by Glyn Iliffe
The pale-eyed man smiled again.
‘There have been no others. You are the only men we have seen. But you can stay here with us and wait for your friends if you wish. We will be pleased to share our home with you until they come.’
Odysseus’s eyes narrowed pensively.
‘No. If you haven’t seen them then they must have headed south, or up into the mountains. We need to go look for them.’
‘Stay a while. Maybe the Old One can help you.’
‘The Old One?’
‘Of course. If there are things we don’t know, we go to him and he helps us. He knows very much and perhaps he knows something about your friends.’
‘Why would he have seen them if you haven’t?’ Antiphus asked, sceptically.
‘His mind travels further than ours. You’ll see. Come with me.’
Odysseus glanced at Eperitus and Antiphus and gave a small nod.
‘We’ll come.’
The crowd parted and they followed the pale-eyed man through the streets, past well-made buildings lost to years of neglect and between hundreds of the strange, lethargic youths who inhabited them. Long shadows fell across the cracked flagstones as the sun set over the tumbled walls and fallen roofs ahead of them. Shortly, they reached the marketplace they had observed from the high ridge. But instead of being taken to the palace as Eperitus had expected, they were led into a stone hut built against a wall of the ruined temple. Fresh hay lined the floor and several bowls of fruit had been placed on a rough table in the centre of the single room. A bowl of water and some wooden cups had been set out beside the food.
‘Eat and drink,’ their guide said. ‘Maybe sleep a while. I will tell the Old One you wish to see him.’
‘Sleep a while?’ Antiphus said when the man had gone. ‘How long does he expect us to wait?’
‘As long as it takes,’ Odysseus answered. ‘I’ve a feeling Eurylochus and the others are here and I’m not going until I know otherwise. Perhaps this Old One can give us some answers.’
‘I knew they had to have a leader,’ Eperitus said, picking up an orange-coloured fruit from the bowl and sniffing at it.
Eperitus opened his eyes and looked up through the broken roof to the skies above. The stars were fading as the grey tinge of dawn was creeping into the world. Somewhere he could hear birds singing, while further off he was conscious of the sound of waves rolling in on sandy beaches. The air was cold and he could smell pine trees and the pungent aroma of the skins they had peeled from the orange fruits. He almost did not notice the familiar smells of sweat and leather and the sound of snoring.
He lifted himself onto one elbow in the thick straw. His muscles were stiff and awkward and the chill from the flagstones below seemed to have penetrated into his bones. He yawned, stretched and sat up. Odysseus’s large bulk was leaning against one of the door jambs as he looked thoughtfully out at the ruin of the once impressive marketplace beyond.
‘Good morning,’ the king said as Eperitus rose and joined him. ‘Sleep well?’
‘Not as well as I’d expected. After ten days at sea, my brain is still swimming around but my body won’t go with it. How about you?’
‘Couldn’t sleep, so I relieved the guard. There’s something about this place that keeps playing on my mind. I get a real sense of danger, but I don’t know why. Much worse than the Cicones.’
‘I have it too. At least with the Cicones you knew what the threat was. They had chariots and spears and bows and arrows, but we’ve dealt with that sort of peril many times. These people seem harmless, and yet –’
‘And yet it’s not the people,’ Odysseus said, turning to look at Eperitus. ‘It’s what’s happened to them. They’re like human husks, as if their souls have been drawn out. The thing I fear is whatever made them that way.’
‘Perhaps this Old One they talk of will know.’
‘Perhaps he’s responsible,’ Odysseus commented.
‘If he even exists,’ said Omeros, pulling straw from his mop of hair as he joined them. ‘I mean, why didn’t he send for us last night? Don’t they observe the rules of xenia in this country? What sort of people don’t know how to show a proper welcome to peaceful guests?’
‘The sort of people who don’t know how to build a wall or repair a roof,’ Odysseus said. ‘You have to remember we’re not in the Greek world now, Omeros.’
