The Return From Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  ‘And why should the immortal gods need a mortal to sort out their differences?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted eventually. ‘I’ve never understood that.’

  ‘Perhaps the story isn’t about the gods .at all?’ she suggested. ‘Perhaps it’s a story about men and the choices that men make for themselves? About who they deeply are, I mean, and how they intend to live their lives, and what values they mean to serve. And if that is so, why do you think the dark aspect of the Goddess should have been left out of count?’

  ‘Isn’t that obvious? The service of Hera offers us a house and home, power, dignity, wealth. Aphrodite brings beauty, passion, love. Athena yields wisdom and strength. All these are desirable. Paris’s folly was to make the choice at all — to serve only one of them to the exclusion of the others. But what does Eris have to offer a man? Discord, bickering and argument. Who in his right mind would choose to give his life over to that kind of strife?’

  Circe said, ‘You ask me that, who have just spent ten years of your life fighting a war?’

  ‘That’s a different matter,’ he frowned.

  ‘Is it so very different?’ she pressed. ‘Don’t your poets tell you that Eris is sister to Ares, Lord of War? Perhaps her rage is the consequence of her exclusion? And might it not be as great a folly to split Eris off from the entire body of the Goddess by rejecting and ignoring her as it was for Paris to single out Aphrodite? She too is immortal. And once she is left out of consideration, what becomes of her power?’ Circe brought her hands together. ‘It is enough for now. You should think more on these things. And dream of them too.’

  Then she stood up with an air of finality and withdrew.

  But Odysseus was in no mood for thought. He was restless and irritable, annoyed once again by her sibylline manner; and by the implication that he was some kind of dunce for whom the obvious was too difficult to grasp.

  He decided to go hunting, not because food was needed, but for the clean sport of tracking something down; for the pleasure of killing it.

  No game came his way. Hot and frustrated, he put his spear down at a spring that broke out of a grassy mound. Lifting the severed goat’s tail that some shepherd had fixed dangling over the source, he let water splash into his mouth.

  Even as he drank he sensed a presence near him. He looked up at the sound of giggling and saw a broad-hipped woman smiling at him. Her name was Mopsa and he had often seen her laughing with his crew while she served them wine.

  Ten minutes later he had mounted her from behind like a billy-goat in the sunlit glade. He was groaning to his climax with both hands grasping at her breasts when a movement in the afternoon dazzle of light and shadow caught his eye.

  Glancing across the glade, he saw that the herb-gatherer with a withy-basket who had disturbed his concentration was the same young woman who had seen him smash the clay figure of the goddess some days earlier. Once again the expression on her exquisite young face was of mild dismay.

  ‘Who was that who came into the glade?’ he said afterwards to the woman who panted in the grass beside him with reddened cheeks.

  ‘I didn’t see anyone,’ Mopsa replied.

  ‘She was gathering herbs and simples, I think.’

  ‘Oh’ — Mopsa flapped a hand to shoo a bee that was buzzing near her curls — ‘that must have been Calypso.’

  He had bad dreams that night. He was out at sea at the steering oar of The Fair Return in uncertain waters under a dark sky heading for a narrow strait. Gloomy cliffs rose at either side of him, yet there were, he dimly sensed, graver dangers imminently present on both bows. On the starboard side the seas were twisting into a vortex that might suck him down if he drifted too close; so he pushed the oar hard over on a course that would take him away from that danger and closer to the portside cliff. He was congratulating himself on his skill when several arms like the tentacles of a giant octopus swooped down on the ship out of the crag. To his horror he saw six of his men plucked screaming from the oar-benches and lifted up to the many mouths of a hideous, doglike monster who crouched on the head of the cliff screaming that she had been made that way by Circe’s magic.

  Odysseus jumped up on his bed sweating and shouting and did not sleep again. His anger grew as he tossed and turned on the bed. It was still broiling inside him when he went to see Circe early the next day. Before she could speak he said, ‘Last night I was visited by a dream. It was made plain to me that if I’m not careful I’ll be swallowed up by the maw of your Goddess or sucked down by it. Either way, I will no longer be a man.’

