The Return From Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  And so it was that, because I heard an old nurse comforting my friend with stories, I conceived the first lines of a song that would not be completed till after Odysseus’ return and is sung across Argos by bards who claim it for their own. As is well-known, the song tells how Odysseus and his men escaped from the island of the Cyclopes by fooling Polyphemus into the belief that a man called ‘Nobody’ had put out his eye. But with Odysseus now long dead, I feel free to tell how there was once a time when his strong sense of identity was so reduced by his ordeals that Odysseus truly believed that he had become Nobody indeed.

  Nobodysseus

  The sight of their leader collapsed and weeping in the arms of Guneus shocked the crew of The Fair Return into a state of dumb bewilderment. This was Odysseus, their lord and captain, the most endlessly resourceful of men and among the most eloquent. What news could be so bad as to wreck him like this?

  And Guneus himself scarcely knew what to say or do in that moment because the whole weight of Odysseus’ upper body had slumped against his chest as if all the power had drained from his legs and he was left with strength only to gasp and shudder as he wept.

  ‘I meant no harm,’ Guneus heard himself saying after a time. ‘The gods are just, Odysseus. I’m sure all will be well.’ But Odysseus had passed beyond reach, beyond hearing and each word was of small account against the force of the blizzard gathering inside his mind. The tears running down his face and the sobs shaking his body were no longer marks of grief or loss or any other emotion with a known name: simply the outward signs of a suddenly accelerated process of dissolution over which he had no control, and which was as impersonal in its power as a flash-flood crashing through a forest and on into the chambers of a well-built house.

  Guneus turned his head towards the dumbstruck men along the beach and shouted, ‘Give me a hand here, someone. This man needs help.’ Then Baius came running, and Demonax, and Eurybates who now wore a vermilion cloth wrapped about his wounded temple in the Libyan fashion. But Odysseus fended them all off as though they were Furies coming at him like bats out of the dark. He pushed Guneus away, staggered in the sand, and stood swaying with his head in his hands and the sobs juddering through him and a hoarse, protracted noise, like the creaking of a door, breaking from his mouth.

  Eurymachus came up alongside Guneus, demanding to know what was happening and was astounded to see Odysseus stare at him with a grimace of horror across his face, almost as though he was covered in blood, before turning away and making for his lodge with one hand still pressed to his head.

  ‘What happened between you?’ Eurymachus demanded of the armoured man across from him, who was tugging in puzzlement at his beard. ‘What did you say to him?’

  Guneus opened his hands as if to demonstrate his harmlessness. ‘I just told him what’s been happening at home. The news isn’t good. It’s given him a shock, I’m afraid. He’ll be all right again when he gets over it.’

  Yet the man’s voice lacked the confidence of the opinion, and as the hours passed, the condition of Odysseus deteriorated further. He sat inside his lodge, rocking backwards and forwards, groaning and holding his head, and would accept no comfort from anyone — not the women who were used to serving him, nor from any of the friends who approached him. He either stared at them aghast without responding or snarled like an injured dog, demanding that they let him be. They muttered together outside the lodge, all of them dismayed by what they too had now learned of events back home in Ithaca and across all Argos, yet still unable to comprehend why Odysseus had been so unmanned by the news.

  Arguments broke out as to what best should be done to help him, and the situation became further confused when Guneus decided that he had no wish to see his own crew contaminated by the febrile atmosphere of this camp. There were a couple of hours of light left in the day and he decided to use them to make progress towards the mouth of the river Cinyps rather than allowing his crew to sink into a stupor with this demoralised bunch of Ithacans. Not all his men were happy at being ordered back to sea but he forced his will on them, and climbed aboard his ship shouting to the Ithacans watching from the shore that if any of them were of the mind to shape up, he could always use good men.

  Glaucus, captain of the Nereid, and Demonax of the Swordfish glanced uneasily at one another as they watched the Thessalian pentekonter pull out into the bay.

  A rosy glow of sunlight glanced off her sail as it billowed from the yard. The oars were shipped, spindrift scattered from the prow, and a white wake glistened behind the vessel as she scudded westwards on the breeze. For the landlocked Ithacans it was like watching their own lives recede.

