Ithaca Read online

  Polycaste says, “Nestor, my father, sends his respects. His deep respects. He thought you might have news of Odysseus.”

  “News. Do you know, I have messengers who can reach the coast in two days . . . the coast anywhere in southern Greece. Horses . . . I have horses that can gallop all day, horses never seen in Greece before, I brought them back from Troy. Tomorrow, I’ll show you my stables.”

  “Have your messengers ever brought news of my father?”

  Menelaus looks away across the terrace, where we can see distant peaks of mountains inland. His face is serious, suddenly, and so, when he speaks, is his voice.

  “Yes, I have news of Odysseus,” he says quietly.

  Suddenly my hands are shaking. My throat feels so full I can hardly speak. “Tell me.”

  “Not now.”

  “Please.”

  He shakes his silky red hair. “Tomorrow you’ll hear for yourself.”

  “Is my father still alive?”

  Menelaus looks at me then. “Yes. Odysseus is still alive.”

  “Where is he?”

  Menelaus raises his hand warningly. “No more for now.”

  There’s a long silence. I don’t know what to say, what to ask. “Tell me about him,” I say at last, in a weak voice.

  “About Odysseus?” Menelaus juts out his lower lip, brooding. “He was a hero.”

  “Some people call him a liar.”

  “Ignore them.” He speaks without a moment’s hesitation. “People are jealous. They try to tear great men down. Your father was a hero. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Tell me . . .”

  “Enough.” Menelaus lifts his hand imperiously. He’s looking across the terrace toward the house. “Here she is at last,” he purrs in a different voice. “My wife.”

  I turn. Helen of Troy is walking toward us across the gravel. My mind is still full of what I’ve just heard, but even so, Helen is overwhelming. She’s more beautiful than any woman I’ve ever seen, more beautiful than any person ought to be. Her cheekbones are high, like a cat’s, her eyes green, wide and somehow caressing, as if they bless everything they touch. She has golden hair tied carelessly up in a simple ribbon. There’s no point decorating it—any ornament would look drab on that face. Her nose is straight, her lips parted in an expression of slight amusement, like someone’s just told her a joke and she wants to please them by smiling. She’s wearing a simple gown of green silk, caught in gold clasps that show off her long, shapely arms. A simple bracelet encircles her right wrist. I can see soft shadows under her collarbones.

  I stand up.

  “Telemachus.” Helen’s voice is low and thrilling. “Odysseus’s son. Polycaste . . . you’ve grown so beautiful.”

  Helen’s lips brush my cheek, leaving behind a faint cloud of rose petals and lavender. I stand there gawping as she moves on to embrace Polycaste. It isn’t just her beauty. It’s what that name means—Helen of Troy. I’m thinking, This is the woman they fought the war for. How many people died because of her? Thousands? And what did it feel like, to have caused all that? Death, destruction, the end of a city. Bloody slaughter on the battlefield, a town in flames.

  Helen sits down on one of the wooden couches. “It’s cold,” she says, yawning. “Too cold to be sitting out. The sunset is lovely, though.” Her green eyes turn toward me. “So you’re Odysseus’s son. Odysseus was my friend.” Her voice grows even more thrilling as she leans toward me. “I hope you will be too.” I don’t know how she does it. There’s something in her voice that seems to plead for protection—and suddenly I realize I’m ready to do just that. I’d do anything she asked.

  Helen glances at her husband before going on—a flickering glance with something of a challenge in it. “I remember Odysseus coming to Troy,” she says in the same caressing voice. “He broke in through a side door by himself . . . can you imagine the courage? Disguised as a Trojan, wearing clothes like theirs. Reconnoitering.” Her voice mocks the military word. “And he bumps into me, poor man, out walking with my women. Our eyes meet. Well, we knew each other before, of course, before the war. I knew him straightaway. And do you know what I felt? Do you know what I felt?” She presses one hand to her chest and leans forward, her wide, beautiful eyes full of tears. “Just seeing him, I wanted to cry. His face said, Greece. It said, Home. My women thought I was ill. I didn’t give him away. I told my women, ‘Just leave me a moment, I’ll come back alone.’ I wanted to talk to Odysseus. To your dear, dear father. The moment we were alone, I embraced him. I couldn’t help myself. Dear Odysseus from dear Greece. Troy, you know, by then . . .” She looks up at the darkening sky, fanning tears from her eyes. “It was a prison.” She looks beseechingly at us. Polycaste’s face is set. Menelaus isn’t saying anything, but he’s glowering at his wife as she talks. There’s trouble coming. “It was hell, sheer hell. I used to go up to the walls every night. I’d stare out across the plain, and in the distance . . .” She lifts one hand, pointing. “I’d see the Greek campfires burning, and I’d think, There are my friends. Odysseus, dear Nestor . . . and there . . .” Her voice catches. “. . . there’s my darling husband, Menelaus . . .” She swallows and stops, eyes glistening.

