Ithaca Page 16

  One of the dogs at his feet gave a low, rumbling growl.

  “Go on, boy,” Eumaeus whispered.

  The dogs were off: the big black dog, the bitch—smaller but nastier in temper—and the grey creature, half wolf, that he had found and reared. They surged around the tramp, who at least had the good sense not to run away. He stopped dead, waiting while the dogs snapped and snarled, nipping at the hem of his ragged coat. Eumaeus let them have their play for a moment before calling, “All right, then, let ’im come on.”

  He kicked playfully at the big black one as they slunk away, and he stooped to tug at the wiry grey fur of the half wolf. The tramp stepped slowly forward, his right leg trailing.

  “What dus ’e want?”

  “I am a stranger here. I ask for a guest’s welcome.” The tramp’s eyes were startlingly blue.

  “Dus ’e, now?” Eumaeus spat in the mud, contemplating the hunched figure in front of him. He sighed. “Then I s’pose ’e better come inside, ’asn’t ’e? Which is ’ow soft I am.”

  He led the way across a muddy courtyard surrounded with prickly pear. Its deep ruts had hardened to a crust of mud. Broken barrows and pieces of fencing lay in piles, along with wagons that had lost their wheels, a dung heap under a cloud of flies, and a hayrick on a pole stuck drunkenly in the ground. The hut itself was low and misshapen, the two windows onto the courtyard uneven, the roof crooked. Inside, it was pitch dark after the hot sunlight. The back wall was cut from the living rock, with a hearth of rough stones on which smoked a fire of olive wood. There was a table down the middle, and the old man’s bed, a pile of greasy sheepskin, lay in one corner. Hams and loops of sausages hung from the roof, and the hut smelled strongly of pig. Of dead pig, in fact—the carcass of a porker, throat gaping, hung from one of the beams over a wooden bucket brimming with bright crimson blood.

  “I’ll cook ’er for yer, seein’ yer a guest. I gutted ’er already.” Eumaeus snatched the porker down from its hook, skewered the pink carcass expertly on a long bronze spit, and set it on two metal cradles on either side of the fire. In a moment the skin began to blister and spit. Pig grease dripped into the flames, spluttering and filling the low hut with the stench of burned meat.

  “Won’t take more’n an hour. I’d have the boy turn it, but I sent ’im to town. Bit o’ burn won’t hurt.” He gave the spit a deft quarter turn and the porker’s feet swung upward toward the ceiling. “Nor will a bit o’ wet. I ’spose you need a bit o’ wet after yer journey.” Eumaeus went to some shelves hacked crudely into the walls and pulled down an old goatskin worn shiny on both sides. He turned to see his visitor still standing in the doorway.

  “Sit down, won’t yer?” he blazed angrily. “Yer wants to be a guest, yer can be a flippin’ guest. Sit down.”

  He banged two rough pottery cups onto the table, a blackened and filthy plank propped up on trestles in the center of the room, and filled them with wine from the neck of the skin. “’E won’t like it,” he commented, shoving one of the cups toward the guest. “I makes it myself.”

  The guest took the cup and drank. “It’s good,” he said.

  “Then ’e’s drunk some rank filth on ’is travels, is all I can say. Lived even rougher’n ’e looks. ’Ave some bread.” Eumaeus pulled over the rump of a huge, stale loaf, more brown than white, wiped his bloodied slaughtering knife on a cloth, and hacked off two crooked slices. “Week old,” he said proudly. “Yer needs all yer teeth to get through that. I’d give ’im oil to dip it in, but I ain’t got much, and yer ain’t worth it.”

  The stranger, too occupied in chewing the dry bread to speak, nodded his thanks.

  “See?” Eumaeus said happily. “’E’ll be a week on that slice.”

  The guest swallowed and coughed. “It’s good,” he said weakly.

  “Good if ’e’s a moth-eaten ol’ tramp who don’t see food more’n once a fortnight. Meat’ll be ready in a while, an’ I bet it’s the first ’e’s tasted in a year, which is ’ow soft I am.” Reaching out one mud-caked boot, he kicked the spit around another quarter turn. The porker’s ear flopped sideways, sizzling in the flames. “Who is ’e, then?” he asked. “Where’s ’e come from? Tell us yer story.”

  The stranger took a deep breath. “I come from Crete,” he said.

  “Crete?”

  “Crete. The island.”

  Eumaeus nodded. “Go on, then.”

