Ithaca Read online

  “Telemachus.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Telemachus.” He repeats my name as if it were a kind of prayer. “What would you say . . .” His voice is stronger than I would expect. “What would you say, Telemachus, if I told you that I am Odysseus.”

  Eumaeus lets out an oath. I push the old beggar away. How many imposters have we had over the years? All of them confident they can prove it. Perhaps they’ll have met someone who sailed with Odysseus and now hold a nugget of information “that only Odysseus could have known”—the scar on his thigh, usually. A scar right here, right up my thigh. Best to get it over quick.

  I draw a deep breath. “Odysseus has a scar on his body. Where?”

  “Many scars,” the stranger whispers. “Many scars.” The wrong answer.

  “What do you know about Penelope?”

  “I did her wrong.”

  That’s not what I expected. I pause. “What color are her eyes?”

  “Green.”

  “How does she weave?”

  “With her left hand.”

  “What does she wear around her neck?”

  “The locket I gave her the day I left.”

  I’m a bit surprised, I admit. Others have given the right answers before, but there’s something unusual in the way this stranger replies. Not thinking, not striving to impress—just telling me what he knows with an odd air of bewilderment.

  I go on. “There’s a shrine to the goddess on Ithaca. Where?”

  “On the mountainside above the house, past the gate in the orchard.”

  “Odysseus left four offerings there. What were they?”

  None of the imposters could ever answer this.

  The stranger pauses, his eyes fixed on me. “A boar’s tusk,” he says huskily. “The tusk that ripped my thigh. A sprig of laurel. I cut it with Penelope in the woods above her home. My sword. I dedicated it the day before I left for war.”

  My attention is fully on him. And it’s then I’m struck by the way he’s looking at me. Inspecting me . . . no, devouring me, with a greedy, all-encompassing fascination.

  I shiver, take too long a pull on Eumaeus’s harsh wine, cough.

  “The fourth.” For some reason my voice is hoarse.

  “A wooden owl.” The stranger’s blue eyes close. “I left it at dawn the day we sailed.”

  A tusk. A sprig of laurel and a sword. A carved owl. I shiver. Perhaps the sea’s chill has gotten to me. Anyone could go to the shrine; anyone could bribe the priest. It proves nothing.

  Eumaeus gets up angrily and twists the skewers of pork on the fire. “Look at ’is ugly ol’ face. Odysseus was strong as a tree, quick as an eagle. My master were a fighter, not some blasted ol’ tramp. If this is Odysseus, then we’s all buggered.”

  As he sits down again, I feel his rough hand briefly gripping my shoulder. Support.

  I can’t take my eyes off the stranger, though. “Who made the owl?”

  “I did.”

  I. Not “Odysseus.” I. But this isn’t Odysseus, I know that. Odysseus is young, strong, a fighter. Odysseus is dead.

  “I made two,” the stranger says before I even ask him. His eyes are locked on mine. This isn’t possible—I know it isn’t. No one knows about the second owl, the one my father carved for his daughter in the town.

  “Where is the second?” My voice sounds unsteady in my own ears. I can feel it now, the second owl, pressing against my belt. Only we know about it. The girl and her mother. I. Odysseus. Suddenly I’m no longer aware of the hut, or of Eumaeus watching spellbound from the fire. It’s as if no one else in the world exists; as if there’s no other moment but this one, this second in which my question hangs unanswered between us.

  “I gave it to my daughter,” he says.

  Eumaeus swears coarsely. “Odysseus ain’t got no daughter!”

  The man on the stool ignores him. “I lied about her,” he says, directing his words to me alone. “I lied to Penelope. I lied to everybody.” He pauses and swallows, then goes on with a wrench, as if the truth is something, an arrow, he has to pull out of his own body. “I had a daughter with a woman in town. The night before I left, I carved an offering for each of you, to keep you safe. Yours I dedicated at the shrine, but I couldn’t leave hers there. She has it, Telemachus.”

  How many days, how many nights? Days I’d walk up to the clifftop and pretend I saw a sail. Nights I lay awake, imagining that at any moment I’d hear the great gate slam, voices, a commotion. When I was young enough I convinced myself, more than once, that those footsteps were real. My eyes filled with tears as I lay in bed. I actually got up and ran downstairs to greet my father.

