Ithaca Read online

  Arete didn’t much like their guest. But she did feel sorry for him.

  He had finished talking, but no one spoke. Nausicaa had tears in her eyes. Alcinous looked thoughtful. It was left to her to reach out and take their guest’s hand.

  “I’m sorry,” Arete said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  The puzzled eyes turned toward her. He seemed more hunched than ever, as if, in retelling his tale, he had relived it physically as well. Odysseus clutched her hand and gave a sob. His hand was rough as sandpaper, calloused and warped, as if the sea had bleached all the softness from it. Arete was reminded of the salt fish the merchants dried for long voyages, hanging fillets in the sun until they looked like scraps of leather. His cheek felt the same when he pressed her hand against it. Once it must have been soft, she supposed, beneath Penelope’s touch. No more. If he ever reached home, would his wife recognize him? And if she did, would she even want this wreck of the man who sailed away sixteen years before?

  Arete hoped so. She wondered what she would have felt if Alcinous had disappeared and returned like this. Not, of course, that her husband would ever go off to war, or seek adventure—he was far too sensible. But she knew she would have wanted him back, whatever his state. She hoped Penelope was the same.

  She felt dry, sore lips press against the back of her hand. Odysseus looked up at her, tears welling from his eyes.

  “I’ve failed them,” he said. It was as if he’d been speaking to her alone.

  “Who?”

  “Penelope. Telemachus.”

  “You’ve done what men do.” She glanced at her husband. “Some men.”

  “It was wrong to leave them. Wrong to go to war. Wrong to spend so many years on the journey home.”

  “I thought bad fortune kept you away?”

  He looked down. “I could have reached Ithaca if I’d tried. I’d have broken any enchantment. That’s the truth. Now all I want is to go home.”

  He gripped her hand so hard Arete almost winced. “You can’t be sure what you’ll find there. Remember what Laocoon said.” She didn’t want to hurt him, but it was better he faced reality now. “Penelope may be with another man. Your son may have left home. He may be dead. You haven’t been in Ithaca for sixteen years.”

  “It would be sensible . . .” Alcinous cleared his throat. “. . . to find out what’s happening there before you go back.”

  Arete felt hot tears on her hand, and she reached up and touched Odysseus’s face. “What will you do if you find her changed?”

  It was a moment before he answered, and when he did, Arete could hear the depths of weariness in his voice. “I’ll go in disguise, at first. If they’ve forgotten me, I’ll travel on. I’m no coward. I can fight for some chief. I could be a sailor.” He wiped his eyes with the back of one hand. “What does it matter what happens if Penelope doesn’t want me? I’ll live out my days fishing on some island. I’ll dream about Telemachus, dream about Penelope. Or I’ll become a servant and sweep the courtyard in a great man’s house. In the evenings I’ll crouch by the fire and hear them tell stories about Odysseus . . .”

  The firelight flickered on the sides of the hearth. With infinite compassion, Arete watched it play over Odysseus’s ravaged face, scour the furrows in his cheeks, burnish his silvered hair.

  “I never deserved them,” Odysseus whispered. “I see that now. My wife, my son. All I want is one more chance.” He gripped her hand again, squeezing the fingers. “Please help me. Please help me to go home.”

  Arete glanced at her husband. He looked almost noble, she thought, in the firelight. The good, sensible man she had married.

  Alcinous leaned forward and laid his hand on the fighter’s shoulder. “Of course we’ll help you,” he said. “We’re preparing a ship now. To take you home to Ithaca.”

  In the great hall at Ithaca, Antinous took a draft of wine and closed his eyes.

  He was troubled. Not badly troubled—things were not out of control. But badly enough to swear at a servant who was trying to clear the table around him, and to follow up the curse with a vicious slash of his table knife, which the servant only just escaped.

  It was annoying to have been up all night. It was annoying to be unshaven—he hated being unshaven. It was annoying to be in dirty clothes and feel limp, sweaty cloth, when he was used to crisp linen. Most of all, it was annoying that Telemachus had still not returned.