‘And yet they speak Greek, some of them,’ Eperitus said. ‘Even the Trojans and the northern barbarians have languages of their own, so if that wind blew us beyond the rim of the world, why would they speak Greek here?’
‘They have a language of their own, so if they can communicate a little in our language then maybe we’re not the only Greeks to have visited them. Besides, take a look at the few repairs they’ve made to this town: old ship’s planking and bits of sail. Others have visited before us – but they didn’t sail home again.’
‘Shipwrecks?’ Omeros suggested.
‘Not likely in this bay. Have you ever seen a friendlier shore to beach a galley on? Barely a rock in sight.’
‘Then what happened to the crews?’ Eperitus asked.
‘That’s what I’d like to know. And until we find out we need to watch each other’s backs.’
The sun was visible above the hilltops before they saw any sign of their hosts. Then, as Eperitus was ready to suggest they start searching the town, a group of women appeared on the threshold of the palace and walked across the square. Despite the morning coolness, they did not think to cover their nakedness with cloaks. Eperitus thought there was a strange beauty about them, but not one that aroused desire. They were more like children than adults and their attraction was in their innocence. As they laughed and chased each other across the flagstones, they seemed oblivious to the fact their town was a ruin without walls, that at any time they could fall victim to pirates or invading armies, or that the strangers that they were coming to visit could slay them upon a whim. They seemed to have no worries at all, and an older part of Eperitus envied them.
‘Odysseus,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘We have visitors.’
The king, who had been dozing in the straw while Omeros and Antiphus played dice, roused himself.
‘I hear them,’ he answered.
The women grew quieter as they saw the two men waiting for them. Eperitus recognised one as the girl who had wanted him to make love to her the evening before. She showed no recollection of him as she walked ahead of the others and stood before Odysseus.
‘Do you wish to lay with us now?’
‘We want to speak with the Old One,’ Odysseus said.
‘He knows that and is expecting you, but first he thought you would like to relieve yourselves of your burdens. The Old One is keen to speak with you, but says men cannot think or talk straight while their sacks are full.’
She cupped her hand over her crotch to indicate what she meant.
Odysseus smiled.
‘Some of us have carried our burdens for a long time and we can manage for a while longer. Right now I’m more interested in talking to the Old One and finding out where our friends are.’
The girl shrugged her shoulders.
‘Of course. He’s in there,’ she said, pointing to the ruined palace. ‘You can follow us back if you like.’
Odysseus called for the others and made a point of telling Omeros to bring his lyre. The women did not wait, but set off towards the palace. Eperitus caught up with their leader.
‘What’s the name of this place?’ he asked her.
‘Name? It has no name.’
‘Every town has a name.’
‘If this one did, then we forgot it a long time ago.’
‘Then did your ancestors build it?’
She smiled at him and shook her head. ‘You ask such strange questions. Always thinking about names and who is in charge, yet you won’t even lie with us.’
‘I already have a woman.’
‘Just one? Stay with us and you can have
as many as you like and whomever you like. Lie with me when we reach the palace, if you wish. I like you, not that that matters. You are bigger and stronger than the men here, and you intrigue me with your strange way of thinking. The Old One has told us about the world you come from. It’s violent and greedy and people work ceaselessly from the time the sun rises until the time it sets again. I don’t think I would like it.’
She was more like a child than Eperitus had first thought.
‘There is much violence and greed,’ he replied, ‘but that’s because there are things worth fighting for. And everyone has to work. It gives us our purpose, our reason for living. Are you saying no-one works here?’
‘Only if we want to – to pick fruit or fetch water, sometimes. But it is not why we live.’
‘Then why do you live? Aren’t you bored in these ruins all day long, sleeping with each other and eating fruit? What’s the point of it all?’
She took his hand in hers.
‘Why do you worry about such things? Here we have the lotus, and the lotus is enough. Nothing else matters. You’ll see for yourself, in time.’