  Menelaus clears his throat deliberately.

  Helen puts her fingers to her temples. Her voice is almost inaudible. “It takes time, you know, to recover . . . Some things you can’t forget, you’re too young to understand that. Every night I’d go back to that man . . . that awful man Paris, the one who abducted me. I’d lie next to him in the dark and think, How many more days? I knew we’d win in the end, you see. I knew Menelaus would come for me . . .” She gives her husband an adoring smile, leans forward, and reaches out a hand to clasp his.

  Menelaus doesn’t take it. He’s scowling now, his big-man, goodwill expression turned into vicious anger. When he ignores her hand, Helen stoops and fiddles with her sandal, like that was why she reached out in the first place.

  “Your father,” she goes on with a bright smile, “was the first Greek I’d spoken to in eight years. Eight wasted years. I couldn’t stop crying. He drew me into a doorway so we could talk. That’s when we came up with it. The wooden horse. I said, ‘You’ll never break the walls. They’re too strong. This is how to get in.’ Odysseus was so clever. I showed him the temple where the horse would be brought. I said, ‘This is the message to give my husband . . . “Then . . . this was the worst, the worst bit . . . I had to go back to the palace and pretend to all the Trojans I was still on their side. Even pretend with that man, that dreadful man . . .”

  She stops. Menelaus has leaned forward. Slowly, deliberately, he knocks three times on the table in front of him. His eyes are on his wife, his face full of contempt. He knocks again, three times. Helen is staring at him. Now she looks scared.

  “When you get older,” Menelaus says quietly as he sits back, “you’ll learn memory plays tricks. Isn’t that right, darling?” Helen winces at the sudden viciousness in his voice. Menelaus leans forward again, muscles bunching under his soft silk gown. “I was in the horse that night. With your father . . .” He’s talking to us but looking at his wife. “Twenty men. Twenty brave men crouched in the darkness, not making a sound. We felt the horse move. We heard them celebrating outside. I was there.” He seems a different man from the host who showed off his palace and treasures this afternoon. Smaller, nastier, but more real. “We waited until the celebrations were over. They’d lit fires. We saw them glow through chinks in the wood. We thought they were going to burn the horse and us in it. But the fires burned down. It was dark. Still we waited. Then what did we hear?” He stares at his wife. “Voices. Two voices. One of them I knew.” By now he looks as if he’s about to pounce on Helen. She’s twisted away from him. Frozen. Contemptuous. “My wife. The woman I hadn’t seen for eight years—the one so many good men had died for. The man with her? Paris.” He sits slowly back again. “Drunk. But I heard her . . . we all heard her . . . ‘Don’t trust them. Don’t trust them
. I know Odysseus. It’s a trick.’ Nothing from Paris. Then what?” He leans forward and raps slowly three times on the table. “She’s knocking on the horse. She knows it’s hollow. ‘Is there anyone in there? Hello?’ My darling wife. Who missed Greece so much, and couldn’t wait to be back with her friends . . .” Menelaus picks up his silver cup and throws his head back, draining it in one draft. “Paris was drunk, thank the gods. He didn’t listen. Two hours later, I killed him myself.”

  Helen laughs suddenly. A low, thrilling laugh. “I wish he wouldn’t,” she says. “Joker. He knows it drives me wild.” She stands up. “We should dine. In honor of our guests.” She stresses the word, but Menelaus doesn’t stand with her. Watching her, he holds his cup out to a servant, waits for it to fill, then drains it again.

  “She has a chest in her room,” he says. “Treasures from Troy. Everything she misses.”

  His voice is thickening. He’s drunk. I’m wondering if this bitter little scene is played out every night, in the luxurious palace that’s turned into their private hell.

  “I don’t know about anyone else,” Helen says, ignoring her husband. “I’m starving.” She goes over to Polycaste and takes her by both hands. “I so hope we’re going to be friends. I love your dress, by the way.”