  “I come from Crete,” the stranger began again. “My father was rich, but I was not his true son . . .”

  “Bastard, then,” Eumaeus put in. “We calls a spade a spade, round ’ere.”

  The stranger looked at him through his puzzled old eyes. “A bastard,” he agreed.

  Eumaeus nodded happily and prodded the porker around another quarter turn. “Get on with it. We ain’t got all day.”

  “I had no land of my own so I became a traveler, a soldier of fortune . . .”

  “Mercenary,” said Eumaeus, frowning. “Tricky buggers, mercenaries.”

  “. . . which is how I reached Troy, fought in the war, and then . . .” said the stranger, speaking faster because he could see Eumaeus was about to interrupt again, “set off on my travels. I won’t recount them all. I made a fortune in Egypt. I was shipwrecked . . . a lightning strike at sea, sail gone, mast gone, half the crew dead. I won’t tire you with all the troubles I’ve seen, the miles I’ve tramped, the ports I’ve washed up in. A month ago I reached Kythera. I sailed from there on a Lastragonian ship.”

  “A Lastragonian ship.” Eumaeus frowned. Suddenly he shoved back his bench and looked under the table at his visitor’s feet. He gave them a long, hard stare, then straightened up, leaned forward with his hands on his knees, and stared unblinking into the guest’s face.

  His visitor pushed his chair uneasily back from the table. “That is my story,” he said. “Now tell me about Ithaca. Who is the chief here?”

  “Odysseus—everyone knows that. ’Cept ’e ain’t ’ere. Everyone knows that too. ’E’s missin’.”

  The visitor’s eyes narrowed. “Do you have any news of him?”

  The old man simply shook his head.

  “What do you think happened to him?”

  “I say ’e’s dead,” the old man growled. “What else would keep ’im away from ’is ’ome? Dead, like as not. Or dead near as can be, which is to say, ’e can’t walk, or ’is back’s broken, or ’e’s captive in a dungeon somewhere, or they made ’im slave and sold ’im to the ’airy folk as live out east, either way ’e ain’t ’ere, is ’e?” And Eumaeus looked around the hut as if to prove his point.

  The old tramp’s face was impassive. “What does his wife think?”

  “Still waitin’ for ’im, though I don’t knows ’ow long. What is it? Cryin’ now, is it? ’Ere.”

  He threw the bloodstained cloth at the stranger, who took it and pressed it to his face.

  The stranger wiped his eyes, streaking the tears. “Does he have any children?”

  “A boy. Telemachus.”

  “Tell me about him.”

  “’E’s just a kid. Good ’eart. Clever, same as ’is dad. Soft, though. ’E never learnt to fight. No one to teach ’im, wiv his dad gone. Oh, don’t start up again . . . what’s wrong wiv ’im?” Eumaeus turned the spit angrily, and grease sizzled into the fire.

  “What would happen,” said the tramp, his voice trembling, “if Odysseus came back today?”

  Eumaeus didn’t answer for a moment. He leaned forward and prodded the porker with the tip of his knife, watching the juices run pink. Then he reached for the goatskin and filled their cups. The wine and the heat of the fire had turned his forehead scarlet.

  “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “I used ter, once, but I don’t knows anymore. I wish ’e ain’t gone away, that’s for sure. Then the big ’ouse wouldn’t be full o’ filthy buggers eatin’ ’is pork, leastwise tryin’ to eat it, what they comes ’ere, I tells ’em, ‘Find yer own blasted pigs’ . . . they don’t likes it, but they d
on’t like my dogs, neither. Sheep, though, they’s barely a sheep left on the island. Oil, corn. Wine in the cellar, Medon tells me, ‘One more month o’ this, the chief comes ’ome, ’e’ll be drinkin’ water like a dirty beggar . . .’”

  “Who are the men in the house?”

  “Guests. Strangers. Flippin’ vultures, I calls ’em. Arter Penelope, they is, to make ’er a new ’usband.”

  “Does she listen to them?”

  “Not ’er. Not yet, anyways.”

  “Why don’t the islanders stop them?”

  “Why should they?” Sweat poured down the old man’s craggy face. His voice was beginning to slur from the wine. “I thought they all loved Odysseus. Turns out I was wrong, don’t it? Why should they love ’im wiv their ’usbands gone and their sons dead? I tells yer, I don’t know nuthin’ no more. I thought ’e was a good master, maybe I wuz wrong about that, too. I thinks about Odysseus now, all I remember is talk. I thinks, ’E leaves ’is wife, ’e leaves ’is son . . .”

