Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy)

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  At the break of dawn they began walking. Diomedes stood on the hill and watched as they made their way with a slow step carrying the rough litter of their fallen king.

  They soon disappeared from sight, but for a long time the funeral dirge could still be heard over the whole breadth of the plain, drifting towards the horizon, still oppressed by large black clouds.

  They walked, stopping neither by day nor by night, until they reached the shores of the Eridanus and then beyond, until they reached the place where the rest of their people were camped. From there they proceeded to the Lake of the Ancestors, guided by the elders who had always known the way. When they reached its shores they laid Nemro’s body in a hollowed log and pushed him into the deep, in keeping with the ancient rite of their fathers. The Great Waters welcomed the son who had returned after so long a time and rocked him at length in the sun and wind before burying him in the liquid darkness of the abyss.

  *

  Diomedes resumed the march towards the Blue Mountains with a heavy heart. Victory had given him no joy, and the land they were passing offered no place suitable for founding a city. They saw more square villages surrounded by moats and cultivated fields, but they were naught but islands in a sea of wild nature that had taken possession of all the territory. Many of the villages appeared to be deserted, as if the inhabitants had left, taking their things with them.

  Boundless cane groves marked the slow snaking of the water over the earth. It seemed that a number of frightful floods had devastated the work of men, and that immense, prolonged fatigue had finally crushed the will of the village communities to withstand the constant onslaught of the elements. Everywhere they found signs of work begun and abandoned half-way: embankments, dams, canals . . .

  The weather had begun to change and the high sun warmed the air and the earth. At first this brought welcome relief, but then the heat became intolerable because the water that flowed on the ground mixed with the air and produced a sense of suffocation and oppression. Only towards evening was there any respite. The land seemed to change; the sun setting behind the Blue Mountains enflamed the clouds in the sky and set alight the marshy expanses at their feet. The water glittered between the canes like molten gold and the wind rose to bend the grass on the plains and rustle the green foliage of the oak and ash trees. The poplars shivered silver at every breath of the wind and the new leaves of the beeches shone like polished copper. At the edges of the forests grazed great horned deer and does with their newly born young. Packs of boars snuffled under aged oaks, and the sows called to their striped-back little ones with soft, continuous grunts. Sometimes, in the thick of the wood, they would glimpse the shiny pelt of a huge bear.

  When darkness fell, an incessant choir of frogs would rise from the waters, joined by the chirping of crickets in the meadows and the solitary warbling of the nightingale in the forest. At that hour, the king would go down towards a nearby river or stream to bathe; he would throw his chlamys over his shoulders and remain in silence to contemplate the evening. Memories would overwhelm him then, of the furious battles fought under the walls of the city of Priam. His companions: Achilles, Sthenelus, Ulysses, Ajax . . . all dead . . . or lost. How he would have liked to sit with them and speak of the toils of the day, drinking wine and eating roasted meat . . .

  For many years he had desired to return to the peace of his home and the love of his bride and now, incredibly, he regretted that the war had ever finished. Not the blind clashes he’d had in this land, but the loyal combat of the past, where two phalanxes would draw up in broad daylight on the open field, front to front. And where the gods could clearly choose whose side they were on, where a man could show what he was worth. He remembered the blinding glare of bronze, the din of the combat chariots launched in unrestrained attack against the barrier of the enemy infantry. He recalled deep sleep under his tent, and endless torpor. And he remembered how continuous familiarity with death made him appreciate enormously every aspect of life, no matter how humble or poor.

  Now, for the first time in all his life, he was afraid. He was afraid of seeing his men die one by one, snared like animals in traps, betrayed at night, surprised in the shadows. He was afraid that he was marching, at the cost of great sacrifice and exhausting strain, towards nothing. This uninhabited wasteland was no land at all; it was a limitless, boundless magma that had already annihilated the people who had tried to settle it.

