted to cry.

  I didn’t have time.

  Mediterranean storms come out of nowhere and go back to the nowhere they came from in a matter of minutes. Or they can last for hours. Or days. It was a storm like that, a nowhere storm. It sucked us from the shoreline and out again onto the open sea for so many sunless days and black nights we didn’t know where we were.

  Do you believe that? You’d better. Isn’t it easier to believe it than to try to understand why a soldier could be just too fucking frightened to go home? Why a sailor who could smell the seaweed and hear the gulls would actually give the order to turn back? How to translate that sound, that smell, the slow old smoke of home? What to equate it to? The sorrow after sex, spiralling into emptiness, the dread of all endings, the emptiness of all emotions after the comradeship of battle, the fear of peace, the fear of life itself, that sort of thing.

  And that’s the truth of it. There really was a storm that sucked me away from Ithaca, but it was an inner storm, one that had fuck all to do with the sea or any of the elements. The truth isn’t always useful, especially if there’s an alternative, a better explanation of why things happen as they do. A myth, if you like. This one is called the Aeolus adventure, and it’s a way out for a wandering hero and a husband who won’t come home. So let the web do its work, let Penelope spin her yarn.

  The storm drove the crew demented, the shrieking in their ears elemental and inhuman, like Polyphemus screeching in his pain, and they raged against Odysseus’s insatiable curiosity which had led them into the Cyclops’ lair, and the arrogance which had brought the vengeance of Poseidon down on their heads. They were certain now to be gulped down by the deeps and their bones rolled about the ocean eternally, their spirits wailing their demise in the shape of the eternal gulls that circle the skies, the souls of lost mariners, unburied and unwept. It was only when they struck the happy land of Aeolus that the crews ceased to curse their commander.

  Aeolus was the god-empowered wind-keeper of the deeps. He lived on his island home, surrounded by a barrier of bronze, its cliffs falling sheer to the sea. With his six daughters and six sons combined in incest, he sat banqueting on his island home, and life at his court was one eternal feast. When Odysseus arrived, Aeolus insisted that the crews partake of his table and their captain tell all that had happened at Troy and after the end of the war. There were adventures enough to satisfy a hundred hearers for a year’s feasting, and Aeolus was so taken with Odysseus by the end of the narrative that he gave him an unusual parting present to help him on his way. It was an oxhide sack in which he had imprisoned the winds, leaving only the west wind free to chase them home. The mouth of this sack had to be kept secure, and it was tied tightly round with a lovely silver cord.

  And so all went well with the fleet until Odysseus sighted Ithaca, whereupon, exhausted by his adventures and overcome with relief and joy, he fell into a deep sleep. Until then he’d been managing the sheet single-handed night and day, eager for the quick run home and unwilling to entrust the task to anyone but himself, so anxious was he to see Penelope again. The sheer strain of this finished him off, and he gave way, knowing that the crew could easily handle the ship and bring her safely into port.

  It was a fatal error. No sooner did his men see him asleep than they put their treacherous heads together and concluded that the mysterious sack presented to their captain had so many bulges and was secured so tightly that it must have been crammed with gold and silver. It was obvious Odysseus was planning on keeping the loot for himself and sending them home empty-handed. So they slipped the sack from his sleeping fingers, undid the cord . . . and let loose all the howling winds of heaven.

  Odysseus awoke with Ithaca fading like a dream into day as the entire fleet was swept back out onto the open ocean. Penelope stood on the shore, tearing her long hair to no avail. The crimson beaks jabbed the other way, away from home, eating the ocean. The winds did the work of nine days in three, and by dawn on the fourth day the fleet had been buffeted all the way back to Aeolia.

  The wind-keeper couldn’t believe it. All his family crowded round the harbour and stared in amazement, asking what had gone wrong. To have been given complete control of the winds and then to have lost that control completely – how? Odysseus denounced his own crew, and they hung their heads in shame to support him, but it failed to impress Aeolus.

  ‘A man who returns after all these years and allows himself to fall asleep within reach of his homeland deserves a bungling crew and is not worth helping. In fact, it would be unwise and unsafe to assist such a man. There is surely something in your soul that must be worked out between you and the gods. No, I’ll not succour you a step further. Find your own way home.’

  And so Odysseus was expelled from Aeolia without a breath of wind in the sails. Nothing left to do but row.

  And we did row – after hitting a three-day storm. We rowed for another seven bastarding days on a windless sea, with arms of ash and hands of rope and backs and shoulders to match, and we were dropping at the oars from sleeplessness and sheer fatigue when we saw buildings looming up on the skyline, a city built on high cliffs that fell steeply into the sea for hundreds of feet. Impregnable. Only the gulls could have got into that city, and when we drew closer we could see the snowstorm thronging the rocks and hear the screeching through the white thunder of the surf beating the cliffs. But even the seagulls rose no higher than midway to the city, shuttling endlessly in the spray, their cries as wild and relentless as the surge.

  The crew were in no doubt.

  ‘This is an arsehole of a place! Let’s turn about.’

  But I wanted a closer look. ‘Whoever lives up there doesn’t fly in on wings,’ I said. ‘There’s got to be a way in.’

  Sure enough, we skirted the cliffs and soon found it, a natural harbour, small but inviting, a quiet little haven for sailors weary of the sea
and the endless rowing. The men perked up.

  ‘Well done, captain, let’s get in there and rest up.’

  But at the last minute I held back. I didn’t like it, the narrow mouth with the cliffs towering up on both sides, no manoeuvrability in an emergency.

  ‘Emergency? What fucking emergency?’

  I moored my own ship to a rock just outside the entrance on the seaward side and ordered the other captains to do the same. The bastards ignored me.

  ‘Look, you’ve found us a harbour. Good for you. Now we need to rest – that’s the only emergency!’

  Against my orders they went in, and what they found was worse than any emergency. They rowed into a slaughter-hole. The last ship had just gone in when all hell broke loose. Suddenly, the cliffs bristled with figures all along the summits and the upper air went dark with missiles, a hail of rocks hurtling down on the fleet. They were bigger than anything that could have been lifted, let alone thrown, and must have been balanced up there on the clifftop edges, all ready to be levered off. The nice quiet haven was a death-trap.

  Whoever was up there didn’t like us, that was for sure, and the bastards didn’t even have to take aim. The fleet was so tightly packed the ships filled up the harbour, and every rock that came crashing down found a target. The ships were splintered into driftwood. Some sank in minutes. The harbour was filled with swimmers thrashing about among the tangle of oars, most of them bleeding and badly injured, trying to find a way out.

  But there was no way out, no shore to swim for, and the retreat to the open sea was blocked.

  And now the natives showed face, emerging out of a circle of caves lower down the cliffs. They were stark-naked, barbarian bastards armed with long harpoons. There was no way they could have built that city up in the air. They must have been some kind of hunter army, kept as slaves by the citizens to procure them meat from the sea. And they were lethal. The crews were speared like fish to the last man, and the waters of that hell-harbour went red with their blood.