  He should have been here by now. Antinous’s breakfast should have been a celebration and a chance to plan next moves. Instead, getting rid of the woman’s brat remained unfinished business.

  Antinous stabbed moodily at his eggs. They weren’t quite runny enough. Or maybe too firm, one or the other. Either way, they weren’t as eggs should be. For a moment he considered running into the kitchen to beat Melanthius, which would have offered some pleasure. But somehow, Antinous knew, his irritation ran too deep to be assuaged by beating an old cook. He needed bigger prey.

  “What are you staring at?” There was a young man crossing the hall. Antinous couldn’t remember his name.

  “I . . .” The young man looked around with a start. “I wasn’t staring.”

  Antinous looked coldly at him. “You were staring.”

  “I wasn’t, I . . .”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “No!”

  “Then you were staring.”

  “I wasn’t . . .”

  “So I’m a liar?”

  “No!”

  “So what,” Antinous said, the words icy, “were you staring at?”

  The young man looked around the hall. There were two or three others about, but all of them seemed occupied by something else. He swallowed.

  “I didn’t mean any offense.”

  Antinous pushed back his chair. He had worked himself into a fine rage now. A fine, cold, bloody rage. The young man had been staring. Insolently. It was about respect. He needed to be taught a lesson. Antinous felt a familiar thrill of excitement and cruelty swelling inside him as he stood up. This was power. This was control, again. This had the doubts in his mind scurrying back into the shadows, as scared of him as everybody else was.

  He pressed right up to the young man’s chest, breathing in the odor of fear. The young man took a step back. His eyes were wide and his lips moist, hanging slightly open. He was caught between two cruelties: the iron law that told him he mustn’t retreat, and his terror of Antinous.

  “I . . .”

  Antinous grabbed the young man’s chest, bunching his shirt in both fists, and threw him backward. He slammed against a column, his head snapping back against the stone. There was no fight in him. Antinous felt a moment almost of disappointment. Why wouldn’t someone fight back? Why wouldn’t they hurt him in turn? Now all he could do was stamp out his rage in blood. He pulled out his sword and swiped it sideways against his victim’s lolling head. The young man gave a scream of agony, and blood spurted across the floor from his cheek. Antinous clutched at his hair and banged his head back against the column, again and again. He was so intent on what he was doing, so furious in his just rage, that he didn’t realize, at first, that someone was pulling at his arm.

  Antinous closed his eyes, trembling and quivering. Suddenly his hand hurt. His eyes filled with tears. It was so unfair.

  “Antinous.” He felt his arm shaken again and looked up. It was Eurymachus, the man he hated most in all the world, his rival. He looked down at the floor, where the young stranger’s body lay hunched in a pool of blood.

  “There’s blood on my sleeve,” he said wonderingly, looking at the fine silk spattered with dark spots. In a sudden rage he kicked the young man’s body.

  “Antinous.” Eurymachus shook his arm again.

  “I’m hungry.”

  “Have some bread.” Eurymachus’s voice was soothing, the way he’d talk to a dog he feared. Antinous liked that. It was a kind of respect. He sat down and took the bread Eurymachus held out.

  “Too little salt,” he sa
id in his most unctuous voice. “If I’ve told Melanthius once, I’ve told him a hundred times. Seasoning is his greatest fault. The chicken last night . . .”

  “Never mind that now.” Eurymachus’s handsome, doglike eyes were screwed up with concern.

  “What’s happened?” Antinous said in a more normal voice.

  “Nothing’s happened. Did he come?”

  “No.”

  Eurymachus blew out a long, slow breath. “You’re sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure,” Antinous snapped. But he had run out of anger. “We waited all night. Again.”

  “Are you sure this is the best way? Telemachus isn’t a fool.”

  “He’s a child.” Antinous plucked moodily at his ruined gown. “We should have gotten rid of him before. Everyone knows we’re waiting now. The island knows. The people. You know they hate us.” Antinous brooded, his face lowered into the rolls of fat under his chin. “Ever since that meeting. They’d hang us from every damned tree if they had an excuse.”