  Some time after the sun had gone down Eurylochus decided to try to speak to his leader again. A good sailor, cautious and pragmatic, always with a keen eye for the run of the weather, he was never gifted with the sharpest of wits but had a feeling heart and could not bear to think of his old friend lying wretchedly alone. Prepared for a further angry dismissal, he went into the lodge with an oil-lamp in one hand and a bowl of food in the other, and found his captain lying on his bed in a dishevelled state.

  ‘I’ve brought you some food,’ he said gently. ‘You should try to eat something.’ When no answer came, he put down the lamp and bowl, stood uncertainly for a moment, then said, ‘It’s me — your old shipmate Eurylochus. You can talk to me.’

  By the dim light of the lamp he saw Odysseus turn over on the bed. A haggard face looked up at him.

  ‘Eurylochus?’

  ‘That’s right, sir,’ the man answered, encouraged, ‘Eurylochus, as ever was.’ He took the hand that Odysseus reached out to him and felt the strength of its grip.

  ‘I keep seeing her,’ Odysseus said, ‘again and again. I can’t get my head clear.’

  Eurylochus nodded his head in sympathy, certain now that he understood the cause of the man’s grief. ‘I’m sure you there’s no need to trouble your head over Penelope, lord. Your wife has always loved you and she always will. You’ve got nothing to fear there, whatever foul lies Guneus was spreading.’

  But Odysseus frowned and shook his head. ‘No, it’s not her’ he said. ‘You don’t understand.’

  Eurylochus furrowed his brow. ‘Then who, sir? Who do you see?’

  Odysseus lifted his stricken face. ‘Polyxena,’ he whispered. ‘Even in the dark, she’s there, looking back at me.’

  Bewildered by the response, Eurylochus said, ‘King Priam’s daughter, you mean? The one that young Neoptolemus took in vengeance for his father? She’s long dead and in the Land of Shades, lord. You don’t have to worry about her.’

  Tightening his grip on his friend’s wrist, Odysseus said, ‘We never atoned for her. That’s why she won’t let me go. Don’t you see it? She was innocent and not one of us atoned for her death. We shan’t ever be free of her now, not unless …’

  Swallowing, calling silently on the gods for protection, Eurylochus said, ‘Unless what, sir?’

  ‘The thing is, I keep seeing her — even when I close my eyes she’s there across from me. I see her baring her breasts on Achilles’ tomb, lifting her chin before the sword, defying us, knowing that she’ll always be there.’

  ‘But you didn’t kill her, lord,’ Eurylochus tried to reason with him. ‘If there’s still blood-guilt there, it’s none of yours. It lies with Neoptolemus.’

  ‘I should have prevented him. I knew what he was going to do and I should have stopped it. He was only a boy. A boy possessed by what he thought was his father’s shade. But he was too young. He should never have been at Troy. And neither should Achilles before him. And it was me who brought him there.’

  ‘Indeed it was,’ his friend encouraged him, ‘and because you brought Achilles to Troy, Hector was killed, and it was because of that we won.’

  But his bluff attempt at confirmation and reassurance sparked only anger. ‘Did we, Eurylochus?’ Odysseus demanded. ‘Tell me, what did we win? Yes, we burned Troy and killed men in their thousands, but if Agam
emnon and the others lost everything when they got back, and men like Guneus and hundreds of others like him are counting themselves lucky just to get out of the war alive, what did we win that’s worth all that suffering, all those deaths?’

  ‘You can’t start to think that way,’ Eurylochus protested. ‘Madness lies that way.’

  ‘But so does the truth,’ Odysseus returned, ‘and Polyxena knows that. That’s why she won’t let me go. She’s always there, tilting her neck to show me her wound as if to say, “It was you, Odysseus. You were the cause of all of this.” ’

  Eurylochus looked down in perplexity as his captain’s body began to shake again. The hairs at the back of his neck were prickling. In the flickering lamp-light he sensed a presence that should not be there and the knowledge chilled his heart. He glanced around the gloomy lodge as though expecting to see the ghost of the dead girl standing in the shadows with the blood of a sword-wound flowing from her neck. He wanted to get out of there but how could he leave his lord to tremble on that desolate bed? Outside the notes of a flute haunted the evening air with their yearning for home.