  The bride who had come from the Mountains of Ice began to understand the language of the Achaeans, because Telephus and the Chnan spoke to her often and dedicated great attention to her, but she never spoke, never asked for anything and never even smiled, for she knew in her heart that she would never again see her land or her family.

  One evening they camped along the river, which had become much more lovely and clear. The water ran sparkling over smooth pebbles and gravel of myriad colours. Long tongues of fine sand stretched into the bends, edged by little tufts of wicker which bowed in the evening breeze until they touched the current.

  The girl descended towards a grove of willow trees, took off her clothing and walked into the water. It was still cold with the melting snow of the Blue Mountains, but very pleasant because it reminded her of the rivers in her native land. She let herself be carried by the current, she rolled and dipped, diving in where it was deepest until she could touch the sands at the bottom. She would turn on to her back and then on to her stomach, letting the water caress her hair.

  When she got to her feet to return to the shore where she had left her clothing she found King Diomedes before her, sitting alone on a boulder.

  The low sun struck him in full, setting his hair ablaze around his bronzed cheeks, mixing it with the curls of his beard like the waves of the river amid the willow bushes. He was wearing only his chlamys over his nude body, and his leg was propped up on a stone. She realized that he had been watching her for some time, without her knowing. She did not run away, because there was nowhere she could go. She was drawn towards him by the melancholy look in his eyes; the same that she had seen in Nemro’s black eyes, but without his gleam of hope. In those few steps that separated her from the king she realized that he was sadder, more alone, more desperate; she understood that Nemro’s death for him had been nothing more, nothing less than an unavoidable turn of fate.

  She looked at his awesome hands, the hands of an annihilator. The strong fingers, the turgid veins under his skin. Hands that gave death or a caress without much difference. She looked into his eyes and laid her hands on his shoulders; they felt hard, and strong. She ran her fingers through his soft, smooth hair. She pressed his head to her bosom and he put his hands around her waist and kissed her breasts and her smooth stomach still dripping with river water. Without standing, he pulled her against him, pulled her into his lap and penetrated within her holding her in his arms like a child, letting her rest her head on his shoulder, as though she were sleeping. One drop of her virgin’s blood stained the white chlamys of the king and she pressed her lips together without a moan. She clasped the hard body of the king with her tender arms and with her long, slender legs. She thought of Nemro’s black eyes, dead, forever, she thought of her distant land, beyond the immaculate peaks of the Mountains of Ice, and she wept. She wept while the king laid her on the sand and unleashed all the power of his loins within her, gripping her by the shoulders, by her hair . . . She wept because she felt the whole world stifled by sadness, in the murmur of the river and the woods, in the slow, opaque dusk, in the remote screeching of the scops owl, in the whisper of the wind.

  The king cried out in the moment of supreme delirium, a cry as hoarse as the growl of a beast, then collapsed, exhausted, his fists clutching the river sand. The girl slipped away from under his heavy body and immersed herself again in the river to purify herself in its gelid waters. When she emerged, Diomedes had disappeared; there was nothing left of him but the footprints in the damp sand and his feral odour in the air, but as she was gathering up her clothing
she found a flower resting on her gown, a wild melilot. She picked it up and brought it to her face, inhaling its scent. The moon was just rising between the boughs of the poplars and the day past was nothing but a thin vermilion strip on the mountain crest. She felt that the king had left her a kiss and a caress.

  10

  WHEN QUEEN CLYTEMNESTRA LEARNED that Helen had returned to Sparta together with her husband Menelaus at the end of a sultry summer, the news filled her with joy and at the same time with great anxiety. She was impatient to embrace the sister she had last seen when she was only twenty, and to learn from her many things about the long war that she still did not know; above all, she was impatient to know whether she would serve the cause of the great conspiracy. But she feared Menelaus.

  The younger Atreid would immediately seek news of Agamemnon and it was not improbable that he would soon know the truth. Many witnesses to the massacre had been eliminated; only the most faithful had been spared. But how to establish who was faithful in a palace where the queen shared her bed with the accomplice who had helped her kill her legitimate husband, where son and daughter no longer trusted their own mother?

