The Odyssey Read online

  Odysseus drew his silver-studded sword and took three paces down the ship towards Eurylochus. But the hands of his other men clasped him round the knees. ‘He’s right, captain! We’re tired! Zeus knows how tired we are! Why shouldn’t we put in at the Island of the Sun? Give us a reason, at least!’

  ‘Death and destruction! Are they reasons enough for you?’

  ‘What? Monsters? Cannibals? Lotus-eaters? Wolves or bears or Trojans?’

  ‘Cows!’ snapped Odysseus peevishly, and suddenly the whole ship burst out laughing.

  ‘Cows!’

  ‘Cows!’

  ‘Moo-hoo-hoo! Ferocious cows!’

  Odysseus gave a hiss of exasperation and turned his back on them all and went to the prow. The steersman swung the tiller and the red-prowed ship heeled round towards the Island of the Sun.

  They put ashore by the light of lightning, lashed the sail like a tarpaulin across the open boat, and sheltered from the torrential rain. The island itself had no shelter – no farmhouse or ruin, no fisherman’s shack or cave or magical villa. It was a miry acre of couch grass and thorn bushes. The Cattle of the Sun munched incessantly on the coarse grasses and their long horns clattered together with a hollow, tuneless music. Their red hides streamed with rain, and their velvety nostrils blew bubbles in the pools of rainwater.

  Odysseus explained then that Teiresias had forbidden the killing of the Cattle, and the men nodded impatiently. Where was the need to kill the sleek, wet cows? Circe had given them bread, raisins, cheese and pomegranates enough for the voyage. They chewed and baled and baled and chewed and still the rain soaked them through and the wind chilled them. It was a new wind, too.

  It was Poseidon’s wind. It blew across the Island of the Sun like a razor across a stubbly chin – not towards Ithaca and home but towards Charybdis and Scylla and the Clashing Rocks. The men grew more and more surly. ‘You wanted us to keep sailing. We’d be fish food by now if we’d listened to you!’ Odysseus said nothing, but wrung the rainwater out of his beard and stared out to sea.

  A week passed: their food was almost gone. The rain still rained and the wind still blew. Another week passed, and Odysseus wrung the neck of his lucky mascot, and they shared one meal of stew. The rain still rained and the wind still blew. Another week passed, and the men’s ribs showed through their skin like the frames of sagging tents. The rain still rained and the wind still blew harder still. Their hearts faltered and their courage shook, and Odysseus knew that disaster was close at hand.

  ‘What does it matter if we kill the cursed cows for meat?’ said Eurylochus finally. ‘We’re dead if we don’t!’

  ‘Don’t say that! Don’t think it!’ shouted Odysseus. ‘I’ll pray to Pallas Athene: I’ll pray to the Goddess of War who kept us safe through ten years of battles and hardships around the walls of Troy. Did she give us victory just to let us starve to death now? No! I’ll pray to Athene. Just be patient one more day! Look, the rain’s stopping even now!’ And he left them and leaned into the wind and walked to the other side of the island to pray.

  Ever since the killing of the cockerel, he had kept awake, afraid that his men might disobey his orders while he slept. The episode of the bag of winds had taught him not to doze off. But he found it difficult to pray, for every time he closed his eyes, the darkness welcomed him like a soft pillow …

  As soon as he woke he could smell the delicious smoke from roasting beef. He ran headlong, fighting his way through the wind as though it was a heavy curtain hung in his path. Too late. A half-eaten carcass rolled slowly on a spit over a sputtering fire. Not a single crew member had hesitated to cram his mouth with chunks of charred, delicious beef.

  He wrenched meat out of their hands and flung it into the surf. But they only glowered at him and cut themselves some more. Roaring and tearing at his hair, he fell on his knees and beat his forehead against the red prow. His friend Polites brought him a rib of beef and knelt down beside him. ‘Surely it’s better to face death with a full stomach, my lord. Think kindly of us.’

  ‘I love you all dearly,’ said Odysseus, pushing the rib of beef away. ‘That’s why I wanted you all to live and see Ithaca again, and your wives and children. And now! Now, even the cows are mourning our fate!’