  Eurylochus said, ‘This is only an evil dream. I think you must have taken some kind of a fever, lord. It will pass. Soon it will pass.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Odysseus snapped back at him. ‘This isn’t the first and it won’t be the last. There are others who come.

  I see all the others too — the ones we cut down like cattle in the streets of Troy. Sometimes in broad daylight I turn round and there they are, still lying in their blood and piss - the old men with their guts hanging out in gaudy rags, the boys with smashed heads - boys who’d never lifted a weapon … lying in piles in the streets where we burned them.’

  ‘But we’ve killed men before,’ Eurylochus said. ‘We’ve taken other towns and men died there, and you weren’t like this afterwards. If we won the victory, lord, it’s because the gods gave it to us. Divine Athena spoke to you in your dream. It was she who showed you how to give us victory. And if the gods were with you, why should you reproach yourself?’

  ‘Because I gave my word,’ Odysseus snarled. ‘It was never meant to be that way. All the blood of Troy is on my head.’

  ‘It’s done, lord,’ Eurylochus urged him, almost impatiently now. ‘It’s done and it’s over and you must put these things from your mind.’

  But it was as if Odysseus had not heard him. ‘That child never hurt anyone in all her days,’ he said. ‘She was innocent. Achilles saw it well enough. She was an innocent caught up in all the violence of our pride and fury. And it’s as if … as if … It’s as if she sees every terrible thing I’ve done and it’s all fixed in her eyes like a frieze carved in marble, and none of it can ever be forgotten or forgiven now …’

  ‘I think it’s time we got you home, sir,’ Eurylochus said. ‘Guneus is right. We’ve stayed too long in this place and it’s started to rot the bottom of our minds. Let’s put back out to sea tomorrow and get the clean wind filling our sail … .You’ll soon start to feel better then, you’ll see. The good salt-wind will blow these dreams away and once you’re home …’

  ‘I can’t,’ Odysseus snapped at him. ‘I can’t go home.’

  ‘Course you can, sir. With a favouring wind we can be there inside the week. And your lady is waiting for you. She’s been waiting for ten long years. And that boy of yours — Telemachus — you’ve said it often enough yourself — he must be capering like a wild young horse for want of a father’s hand.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Odysseus freed his friend’s wrist from his grip and sat up with his hands clutching at his head, saying over and over again, ‘I can’t, I can’t.’

  ‘Why not, lord? I don’t understand. Why can’t you go home?’

  ‘Because I’m not fit.’ The sobbing shook his whole frame again.

  ‘Not right now you’re not,’ Eurylochus put a hand to his shoulder. ‘I can see that clear enough. But we’ll soon have you well again.’

  Angrily Odysseus pulled the hand away. ‘I’m not fit to touch her. Not with these hands. Don’t you see? There’s too much blood on them. So much blood and so much death that I’m not fit to be among decent people any more. Penelope wouldn’t want me near our son like this. She wouldn’t even know me because I don’t know who I am myself. I don’t know what I’m for. I don’t know what to do.’ He looked up at his friend with a pang of appeal in his eyes. ‘Tell me, Eurylochus,’ he pleaded, ‘what do you do when you don’t know what to do?’

  But the worried seaman had no answer. He looked down at this ruin of the man he had known and loved and admired since he was a boy, and he too had no idea what to do except take his lord’s weeping head into his arms and hold it against his chest and pray to all the gods he could think of to have mercy on them both.

  That night Odysseus woke from a brief hour or two of troubled sleep with a headache so violent that he thought his brain must be bursting inside his skull. He had been wounded many times in his life but never had he known pain such as this. The hand of a god might have been twisting a stick inside a leather strap made fast about his temples. He might have been bleeding inside his head.

  His groans woke Eurylochus, who had fallen asleep on the floor at his side. ‘What is it, lord?’ he cried.

  But Odysseus could scarcely speak for the strength of the storm inside his head. ‘My head,’ he groaned. ‘My head feels as though it must split apart.’