  “It isn’t mine,” Polycaste says coldly. “I found it in my room.”

  “You wear it so well. Come on, do let’s eat.”

  She leads Polycaste through to the great hall. After a moment’s hesitation I follow them. Menelaus stays out on the terrace. A table’s been laid, groaning with luxuries, and to add to them, servants bring gold dishes of food I’ve only ever heard about in stories: stuffed snails in their shells, piles of tiny roast birds, a whole suckling pig surrounded by mushrooms. Music plays from a gallery overhead: a flute, harp, and tambourine.

  “My husband’s been through a lot,” Helen says, looking at each of us in turn and talking in a hushed, confidential voice. “You have to understand, it was hard for him . . . so hard.” Suddenly she grips both of our wrists. Her fingers are warm and surprisingly strong. “You do understand, don’t you? And for me. Paris was violent . . .” Still holding our wrists, she looks down at her plate laden with delicacies. “Horribly violent . . . He forced me to go up to the horse. Thank the gods I’d worked it out with Odysseus beforehand.” She squeezes my hand. “Your dear father. I said, ‘They’ll make me say things. Don’t answer.’ Thank the gods, not one of them spoke . . .”

  “Has she told you her version?” Menelaus is standing in the doorway, holding his empty cup. He comes over and sits down heavily at the end of the table. “She always has a version. So. Memory plays tricks. She hated Paris. She hated Troy. She longed to come home again. Eight years.”

  “Perhaps he could have stopped me leaving in the first place.”

  “Perhaps she could have restrained herself.”

  “Perhaps there was nothing to stay for!”

  They pretend they’re talking to us, but they might as well have been alone together. For a long moment silence hangs in the great hall, the music playing behind it as if nothing’s wrong. Slowly we feel the violence wash away through the echoing room. No one speaks. Then Helen turns her beautiful head to look at Polycaste.

  “What lovely earrings,” she says.

  The rest of the evening goes the same way. Menelaus drinks, occasionally rousing himself to boast about the treasures on the walls around us. Helen talks like we’re young children. After a time she gets bored and goes to bed early. Polycaste takes that as an excuse to follow her. For a while I sit on with Menelaus. It’s the wrong time to ask questions about my father, though. At last, when he seems to have fallen asleep, I leave.

  I can’t sleep. Maybe it’s the heavy scent of flowers hanging in the room, or the heat of the plains that stifles the whole palace. When I do fall asleep at last, I wake up sweating, my mouth dry. I need water. There isn’t any in the room, so I make my way out into the corridor, hoping to find the kitchen, or a cool jar of water in the courtyard downstairs. There’s silver moonlight on the floor. Suddenly I hear voices coming from the corridor to my right. Moving as quietly as I can, I make my way toward them, keeping one hand on the wall. There’s a crack of light under a door at the end of the corridor. From behind it comes the rumble of a man’s voice, then Helen’s, shouting something in reply. I’m sure it’s Helen, but she doesn’t sound anything like the languid hostess who greeted us this afternoon. Her voice breaks off in a wail—“I’d rather one night with Paris than a lifetime with you . . .”

  The words are shrieked rather than spoken, like the howl of an animal in pain, or the moaning laments you hear from women at funerals—a sound that comes not from the mind but from a deeper instinct of hatred or fear. There’s nothing I can do. I feel my way back to my room, and at last I fall asleep.

  I wake up early. The palace is silent, but I find Polycaste, already dressed, leaning over the balustrade of the courtyard.

  “Come on.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Anywhere but here. I can’t stand another moment.”

  We make our way to a balcony with steps leading down into a garden. In it we find a doorway, unlocked, with a stair that looks like it will lead to the town but ends in a walled courtyard. We’ve been wondering about a rhythmic sound, a sucking sound like an octopus being slapped against the harbor wall to soften it. When we reach the courtyard, we find out what it is.

  They’re flogging a man. His tunic’s been stripped from his back and he’s tied to a post, with a leather strap between his teeth to stop him from screaming. A soldier, sweating in the early-morning heat, is whipping him with a flail. Blood showers the sand around our feet.

  “It’s him!” Polycaste runs forward just as I recognize the sandy beard of the officer who escorted us to Sparta the day before. “Stop! What are you doing?”

  The man with the whip pauses only for a moment. Still tensed for the blow, he eyes Polycaste’s furious face, then swings his arm forward, lashing it across his victim’s back. The officer whimpers through his leather gag. Blood spatters sickeningly over the sand and on the hem of Polycaste’s dress.