  A loud lowing – deep and doleful – spiralled past them on the wind. It seemed to come out of the cloud of smoke which hid the spitted, roasting beef. The men one by one dropped the meat out of their hands. For the mournful mooing came not from any of the live cows (which stood in a silent circle around them) but from the carcass spitted over the fire.

  They could not get to the boat quickly enough. They ran it into the water, leaving behind the burning fire, the delicious-smelling meat, some swords and sandals and shirts and lengths of rope. They bent to their oars like men pursued by monsters, and they grunted, and ground their teeth with the exertion of rowing. The blades pecked a broken line of white foam across the sea.

  But the trail they left on the greatness of the ocean was no more than the trail of a snail across the roof of a great city. And beneath them, in the cellars of that city, the god Poseidon watched their puny progress and smiled. ‘I have you now, Odysseus. You blinded my son the Cyclops, and now I shall plunge your red-prowed ship like a little fiery stick into the eye of Charybdis!’

  Poseidon lifted his head above the waves: he pouched the winds in his cheeks and crumpled the sea’s surface between his two hands. He loosed his white-maned horses from the icy north, and he caged the rowers round with waterspouts so tall they seemed to touch Heaven. He planted his feet on the mountain peaks that rise from the sea floor and he stood, head and chest out of the sea, to shake out his blue hair.

  In the darkness they might have escaped. But when sunset came, and the Sun God, passing over his Red Island in the west, looked down and saw the roasted cow, he too swore to be avenged.

  ‘You have slaughtered one of my beasts – my red-backed beasts – my heart’s delight! I shall spit you and roast you till you bellow!’ And he laid the fiery beams of sunset across the sea and fixed the position of the little ship in the red light, neither sinking nor setting, so that there was no chance of escape under cover of darkness.

  Hemmed in by monstrous waves, the little ship was nothing but a straw blowing across the water. A dozen times it stood on its stern and seemed about to plunge, arrow-straight, to the seabed. Men were shaken from their benches like olives shaken out of a tree. They plunged into the sea and never resurfaced. The mast fell and carried with it all the ropes, stays, sailcloth and men that clung to it. A wave beat out the base boards of the boat and lifted Eurylochus bodily over the side: he cursed Odysseus as he went under.

  And Polites was sucked out through the gaping hole, his hands too wet for Odysseus to keep hold of them.

  Soon a noise louder than the howling of the wind and the laugher of Poseidon rose above the chaos: the clashing of the rocks and the roar of Charybdis. In the shadow of the cliff which overhung it, the great wheel of whirling water was just starting its downward spiral.

  The hole at its heart grew deeper by the minute, sucking into it all the floating litter of the slipping sea. Down went casks and kegs. Down went masts and ropes. Over the glassy rim went swimmers, oars and spars. Out over the gaping trough, sheer speed hurled the broken ship. It seemed to pause in midair: a single figure could be seen astride its red prow. Then the stern dropped, and it plunged downwards.

  The figure on the prow leapt into the plume of spray which hangs continuously over the monstrous Charybdis. He leapt, arms up, into the spray, and he grasped the little thorn tree that grew out of the cliff face. The tree sagged. Its withered roots writhed in the scanty soil that held them. The man’s weight seemed certain to wrench it out of the cliff and drop with it into Charybdis.

  But Odysseus had not eaten for eight days – not so much as a mouthful of beef. He had never been tall, and his stocky frame was shrunk now to skin and bone and trembling muscle. He knotted his thin legs round th
e tree and hooked his thin arms over it, and he held as still as the mantis insect that hangs on a blade of grass and waits and prays, and waits and prays.

  There under the cover of the spindrift spray, while Poseidon rolled on his back in the ocean trench and laughed, the goddess Athene answered Odysseus’ faithful prayers. She reached out an invisible hand and pressed the earth firm around the tree’s roots. She cloaked Odysseus from view in a welter of spray, and as the tide turned, and Charybdis’ spiral began to unwind, she plucked the red keel of his fast, black ship out of the spinning water.