  Circe looked up from the wax tablet on which she was inscribing a message. ‘Tell me your dream,’ she said.

  He did so, sparing none of the revulsion it had aroused in him, and when he was done, she said, ‘Did I not tell you that the dark aspect of the Goddess will not be excluded? If you don’t admit her to the feast of your waking life, then expect to find her waiting in your sleep. Also I should point out that you burst in here without invitation. I have no time for you today. Perhaps you will find a warmer welcome in Mopsa’s arms.’ Then she returned her attention to the wax.

  When Odysseus left her chamber, he found Macareus waiting in the ante-room with a warm smile of greeting on his face. ‘Oh it’s you, Odysseus,’ he said. ‘I heard voices, so I didn’t knock, even though I can hardly contain myself today.’ Swallowing his excitement, he added with an attempt at sobriety, ‘If all goes well, the Lady has promised to admit me to the next initiation. I believe that means I’ll shortly be taken to the Oracle of the Dead.’

  A sickly wave of apprehension passed across Odysseus’s mind. ‘I wish you well of it,’ he scowled. ‘It seems the Lady no longer has time for me.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he demanded the next time he was admitted to Circe’s presence, ‘have you taken Macareus to your bed?’

  She widened her eyes momentarily at this indiscretion and glanced away.

  ‘Well?’ he demanded.

  ‘And if I have?’

  ‘You say that as if it was a matter of no consequence,’ he snapped.

  ‘I do not see,’ she said, ‘how it can be of any consequence to you.’

  ‘Have you forgotten who I am?’ he demanded, outraged. ‘I am Odysseus of Ithaca and as much a lord on my own island as you are Lady here. My name is known from Sicily to furthest Egypt as one of the great conquerors of Troy. On board my ship my power is as unquestionable as that of Zeus himself. Whereas that man … that man belongs nowhere now. He is merely a member of my crew, and because of that there are issues of discipline and respect … and confidence.’

  Already he saw that his complaints were becoming more than faintly absurd. ‘Besides,’ he tried again, ‘the man is …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He is guilty of the crime of incest.’

  ‘You mean that he loved his sister?’

  ‘What foul kind of love is that?’

  Circe left him treading water in a long silence before she said, ‘Do you know, I cannot believe that any true love is foul. Why are you angry with me, Odysseus?’

  ’I’m not angry with you,’ he snapped back. ‘I’m just… appalled.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Circe bit her lip to restrain a laugh he would have found intolerable, ‘how fiercely she has you in her grip! It really is time you began to listen to her.’

  ‘Who?’ he frowned. When Circe merely shook her magnificent head, he said, ‘This is entirely between you and me. It has always been so. I’ve listened to you and I’ve tried to learn from you; but how can I respect you if you let any man take you, however basely he may have behaved?’

  ‘No man takes me,’ she said, ‘though I give myself to whom I choose.’

  ‘Then I must think you as promiscuous a whore as the goddess you serve.’

  She left a further silence before saying, ‘Insult me if you must, but beware how you speak of the Goddess. She has had you in her power for a long time, even though you were scarcely aware of her existence
when you first came to me. But now that you know of her and still won’t let her in, she’s turning you into a crabby sort of prude.’ She looked at him coldly. ‘And I’m afraid that makes you merely ridiculous!’

  Circe had been seated when he came in and he was standing over her. He raised his hand now and was about to bring it down across her face when he saw that this was exactly what she had anticipated. Her cheek was tilted to receive the blow. Her eyes were open. ‘If it will make you feel better,’ she said, ‘go ahead and hit me, Odysseus of Ithaca, Sacker of Cities, Striker of Women.’

