The Odyssey Read online

  ‘Sir!’ cried Odysseus, struggling to keep the terror out of his voice. ‘Where did you learn your manners? From the scum of Troy? Everyone knows that the gods frown on the man who shows unkindness to his guests!’

  ‘Nobody frowns on Polyphemus,’ said the Cyclops, tapping his hairy chest. ‘My father’s a god! I can do what I like.’ He began counting them with an outstretched finger, and licking his hairy lips. ‘Hmmm. Are there any more of you outside? Where did you come from? Did you come out of a hole in the ground like ants, or did you fly down from the sky?’

  Made brave by fury, one man began to say, ‘We came off the sea in warships, with swords and spears aboard, and yes, there are plenty of good men who –’

  ‘– who would be here now if they had not been wrecked and drowned on the rocks,’ said Odysseus quickly, to protect the five hundred waiting in ignorance on the little island offshore. (Better fifty should be lost than five hundred and fifty.)

  ‘And who are you, skinny one?’ said the Cyclops, walking his fingertips across the floor towards Odysseus.

  For a moment he was tempted to throw back his head and declare, ‘I am Odysseus, King of Ithaca, hero of Troy, whose deeds are spoken of by poets and whose kingdom encompasses Cephalonia and wooded Zanthe.’ But Odysseus said instead, ‘My family name is Atall, but I was the sorrow of my mother and my father’s shame. So small am I of stature that my parents called me No-Body. What pride could you take in such a prisoner? Now roll back the boulder and let us go, or I won’t give you the present I brought with me to your cave.’

  ‘Present? What present? I like presents! Want a present! Give me a present! Give me, and I won’t eat you, No-Body – promise, promise, promise!’ said the Cyclops, thumping his fists on the floor.

  ‘Very well. Since you ask so graciously. Men! Fetch out the amphora.’

  Greeks crawled out from every corner of the cave, sobbing with fright. They had no wish to give the Cyclops so much as a smell of their sweat. But they trusted their captain and they heaved the stone wine jar out of the shadows.

  ‘Boo, is that all? I’ve got wine of my own,’ snarled Polyphemus.

  ‘Not like this, you haven’t.’

  So Polyphemus broke off the neck of the amphora and took a swig. ‘Mmm. Fair.’

  ‘The flavour settles to the bottom,’ said Odysseus keenly. ‘The first taste is good, but the last dregs are best.’

  So Polyphemus drank it all, and he had to agree that the more he drank, the happier he grew until, when the amphora was empty, he was so happy that his brains were like melted butter and his words as scrambled as eggs. ‘’Sgood present, No-Body. Likit. Polyphemush shleepnow. Alsho sheep shleepnow – baahaha! Morningtime eachew, No-Body!’

  ‘Eachew?’ inquired Odysseus, hoping he had misunderstood.

  ‘No, shilly. Can’t eat me! Eachew!’

  ‘But you promised!’ cried Odysseus indignantly.

  ‘I lied,’ said Polyphemus, with a beaming smile, before falling backwards unconscious.

  For a moment there was silence – then a general rush for the doorway and a great heaving against the boulder.

  It was futile. The men fell exhausted to their knees and wept openly.

  ‘We’re done for, captain. It didn’t work. Your plan didn’t work.’

  ‘My plan has only just begun,’ said Odysseus from the rear of the cave where he had stood to watch them struggle with the boulder. ‘Who has a knife with him? Help me work this oar to a point – and quickly! The drink won’t keep our hospitable friend asleep for too many hours.’

  With knives, and flints off the floor of the cave, they whittled at the rounded end of one of the oars by which they had carried the wine jar. When it was worked to a point, they laid it in the dying embers of the fire. And when it was glowing hot and ready to burst into flames, they tempered it, hard as metal, by splashing it with milk from the ewe-sheep. Again they laid it in the fire. By the time it was glowing white-hot, the darkest, latest hour of the night had begun, and the monstrous Cyclops was beginning to stir.

  Men who had charged the brass gates of Troy once more stood side by side, the sharpened oar resting on their shoulders like a battering ram. Odysseus was nearest the glowing point. He gave the word to run forward. He aimed the oar. He guided the point into the opening eye of the waking Cyclops. But he and all his men fell back from the noise which followed.

