Ithaca (33 page)

Odysseus is finishing his speech now. I glance over my shoulder. The beach is strewn with driftwood and seaweed, as it always is after a storm. In the distance I can see the mainland through air as sharp and clean as mountain water. Beyond the horizon I'll find Pylos. I feel my black mood lifting, shredding like sea fog to leave my mind clear. I look around at the familiar little houses, at the faces I know so well, at the mountain towering over the rooftops. It isn't that I've lost Ithaca. I've grown out of it. Perhaps it's because there's less space for me now that Odysseus has returned. But maybe I would have had to leave anyway. There's nothing new on Ithaca. Life is how it's always been. Blood deserves blood. A fighter's status grows with the nicks on his sword and the plundered gold on his arms. Men brag and boast, snarling and fighting their way to fame. A brave death, their name in the stories—that's the only glory they know, the only glory my father knows.

I know that world too. I know it, and I'm sick of it. I don't want to live by fighting. I don't want war. I don't need a Troy of my own.

Applause breaks out in the square, scattered cheers, a drumming of feet on the beaten earth. Penelope stands up to put her arm around her husband's waist. Odysseus has come home. I lie back in my chair and close my eyes, content.

The next morning we climb on board our ship to leave.

I haven't slept. Most of last night I heard my mother weeping in her room. She spent yesterday evening pleading with me,
begging, cajoling. She clutched me the way she hugged me when I was a child.

“You'll come back when I die,” Odysseus said.

“Before, I hope.”

“Perhaps.”

He's gripping the gunwale of our ship now, as Mentor's sons stow sacks of seed under the benches. Their wives look frightened, unused to the sea. The boys who are coming with us are playing around the mast. It feels like a game to them. Beyond them, on the beach, town boys are splashing each other in the water, swapping jokes with their friends who are leaving. Mentor is solemnly counting barrels of water. Eumaeus's pigs are squealing in the makeshift pen he's knocked together in the bow. Behind it, chickens are trussed up in netting stapled to the keel. It's hardly a war galley.

“The man who brought me home,” my father says, “tried to live the way you want. He sold dye made from seashells on an island in the west. A dull man with a dried-up wife and a foolish daughter. Is that what you want?”

Our stern dips as a wave rolls under it and on up the shore. There's a stiff wind blowing. It rustles sand across the beach and blows the smoke from the big house out sideways over the olive groves. I can see two forlorn white figures standing up there, on the terrace: my mother, with Eurycleia beside her. My father's talked a lot about the Phaeacians, always scornfully. I want to find them—Alcinous, Arete, and Nausicaa. To find them and trade with them. I want to ask them about the islands even farther west, where we might settle, plant our crops, and build our town.

Odysseus's hands tense on the bleached wood. He's up to his knees, wading out, not wanting to let us go.

“We're men,” he says. “We fight. No one can change that. There's no easy home for you to find. Why do you think it took
me so long to come home? Because storms blow you off course and journeys never end. Men are born wanderers. There's always another island for you to find.”

He has to let us go then. The water's too deep. Looking back, I see the islanders thronging the beach. Their fishing boats line the sand. Behind them I can see Nirito, the big house, the ashes of the pyre. My father, thigh-deep in waves, with one hand raised in farewell.

But I don't look back for long. Sun sparkles on the water, and the wind tugs urgently at our sail. Polycaste is somewhere beyond the horizon. I grip the steering oar and turn my face to the open sea.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

W
ith thanks to my agents Andrew Lownie and David Haviland, who were instrumental in helping shape the book; to Maia Larson and the brilliant team at Pegasus, who have done a wonderful job in editing it to final form; and to my old Greek teacher, Martin Hammond, who first pointed out to me that
The Odyssey
is as much about Telemachus as Odysseus.

ITHACA

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Copyright © 2016 Patrick Dillon

First Pegasus Books edition July 2016

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