  Her informers had told her that Menelaus had been greeted by a city astonished and troubled, but not hostile.

  The mothers and fathers of the warriors who were returning after so many years had thronged along the road that led into the city from the south. They anxiously watched the ranks of foot soldiers, scanned the rumbling battle chariots as they paraded by with their gleaming decorations of silver and copper.

  Some of them suddenly lit up, shouting out a name, and began to run along the column so as not to lose sight of the beloved face, not for a single instant. The man who answered to that name did not turn his head, remaining in the ranks, closed in his polished armour, but his gaze rested on those well-loved heads, on those faces so harshly lined by their long wait.

  Others, after having watched the very last man parade by, dragged themselves back to the head of the line to have another look, or crossed to the other side, not willing to resign themselves to the despair of a loss, telling themselves that time and the war can make a son unrecognizable to the father who sired him, to the mother who bore him.

  Still others, after having futilely called out the names of one or more of their sons, again and again, after having run up and down the ranks with their hearts in a flurry, and after having frantically searched the rows of warriors arrayed in front of the king’s palace waiting to be discharged, gave themselves up to despair. The women raised shrill cries and soiled their hair in the dust, the men, their cheeks streaked with tears, stared silently at the dull, lightless sky hanging over the city.

  At nightfall several guards exited the palace with torches, accompanied by scribes who had inscribed the names of the fallen on fresh clay tablets. Then came the king in person, armed, flanked by his field adjutants. He had been responsible for the war and he was responsible for the fallen, for all the young men run through by merciless bronze, buried in a foreign land, in the fields of Asia or the swamps of Egypt. He had to answer to the grief-shattered parents.

  The great courtyard of the palace was packed with a silent crowd, but soon someone began to shout: ‘Bring us back our sons! What have you done with them? You took the best of our young men and brought them to war . . . over a woman!’

  The king was pale, subdued. He wore his long red hair tied at the nape of his neck and was barefoot, like a beggar.

  ‘Even I mourn my dead!’ he shouted suddenly. ‘Where is my brother Agamemnon? And where are his comrades? Where are my brother’s children, Prince Orestes and Princess Electra? Why haven’t they come to welcome me?’ He advanced towards the edge of the steps. ‘The responsibility for the war was mine,’ he said, ‘and I will pronounce the names of my comrades fallen in a strange land, buried far away from their homes, so that their parents can raise a mound to them, with a stone remembering their name, should they so wish.’

  ‘It’s your fault that they’re dead!’ shouted another voice. ‘Just so you could have Helen back in your bed! And you are alive!’

  The king opened his robe and bared the scars on his chest. ‘It is only fate that has spared me,’ he shouted. ‘A thousand times I heard arrows whistling next to my temples, many times did the bronze cut my skin. I never hid myself. Strike this heart if you believe that I trembled with fear, that I used the lives of the comrades you entrusted me with as a shield.’ He lowered his head. ‘I wept over them. Bitterly. Each one. And I remember every one of them.’

  The crowd’s shouts lowered to a diffused murmur. The king held his hand out to the scribe sitting on the ground near him, who handed him a tablet. He began to read the names of the fallen, one by one, with a firm, sharp voice, and the silence in the courtyard became so deep that the sputtering of the torches could be heard in the still air. Until late that night, the king pronounced the names of the fallen before their mothers and their fathers, before their tearful brides.

  Among them he pronounced the name of Lamus, son of Onchestus, but the youth’s old father did not hear him. He lay dying in his bed, his heart full of grief because he would have to descend into the house of Hades without seeing his son, the only son that his wife had borne him. For years he had dreamed of seeing Lamus return one day, of seeing him enter the gate to the vineyard under the arbour, made a man by the war and its hardships, of seeing him toss his spear and his shield on the ground and run forward to embrace him. But now his hour had come; his wait had been futile.

