The Lost Books of the Odyssey (6 page)

I go through the forest to the old highway and head toward town with my eyes open. Peasants and merchants walk past, ignoring me. They look well fed but keep their eyes on the road. I come to town and see smoke rising from every chimney and houses in good repair, whitewashed and clean. It is, however, very quiet—no doors slamming, mothers calling or children shrieking. My conviction that all is not well is cemented at the fountain, where the women get their water and stride quickly home without so much as passing the time of day. I sit down on the low wall of a corral to think about my people, who have become as timid as the knot of cattle lowing nervously behind me.

I am reminded of the village of my father-in-law Autolykos.
^*
Nevertheless, I collect myself and as it gets dark go toward what was once my hall, guided by the red
torchlight glowing from its high windows. With the ham of my fist I pound on the gate—“Open up, good people! It is Nohbdy the peddler come to deal—let me in and show me some hospitality!” The door is opened by a greasy young man with a glazed expression. His bearing suggests breeding but he barely acknowledges me, gesturing at me to follow him down the hall with a loose flick of his wrist.

We pass through the clean-swept courtyard, where cracked bones are piled against the walls. I shape my face into a mask combining greed and cringing humility and prepare myself for what I now know I will find in the great hall. On my throne Penelope lounges, taller than I remember, her presence filling the room. Young gentlemen orbit around her with vacant faces and deferential postures, lighting up when she notices them. There is no furniture except the throne and piles of matted furs strewn on the ground. It smells musky, like an animal’s den.

Penelope toys with the black hair of a lanky young man who lounges at her feet, his arm entangled in her legs, and studies me balefully while the men study her. She orders a maid to bring me meat and wine, and as I eat I say, “I have news that you will rejoice to hear, dread queen. Not a day’s journey behind me is Odysseus Laertides himself, your husband and king, returned alive after many years of suffering. His Lordship did me the honor of speaking with me and entrusted me with a message for
you—he says that the first thing he intends to do upon getting home is move his bed out of the bedroom for airing. That was all of his message, and I swear to you every word is true, or I am not Nohbdy.”

Penelope sniffs the air and smiles toothily, thanking me for my welcome but—and here she almost purrs—extremely surprising news. She regrets that her house is full tonight—I should come back tomorrow and there will be room enough. The black-haired boy, apparently a favorite, pipes up that they have no other guests, so why can’t the peddler stay, but she puts a finger to his lips. Though her movements are gentle there is a new predatory light in her eyes. As she surreptitiously sizes up the men who crowd around her, their stupid, trusting, Ithacan faces remind me of my own men, all lost, and I make a hasty goodbye, leaving sooner than is polite.

I set off into the warm night, walking briskly, not minding much where I am going so long as I put the hall out of earshot behind me. After many miles I find an abandoned shepherd’s hut, just visible from the road. I try to sleep but end up lying under my cloak for hours listening to the crickets play and the wind sigh through the branches. Every time a branch cracks I bolt upright, poised, alert, sword in my hand, holding my breath. Probably just foxes making their nocturnal rounds. I know I am being absurd. I think of Penelope’s green eyes and the mooncalf faces of her lovers. I wonder if I performed the rites properly and my men, all dead now,
have such peace as the shadow kingdom can afford. I wonder how Telemachus is doing and wish I could have seen him. By the time the moon sets I have given up on sleep and go outside to sit on the porch and stare out into the dark woods.

While I wait for dawn, my mind turns back to the one time I met my father-in-law Autolykos, lord of high peaks and deep valleys a week’s hard journey into the mountains of the mainland. Wolf song had ushered me up through the last pass and into his domain, a prosperous quiet land where the dark pines were thick up to the edges of the fields. I was picking my way along a narrow track in a dense stretch of forest when he stepped out of the trees with his daughter at his side and greeted me. A young deer, just gutted, was slung over his shoulders. He was a rangy, wild-looking man with the quiet air of one who had never been contradicted. His daughter, Penelope, was barefoot and wore a torn, ill-fitting dress that hung so awkwardly she might have just shrugged it on. There were twigs in her hair and she never smiled but even in her bare, muddy feet she walked with a careless hauteur that would have discomfited Helen. Autolykos led me through his village and down to the deep river valley where his hall was built, an old place, mostly underground, with the roots of ancient, still-living trees for pillars and a foundation. The servant was clumsy, singeing the venison and burning his fingers. As we ate, Autolykos made odd little formal stabs at conversation.
We discussed the weather (unseasonably cold for spring), the wheat (which seemed to bore him), the wars in the East (of which he knew nothing) and the migration of elk (which, finally, engaged him). He and his silent daughter ate with their hands. He watched me sidelong as I used my knife. Ithaca is not so cosmopolitan and it was the first time I had ever felt effetely civilized.

When we had washed our hands he questioned me about my family: Who was my father? My father’s father? How long had my line been kings? (He suppressed a snort when I told him five generations.) Were there heroes among them? Was there any madness, divine possession or shameful defect of person? Then he interrogated me about my island: What were the forests like? Was the hunting good? Was it far away from every other place where men lived? How well could I control my people? I painted a portrait of a line of kings who had been at the periphery of the great events of Hellas but had never permitted the slightest infringement of their prerogatives or weakening of their bloodline, and of a harsh island of many valleys, full of mists, favored by hunters, where it was easy to lose one’s way. Of the people I said they were strong-minded and though the land was poor they were not—Ithacans were steadfast, good fighters and better traders. He asked about the character of the people, their religious observances and what they feared. I sensed he was circling around something and replied that in Ithaca people minded their own business
and that in any event if I chose to give them a queen they would not only accept her but like it too. This seemed to satisfy him. He drew me up and embraced me, wishing me good luck and long life, large dominion and many children, and said that he would be gone in the morning. He smelled sharp and musky, full of spices. Then he showed me to my room, comfortable but practically a cave, and that was the last I ever saw of him.

