Ithaca Read online

  For Catherine, Victor, Marina, and Maria

  When I was younger my mother used to tell me stories. Always about my father.

  The time they met—already knowing they were to be married—and spent the night on the mountain above her father’s home, and Odysseus cut a sprig of laurel leaves that they swore to keep forever. The first boar he killed, aged sixteen—the age I am now. His friends had been left behind in a frantic chase through the forests. In its first charge, the beast, a monster, gored Odysseus’s thigh, but he ignored the pain and hurled himself on the animal with a spear. His friends found him that evening, lying bloodied but alive across the boar’s carcass.

  My mother took me out for picnics. Three, four years ago things were different in the big house. Everything was calm and orderly. Melanthius, the cook, would have a basket ready for us, full of fresh bread and olives, honey cakes in a linen cloth, salty little cheeses wrapped in vine leaves. Eurycleia, my nurse, would fuss around, warning of hornets and snakes. Medon, the steward, would snap at servants who disturbed the perfectly raked gravel. My mother, Penelope, was only sixteen when I was born, the year my father went away to the war. When I was growing up, she seemed more like a girl than a grown woman. Everyone loved her. She laughed at Eurycleia, bewitched Melanthius with a smile, and the two of us would be gone, up through the olive groves behind the house, past the rocks and little temple, to a high promontory above the sea, where we could eat our picnic and she could tell me stories about Odysseus, the father I’d never met, while we gazed at the far-off, misty horizon beyond which he’d vanished.

  “And then,” her stories always ended, “Odysseus sailed home to Ithaca, and we all lived happily ever after.”

  I know her stories were true. The sprig of laurel leaves and the boar’s tusk, roughly sawn off at the root, are both kept in the little temple on the mountainside. I went up there yesterday, along the weed-choked path that skirts the cliffs then climbs steeply through oak forests to an overgrown valley where a cave was faced, years ago, with a portico of rough wooden columns twined in ivy. Behind a curtain of sacking the cave is stiflingly hot, its air thick with the stench of rancid fat and rotting meat. Rows of oil lamps flicker on every ledge. Smoke coils from a brazier on the altar step. It always takes time to adjust from the sun’s glare outside. Only slowly do one’s eyes take in the fantastical array of objects that crowd the wooden shelves stapled to the cave’s walls: jars of wine and bunches of fading flowers, silver goblets and enameled dishes, rings and bangles. Everyone on the island comes here to make offerings to the goddess to win her help. Farmers leave dishes of grain for a good harvest. The sick leave clay hearts, hands, or feet. Hung from the ceiling is the entire prow of a boat, the thank-offering of some fishermen who survived a wreck. Some of the offerings are encrusted with jewels, others as humble as a comb carved from bone, the love-pledge of a girl trying to capture some boy from the town.

  The goddess’s statue, a blackened thing of silver and wood, watches over everything through white enameled eyes. The altar step below her is black with spilled oil. As always, lining the step are rows of silver dishes piled with feast-day sacrifices of thigh bones wrapped in yellowing fat. Their putrefying reek makes the air in the cavern almost unbreathable.

  Yesterday the priest, a slovenly old man in a wine-stained robe, was filling oil lamps when I came in.

  “Telemachus.” He nodded curtly to me, then went on with his task. I reached into my satchel, drew out a silver cup, and placed it on the altar.

  “To bring your father back?” His voice was sarcastic, as always.

  “Yes.”

  “Light a candle.”

  We all hate the priest, but no one on Ithaca challenges him. People say he talks directly to the goddess, just as I might talk to my mother or Eurycleia.

  “Is there something else?” His white robe was dirty at the sleeves. A single yellow tooth jutted at an angle from his lower lip.

  “I want to see my father’s offerings.”

  “You know where to find them.”

  Among the hundreds of offerings in the cavern are four that my father dedicated before he disappeared. They’re kept together on a felt-lined tray next to the altar: the boar’s tusk, the sprig of laurel, so faded it’s almost grey, and two others.