The other women had gone on ahead and were already entering the roofless portico where the palace gates used to stand. Odysseus and the others were several paces behind.
‘What’s the lotus?’
‘It is pleasure,’ she answered, letting his fingers slip. ‘Nothing but pleasure. Embrace it as the others did and you will have no need for violence or work. No need for anything at all.’
‘What others?’ he asked, but already she was running towards the temple, her long hair flowing behind her as she laughed aloud.
A moment later Odysseus was at his side.
‘Did you learn anything?’
‘Yes. Your instincts were right: Eurylochus is here.’
Chapter Seventeen
THE OLD ONE
As the front of the palace cast its shadow over them they were able to see that it had once been a building of beauty and opulence. Six broad steps led up to the portico, where a wooden pediment had been supported by four columns. One of the columns had since collapsed and lay like a slain serpent across the steps, while the pediment had sagged and its roof had fallen in. The high front wall of the palace remained, though it was sun-bleached and the painted frieze that ran along it was now barely visible. The doors to the palace were gone and all they could see inside was darkness.
They entered a large antechamber, where the light spilling in from the doorway revealed a floor covered in fallen masonry and plaster. The ceiling remained, though, and to their right was a flight of steps leading to an upper storey. Ahead of them was a pair of large doors that no longer seemed to fit their frame, as bold lines of yellow light were visible beneath them and along the seam where they met. Beyond them they could hear the sound of many voices.
Odysseus pushed open the doors. The Ithacans now stood at the threshold of what had been the great hall. It was spacious, with five wooden columns forming the points of a pentacle at its centre. The ceiling they had once supported was gone and sunlight from the open roof was spreading over the western half of the hall, leaving the eastern half in shadow. The walls carried murals depicting a forest on two sides and the sea on the others. Large chunks of plaster had fallen away in places, but to his left Eperitus could still see the painted figures of huntsmen chasing deer through the trees, while to his right long galleys of an exotic design he had never seen before sailed over dolphin-filled waters. Unlike the murals on the outer walls, these had retained their colour and vibrancy. At the centre of the hall, between the columns, was a circular hearth. But whereas every palace he had ever visited kept a large bed of embers burning day and night, all that remained in the centre of the stone ring were a few burnt sticks and a pile of ash.
Despite its decrepit state, the hall was filled with people. The rubble from the fallen ceiling had been pushed against the walls and the remainder of the floor had been thickly strewn with straw. Lying or kneeling on this were more than a hundred of the town’s inhabitants. A group of four or five children were throwing straw into the air and shouting, while on a mound of broken stone in the shadowy half of the hall three boys were beating another with sticks. The adults seemed not to care, absorbed as they were with their private conversations or picking fruit from large piles that had been left here and there in the straw. Some couples were touching each other intimately, not bothering even to withdraw into the shadows. Eperitus glanced across at Odysseus, who raised a questioning eyebrow in reply.
‘Come, join us,’ said the girl whom Eperitus had spoken with on the way to the palace.
She came towards them with her hands held out, the sunlight a warm yellow on her bare torso. That children were allowed to run free in the great hall, even the ruined shell of one like this, and that women were permitted to sit as equals among the men did not surprise Eperitus after everything he had seen; so to be welcomed into the hall by a woman in opposition to every custom that governed the world he knew seemed appropriate. It was not only the buildings that had crumbled in this strange place, he thought.
‘My friends,’ the girl announced to the rest of the hall, after taking Eperitus’s hand, ‘make space. Pass food and drink for our visitors. Make them welcome.’
There were no chairs or tables and no place of honour for the newcomers to sit at. Indeed, there was no throne or place of authority they could be seated across from. The girl sat in the straw and tugged at Eperitus’s hand, encouraging him to do the same. He looked at Odysseus, who remained on his feet.
‘Where is the Old One?’
‘That’ll be me you’re looking for,’ answered a voice in perfect Greek from a corner of the hall.
