Heroes (formerly Talisman of Troy) (11 page)

‘Old Man of the Sea,’ he said, ‘I cover my head and deliver myself to the infernal gods. I recognize my guilt and I am ready to suffer my punishment. But one thing you must tell me, and I will do the rest: where is the talisman of the Trojans now? Did Queen Clytemnestra take it from Agamemnon after killing him? Is she hiding it somewhere . . . or has she destroyed it? Tell me only this, I beg of you. I alone remain; I alone can stave off the misfortune that weighs upon the Achaeans.’

‘Who else, besides you, knows your secret?’ asked the Old Man.

‘No one ever suspected anything . . . except for Ulysses.’

‘All was born in deceit and in deceit it is destined to end. But you can turn the evil you have done into good. Ulysses can help you, far away as he is. Use his mind. Carry out what he has imagined,’ said the voice. ‘No more than this can I tell you.’

The ray of light dimmed until it nearly disappeared and the hiss of the wind issued ever stronger from the top of the cavern.

The Old Man of the Sea seemed to have dozed off on his stone throne. His limbs hung limply, his mouth fell half open. The king of Sparta turned back, traversing the tunnel and the great chamber until he found himself once again in the open. The wind had become very strong and his men struggled to secure the ship’s lines to the ground so that the sea would not steal it away.

Menelaus watched them through the swirling sands that obscured the light of day, and he hardly recognized them, as if they were foreigners pushed there from distant lands by the force of the sea and the wind.

Only the next day were they able to return to their island in the delta. The queen saw the ship coming to shore, and yet he tarried. After a long wait, she walked to the beach and found her king sitting in silence, watching the waves. She asked him what the response of the Old Man of the Sea had been and Menelaus, without turning, said: ‘His response was quite auspicious, for me and for you, my queen. The old man said:

Menelaus, it is not your destiny to die in the bluegrass land of Argos,

but in the Elysian fields where the gods will send you,

there where life is lovely for mortal men.

No snow, nor chill, nor rain there,

but always the gentle breeze of Zephyr blowing

sonorous from the Ocean, soothing and refreshing.

For the gods hold you, as Helen’s lord, a son of Zeus.

‘One day sorrow and wounds and death will end, my queen. We shall live in a happy place, far from all others, for ever.’

He fell still again, watching the foam of the waves that died at his feet, and then said: ‘We must return.’

M
YRSILUS THOUGHT THAT HIS
last day had come when he saw armed Trojans in such a far-off land. But the
Chnan
had no fear and he approached the new arrivals, mingling among them, watching and listening to try to understand why they were there.

It was evident that the village chieftain and the man who seemed to be the chief of the Trojans did not understand each other, but that they had become accustomed to communicating using gestures, and even the
Chnan
could understand these gestures well.

‘I think,’ he told Myrsilus later, ‘that the foreigners want to remain here. They are prepared to exchange bronze for wheat, milk and meat for the winter, and seeds for the spring. They want to settle down in this land.’

‘When Diomedes finds out he will march here with his men and wipe them all out! I am certain he wants no Trojans in the land in which he will found his new kingdom.’

‘Then don’t tell him,’ answered the
Chnan
. ‘We cannot wage war in these swamps, in this bitter cold, and those wretches mean no harm. They’re just trying to survive the winter. When the seasons change they will sow wheat and, if they manage to harvest it, a new people will be born, in a new land, under a new sky. Let the seeds take root, warrior. This land is big enough to nourish many peoples.’

‘Perhaps you are right,
Chnan
. There’s only one thing I do not understand; why it is deserted. If we were in the land of the Achaeans, there would be at least six or seven villages in the land that stretches from here to the sea. Here we’ve found nothing but these four huts in an entire day’s journey. And no more, as far as the eye can see.’