  “Perhaps we should wait ’til after Telemachus comes back,” Eurymachus said.

  “No,” Antinous said thickly, his head dangling. He was exhausted now, as he always was after violence. “It’s better off the way we planned it. We wait on that island offshore . . .”

  “Asteris.”

  “As soon as his ship appears, we seize it, night or day. Drown the crew. Kill Telemachus.”

  “Whatever you think best.” Eurymachus was suddenly aware that Antinous was watching him, his piggy little eyes swiveled upward from his lowered face. He knew how dangerous Antinous was, perhaps the most dangerous man he had ever met.

  “And then?” Antinous said.

  Eurymachus forced his own face into a bland smile. “And then,” he said, “we discuss the future calmly and rationally. We give Penelope time to make her choice . . .” He listened to his own voice lilting blandly up and down. He would kill Antinous, he decided. Kill him first of all. It was too risky to leave him alive. Antinous was probably reaching the same decision about him. As Eurymachus calculated, he outlined councils, envoys, a sequence of meetings. “The important thing,” he finished, “is not to fight among ourselves.” He put his hand on Antinous’s cold forearm and gave it a squeeze. “Friends?” he said.

  A movement behind them made him look around. Medon, the old servant, was staring distrustfully at them.

  “The mistress wants to see you.”

  Eurymachus glanced at the young man’s body still splayed against the column. “Not here.”

  He dragged Antinous to his feet, and they hurried out into the hot courtyard. They met Penelope coming down the stairs. Eurymachus was astonished to see her outside her room—she hadn’t left it since Telemachus’s departure. Medon had slept across the threshold like a loyal dog.

  Penelope was dressed in immaculate white, her hair bound up in a gold ribbon. She held her chin high, as if something was balanced on her head. She looked every inch a chief’s wife—except that when he looked down, he saw that her feet were bare.

  Eurycleia, the nurse, was behind her.

  “I have something to say to you.” Penelope’s voice was clear and high, but suddenly it quavered, and she frowned like a little girl. “I can’t remember it,” she said.

  Eurycleia leaned forward and whispered in her ear. Penelope blinked. “About my son, Telemachus,” she resumed in the same clear voice, as if she was reciting a poem learned by heart. “You’re waiting for him in a ship. You’re going to kill my son. To kill him . . . to kill . . . him.” Eurycleia put a soothing hand on Penelope’s shoulder. Penelope clutched it and sobbed, her eyes filling with tears.

  “No!” Eurymachus’s voice throbbed. “Who told you this? I love Telemachus.” Eurymachus glanced at Antinous, who was standing in a kind of stupor. So much the better—this was a chance for him. He advanced up the stairs toward Penelope and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “To me, Telemachus is like a brother. If anyone tried to hurt him, they’d have an enemy for life. Kill him? I’d hunt them down. Telemachus is my companion, my friend. He’s the child . . .” He glanced over his shoulder and dropped his voice. “The child of the person I care for most in the world.” He took Penelope’s hand, but she snatched it away as if he’d bitten it.

  “They want to kill him,” she repeated. “They’re waiting in a ship.”

  “Who told you this?”

  “I know.”

  “Penelope.” Eurymachus took her hand again and shook it. “Listen to me . . . I will never lay a finger on Telemachus.” He stared into her eyes until they were caught. “That’s a promise. Yes? You believe me?” His large, appealing eyes crinkled with emotion. Afterward, when Telemachus was dead, he would tell her Antinous was responsible. Things couldn’t have worked out better. “I will—never—hurt—Telemachus,” he said. “That’s a promise.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed them.

  From behind him, Eurymachus heard Antinous clear his throat. “A promise,” he repeated solemnly.

  From the fence above his pigpen, Eumaeus, the farmer, looked down on the roofs of Ithaca’s big house and spat copiously into the mud.