Eperitus observed a pot-bellied man walking towards them from the shadows, his penis still in his hand as he shook off the last drops of urine. At least they do that away from the others, Eperitus thought sardonically. The Old One hid his manhood behind his loin cloth and stepped into the sunlight, opening his arms wide in greeting.
‘Welcome fellow Greeks,’ he said, folding Odysseus in an embrace. ‘Your accent gives you away. Peloponnese? Pylos perhaps?’
‘Ithaca,’ Odysseus replied. ‘And you’re a Cretan.’
‘I was.’ The man gave another laugh, patted Odysseus on both shoulders, and then went to lie down between a group of women. ‘Or at least I think I was, but that was a very long time ago. A past life! Now I belong to paradise.’
He turned and placed his bearded lips against one of his companions’ breasts. She smiled and held his head as if he were a suckling baby. Despite the streaks of grey in his hair and the title conferred on him by the others, Eperitus judged that the man was no older than himself, maybe even younger.
‘Then were you shipwrecked here?’ Odysseus asked, sitting in the straw and accepting the small brown fruit offered by one of the men.
The Old One pulled his face away, a line of saliva sagging between his lips and the woman’s nipple.
‘Eh? Shipwreck? Well, let’s say our vessel came to grief, shall we? And what of yourselves? You’re no merchantmen, I can tell that. Warriors by your garb. How many of you?’
‘Enough to look after ourselves.’
‘You’ve nothing to fear from us,’ said the girl beside Eperitus, pulling at his hand again.
As the rest of his companions were sitting, Eperitus conceded and knelt beside her.
‘But much to gain,’ added the Old One.
‘Do you have a name,’ Odysseus asked him.
‘Not that I remember.’
‘What about this town, this land, these people?’
The man rolled his eyes and gave a groan.
‘Don’t your kind ever change? Why does everything need a name? Ithaca, Crete, your name, my name… Names are meaningless.’
‘Without our names we’re nothing,’ Odysseus countered with a smile.
‘Then become nothing and set yourself free! Perhaps you were expecting me to ask your
name? Oh yes, I haven’t forgotten the old customs – enquire of a guest’s name and family; invite him to share the purpose of his visit; feed him; give him a gift. But don’t you see that xenia is meaningless here? In a place without names, a man’s reputation is of no importance. And as we have already said, you have nothing to fear among us. Nor do we have swords or cauldrons to offer you as guest-gifts. So stop hiding behind your names and forget why you came here – neither of which interests us. Eat the fruit! Take a woman! Take a man! And when you’ve forgotten some of your inhibitions perhaps there is something we can offer you. Something better than swords and cauldrons, eh, my friends?’
He gave a knowing look to those around him, who raised their voices in excited agreement. It was the most animated Eperitus had yet seen them. The men clapped their hands and the women beat their breasts, and amid the strange cacophony Eperitus felt a hand pull at his tunic. Turning, he saw the young man whom he had punched to the ground the evening before.
‘I must show you something,’ he whispered.
Eperitus shook off his hand and looked away.
‘So you have no names, no leaders and, it seems, not even a chair to share among you,’ Odysseus was saying as he bit into the brown fruit. ‘And you’re as free as any people I’ve ever met. So free that you boast about it with as much pride as any king.’
‘Here we are all kings.’
‘Kings in a city without walls, without armies and without weapons. You don’t even have the good sense to employ xenia in the hope strangers will spare you out of respect for good manners. And yet you survive. How is that possible?’
‘You’ve seen our city, my friend. We have nothing worth taking. Nothing that the likes of you would value.’
‘But you do. You have yourselves. In the absence of gold and silver, a warrior will take slaves. What’s to stop me drawing my sword and herding off a score of your men to farm my lands or watch over my flocks, or another score of your women to be nursemaids to my children or playthings for my men? What is this hidden power that protects you? Are you telling me that no armed band has ever appeared unexpected over the hills that surround you, or that no pirate has ever landed on your shores looking for plunder to make his voyage worthwhile?’