  One is a bronze sword, a wedding gift from my grandfather. Odysseus dedicated it the day he announced he was leaving for the war. Yesterday I picked it up and weighed it in my hand. Boys my age should know how to fight, but with my father gone, there was no one at home to teach me. The sword’s hilt sat awkwardly in my hand. Its cold bulk dragged at my arm. I found myself wondering, for the thousandth time, what kind of man could fight all day with a sword like that, stabbing, thrusting, never tiring? A man like my father, Odysseus.

  I laid the sword back in the tray and picked up the fourth offering, a tiny, carved owl. My mother told me stories about the laurel, the sword, and the boar’s tusk, but she never talked about the owl. I held it closer to a lamp. The carving is crude, the eyes roughly scratched with a pin. The priest told me Odysseus came at dawn on the day he sailed, ordered him out of the cave, and went in alone. He found my father’s other offerings on the altar step, but the little owl stood apart—he didn’t know why.

  “The owl is the symbol of the goddess. Maybe Odysseus left it as an offering to her. To protect him in war. To make sure he came home.”

  “So why did he set it apart?”

  The priest could only ever shrug.

  Yesterday, when I put the little carving back in the tray, he put down his jar of oil. “Eurycleia was here yesterday. Sent by your mother. Another gift. To bring him back. A bracelet, solid gold—over there.”

  His voice was mocking. I turned to look. The sight never failed to break my heart. A whole alcove is filled with wooden cases. My mother had them made by the island’s best carpenter, to hold her offerings. Sixteen years since he sailed away. Sixteen years of offerings to bring him back: enameled brooches, gold bangles and ingots of pure silver, rings and hairpins. Some were treasures Penelope must have bought from traders in the harbor—blown ostrich’s eggs, and turtle shells waxed to shine like brass. Others were embroideries she sewed herself in tiny stitches, whose colors glowed in the candlelight: Ithaca’s mountain and the sea under moonlight, a battle scene, ships returning home.

  In the beginning, she left offerings to keep Odysseus safe in war. Then, when news came that the war had ended, eight years ago, she left offerings to bring him back. To preserve him from shipwreck and pirates, from storms and whirlpools, currents and sea-monsters—from everything and anything that might keep a good man from his family and island home.

  I ran my eyes over them. The new gold bracelet shone on the top shelf. Sixteen years of faith, those offerings represented. Sixteen years of waiting. A small fortune in jewels, precious metal, and hope.

  And that’s the only fortune my father has left.

  I’m in my bedroom thinking about my father when I hear a commotion outside. A man shouting, a girl’s high-pitched scream. I pull on a shirt and hurry out onto the gallery. Below, in the shantytown of tents that fills the courtyard, two men are circling, knives in their hands. Agelaus I know; the other is a newcomer. Agelaus’s torso is bare, his hair unbrushed. It looks like he’s only just woken up. Melantho, my mother’s maid, tugs at one arm, sobbing and pleading. The other man, slim and youthful-looking, shifts his weight nervously from one leg to the other as he clutches his knife. I’m guessing he’s Melantho’s new lover.

  The fight doesn’t last long. Agelaus rubs his hand over his eyes, like Melantho’s voice is giving him a headache, then shoves her aside and in one movement brings his knife up into the other man’s leg. It happens so fast the newcomer barely even moves. He looks down at his
leg, where dark blood is suddenly pulsing across his thigh. Melantho screams and puts her arms around him, trying to hold him up, but he’s already sagging to the ground. Agelaus yawns, wipes his knife, and crawls back into his tent. The other men in the courtyard watch until the youth on the ground stops moving, then go back to their tasks. One picks up an axe to hack firewood from a stack of furniture. Another, his face tattooed with the pattern of a wolf’s head, wets his razor in a barrel of water and begins to shave.

  I grip the balcony rail and look down at the scene below me. At the washing lines festooned with young men’s clothes, at the tents made of carpets draped over furniture dragged from the great hall, at the targets daubed on the walls, the piles of smashed jars, broken sticks and abandoned wineskins. I breathe in the stench rising from the pit they use as a toilet, and the fire of sawn-up furniture whose smoke is already dirtying the clean morning air. I watch a crow drop to the ground, hop forward on strong legs, and tear at some abandoned food on a tray under the colonnade. I don’t want to think about what I’ve just seen: a man killed casually in a knife fight over a girl, his body left lying in a pool of blood. I try to remember what the courtyard looked like when I was little. I used to run after the gardeners who tended it each morning, their rakes sweeping arcs in the gravel. The whitewash was so bright it hurt to look at. Servants dozed away afternoons in the long, cool colonnade. There was a great jar of water always kept full, with a bronze cup hanging on a hook for anyone who was thirsty. On feast days, we draped garlands around the gateposts of the great hall, whose pillars were carved in the shape of boars’ heads, my father’s symbol.