  Polyphemus arched his back and clawed at them and at the pain in his head. He took hold of the quivering oar, and wrenched it out of his tormented face and hurled it. The sheep scattered in terror. The Greeks threw themselves on their faces and prayed to the gods. The Cyclops’ screams clamoured in the cave like the clapper in a bell – rattled the cave in its cliff-face. Landslides crumbled into the sea below.

  Other Cyclopses were brought from their beds – men and women all as vast as trees – crashing about in the outer darkness, hurrying to the aid of their neighbour. ‘What is it, Polyphemus? Who’s in there with you?’

  The cry came back: ‘No-Body! No-Body Atall has hurt me. No-Body Atall is in here. Oh, someone tell my father! No-Body Atall has blinded me!’

  The Cyclopses peered at each other in the moonlessness. ‘Well, that’s all right then. A nightmare obviously. We’re glad to hear it, Polyphemus! Peace be on your eyelid till morning!’ And away they went, a little bad-tempered at having been roused up for no purpose.

  When Polyphemus heard them go, he lapsed into a terrible silence, staring about him at the unutterable darkness of his everlasting night. At last he said, ‘Your plan has failed, No-Body. I am not dead. But you and your comrades will never leave this cave alive!’

  Outside, the night sky turned pale with fear. It was morning. But no sunlight creeping in round the massive boulder told Polyphemus that it was daytime – only the bleating of his sheep. ‘Oh, my woolly ones! You want to be out in the daylight. Of course you do. Don’t I know, better than any of you, how to long for the sunlight? It’s gone! I’ll never see it again. I’ll never see anything again. Blind! Oh, you gods! To be blind for ever! The sea’s blue is nothing but a noise. The grass’s green is nothing but a wetness underfoot. Oh my dear, happy, ignorant little sheep! If only you could speak and tell me where those Greeks are hiding. I’d pull them like wishbones. I’d have them die twenty times over in the killing of them!’

  Feeling the contours of the familiar boulder which stoppered up his cave, he put his shoulder to it and rolled it aside. But he sat himself in the very centre of the doorway, with his hands spread to either side, so that no loathsome Greek should pass him alive. The sun warmed his back and his sheep pushed forward, bleating. ‘Slowly, now. Quietly, my little loves,’ said the Cyclops tenderly. ‘It would never do for the villains to get by me by clinging to your fleece.’ And he felt along their backs and along their fleecy sides before he let them pass.

  Little did he realize that Odysseus had roped the ewes together in threes, and that underneath each centre sheep a man clung on for his life.

  Soon all the sheep but one had passed Polyphemus. Only the big old ram remained, with Odysseus himself clinging beneath its belly. As it passed the Cyclops, he took hold of its head in his two great hands, and wept from his lost eye. ‘Oh, my old mate. My dear old friend and companion. Would to the gods you could speak and describe the beauty and the wildness of the world. What use am I to you now? Can I milk your ewes or guide you to the pasturelands? I shall have to give you to my worthless neighbours – the scum who left me in agony last night and never came to my aid. Oh, woolly one! I’m sorry! You’ll never, never know how sorry I am!’

  At last he let the ram pass by, and Odysseus dropped on to his back on the rough cliff path. He took to his heels and ran after his men, gathered by now on the beach below. They were wrestling the sheep into their fast, black ship: food for the voyage.

  They pushed off. They bent across their oars. The sea rose white beneath the prow. Their course lay past the cliff pitted with caves – right below t
he cave-mouth where Polyphemus sat feeling about for his enemies. The memory of his two dead companions galled Odysseus: he could not unfix his eyes from the huge, hairy back of the weeping Cyclops. All at once he got to his feet and roared, ‘I am Odysseus, Polyphemus. I am Odysseus, hero of Troy, and my kingdom encompasses Ithaca, Cephalonia and wooded Zanthe! It was I who blinded you, and the poets will one day praise me for it in songs of sixty verses!’

  The men at their oars stared at him in disbelief. Even his mascot, his own cockerel, pecked him in the arm. But Odysseus was unrepentant. ‘What harm can it do?’ he blared. ‘There’s no one but a blind Cyclops to hear me – ha, ha, ha!’