  The whirling water slowed. The whirlpool grew shallow. Odysseus looked down and saw the keel float free of the current. He offered up thanks to the goddess Athene; he unknotted his aching legs and arms and let himself drop astride the red-painted keel. By paddling frantically through the lava-warmed water, he got out of the evil channel – out from between the two dreadful cliffs – and floated back towards the Island of the Sun.

  But surely no amount of paddling, no kicking at the water with weary feet, could have saved him from the toils of Charybdis as it began to recoil – not unless some unseen hand had sped him through the water.

  8

  Three Women Watching

  A friendly fog smothered the face of the ocean. Neither the vengeful Sun God above nor the vengeful Sea God below sighted Odysseus as he drifted to the shores of Ogygia. There he woke to find himself on a bed of fleeces, with a sea nymph’s song in his ears.

  Calypso the sea nymph had everything a nymph’s heart could desire: hives full of honey, vines bent double with grapes, olive groves and pomegranate trees, figs and carobs and freshwater springs. Her cave was no dark, damp hollow in a rock infested with crabs. It was a sunny cleft high in a flowery hillside. The floor was carpeted with woven rugs seven deep, for each time the colours faded, Calypso had others to throw across them. The walls, too, were hung with tapestries. The weaving of these was her only daily work. Indeed, Calypso wanted for nothing. Nothing, that is, but a husband.

  When Odysseus sat up and looked around him, he commented on the prettiness of the cave.

  ‘I have tried always to keep it pleasant while I waited.’

  ‘Without your nursing I would be lying dead on the beach now,’ he said. ‘I am truly grateful.’

  ‘But how could I let you die after waiting all these years?’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘Waiting for what?’ He began to feel nervous.

  ‘Waiting for you, of course, Odysseus my love. You are the husband I’ve waited for all my life. I knew you would come, and now you’ll stay with me for ever.’

  ‘But, lady! I’m married! My wife and son are waiting in my three-island kingdom of Ithaca! I must set sail today!’

  Calypso narrowed her sea-green eyes. ‘But you have no ship, husband.’

  ‘Then you must give me one – lend me one – help me to build one!’

  ‘But I have no ship, husband, and I am the only person living on this island. The trees here are my friends and subjects. They would never allow themselves to be fashioned into a ship that would take you away from me.’

  ‘But my wife …!’

  ‘Yes, my dear?’

  ‘My wife Penelope, I mean …’

  ‘… is old and wrinkled now. I will never grow old: I am immortal.’

  Then Odysseus knew how the little bird feels when it lands on lime twigs to rest and finds its feet stuck fast. He threw himself down on the fleecy bed and turned his face to the wall. Calypso smiled patiently. ‘Soon you will love me. Wait and see,’ she said cheerfully, and returned to her loom which stood by the entrance to the cave.

  Far, far across the ocean, in the white halls of Pelicata Palace, another woman was weaving. Penelope, Queen of Ithaca, looked up from her loom and stared out across the wave-striped sea. Every day she sat at her loom in the window of the palace, and every day she watched for Odysseus to sail over the horizon.

  But the only ships which came were the ships of smiling, smiling, smiling suitors. Moneyless princes and dispossessed warlords sailed in on every tide to ask for her hand. The laws of hospitality demanded that she offer them food and drink and a bed to sleep in. But the suitors never went home. They were sleeping four to a bed now. Every day they ate and drank the produce of the island, feasting and making free with Odysseus’ own clothes, Odysseus’ own weapons, Odysseus’ own chairs. Making eyes at Odysseus’ own wife!

  ‘He’s dead long since, lady. His ship went down in a storm.’

  ‘He was killed by pirates, most likely.’

  ‘Or eaten by cannibals!’

  ‘Don’t give him another thought, dear lady. Marry again and give this three-island kingdom of yours a new king.’ They talked of love, but none of them loved Penelope: their hearts were set on the golden crown of Ithaca and the island’s riches.

  ‘My husband will come back soon,’ she told them at first. ‘I feel in my heart that he is still alive. He’ll be angry to find you here, pestering me. Leave now, that’s my advice.’

  But as the months went past, she realized that they would not leave just because she advised it. ‘Go away!’ she told them. ‘I don’t want to marry any of you. I shall have only one husband in my life and that husband is Odysseus. His son Telemachus will rule the three-island kingdom after him.’

