Penelope and Ulysses (16 page)

your trap.

Soon you will come into it

and I will spring it shut on you.

We will marry. You will have no choice.

I will stir the hearts of the other men.

I will stir their doubts and I will enrage them

over you tricking them with the tapestry.

You will be forced to choose

or be conquered by all of us.

Penelope, you will marry me.

I will have to put Agathy to death

for his improper sexual advances towards you.

The other suitors will leave Ithaca,

and I will send you to my home

as a gift to my family—as a servant.

At some time in the future,

you and your poetic son

will join Ulysses on the sea.

We will find your drowned bodies.

I will grieve for this loss of you, my wife,

and the loss of Telemachus,

since the world will believe I loved him,

as the son I never had.

I will gain Ithaca and the regions around for trade

and I will be a most respected

and reverenced senior leader,

one who will not be questioned

when others leave me to the personal tragedy

of losing my wife.

As for Ulysses, if he does come back

he will have to face Penelope’s betrayal,

the loss of his son, and my army

will quickly put the spear of departure to his heels.

What a catastrophe!

Three wasted lives!

But the three deaths will make my life permanent

in privileges and wealth.

I will be powerful, respected, and admired.

The world will say, “Look at noble Petroculos.

He has lost so much.

Life has been unkind to him

and yet he continues to conduct himself

with human integrity

and the actions of a selfless man

in the service of his country.”

Act VI
Telemachus
 

Colours of Twilight

[TELEMACHUS
is
a
young
man,
about
twenty-five,
tall
and
graceful.
He
has
his
mother’s
auburn
hair
and
light
skin,
with
piercing
blue
eyes.
He
is
soft
spoken
and
gives
the
appearance
of
being
thoughtful
and
learned
in
the
arts
of
music,
poetry,
and
philosophy.
He
enters
his
mother’s
chambers:
the
secret
room,
which
the
suitors
have
not
seen,
the
chambers
that
belong
to
Penelope
and
Ulysses
with
the
tree
and
the
carvings.
PENELOPE
is
at
her
tapestry.
TELEMACHUS
enters
.]

TELEMACHUS: Mother, how can you stay at that tapestry

when there is so much uncertainty in our lives?

PENELOPE: Life is certain. Death is certain.

It is the ways of man

and the way he conducts himself

that bring about uncertainty, not only to his life

but to all other lives around him.

It is man who brings uncertainty

with his conquest and domination,

the controlling and confinement

of all other lives around him.

How do you dispense uncertainty?

You think, you organise.

You plan and you act in the face of uncertainty.

You affirm life, my son.

Say
yes
to life.

The uncertainty that you speak about

becomes a cancer that destroys

the passion and affirmation in a man.

TELEMACHUS: What do you want me to do?

All these years you have been preoccupied

with these threads that you put in during the day

and undo at night.

I have seen you embroider my father’s ship

on the canvas during the day

only to see you undo it at night.

PENELOPE: I sail with him at night,

and during the day I hide him from others.

TELEMACHUS: I do not know what to do.

I fear to act and I fear not to act.

Whichever way I decide

will bring turmoil and further uncertainty.

PENELOPE: These past ten years it is this tapestry

and my desire to do the right thing for my lost husband,

for your shipwrecked father,

that has given us more time.

I have conducted myself

as a woman of the law

and that is why those out there

have not broken the law with violence or murder.

TELEMACHUS: But they will break the law!

We do not have much time.

The hunters have thrown the net

of our captivity.

You have managed to find something

within the law

that has given us more time,

but not anymore.

We have run out of threads,

and the men outside

are coiling and coiling

the black thread of our fate

around and around our ankles,

and they will pull and pull

until we fall.

Our time is running out.

PENELOPE: I sense it too.

I see the net of our captivity becoming tighter;

our world is getting smaller.

TELEMACHUS: I know you cannot agree to marry any of them.

They are wolves, wild dogs, and jackals.

They all want to steal what belongs to Ulysses.

Those men out there want to hunt and kill you.

They haven’t driven you insane,

or maybe that will be the last lie

that they invent about you, mother—

that you have gone insane

with your longing and grief for my father,

and therefore they had to take over our region.

PENELOPE: They will not declare me mad

because they want to show to the world

that they have married a sane woman.

They want me sane.

As Agamemnon wanted the cunning intellect of your father,

these men want my intellect and prestige.

They will not declare me mad.

I am their prize.

TELEMACHUS: They will kill you after they have wed you.

PENELOPE: I will not wed any of them.

It has never been a moral right,

or a right within the law, that they be here.

TELEMACHUS: Mother, beloved mother. They are pulling in the nets!

PENELOPE: My son you must leave.

TELEMACHUS: Leave without you?

The one who has kept me alive and sane all these years?