  And found the hall empty, the guards asleep. Nothing.

  How many different scenes did I play out in my head? The fleet sailing back into the harbor at dawn. Doors opening, children running out. The scrunch of keels on the sand, men jumping down, taking women in their arms while the sails billowed and the oars were stowed for the last time. Eurycleia shaking me awake in the middle of the night. And a hundred times—a thousand times—my father striding into the hall while the young men feasted, his face grim and his sword drawn.

  But it was never like this: an old man hunched on a stool in a pig farmer’s hut. No ships. No men. And old. Why did I never realize my father would grow old? That he would be scarred, broken—that eight years of war and eight of travel would wither his muscles and twist his legs, fill those blue eyes with that look of helpless pleading? As if he were a son looking for his father’s blessing. As if he isn’t a returning chief but a fugitive begging for help.

  I don’t take the hand he’s holding out to me. I sit down and hold out my cup for Eumaeus to refill.

  “Telemachus?” My father’s voice trembles. He can feel the hostility. He can feel my anger like heat from a fire. I don’t even know why I’m angry. Perhaps it’s because I’ve found my father just when I’d stopped looking for him. Or because he isn’t the hero I’ve pictured for sixteen years; he’s a tired old man, an imposter.

  Or perhaps because I’ve always been angry with him, every day of my life. My father: the first stranger I ever hated.

  “What’s ’appenin’?” Eumaeus’s gruff old voice is trembling. He looks at the stranger. Gets up, goes to him, and peers at his shoulders, his face, his chest, the way he might inspect a pig he was thinking of buying at market.

  “Eumaeus.” Is that a note of half-forgotten command in my father’s voice? The old farmer can hear it too. And perhaps he hears in it, at last, the echo of remembered tones; a voice faded and hollowed out by time; a voice he never expected to hear again. Suddenly Eumaeus is weeping, gripping my father’s shoulders and weeping like a child who wants to be forgiven.

  The sound of Eumaeus’s tears breaks me. I have the sense of a void filling, a circle closing. Odysseus, who was missing for so long. I go to him myself then, and let my father take my hand. His touch is odd, harsh, tanned by salt—so dry and cold I can hardly sense any human warmth in it. I look into his eyes and suddenly, there, I see something I recognize as my own, a shard of mirror in a vast darkness. I may hate him, but I can’t ignore my own father. And all at once I’m overwhelmed, not with love but with pity—pity for this poor, scarred old man quivering inside the name of Odysseus, pity for the wanderer who’s come home alone, to find his house ruined and his fortune gone.

  I always thought I needed a father. It isn’t like that, I realize. Odysseus needs me.

  Hours later I’m watching the big house from the shadow of the olive grove.

  I knew a man in town once who broke his leg. It mended slowly and crooked. It took time for the bone to knit, time for the hurt to heal, time for it to stiffen enough to carry his weight. Even then it didn’t grow straight. He had to learn to walk again. We watched him hobble across the town square, treading gingerly on his twisted leg as if he wasn’t sure whether or not it would hold. It’s going to be like that for my father and me. It will take time for us to
meld together, father and son, time for scar tissue to form and the bones slowly to unite. We’ll have to learn how to walk on this crooked, tender thing, our bond, test its strength little by little. Learn what it is to be part of each other.

  Only we don’t have any time.

  We talked for hours this morning, but not about the things we should have shared—my childhood, his journey. There was no time for that. Instead, we talked about the battle that awaits us here on Ithaca in the next two days. About Penelope, imprisoned in the big house. About Odysseus’s return.

  Neither of us has any illusions about how complicated this is going to be. I came back to Ithaca expecting a fight. I’m still expecting one.

  A few years ago, Odysseus might have returned home to Ithaca in triumph and been welcomed as a returning chief, but it’s different now. Ithaca’s changed—I saw that at the town meeting. Odysseus could stand up under the plane tree, he could tell them, “I’m back, but your sons, your husbands, you’re never going to see them again.” Five hundred men. Would anyone leap up to acclaim him? I don’t think so.