  “He’s sorry for that.”

  The old man stared at him, openmouthed. Then he suddenly blazed, “Oh, yer’d knows that, would yer? Yer’d knows what Odysseus thinks?”

  “Eumaeus.” The tramp rose to a crouch, clutching the old farmer’s arm.

  The old farmer snatched his arm away as if he had been burned. “’Ow does ’e know my name?”

  “Because he told me about you. Eumaeus, I met Odysseus.”

  The pork sizzled on the fire. Hot, greasy smoke filled the hut. Eumaeus didn’t react, to start with. He simply pushed the stranger away and nodded.

  “Now we knows where we is, anyways,” he said scornfully.

  The stranger blinked. “Eumaeus?”

  “D’yer know ’ow many types like you we ’as comin’ ’ere to Ithaca?”

  “What do you mean?” He sounded bewildered.

  “‘I bring a message from Odysseus’ . . . any number o’ those. ‘I just seen ’im, ’e ’as a message for Penelope.’ An’ she swallers every word, fills their ragged little coats wiv gold. ‘Stay as long as yer likes.’ Easiest blasted story in the world, ‘I saw Odysseus.’” Eumaeus snorted derisively and poured more wine from the skin. “Then we ’as Odysseus hisself, half a dozen on ’em. One even ’ad the scar on ’is thigh, cut it ’isself. ‘I got it on my first boar ’unt,’ ’e says. T’other one ’ad Odysseus’s sword, ’e must ’a’ nicked it. Gets ’is paws ’round Penelope, nearly fools all on us. ’E’s ’alfway to ’er blasted bedroom, then I says, ‘Since when did Odysseus ’ave a blasted Egyptian tattoo on ’is bum, greasy bugger.’ We gets ’im, we toss ’im off the cliff behin’ the big ’ouse, an’ no doubts we’ll end up doin’ the same wiv youse.”

  The stranger stood up. “I’ll go to Penelope myself. Now.”

  One of the dogs growled. “You ain’t goin’ nowheres,” Eumaeus said quietly. “Yer’ll stay ’ere where I can sees yer. Yer’ll sleep in my corner wiv one dog on yer feet and t’other on yer blasted neck. Yer gets up in the night to take a leak, my dogs’ll go wiv yer, an’ if yer makes a run for it, they’ll drag yer back by yer blasted little bangle.” The old farmer’s voice rose to a growl. “What I didn’t ask for no guest but now yer ’ere, yer can stays ’til I knows ’oo the blazes yer are.”

  I’ve learned something about the timbers of a ship. They’re not dead wood, like the planks of a table. You can feel the wind hum in them and the waves vibrate through them. Laying your hand on a gunwale or oar isn’t like touching a door. It’s more like placing your fingers against a pine tree quivering on a mountainside.

  Right now I can feel the steering oar stiffen and relax beneath my hand. The sea, smooth and heavy as oil, barely ripples as we slip along. There’s only just enough wind to sail by. The crew is asleep next to their oars. Above us, stars are unfurled across the sky like a field of night flowers. They’re so bright I can see the sail’s shape as a patch of starless sky, filling and sagging above me. The rhythm of the deck under my feet has become second nature, like the creak of my own heart.

  One day I’m going to learn the names of all the stars. I know the polestar, of course—I’m steering by it now, toward Ithaca. I know Orion and the Bear and Cassiopeia. Mentor taught me the sailors’ stars, the Hyades and Pleiades. I know Andromeda, just below Cassiopeia, because Polycaste showed it to me two nights ago.

  “Four bright stars in a row. Just above the horizon. And Perseus above her. Like a fork.”

  We both knew the legend. Andromeda boasted of her own beauty and was condemned by the sea god to be chained to a rock, where a monster would come and devour her. The fighter Perseus killed the monster and married her.

  “Idiot,” Polycaste said scornfully as we lay on the mountainside, the smell of pine resin mingling with the smoke of the fire on which we’d cooked our meal. It was the last night of our journey back from Sparta.

  “Because she boasted about being beautiful?”

  I heard the rustle of pine needles as she rolled over to look at me. “Because she needed help with the monster.”