  When King Menelaus had pronounced the last name, the moon was disappearing behind Mount Taygetus and old Onchestus descended weeping into the shadows. The gods who see all and know all did not permit him to know that his beloved son was alive. Lamus was marching in that moment under an incessant rain on a path which climbed towards the woody heights of the Blue Mountains, in the remote Land of Evening. He was following the son of Tydeus, Diomedes, towards an obscure destiny.

  *

  Helen met with Queen Clytemnestra of Mycenae and Queen Aigialeia of Argos in the sanctuary of the Potinja, the ancient goddess and lady of the animals, near Nemea, at night, by the light of a lantern. She had requested this herself, so as not to be recognized or arouse suspicion in the men of her escort. And she had also requested that when they met in the temple, the priestess of the goddess be present as well to celebrate her rites.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ Queen Clytemnestra said to her.

  ‘So have you,’ replied Helen meekly.

  ‘We reign over Argos, Knossos and Mycenae,’ said Aigialeia. ‘We each have a man in the palace and in our beds, but he has no power. You must do away with Menelaus.’

  ‘Does he know how his brother died?’ asked Clytemnestra.

  ‘He knows that he is dead. That he has been for some time. And he is suffering.’

  ‘We’ve suffered as well,’ said Aigialeia. ‘Don’t let yourself be moved. Men are bearers of death and it is only right that they die. It is women who bear life, and our reign will bring happiness back to this world.’

  ‘He will soon know learn how Agamemnon died,’ said Helen, ‘if he hasn’t already found out. Yesterday friends from Mycenae announced a visit.’

  ‘Do you know who they are?’ asked Clytemnestra, and fear flashed through her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Helen.

  ‘You must kill him before he has time to take any initiative . . . or find allies.’

  ‘One of the kings might come to his aid . . .’ said Helen.

  ‘Only Nestor remains,’ said Aigialeia. ‘The others are all dead or gone.’ She handed Helen a vial. ‘This is a potent poison. You must mix it with your perfume and spread it on your body where you know he will kiss you. He will die slowly, little by little, every time he makes love to you. When he is weakened by the poison he will no longer approach you, and it is then that you must entice him, provoke him, force him. He made war to have you back in his bed. And that is how he must die.’ Helen accepte
d the vial and hid it in the folds of her gown. ‘With Menelaus dead no one will be able to thwart our plan. Old Nestor will be completely alone; at his age, he won’t want to take up a war, and I doubt that his sons will either. Pisistratus, his firstborn, is a bull, but he has everything to lose and nothing to gain. Penelope already reigns in Ithaca, and Ulysses is surely dead. If he were alive he would have returned by now. In Crete, Idomeneus has been dethroned after he immolated his only male heir to the gods. There is no one left in the palace of Minos but the women. We have won!’ exulted Aigialeia.

  She was the first to leave the sanctuary, as night was falling. Her driver was waiting for her, holding by the reins a couple of horses as white as the dust on the road. Helen was to go last, after allowing some time to pass. Clytemnestra approached her before taking leave herself. The sanctuary was dark by then and nothing could be seen but the image of the goddess crowned in pale light, although the priestess continued her woeful chanting.

  ‘Have you seen anything strange among the things that Menelaus brought back with him from Ilium?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Clytemnestra smiled and her lips twisted into a kind of grimace. ‘You know. They say that this wretched war was not fought over you, but over something else . . .’

  Helen did not turn. ‘The talisman of Troy?’

  ‘But then it’s true,’ gasped Clytemnestra. ‘It was all done for the mad dream of endless power . . . that is why Iphigenia was sacrificed, her throat slit at the altar like a lamb’s . . .’ Her voice trembled and her eyes filled with darkness; her forehead was creased and drawn. She bowed her head and gathered her thoughts in silence, then said: ‘Aigialeia had all of Diomedes’s comrades killed and requisitioned all their booty. She searched everywhere. She was evidently looking for something.’