  Polyphemus heard the taunt and rose to his knees, then to his feet. He cocked his ear towards the sound of Odysseus’ voice. He picked up the boulder from the opening of his cave and raised it over his head. Before he let it go, he raised his blinded face to the heat of the sun and bawled, ‘Father! You God of the Oceans! Poseidon, God of the Sea – hear my curse! See what Odysseus, King of Ithaca, has done to your son! Hate him with all the heat of the Earth’s core – as I do! Hate him with all the unforgivingness of the Earth’s icy peaks – as I do! Curse him as I curse him! Avenge me, for I am powerless to be avenged!’ And he hurled the boulder.

  It hit the water a fraction behind the stern post, and the wave it raised lifted the boat like a hand and thrust it forward, gouging a furrow through the sea. Headlong they hit the little offshore island. Keel-long the boat split, spilling the rowers on to the silver shingle. Odysseus, as he rolled clear, laughed out loud and kicked his feet in the air. ‘So much for the curses of a Cyclops!’ he snorted as his crew of five hundred and more gathered round him, slaughtering the captured sheep.

  But of those who had escaped from the cave, not one laughed and not one congratulated him. Two of their comrades were dead – eaten by the Cyclops – and Polyphemus had cursed them.

  Odysseus scowled and lay on his back, looking up at the sunny morning sky. ‘Poseidon, did he say?’ whispered a voice over his heart. ‘Are we to be cursed by Poseidon, the god of the sea?’

  And somewhere in the ocean’s well, the cries of Polyphemus set the electric rays trembling and the jaws of clams agape. ‘Polyphemus is blinded!’ they cried. ‘A curse on Odysseus and on all his men!’

  3

  The Brass Island and the Bag of Winds

  At first it was just a dazzle on the horizon, a flash too bright for the eyes. Then they began to make out its shape.

  ‘Land!’ cried the look-out.

  ‘No, a ship, surely?’

  ‘An island.’

  ‘A city!’

  Aeolia was all of those things. It rose out of the sea like a great inverted brass bucket – floating, bobbing, bound about with brass cliffs as high as the walls of Troy. Only a single white line of caked sea-salt stained its shining, polished sides. There was not a ladder, a rung or a foothold. As they sailed alongside, they could see their own faces – a strange sight after ten years spent living in battle tents. While they groomed their beards and hair, Odysseus cupped his hands about his mouth and hailed the people of Aeolia.

  Right beside him, a wirework basket, woven in the shape of a house martin’s nest, dropped down on the end of a brass chain. An arm was beckoning from the rim of the high brass wall. Without a moment’s hesitation, Odysseus leapt inside. ‘At the first sign of trouble, push off and get well away. Polites is in command if I don’t return.’ As he spoke, the basket was hauled up.

  When he reached the top, two hands helped him out of the basket. They were soft hands, heavy with jewels. ‘Welcome! Welcome to Aeolia, stranger. Come and dine with me and my family. Shall I fetch up your men or send food and drink down to them? The rules of hospitality command that I give you everything you need.’

  ‘Your kindness does you credit, sir,’ said Odysseus, and introduced himself modestly enough.

  ‘Odysseus? But I have heard so much about you! Every ship that passes brings some new news of Troy and its heroes, and your name is always mentioned. But the war is over. What are you doing so far from your three-island kingdom? The King of Aeolia was hungry for news: he gobbled it down like food and drink, and Odysseus quickly understood why.

  In the dining hall, all the people of Aeolia were gathered: the King’s Queen, his six sons, six daughters, and a handful of servants. Like two teams of chessmen, they faced each other across the shiny tiled floor, and a tinkling music resounded over their heads where strings of seashells jostled in the breeze.

  Odysseus sent word to his men that they were in safe hands. But seeing the great shortage of chairs and the one dining table, he insisted they stay in the ships below to eat and drink all the good things King Aeolus sent down to them. How they dined! All evening and all night they ate, until the eleven black ships sat low in the water and the sailors slept over their oars.

  High above, there was no sleep for Odysseus. To satisfy the endless curiosity of the King, he had to recount all his exploits of bravery in the wars, all his adventures since leaving Ithaca. The ruler of this floating castle, this drifting kingdom, had never set foot on the shore of the O-round sea, and he lived for the gossip of sailors.

  Odysseus said, ‘You must come to Ithaca some day and let me repay your hospitality.’ But then the King’s features froze, and all of a sudden the beautiful brass city of Aeolia seemed like a prison.