  “Telemachus.” Eurycleia bustled along the gallery toward me, her face shocked.

  “What is it?”

  “Antinous is in Penelope’s room.”

  I can hear the creak of my mother’s loom from along the gallery. I race to her door and stop. My mother is sitting at her loom just as I would expect, eyes squinting at her skeins of vividly colored thread, small fingers thrusting her needle in and out of the weave. But she isn’t alone.

  Sprawled in a chair close by her, one leg hooked over the arm, is a heavily built, handsome young man wearing a silk dressing gown and rows of beads that tangle in the thick fur on his chest. As he watches Penelope weave, he’s eating handfuls of nuts and dropping their shells on the floor.

  Another line crossed. None of the young men have ever gone into my mother’s bedroom before. I ought to shout. I ought to run forward and hit him, or draw a knife on him. But I can’t fight Antinous. I know. I tried once, last autumn. Something made me crack and I hurled myself at him, fists pummeling his body, fingers ripping away layers of silk to claw at his flesh. I still remember the moment I encountered hard muscle under Antinous’s layers of fat, and the shock of helplessness as he chucked me aside. I don’t need another lesson. I’m sixteen years old, not yet fully grown, and no one has ever taught me how to use a sword. The visitors who have taken over our house are grown men. They’re fighters.

  “One day you’ll be a fighter.” My nurse, Eurycleia, used to tell me that.

  I hardly knew what fighters were, then. Men on Ithaca are fishermen and farmers. I didn’t know about the weapons and tattoos, the peacock clothes and jewelry, the plaited hair, the scars exposed like badges of pride, the furious arguments, knife fights, killings. Fighters—I’m surrounded by them now. They stalk the corridors of the big house like dogs, their aggression filling every room with a raw animal stench. Every day ends in drunken arguments. Fights—like the one in the courtyard earlier—happen pretty much every week. I still remember the first corpse I ever saw: a young man barely older than me, sprawled in the courtyard with his teeth grinning at his own blood while two others rolled dice for his shirt.

  I’m neither a coward nor a weakling—at least I hope I’m not. But I can’t do anything against men such as these.

  How do I cope? I’ve learned different survival strategies instead. I’ve learned how to defuse ugly situations, how to swallow the petty humiliations that would make a fighter reach for his sword. Sometimes I don’t feel like a boy at all. At sixteen I’m like an old man, with the skills of a practiced diplomat.

  So instead of hurling myself at him, I just say, “Good morning, Antinous.” Keeping my voice calm.

  Antinous nods, not even looking at me. His fat tongue appears, searching his lips for a shred of nut. Antinous’s features seem too small for his face, as if his pointed nose, girlish mouth, and small, bright eyes were designed for someone more delicate. Seeing him watch Penelope, his expression reminds me of Eumaeus, the farmer, looking over a pig he’s fed up for slaughter. The thought makes me feel sick, but I don’t show it.

  “I thought you were in the kitchen.” I heard him there earlier, giving Melanthius orders for this evening’s feast: lambs to be slaughtered and spitted, fish to be gutted and stewed in squid ink. Antinous loves his food.

  “I was in the kitchen.” Antinous twists his thick neck and gives me a contemptuous look. “I’m not anymore.”

  I glance out the window to calm myself. Outside, sun shines on the olive grove, and the sea is a majestic blue. No sail in sight. It’s a habit I’ve had all my life: to check the window each morning, just in case this morning—this morning, of all the mornings—there’ll be a speck of white out there on the endless blue. A ship bringing Odysseus home to Ithaca. This morning I see nothing but a familiar cluster of fishing boats hauling in nets by the little islet of Asteris.

  I go up to my mother, ignoring Antinous, and kiss her on the forehead. “How did you sleep?” I ask gently.