  I miss Polycaste. Not just her scorn—although I miss that too. I miss her courage, her quick anger, her boldness. I’m going to need all of those on Ithaca. I miss her directness, her instant judgments and fierce opinions. I’m not like her. Me, I’m always putting myself in other people’s shoes, seeing both sides of an argument, understanding people then making excuses for them. My instinct is to overthink, to put things into words, to rationalize . . . just like I’m doing now, because, of course, it isn’t Polycaste’s courage or directness I miss, it’s just her.

  When I lean my weight on the steering oar, the polestar swings back into view from behind the dark patch of sail. It’s the scornful twist of her mouth I miss; the quick gesture with which she shakes back her hair; the ease with which, when she’s washing her face in a mountain stream, she stoops to splash water up each bare arm. I miss the rustle of leaves as she turns over in her sleep. I miss her raucous, throaty laugh when something—usually some mistake on my part—amuses her.

  She should be with me now, steering through the night. That’s what we planned when we journeyed back from Sparta. But Nestor refused to let her go.

  “We wish you good fortune in your return. I will give you a gold dish to place upon Odysseus’s funeral pyre, as a mark of our old friendship . . . a true friendship—I cannot tell you how fond I was of your father, who hardly ever disagreed with my opinions. But then you must busy yourself with family matters . . . your mother . . . the government of Ithaca . . . decisions . . . Take it from one who has been making decisions for more decades than I choose to recall . . .”

  But he did go on to recall them, of course—at length, burying the subject in mazy recollection, then pleading tiredness and going to bed. It wasn’t hard to read between the lines. In Ithaca there’s going to be a fight. He doesn’t want his daughter caught up in it.

  The morning I left, he came down to the beach to watch us board Mentor’s ship. I took his hand as the waves hissed on the shingle behind us.

  “You think I’m going to be killed,” I said.

  Nestor just looked at me, blinked his rheumy eyes, then nodded. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

  I didn’t answer. After a moment Nestor went on, “You think me callous. I’m a hundred and ten years old—do you know how many men I’ve seen killed? Good men, kind men, friends. Soon I’ll die myself. I long for it.”

  Polycaste raged on the terrace, but even she didn’t dare disobey her father. For all that polish and old-world charm, Nestor is quite as headstrong as his daughter. Polycaste and I said good-bye on the shore, alone, with a bear hug that slowly melted into something else. There’s a kind of language in the way two bodies touch. A language in the squeeze of shoulder, chest and thigh, in the touch of fingers on each other’s backs, in the strength of a grip that suddenly becomes soft and lasting. I felt a sudden heat beside me and knew Polycaste was crying. Then she pulled back, looking angrily away, like I’d
done something wrong.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said curtly. “Come and see me when it’s over.”

  As I sailed out of the bay, I wondered if she was watching from the house. The empty space on the deck next to me felt more real than a presence. I could see the roof over the trees and the windows of the upper story. I nearly waved but stopped myself. If Polycaste was watching, she would have torn herself away from the window with a sneer.

  I lean on the tiller again. A little wave clops against the hull. One of the sailors clears his throat and mutters in his sleep.

  When I look back on it now, that short journey across the mountains feels like a lost paradise. If I’m killed—when I’m killed—at least I’ll have had that. Nothing special was said or done, but we both felt a sense of freedom that seemed almost like an enchantment. The rest of the world—troubles, adults—might not have existed at all. Nothing existed except the two of us traveling through mountains that seemed to go on forever.

  We left Sparta at dawn, with a faint mist still hanging over the little town and the mules stamping impatiently on the paved square outside the palace. Helen hadn’t left her room since the day we arrived.

  “Women’s troubles,” Menelaus said and gave me a greasy wink. I ignored him. Our last few days together, Menelaus had regained some of his bravado. He had taken us to see one of his vast warehouses, where rows of peasants were stacking harvested grain.

  “My horses,” he said, pointing to the stables on one side. “See? They are the fastest horses in Greece. One day perhaps you will have faster horses, but first you will have to kill me.” He thought that was hilarious, slapped me on the back and roared with laughter.

  On the day we left, though, he showed, just for a moment, a different side of himself—a glimpse of why the storytellers call Menelaus a great man.

  “I’ve something for you,” he said while Polycaste was adjusting her stirrups, then he tugged me by the sleeve. A servant was waiting under the trees with something wrapped in white linen. Menelaus pulled off the covers. Inside was a sword. Not one of those glittering swords studded with jewels that hung in racks in his armory. It was short and tarnished, with nicks on the blade and a row of holes in the handle where gems had been pried out.