  Eurylochus looked helplessly down at him. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked, clenching and unclenching his fists.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know,’ Odysseus gasped. ‘In the name of all the gods, you could take a sword to my head and put me from this pain.’

  ‘I think some god is angry with you, lord,’ Eurylochus muttered grimly. ‘Shall I go out and make the offerings?’

  But Odysseus had the strength only to nod his vague assent before he turned to the wall moaning with his head clutched between his hands.

  By the morning the intensity of the pain had eased a little, though Odysseus still lay inside his lodge, white-faced and red eyed, like a shipwrecked mariner barely clinging on to life. He drank some water but refused all food and asked only to be left alone. So he was angry at first when Eurylochus came back into the lodge saying that he had brought Hanno with him, for the Libyan claimed to have some understanding of physic and believed he might be able to offer help.

  ‘I told you to leave me alone,’ Odysseus growled.

  But Hanno stood before him unruffled. ‘Your friend thinks only to ease your suffering,’ he said quietly. ‘I have mixed something with this water that may ease the pain a little. Come, drink it. Then you will sleep for a time and I will come and see you again when you awake.’

  Several hours later Hanno returned alone to the lodge. As the Libyan entered, Odysseus jumped up as if he had been startled and turned to see who was there, one hand already feeling about the bed for a weapon and finding none.

  ‘Be calm, friend,’ the Libyan said. ‘No one means you harm.’ He crouched beside Odysseus, laid a hand across his brow, then lifted the lid of each eye in turn and looked inside. ‘How is the pain inside your head now?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s still there,’ Odysseus frowned, ‘still bad, but duller than it was.’

  ‘Tell me how it was.’

  ‘I’ve never known pain like it. I think it was like the pain that Zeus himself must have felt when Divine Athena was labouring to be born inside his head.’

  Frowning, Hanno was pondering that remark when Odysseus added, ‘I wanted Eurylochus to smash my head open. Anything to stop the pain.’

  Hanno nodded and said, ‘Your friend tells me that your mind has become like our desert air and is showing things that are not truly there.’

  ‘I see what I see.’ Odysseus turned his face towards the mud wall of his hut. ‘Eurylochus shouldn’t have spoken to anyone about it.’

  ‘How could he not when his friends saw him making offerings on your behalf in the n
ight? You inspire great love in your men, Lord Odysseus. Everyone is concerned for you.’ But when he smiled down into the haggard face he saw that his words had started tears at the man’s eyes and that his hands were trembling again. ‘I think your friend spoke wiser than he knew,’ Hanno said. ‘This is more than bodily sickness. It seems some god is indeed at work on you.’

  ‘If I learned anything at Troy,’ Odysseus snapped back, ‘it’s that men are too quick to blame the gods for the troubles that afflict them.’

  ‘Perhaps so,’ Hanno smiled, ‘but pain is sometimes the only way the gods can find to make us face the truth of things. And because it is pain we fail to see it as their gift to us.’

  ‘It’s a gift I can live without.’

  ‘No doubt you will.’ Hanno took a small flask from the goatskin bag slung at his side and measured a few drops of liquid into a gourd of water. As he did so, he added, ‘But first you must find the cause of your suffering.’

  ‘I know the cause. I know what I’ve done. I know it can never be undone and that this is the price I have to pay.’

  ‘So you presume to know the will of the gods without consulting them?’

  ‘Leave me be,’ Odysseus groaned. ‘My head hurts too much to argue with you.’

  ‘I seek no argument, but I will let you rest some more. Drink this. It may ease the pain further.’ The Libyan returned the flask to the bag, gathered his robe at his shoulders and made to leave. ‘In the meantime,’ he said as he reached the door, ‘perhaps you should think more about what you said to me a few moments ago.’

  ‘What? What did I say?’

  ‘That your head ached like that of Zeus in the time before Athena sprang from his head. Perhaps it is she who rages inside you. Perhaps she is trying to be born again in you.’ And even as Odysseus gasped at what he took to be the impiety of the remark, Hanno was gone into the ruddy glow of the evening light.