‘You’re right. Perhaps the land is inhospitable, perhaps it is infested with wild beasts. Perhaps the people who lived here were driven away by famine or killed off by a plague. Man persists in living everywhere, even if the earth doesn’t want him. Do you know that there are men who inhabit the great sands, where not a blade of grass grows? And men that live in lands covered with ice? But the earth, sooner or later, frees itself of men like a dog scratches off fleas. Perhaps it is best that we rest now. Tomorrow morning we will have to start off for the ships before dawn, or your king will set off looking for us and get all of us into a fine mess.’

‘What about our comrades out there on the plain? They have no shelter; they’ll die of cold when the frost sets in.’

‘I’ll go tell them to come here with us. There’s plenty of room.’

‘No,’ said Myrsilus. ‘Someone must remain outside the village in case something happens.’

‘I understand,’ said the
Chnan
. ‘I’ll go . . .’ He took a pile of pelts from one of the corners and stole away, disappearing into the darkness. He returned not long after. The Trojan camp was lit up by a few scattered fires. The village was just barely illuminated by the ash-covered embers that still burned in the centre of the main clearing.

As he groped around for the entrance to the hut, he felt a heavy hand fall on his shoulder. He spun around and saw that it was one of the women who had looked with longing at the goods he had set out. No one had offered to exchange pelts or food for an amber-beaded clasp for her. But she knew she had something even more precious that perhaps the foreign merchant would appreciate: herself. Tall and buxom, her blonde hair fell loose on her shoulders and a leather cord decorated with bits of bone adorned her white neck.

She smiled at him and the
Chnan
smiled back. Small and dark he was, and with his short, curly hair he seemed like little more than a boy next to her. She slipped a hand under his tunic to feel for a trinket that she liked, taking his right hand at the same time and placing it on her breast. The
Chnan
was flooded by a heat he had not felt since he had left his land; he felt like a boy reaching out to gather ripe clusters of grapes from the vine. He put his other hand under her gown and he realized she wore nothing underneath; it was like caressing the soft down of a newborn lamb. He kissed her avidly, and it felt like sucking a honeycomb at high noon in the fragrant mountains of Lebanon.

She left him leaning against the wall of the hut, exhausted, walking away with the supple, solemn roll of a mare and the
Chnan
realized that he had made the best deal of his entire life. Even if she had carried away all the wealth he had laced under his tunic, what he had had in exchange was worth as much as a herd of horses, as a load of cedar wood, as a caravan of mules laden with all the copper in Sinai.

He entered the hut and by the dim light of a wick stuck in tallow took stock of what was left to him. Oh virtuous woman! The girl had taken nothing but a clasp with three beads of coloured glass, one yellow, one red and one white, streaked blue. In the dark her fingers had recognized what her eyes had desired by the light of sunset.

‘Did you see them?’ asked Myrsilus’s voice in the dark.

‘I did not see much but I felt the earth shake . . .’ answered the
Chnan
as if talking in his sleep.

Two hard, woody hands threw him against the wall. ‘I asked you if you’d seen our comrades,’ repeated Myrsilus, and his voice was a low growl.

The
Chnan
regained his wits: ‘I did see them and they were dying of cold. Now they’re fine. Better than before, without a doubt. Calm down, warrior, let us get some sleep as well.’

Myrsilus was placated and lay down once again on his mat, pulling up a cover made of sheepskins sewn together. The warmth was soothing, and sleep descended rapidly on his eyelids, but he was soon saddened by anguished dreams. He realized that he had left his homeland for a cold, muddy place where the sky and the ground were always sodden, as if it had just rained or were about to rain. Even his king was changing; he was shedding his splendour with each passing day. The days of Ilium were distant, as if centuries had passed since they had left the shores of the Hellespont.

It was the
Chnan
who woke him, shortly before dawn. They took their things and left without making a sound. At their backs, a pale sun illuminated a group of hills that rose from the plains like islands in the sea. Myrsilus had not noticed them before, and he had the sensation that they had emerged overnight. And perhaps that is what happened.

They reached their comrades outside the village and they took the road of return towards the sea.

‘The Trojans are not alone,’ said the
Chnan
abruptly. ‘There are others with them, who followed them across the sea.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Myrsilus.