  Penelope stops weaving and frowns, as if she’s thinking hard. “Well,” she says at last. “Very well.”

  When Odysseus married her, Penelope was said to be the prettiest girl on the islands, and her looks have barely changed. Past thirty, her skin is still smooth, her hair black, her figure as light as ever. It’s inside that the years of loneliness have eaten her away. Until recently, she could still dress for dinner, put on her jewels and play the part of a hostess—as if the young men downstairs really were just guests in a big house. Now she weaves all day, sitting next to a window overlooking the harbor where she last set eyes on Odysseus. She eats nothing. She hardly leaves her bedroom. There are good days, but they are becoming fewer and fewer.

  “We slept very well,” Antinous mocks, in a high-pitched imitation of Penelope.

  I look down at my mother’s loom. In the past I used to love the pictures my mother conjured from wool: birds and trees, fishing nets and waves. After the first visitors arrived, three years ago, she wove pictures of men fighting, men feasting, men lying drunk on the shore. Then came the episode of the shroud, just after my grandfather’s death last year, and everything changed.

  The visitors were pushing her to name one of them as her second husband. Other than servants, Penelope had no one but a boy to protect her—me. One day she gave in. She said she had to weave her father-in-law’s shroud, but as soon as it was completed, she’d make a decision. The day she began, I watched her work. Even I could see that it was really Odysseus’s shroud my mother was making. I watched the boar turning at bay as it was cornered by a young Odysseus; I watched the stones of the harbor take shape, a crowd of people on the shore, and the billowing sail of the ship that took him away. Penelope worked swiftly, her thin, strong fingers nimbly twisting wool and snapping threads. By nightfall the shroud seemed almost finished. But when I ran into her room the next morning, I found only a few lines of thread at the foot of the loom.

  “What happened to the boar?” I asked. “What happened to the ship?”

  My mother was already growing thinner, already developing that remote gaze that would eventually shut the rest of the world out. I remember her laughing and rubbing the hair back from my forehead. “You must have dreamed them,” she said.

  I soon worked out what she was doing. Each day she wove the story of her husband’s life. Each night she pulled the threads from the loom and
burned them.

  It didn’t take the young men long to work it out either. They weren’t fools. They forced her to finish the shroud. We buried Laertes, my grandfather. But Penelope still refused to choose between them. She wouldn’t admit Odysseus was dead.

  And she never wove pictures again. She works at her loom hour after hour, its noise creaking along the corridors of the big house. But the cloth she makes is filled with meaningless shape, glaring color, empty black space.

  Antinous yawns and spreads his fingers in front of his face, inspecting them. “In the kitchen,” he says, “I was planning the feast for tonight. We will eat a slowly roast lamb—a young lamb—wrapped in bay leaves and cooked in a pit. Melanthius is digging the pit now. With it we will drink a jar of the exquisite . . .” He pauses and frowns, like he’s checking whether the word is appropriate. “The exquisite,” he repeats, nodding, “wine from the second row at the back of the cellar. I have told Melanthius not to bring it up until after noon and then to leave it outside the kitchen door so that it is raised to the exact temperature”—he closes his eyes dreamily—“of a peach warmed by the sun.”

  Antinous is a killer. I’ve seen him kill. The man-of-luxury talk is an act, as phony as everything else about him—or else one pole of a character so split it leaves Antinous barely sane. I watch his face go slack now. His mood is turning. Suddenly he stands up and goes over to my mother. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he leans over and pretends to lick her cheek.

  “I could eat your mother,” he says.

  The loom creaks and stops. I can see Penelope tense, eyes scared, then closed. Antinous’s fingers, white and fat as worms, creep up her neck. He touches one earring and flicks it with his nail to set it swinging.

  “Don’t touch her,” I say.

  “Why not?” His voice is cold.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “I don’t want you to,” he imitates. “She’s going to have to choose.” Slowly, almost tenderly, he cups his fingers around my mother’s cheek. He’s looking at me, not down at her. “We’re going to have to choose.” His voice is a singsong. “Which is the best man? Who do we want for a husband?” He leans forward suddenly and breathes deeply the perfume from her hair. “Who do we want in our bed?”