  It had already been late in the day when he came to her. Darkness had fallen outside. The evening was loud with the shrill friction of cicadas and the croak of bullfrogs in the distant fen. Somewhere across the house a woman was singing. The only other sound came in the creak of his breath as the unstable foundations of Odysseus’ life shifted under this last, minimal exertion of pressure, and the collapse for which Circe had so patiently waited quietly began.

  Telemachus

  Late in the spring of the year after the war had ended, all of Ithaca was thrown into mourning by the death of Queen Anticleia. The daughter of that old rogue Autolycus, who ruled the lands around Mount Parnassus and claimed descent from Hermes himself, she had been a much-loved figure on the island ever since she first came there as bride to King Laertes more than forty years earlier. And if ever there has been a love-match on this troubled earth, it was between that shy and happy couple.

  Laertes had been an adventurer in his youth, sailing with the Argonauts and taking part in the great hunt for the Calydonian boar, but once the two of them were wedded, neither had any larger ambition than to rule over the islands in peace and spend as much time as possible in each other’s company. Once affairs of state were dealt with, they took most pleasure in tending their vineyards and gardens together, and encouraging the islanders by example in all the best practices of animal husbandry. But the greatest joy of their life was found in their love for their only child, Odysseus.

  In his later life, Odysseus always maintained that such understanding of love as he possessed had been instilled into him at an early age by the knowledge that he was devoutly loved by two parents who shared an unquestioning love for each other. If it was a love that allowed him to rove freely across the world in his youth as his father had done before him, it was also one which demonstrated daily on each of his returns that true and lasting satisfaction would eventually be found only in such a life as his parents were now living together. So it was among the happiest times anyone had known on Ithaca when Odysseus came back one day with Penelope, daughter of Lord Icarius of Sparta, and announced their intention to live thereafter in quiet contentment on the island. By the same token, it was among the most grievous of times, when he was drawn away to the war at Troy, taking most of the young men of the islands with him. But by then, Odysseus and Penelope also had a son, and Laertes and Anticleia consoled themselves as best they could by keeping both Telemachus and his distraught mother in their care.

  Though Odysseus had warned everyone of his conviction that the war must drag on for many years, no one had wanted to believe him. Yet his prediction proved true, and there was nothing to be done about it but endure the empty years, and make the offerings to the gods, and take measures to ensure that the kingdom which Odysseus would inherit on his eventual return remained in good order. Yet the stress of managing the often quarrelsome people of the islands without his son at his side, soon began to age Laertes beyond his years; and though she was never heard to mutter a word of complaint against her son, Anticleia’s heart sometimes turned grey with grief as she worried over the fate of Odysseus and the growing signs of weariness in her husband’s face.

  Then the news came that the war had ended. For a time, like everyone else, Anticleia lived in the happy expectation that Odysseus must soon come home. But as the months passed and he did not return, it was as if some portion of her being without which life could no longer be supported, began to fail inside her. In many ways she remained more alert to the stresses at work in the life of the islands than was her husband. She was sensitive to the loneliness which led Penelope to take comfort in the friendship of Amphinomus; and she was deeply troubled by the hostility that the friendship stirred inside Telemachus. So each morning Anticleia prayed to Athena for Odysseus’ return; yet with the passing of each day her heart was oppressed by the fear that her prayers would not be answered. She began to lose weight. Gaunt hollows appeared at her cheeks. Though no one knew it but her old servant Eurycleia, she was in great pain.

  Then, during the course of one night after a rancorous council meeting which had left her husband exhausted and confused, Queen Anticleia passed away.

  Laertes was found weeping over her frail body the next morning and it was a long time before he could be persuaded to leave her side.

  I remember being astounded that, alone of all the people present, Telemachus shed no tears at his grandmother’s funeral. He stood stiffly upright beside the frail figure of his grandfather, with the wind blowing through his hair. Staring out across the cliff into the glare of the sea, he knew that he would never see his father’s ship cross that horizon. He must find the strength inside himself to endure all the misfortunes that had fallen on his family.