I slept deeply that night, for all that the forest was full of movement. Sometime in the small hours Penelope came in to get me, clad only in her shift, her eyes green in the moonlight. She shook me awake and led me by the hand out into the woods. I assumed that it would be futile to ask for explanations. We went deep into the forest and all I could see in the sighing darkness were stray patches of moonlight on the pine needles.

She pulled her hand away and vanished. Entirely awake, I balanced on the balls of my feet, listening, hands out as though to feel currents in the air. I could hear motion among the trees, now here, now there. I saw a flash of green eyes. Something moved behind me and I ducked as she sprang at me, the fur on her flank brushing my shoulder. My eyes had adjusted and I caught just a glimpse of her, and she was a fine thing, so very fleet. She didn’t lunge again but stood in a patch of moonlight where I could see her face, where amusement and threat were written in equal measure, but I showed no fear and she disappeared again, coming back moments later, a
woman again, and insinuated herself into my arms. Hera
^*
was never invoked and there were neither gifts nor priests but I suppose that was when we were married.

The next day I led her out through the valley and up through the mountains and soon after we sailed for Ithaca. I brought her to my father’s house and she was gracious with her new relatives but privately complained that the place smelled like centuries of dead wood and men, though I think that really she was just homesick. To please her, I built a new house, centered around our bedroom, in which I carved our bed out of the wood of a wide-trunked, still-living olive tree, its fruits falling onto our roof each summer. She did not want it said that she was strange or that she clung to the old ways, so we kept the bed a secret, even from the servants.

The next morning I take my armor from my pack and cast away Nohbdy’s cloak and name. I find a stream and shave with my dagger. I stride into town in the center of the road, very much the master. There are no guards at the gates but a maid sees me coming and flutters inside. In the empty, newly white-washed courtyard another maid is weeping hysterically, surrounded by three others, one of whom is gripping her shoulder and speaking to her in a low, brutal whisper. They see me and fall silent, their faces blank. I go into the great hall and there is
Penelope, a head shorter than me, green-eyed and pretty in her red dress, smiling demurely. She embraces me and says all that is right and sheds a tear of happiness as the maids energetically scrub the already pristine flagstones behind her. One maid hurries past us on her way to the midden with a sack of scraps from the slaughter-room. The cloth sack is soaked through and a second maid runs behind her to wipe up the trail of red droplets.

The celebration lasts into the night and our reunion is entirely convivial. I tell Penelope about the war and my many exploits, already feeling myself becoming a bore whose only conversation is of battles long past. She seems not to notice when I skim over Circe and Calypso, and for my part I take no notice when her own history becomes light on detail. In the evening Telemachus appears, back from hunting, and greets me respectfully. I kiss him and turn his face this way and that in the light, pleased beyond words to see him.

Ithaca Town gradually comes back to life. There are a few squires inquiring into the whereabouts of their fools of sons, gone missing, and dour farmers impertinent enough to bring me dark insinuations, but they are quickly dealt with and soon there is peace. Almost overnight I cease to be the clear-eyed wanderer and undoer of men and become, as my circumstances require, the level-headed lord of a small island, settling disputes about sheep and planning with my engineer to dredge
the harbor. Penelope is attentive and I am happy to be back with her, though of course I would not tolerate the slightest insubordination, let alone infidelity.

Telemachus is an excellent young man. He can throw a javelin farther even than Achilles could and outruns his peers without breaking a sweat. He is affectionate, loyal and fiercely protective of his house. In him, the preeminence of my house and line are secure for generations, though for all my satisfaction it sometimes gives me pause to see he has his mother’s eyes.

*
The name Autolykos is usually translated “The Wolf Himself.”

*
Hera, the wife of Zeus and goddess of marriage, was always invoked at weddings.

I
n the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, “What is the way to the land of the dead?”

Circe answers, “You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off a layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle. By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes.”

I
mutilated his son, the cyclops,
^*
but he had outraged the laws of hospitality that bind both gods and men and Poseidon knew it. The waters were calm when I sailed away from that island, my spear still caked with the clotted humors of Polyphemus’s ruined eye. I needed a story, though, and the notional grudge of the sea lord was a plausible one—people are willing to attribute any amount of ill-tempered vindictiveness to the gods. Even after she forsook me I was unwilling to embarrass her.

She carried me through the war. Nestor said he had never seen a god so openly love a mortal, and I suppose it is true. So much so, in fact, that my friendships with other men were strained—more than once I overheard someone call me uncanny, and some of the Achaeans made the sign against the evil eye when I passed. But I
did not care—their fear added to my mystique and made them pliable, easy to manipulate, and anyway I had her.

She spoke to me often, manifesting as a brother warrior, or in the cry of a seagull, or in the crash of waves, or very rarely as herself, a tall severe woman with a long thin face whose skin was so pale it seemed to glow. Our discussions were mostly concrete—she would tell me not to leave my tent that night, or to seek out a certain Trojan in the fray, or what lie to tell or inanity to feign to survive the next few hours. Now and then she would be talkative and tell me what she had seen in the wider world—giants grumbling and talking rebellion among the roots of mountains, a lightning-riddled storm cloud scudding over blood-warm equatorial seas.