  He didn’t want to hear that. “They love me,” he kept saying, shaking his grey head. “They love me. They’d follow me to the ends of the earth.”

  If Odysseus had come back a few years ago, the young men in the house might have packed their things, paid homage, and left. He’s lost that opportunity too. The ruined courtyard and empty cellars, the feasts, the destruction—those are the work of invaders, not guests. The men in the house will expect Odysseus’s vengeance. They’ll kill him first.

  That was when the discussion got difficult. Odysseus wanted to charge down to the house, sword in hand, and take them on. He and I, with the goddess to give us strength. It took all my tact to argue him out of that. How to tell your own father he’s no longer the fighter who conquered Troy? That he’s old and weak? That his son has only ever fought a single fight, and his enemies are stronger than he is?

  Odysseus sat on his stool, brooding. “Who are they?” he said at last, so I listed them, and my father nodded at each name. Most were children when he left for Troy. Now they’re in their prime, stronger than he is.

  “Antinous is the worst,” I finished. “He’s vicious. And Eurymachus, Polybus’s son.”

  “No.” Odysseus shook his head decisively.

  “You’ve never met him.”

  “I knew his father. There’s good blood in that family. His father was a good man. Count Eurymachus a friend.”

  Commanding me, like it wasn’t open for discussion. I didn’t want to argue with my father on our first day together—perhaps our last day—so I forced myself to think impartially. Eurymachus had spoken for me at the town meeting. He’d given me money for my journey to Pylos. Had he been trying to ingratiate himself with Penelope? Maybe. But he’d shown me other kindnesses over the years. Grudgingly I was forced to admit my father could be right.

  “He’ll help us,” he decreed. “Four against thirty. Maybe more than four. We’ll have supporters in the town.”

  Eventually Odysseus accepted he couldn’t just march into the big house and take possession. We needed to buy time. And it was in this acceptance, this talking through options, that I finally undersood this really was Odysseus sitting here in the hut—Odysseus, the great strategist, the trickster, the man who dreamed up the wooden horse. His mind moved like lightning. He was always two steps ahead, dismissing plans before we’d even described them, weighing pros and cons, conjuring up schemes. And I began to feel proud this was Odysseus, proud to be his son—which only added to my confusion. Proud, angry, resentful. How could I not be confused? For a moment I found myself missing those hours last night when it was just me, sailing across a starlit sea alone.

  At last Odysseus said, “Do what you planned yourself. Tell them I’m dead. Announce my funeral. They won’t attack you until it’s over. Meanwhile we must get me into the palace, disguised.”

  We needed to get Odysseus into the palace. We needed to get Eurymachus on our side, but we agreed that could only happen at the last minute. We needed to divide our enemies into smaller groups—Odysseus had a plan for that as well. Talking about Penelope was the hardest of all. Odysseus listened in anguish as we decribed her hesitant, distant voice, the days without eating, the looms full of empty pictures. I was against telling Penelope of Odysseus’s return, because I wasn’t sure she could take the strain, let alone keep the secret. To my surprise, Odysseus accepted that without hesitation.

  “Better not,” he said gruffly. “She won’t recognize me now. Better she doesn’t know.”

  It was late by the time we finished planning and I made my way down to the big house under cover of the olive grove. From where I am now, crouched under the trees, I can see the whole forecourt. The ground outside the big house is full of debris—broken cart wheels and chariots awaiting repair, smashed furniture, abandoned mattresses. Old cooking pots have been thrown out of windows and messes swept out through doorways. Flocks of sheep and goats have left piles of dung drying in the heat. Now, at high noon, the rough ground outside the gate is chalk white in the sun, so blinding it hurts to look at. Stray dogs lie panting in the thin line of shadow under the wall. The guards are slumped apathetically against the doorposts, while the beggars have taken shelter under the covered well a few yards away.