  “Stop!”

  “Orders.” The man’s voice is flat. His eyes are weird. Glazed. Unfocused. Clumsily he pushes Polycaste aside to take another blow.

  “We didn’t say he’d been rude. We didn’t ask for him to be punished. It’s a mistake!”

  “Orders.” The man lashes again, and again the officer moans, his body convulsing against the post.

  I tug Polycaste by the arm. “Come on.”

  “I won’t. He’s got to stop.”

  “He won’t stop. He’s been ordered. We’ll only make things worse.”

  Polycaste gives a strangled sob but lets me pull her back across the deserted courtyard. We go to the garden and find a bench under a eucalyptus tree. Neither of us speaks until the slapping noise has stopped.

  Then Polycaste draws a deep breath. “I can’t stand this. This place is awful. What’s wrong with him?” We both know she means Menelaus.

  “He’s angry.”

  “With that soldier? He didn’t do anything.”

  “Not just with him. With everybody.” For some reason I’m picturing not Menelaus but Antinous’s small, mean eyes, shining with malice when he’s invented some torment for a new arrival—or for me. “He’s angry about Helen . . . about everything. And he has the power to make everyone else suffer.”

  “They’re all mad.” She says it in a near whisper. “All of them who went to the war. It hasn’t made them happy, has it? Fighters . . . they’re all damaged. Odysseus missing, Agamemnon dead. Menelaus trapped with a woman who hates him. What did they do it for? You hear the storytellers: ‘Glorious Menelaus won the war . . .’ It isn’t like that, it’s a nightmare. And it’s us, isn’t it, who have to pick up the pieces, get on with life, while they live in this hell.” She breathes more slowly, eyes closed, one hand on her chest. “And it was al
l for her. That’s the worst thing of all. She’s so empty, so false. Why would anyone fight a war over her?”

  “Menelaus loves her.”

  “Love?” Polycaste stares at me. “What are you talking about? She’s a trophy. ‘The most beautiful woman on earth.’ What man wouldn’t love her?” She shrugs. “Isn’t that what men are like?”

  “And she loved Paris. I think she really did.”

  “You think she’s capable of love? Her? Look at her. The war was vanity, too. ‘Thousands died for me.’ Do you think she cares about any of them? She’s proud of it. She’s empty.”

  “No. Even if she’s hard, and vain, she’s still . . . a person . . .” I know I’m not finding the right words, but somewhere in my mind I’ve got an image of a younger Helen who might not have been thinking about war or consequences. Who was just swept away by a feeling she hadn’t known before. I don’t like her. But for that younger, foolish Helen I can only feel pity.

  Polycaste says, “You’re nicer than me.” She’s looking at me with an odd expression, half affectionate, half angry. “You think more.”

  “No.”

  “If I hate someone, I just hate them. I’m simple. And I hate her. She’s false.”

  “You’re not simple.”

  “You don’t think so?” She stands up, shaking back her hair.

  “Nobody is.”

  At the doorway to the palace a servant is waiting for us. He leads us to the town square, where a chariot with gilt wheels is standing under the shade of the plane trees, harnessed to two lively black horses with their manes braided in gold thread. One servant holds their bridles while another stands by with a tray of steaming silver cups and fresh rolls.

  Menelaus, dressed in a leather coat and carrying a whip, drains his cup and puts it back on the tray. He looks as if he hasn’t slept.

  “Breakfast,” he says, gesturing to the tray. He sounds grim. There’s no sign of the expansive host of the day before. “Then we leave.”

  We take cups and sip at a warm infusion of herbs. The rolls are flavored with honey and sweet spices. Menelaus, tapping the handle of his whip against the rail of the chariot, waits impatiently while we eat and drink. There’s no sign of bodyguards. As soon as we climb up next to him, he flicks the servant away and we set off with a lurch, the horses pawing at the square’s baked earth. As soon as we’re clear of the town, he lashes the horses with his whip and they break into a wild gallop, dragging the chariot along at a pace I’ve never experienced before. The chariot’s platform bucks and rears. I look down and see the ground whipping past just a hand’s breadth below. Gripping the rail, hands and legs shaking, I’m thinking, Surely it can’t take the strain. The dust blinds me. A hot reek of horse fills my nostrils. Beside me, Menelaus is cracking the whip over the horses’ heads, urging them to a still-crazier pace.