  The pigpen stood on a rise above the house. He could see into its courtyard. He could even smell whatever it was they were cooking. Meat, maybe even pork, but not one of his pigs—not likely. The day before, when two of the young visitors had come to take a porker, he had seen them off with dogs. The old man gathered saliva in his mouth and spat again, with some satisfaction. Spitting was the only way he could express his feelings about the big house and everyone in it.

  The old sow came snuffling around the gob of spittle in the mud. Eumaeus reached over the fence to scratch her between the ears.

  Not everyone in it. Not Penelope, of course. Nor Eurycleia, the nurse. Annoying old cow though she was—bossy, haughty, and disdainful of men with dirty hands and pig shit on their boots—she was still loyal to the mistress, and to Telemachus. Eumaeus sighed. He liked Telemachus and would do all he could, for the master’s sake, but he had doubts enough to make him sigh. The boy was good-hearted; he was clever, maybe even cleverer than Odysseus—although that would be saying something. But he had been dealt a tough hand. Father gone, mother available, home overrun with phony guests, and no one to teach him how to fight. That was enough to overwhelm any young man. And besides all that, Eumaeus had a suspicion—a nagging worry—that Telemachus was soft.

  He had done well in the town meeting, though. Eumaeus had to admit that. Stood up to them, fought his corner, blinked back the tears. He’d been proud of him then, given him his vote, of course, and smacked some young fools who bad-mouthed him in the tavern afterward. That was the worst thing about what was happening in Ithaca—he could feel the island turning bad. The rot in the big house was bound to spread. You could sense it even walking through the town, a growing discontent. Boys pushed ahead of you into the tavern, lounged on the harbor wall, didn’t work. He saw old men going out to fish alone, their sons refusing to come. That had never happened in the old days. The old man sighed and spat again, with venom.

  So Telemachus had sailed away, just as his father had, and not come back. And maybe wouldn’t come back. He had heard, as most people had, what the young men in the big house were planning. There was always that sense of threat hanging over Ithaca now. Young men with swords, young men with spears. A town boy had been killed just the week before. One day, Eumaeus supposed, they would come for him—they knew what he thought of them—but he was ready enough, ready with his dogs. Let them come. He was an old man, and angry, and he didn’t care what happened to him now that Odysseus was gone.

  Only the thought of Penelope gave him pause. Eumaeus loved Penelope. Loved her with utter devotion—would have thrust his hand into fire if she’d ordered it. With Laertes dead, Penelope was all that was left of the old times before his master sailed away. It broke Eumaeus’s heart that she might end up married to one of the louts in the big house. And what would become of Ithaca t
hen? Fighting, he was sure of that. A small party defending Telemachus’s interests—they wouldn’t last long. Rivalries between young fighters. Neighbors waiting to snap up Ithaca as soon as the fires began to burn. He knew what could happen. He had gone out into the world and seen fighting as a young man before he’d taken on the care of Odysseus’s pigs. He still woke up at night, sometimes, remembering the things he’d seen: the broken gates and fallen roofs, the wrecked fishing boats strewn along the shore. He knew what happened when people stopped trusting each other, closed the shutters, unwrapped the rusting weapons their grandfathers had buried under the floor. He knew what a broken town looked like.

  Eumaeus heard a sound from somewhere behind him. He turned heavily—he was no longer as mobile as he had once been. A stooped figure was making its way down the path from the mountain. Not many came from that direction, but he could guess where the man must be from. Early that morning he had walked the dogs up the mountain path, and from the top, looking down onto the west, the wilder side of the island, he had seen a Phaeacian ship beached in the cove. He knew she was Phaeacian by the purple sails the crew had hung in the sun to dry. He had wondered why she hadn’t gone around to the harbor. This man had to be one of her sailors.

  Eumaeus shielded his eyes against the morning glare and watched the man approach. He walked slowly, limping. An old man, then. Eumaeus could tell he was old from his hunched back. His face was lined as well, Eumaeus saw as he came closer, and his hair was a tangle of grey. A thick beard covered his face. Not a sailor, if he knew anything, and certainly not the ship’s captain. He spat scornfully into the mud at his feet. More like a tramp.