  I’ve known this courtyard all my life. Smoke rises from the kitchen chimneys the way it always has. I’ve known the two guards—one whittling a stick, the other scraping mud from his sandal—since I was born. But today the smoke smells different—bitter, somehow—and the guards look like strangers. I’m noticing it all because, for the first time ever, this scene I know so well no longer feels like home. I’m on a foreign island, and this is a doorway I’ve never passed through before.

  I leave the shade and walk quickly across the baking earth to the gate. Startled, the guards pull themselves upright in an untidy salute. Speed is everything, Odysseus said. Don’t give them time to think. I stride briskly into the courtyard. Melanthius, the cook, is standing under the balcony, talking to one of the young men.

  “Melanthius! Call everyone to the hall. I have an announcement to make.”

  Heads appear from the tents. None of them can hide their astonishment. They expected me to be dead by now. I ignore them and stride into the hall, snapping my fingers as if that’s going to keep things moving. Can I trust Melanthius? I guess not. That’s one of the risks we have to run. There are servants who like the young men being here. The cook is close to several of them, not least Antinous, whom he worships despite the fighter’s rudeness. Maids like Melantho have had affairs with them. Village boys have gotten rich on tips. Whom can we trust? I’ve known these people all my life. Now I have to work out whose side they’re on.

  I climb up on the hearth and feel the heat of the fire on the backs of my legs. The young men are crowding into the hall as word spreads through the house that I’m back. Eurycleia appears on the stair landing, mouth open in wonder. I know she’ll run up to Penelope as soon as she hears what I have to say, and for a moment I wish I’d gone to my mother first. But that wouldn’t have worked—we agreed in Eumaeus’s hut. Cooks spill in from the kitchen, wiping their hands on aprons. Antinous, face impassive, takes a seat at the front. Eurymachus leans against a column, looking troubled. These are the men I’ll be fighting tomorrow. The thought brings a simultaneous rush of terror and exultation.

  “There’s something I need to share with you.” No introduction. No apology for calling them in or explanation of my return. Go straight into it. “I went to Pylos for news of my father. Nestor received me there as a friend. He spoke of the ties that link him and Odysseus. If ever I need help, he told me, he will come to my aid with Pylos’s ships and men. Next I went to Sparta, to the court of Menelaus and Helen.” A murmur runs around the room. No one there has met Helen of Troy. In their world, that’s status, something I badly need. “He gave me Hector’s sword as a gift. He told me he will never forget the se
rvice my father did him in the war. If he ever heard of trouble in Ithaca, he told me, he would come here to help.”

  The smart ones—Antinous, Eurymachus—will know there isn’t the faintest chance Menelaus or Nestor will send an armed expedition to rescue the sixteen-year-old son of Odysseus. Antinous is scornfully picking his nails, his chair half turned away from the hearth. But some of the others, at least, are looking thoughtful. Above all the heads I can see Odysseus’s armor on the walls, its dull bronze winking in the light from the door.

  “Neither of them could give me news of my father, so I have come to a decision. Tomorrow I will declare Odysseus dead. I will raise a pyre on the shore and say the funeral rites for my father.”

  There’s a gasp from Eurycleia. From the corner of my eye, I see her fleeing upstairs to tell my mother. The young men have broken out into an instant hubbub. Antinous is frowning. That’s something gained, in any case—I’ve thrown him off balance.

  I raise one hand. “I want you to respect Odysseus’s memory. Medon?” The old servant is waiting by the kitchen door. “Take down all the armor from the walls and lock it in the armory. I’ll polish it for the ceremony, as a gesture of respect.” My father’s hunting bow catches my eye. Its horns are yellowed, and the quiver of arrows next to it has mildewed. It’s hung there all my life, and I can’t bear to see it moved. “Leave the bow. That will always hang there in Odysseus’s memory.”

  I step down from the hearth into a sea of urgent talk. Young men pluck at my sleeve, asking questions, but I ignore them. It’s worked. The plan is in motion.

  Eurymachus appears in front of me. “Come with me. Quickly.”

  He pulls me out into the kitchen corridor. It’s deserted. “That was brave,” he says briefly.

  “It was necessary.”

  “That isn’t what I asked you here for.” His handsome face is serious. “Listen, Telemachus, there’s something going on. You’ve got to be careful.”