The one who has planned and plotted

against the armies of conquerors

with only your determination

and those cursed and blessed threads.

I could never leave you!

PENELOPE: You must leave.

You must harden your heart

and abandon me to my fate.

TELEMACHUS: I will not do this,

not even for you, mother.

I love you, and I will not abandon you

in the crisis of our lives.

I do not have this metal will or stone heart.

What you ask me to do

takes a different kind of ruthless courage.

I do not have such courage.

I am caught mother,

like a freshly caught creature.

And all the tensions of uncertainty

pull like hooks in my chest.

I am caught and I cannot act,

for whatever way I act

it will bring betrayal and death.

Tell me, mother,

was my father a great warrior?

PENELOPE: Yes, he was,

and he taught me the skill of the sword

to protect you or him in such a critical time.

Yes, your father was such a man who would strike,

and yes he was stained with other men’s blood.

TELEMACHUS: I love my father,

but I do not have his heart

to pick up a sword and fight.

I question and seek what is hidden from me.

I am continually in the quest

to find the missing parts of me in the hidden.

My actions are uncertain

because my heart loves

and cannot take the life of another.

All my actions suffer from this sadness in my heart.

And therefore I miss my target.

I was an archer in life,

but I missed my target, Mother.

PENELOPE: You will leave and you will leave tonight.

TELEMACHUS: If I left, you will be killed

by whoever you choose.

If I stay, we both will be killed.

I will probably be the sacrifice on your wedding.

My blood will stain your marriage bed.

I can’t leave you alone in this crisis,

and at the same time I cannot protect you.

I have thought about this, Mother.

I have spent many nights awake,

soaking in my sweat at our fate and final outcome.

I cannot leave you.

PENELOPE: Go and search for your father.

If I am to die at the hands of either the wolf or jackal,

I would rather die knowing

that you have escaped their nets.

Your father did not have a choice.

Either he went or all of us would have been killed.

You must learn to depend on your intuition,

your intellect, and your blood affirmation.

My son, my son.

You will leave and you will leave tonight.

I am begging you. [
drops
to
her
knees
]

I am on my knees. Save yourself.

You are all truth and beauty to me.

Save this seed in you

and leave me to my choices and fate.

TELEMACHUS: No, no, no! I will not leave!

And as the blade falls,

I will see my father and you welcoming me home.

[
They
hold
each
other
and
weep
.]

PENELOPE: It has come to this.

I plead with you, my son.

You can only save me by saving yourself.

You must leave and find your father and his men.

You must organise to take back

what these men seem to have made their own,

because they have found a back door in the law.

TELEMACHUS: I have thought many times

to cut them with my sword while they slept:

one by one, the young, and the old.

When I pick up my father’s sword,

such a weight and burden comes upon my soul,

and I freeze. Mother, I freeze—

not with fear or doubt

but with the knowledge that this blade

has gutted and disembowelled the lives of other men.

And yet . . . although I realise

that I would be in the right to kill them in their sleep,

I do not have the might to spill another man’s blood

into the thirsty earth.

And I well realise

that I cannot kill them while they are awake.

I do not have their training, age, or skill.

I question the structure of appearance

and the shifting and changing masks

of the taught things.

I question my place and role in all this disaster.

PENELOPE: Listen, I can hear noises outside.

Are they organising themselves?

I will give my answer to Petroculos,

to gain some more time while you escape.

TELEMACHUS: Do you mean to tell me

that you will marry this man?

He is a jackal.

I have watched him with the others.

He always speaks wisely and yet

seeks every opportunity to gain power for himself.

He has become friends with Agathy.

I have more than once seen them talking together.

I do not think they are speaking

about poetry or philosophy

and since they have nothing in common,

they are probably planning our fate together.

If you choose Petroculos, we are dead.

He will arrange an accident for us.

PENELOPE: I choose my husband Ulysses in life.

I choose Ulysses in death.

TELEMACHUS: Petroculos is planning something.

He is not going to wait anymore.

How did you manage to stay alive so long?

Have you never suffered fear?

PENELOPE: I suffer from the inquisition of my soul.

I suffer from fear of not being able to keep you alive.

This fear is with me all the time.

My desire is to keep you alive.

I do not fear these men’s betrayals.

They cannot remove what is mine or of me.

The worst thing a man can do in his life

is not to have lived it,

and you can only live your life by being in it,

facing all your struggles and fears,

and then—Telemachus—asking for more.

The deeper you get, the more you find of yourself.

The more you live in safety and security

—the world of mediocrity—

the less you have of what gives meaning to life:

deep longing and deep love.

You listen to me: whatever happens here

—and expect the worst—

you
will
leave.

TELEMACHUS: I will not leave you here alone.

And yet you cannot come with me.

I am torn between you and my father,