  ‘Oh, we never leave the city. We have everything we need here. I’ve married my sons to my daughters so that they need never leave home, and travellers like you tell us stories of the world. What more do we need? … Enough! Come with me. I have a present for you.’

  He took Odysseus by the wrist and led him through brass corridors to a steely room locked with a golden key. Inside it was a single bag fastened with seven cords. But it was a bag such as the god Helios might have sewn out of the hides of his own cattle – a skin bag with seven seams, neither round nor square, but writhing slightly where it lay. Something was inside it. While servants carried the bag up to the roof of Aeolia, the King explained. ‘Last week, Zeus the Almighty, Father of all the gods, quarrelled with Poseidon, the Sea God. To punish him, Zeus confiscated from him the eight winds of the world, and put them in my safe-keeping for five days. The five days are up, but before I give Poseidon back his winds, why don’t I lend them to you, my dear Odysseus? I shall set just one free – the soft westerly breeze that will carry you home to Ithaca. If you keep all the rest safely penned up in the bag, they can’t hold you back or endanger you with storms and rough seas.’

  Up on the roof, he eased the cords a fraction and thrust in his arm, right up to the elbow. His clothes billowed: he was almost lifted off the floor. But at last he pulled out a white rag of a thing – a corner of a westerly breeze. Seven servants hauled on the seven cords to shut the bag again.

  ‘Go with my blessing, Odysseus, and with a full sail. No need to row – only to keep a straight tiller and watch out for the shores of your homeland.’

  Odysseus was lowered down with the bag into his own ship, where he found his men struggling to raise the sails and catch the favourable breezes. ‘No hurry, men. There’s plenty to carry us all the way home. Stand away from the tiller. I mean to steer this little fleet of ours all the way into the harbour below Pelicata Palace!’

  ‘What’s in the bag, captain?’

  ‘Treasure!’ declared Odysseus delightedly. ‘The best present any host could have given to a weary traveller. Nobody touch it, you hear?’

  And foolishly, that was all he said.

  He stood at the tiller with one foot resting on the wriggling bag of winds, and he looked into the distance, thinking of his wife and his little son and his three-island home.

  The royal family of Aeolia waved from the parapets of their brass home – a lonely sight for all their wealth – drifting for ever in the heart of the sea. Soon Aeolia was nothing but a flash too bright for the eye, away on the distant horizon.

  ‘What is it, do you suppose?’
whispered Eurylochus to the man alongside him. (The man shrugged.) ‘He said it was treasure – and we’re not to lay hands on it. That’s how kings share their winnings, is it? No wonder he left us down in the ships while he went up into that brass treasure-chest of a place. The King gave him some gold, or jewels or some such, and he’s keeping it to himself. Ten years we fought alongside him, and this is how he repays us. Look at him: he won’t take his foot off that sack.’ Again the man beside Eurylochus shrugged, then, resting his forehead on his arms, he went to sleep across his oar.

  But for ten days and nights Eurylochus kept wondering, kept asking his unanswerable questions of the men around him. He did not dare to ask Odysseus outright. There was a better way to find out the truth. He had only to wait, and Odysseus would fall asleep; night and day he stood at the tiller with his foot on the sack, and would not leave it even to snatch an hour’s rest. The rest of the crews were well-rested, however, when the hills of wooded Zanthe came into view, and seaweed off the beaches of Cephalonia and Ithaca itself drifted by. People on the foreshore mending nets shielded their eyes and looked out to sea at the approaching ships. Then Odysseus felt safe at last. ‘Someone take this tiller. I must sleep. I can’t stay awake another moment.’

  Eurylochus leapt the length of the boat, all smiles, all helpfulness. ‘Let me, captain.’ He took the tiller and watched Odysseus curl up against the cowhide flank of the bag. And while other men were standing up, exclaiming and pointing out the familiar landmarks of home, Eurylochus eased just one of the seven fastening cords beside Odysseus’ sleeping head.

  The people on the shore rubbed their eyes. They thought they had spotted a fleet of black ships, but now there was nothing but a funnel of water gouged out of the sea like the core of an apple. Above it the sky filled with rainclouds, and the whole plain of the ocean was crumpled into mountainous waves. Spray blanked out the horizon.