  And that, over the following five years, is precisely what he did. Sometimes I looked on in wonder as he subjected himself to a gruelling round of athletic exercises, running for miles across the hills of Ithaca, practising hour after hour with the discus and the spear, as though he was quite certain that one day another war must come and it must not find him unprepared.

  On one occasion, when he was not yet fourteen years old, I found him fondling the great bow that his father had left behind in Ithaca, a springy length of yew-wood fortified with ibex horn and curved at either end to increase the tension when an arrow was nocked at full stretch. No one had taken it from its protective wrappings since Odysseus left for Troy, and I doubted that Telemachus had been given permission to do so either; so I expected to see him reprimanded when Penelope chanced on us sitting together in the armoury. But she looked down onto her son’s defiant face with a fond and rueful smile.

  ‘That bow has a tremendous history,’ she said. ‘It was given as a gift to your father by the hero Iphitus after Odysseus helped him to recover a string of mares he had lost in the mountains near Sparta. Iphitus had inherited the bow from his father, the great archer Eurytus, who claimed to have had it straight from the hand of Far-shooting Apollo himself, who is the greatest archer of all.’

  Looking up from where he greased the bow with hot tallow, Telemachus said, ‘Is it true that no one but my father can bend this bow far enough to string it?’

  ‘No one else has ever dared to try,’ she smiled. ‘But your father told me as much and I’ve never known him lie to me. He used to practice with it all the time; and his hand grew so steady that I once saw him whistle an arrow through the handles of a whole line of axes he had set up out there in the courtyard. That was just before you were born.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘He was so happy at the prospect of your birth that he was quite sure he could do anything. And he inspired such confidence that everyone else thought so too.’

  Penelope looked down at the bow again, biting her nether lip. Then she looked back earnestly at her son. ‘Believe me, Telemachus, there has never been such a man as your father. One day, when you’re older and strong enough, he’ll teach you how to draw this bow.’

  For a moment the boy’s young heart was lifted by the eager light in his mother’s eyes; but at that moment he heard Amphinomus call down the passage outside. ‘Where have you got to, Penelope? What are you doing down there?’

  Immediately the face of Telemachus darkened again. ‘If he ever comes back,’ he scowled.

  ‘He will come back,’ Penelope said sternly. ‘Don’t you ever dare to doubt it.’

  ‘Your friend out there doesn’t seem to think so.’

  ‘I d
on’t care what anybody else thinks,’ she answered. ‘Nobody knows Odysseus as I know him. Only death could keep him from us; and I’m quite sure he’s not yet dead.’

  ‘Where is he then?’ the boy demanded.

  ‘I don’t know where he is and I’ve no idea what he’s doing. But I do know that if his life-thread was strong enough not to break during all those years of the war, then nothing since will have broken it.’ Crouching down, Penelope held her son by the shoulders and gazed steadily into his eyes. ‘Your father will come home, Telemachus. I can’t tell you when he will come or how long he will take about it, but he will return. So be careful how you handle that bow,’ she smiled. ‘Odysseus will want it when he gets back.’

  Thereafter Telemachus took to waxing the bow more often, for he was greatly heartened in his resolve that day. It was as if he drew strength from the sturdy pliancy of the bow, and with it came a stronger sense of his father and a firmer conviction that he would indeed return. But few people across the islands shared that conviction and, when another year passed with no news of Odysseus’ whereabouts, the issue of good governance became more problematic.

  As tribute time approached, Eupeithes and his son Antinous sailed across to Cephallenian Same where they put their heads together with the local overlord Polytherses and his son Ctesippus, who was now looking for a wife. Together they decided that it was time that a Council of the Islands was called to discuss the future. In particular they agreed that serious thought should be given to the question of the succession now that Odysseus was dead. When they managed to rally support among a number of the other chieftains, including King Nisus of Dulichion, who had ambitions for his son Amphinomus, a formal petition was drawn up and addressed, with many signatories, to the attention of King Laertes.