‘I had awoken before you. I wanted to say farewell to a girl; I owed her a gift. She’s the one who told me.’

‘Who are these people?’

‘
Enet
, I think. They’re called
Enet
.’

Myrsilus continued on his way for a while without speaking, as if he were trying to recall something.

‘Enetians,’ he said.

‘What?’ asked the
Chnan.

‘Perhaps they are Enetians. A nation allied with the Trojans. Fine combatants, both with spears and with bows. They were almost always drawn up on the left wing; they faced the Cretans of King Idomeneus and Ulysses’s Cephallenians. I never met them myself. I wonder what they’re doing here. And I also wonder why they’re with the Trojans. The gods are truly persecuting us; they have cursed us.’

‘Don’t you know how many peoples have abandoned their settlements in these past years? Didn’t you ever notice those strange lights in the sky when we were out to sea? No man alive has ever heard of or seen such a thing, I’m certain of it. And I’m sure that all this means something, although I don’t know what.’

‘If only the seer Calchas were with us!’ said Myrsilus. ‘He would know how to interpret these signs, and he would know what they meant.’

They journeyed that whole day without seeing a soul, and towards evening came within sight of their camp. Myrsilus reported to the king, telling him everything they had seen without making mention of the Trojans. He did not want to march back inland and start up a war again that he hoped finished for ever. He could not know that it was only a sign, and that a man can not escape the destiny that the gods have placed on his scale.

His comrades offered the food given to them by the villagers and someone lit a fire for their evening meal. There were fish from the sea as well, and partridges and teals that some of the men had downed with their bows.

The sun was setting over the plain and a mist was rising from the ground, looking something like a cloud, a milky foam crossed by whitish streaks. It veiled the sun, and everything that was near the ground was swallowed up within it. The men looked around in dismay. Not even the king, Diomedes the hero, knew what to do or what to tell them.

After a while, only the tips of the tallest poplars emerged from that shapeless expanse that fluttered like a veil. Sounds were muffled and even the birds called to each other with weak laments. A heron, passing over their heads in slow, solemn flight, vanished all at once into the void.

‘What is this?’ the king asked the
Chnan
. ‘You who have seen so many lands, can you tell me what this is?’

‘I’ve never seen anything like this,
wanax
,’ said the
Chnan
, ‘but I think it may be a cloud. I have met men who come from the land of the
Urartu
where the mountains pierce the clouds, and they have told me that it is like this inside a cloud. But I cannot explain why the clouds weigh on the ground in this land instead of sailing in the sky. It is a strange land indeed.’

When darkness fell nothing could be seen at all, and the men stayed very close together for fear of losing their bearings, and kept the fire burning that whole night. Diomedes thought that that land must be similar to Hades, and perhaps he believed that he had truly reached the limits of the other world, but he neither trembled nor sought to flee. He knew that only heroes and Zeus’s favoured sons can face that which is impossible for all others.

He lay down on his bearskin and covered himself with a fleece. Myrsilus slept nearby.

At dawn the next day, Diomedes gave orders to set sail and the fleet began to navigate slowly through the mist that steamed on the surface of the water, amidst the cane thickets on the shore and the little woody islands that cropped up on the sea.

They advanced in this way for most of the day, when suddenly, they all thought they had heard calls of some sort.

‘What was that?’ asked the men at the oars.

‘I don’t know, but it’s best to stop,’ replied Myrsilus.

The king agreed and went to the bow to scan the foggy expanse in front of them. The other ships stopped as well and the splashing of the oars ceased. In that complete silence, the calls sounded more clearly and then long rostrated ships emerged from the mist slowly, like ghosts. A standard with the head of a lion stood tall at one of the bows, and a red cloth hung loose on the mast.

Telephus, the Hittite slave, approached the king. ‘
Peleset
pirates,’ he said. ‘They must have got lost in this accursed cloud. Let’s hope they don’t attack us.’

‘Why?’ said the king. ‘I do not fear them.’