  But as the months went past, she realized that the suitors were plotting and scheming to murder Telemachus so that Odysseus, dead or alive, would have no heir.

  ‘Go away!’ she told them. ‘There’s not one of you I’d choose to marry, even if my Odysseus were dead.’

  ‘Then we’ll draw lots,’ said the suitors. ‘The man who wins shall take you for his wife, since you have no special preference.’

  Then Penelope asked herself, ‘What would Odysseus do if he were in my place? He wouldn’t let these bullies have their own way.’ And so she set up a loom in the window of Pelicata Palace, and she threaded a wide warp and she wound a heavy shuttle. ‘Hear this, you graceless men. I believe now that my husband Odysseus is dead. I will marry one of you – a man of my own choosing. But not yet. Let me weave a wedding veil and over it weep tears of mourning for my dear, dead Odysseus. When it is finished, I shall choose. Not before.’

  That night the suitors feasted more wildly than ever.

  ‘She’ll choose me!’

  ‘Never! She’s liked me all along.’

  ‘Nah! Haven’t you seen the way she looks at me?’

  ‘Why argue? Not long till that veil’s woven and we’ll know,’ they said, and broke open more of Odysseus’ wine.

  That night, when they had all drunk themselves into a stupor, Penelope left her bed and crept to the loom in the moonlit square of the window. ‘O moon who shines on me and, somewhere over the sea, shines on my dear Odysseus, too, give me light now enough to do my work.’ And she set about unpicking all but a row or two of the weaving she had done during the day. ‘Here is one wedding veil which will never be worn to a wedding,’ she said to herself. ‘Long before it’s finished, Odysseus will sail over the horizon and drive these bullies into the Underworld, like sheep into the slaughterhouse.’

  But though the friendly moon lit her work and laid a yellow path across the ocean, no red-prowed, fast, black ship sailed along the moon’s highway.

  High, high above the ocean, another woman sat watching. Like Calypso the sea nymph, and like Queen Penelope, she loved Odysseus, the hero of Troy. She had preserved his life through many battles; she had planted the little white moly flowers which were the antidote to Circe’s magic potions. She had pressed home the soil around the roots of the tree which overhangs Charybdis, and she had laid the friendly fog across the sea to hide Odysseus as he drifted helplessly on his red keel. The goddess Pallas Athene loved Odysseus, for all he was small and stocky and mortal.

  For seven interminable years she watched Calypso’s carpeted cave and saw Odysseus sit sobbing in the sun, pleading with Calypso to let him go. Every day he lit a fire and made sacrifice a
nd prayed to the gods for their help. But every god and goddess on holy Olympus’ mountain top had been forbidden to help him. The father of all gods, Zeus the Almighty, had spoken. No meddling goddess was to send a ship or carry Odysseus home on wings of magic.

  At last Athene went to her father and said, ‘Zeus! Let Odysseus continue on his way. His wife and son need him at home.’

  ‘No!’ snapped Zeus. ‘He may stay where he is – no torment, surely, to live with a sea nymph in paradise? No, I will not deny Poseidon some revenge for the blinding of his son!’

  ‘Have you heard what Calypso did today?’ Athene persisted, her head on one side. ‘She offered to make him immortal, as she is.’

  ‘She what?’

  ‘She offered him the gift of immortality if only he would love her.’

  ‘The hussy! … What did he answer?’

  ‘He refused!’ declared Athene proudly.

  Zeus gave a sigh of relief and seemed pleasantly surprised. ‘Refused immortality? He must really want to leave Calypso very much. What for, I wonder? A wife and a son and a miserable little three-island kingdom?’

  Athene waited patiently. ‘So you will consider setting him free?’

  Zeus scowled, banks of white cloud knitting over his all-seeing eyes. ‘When has one little mortal ever caused such excitement among the Immortals? In a few years he’ll be nothing but a heap of dust and drifting spirit … Very well. I’ll send and tell Calypso she must set Odysseus free. But Athene …’

  ‘Yes, dearest Father?’

  ‘No magic wings to carry him, no words of advice whispered in his ear while he sleeps, no visits to Earth to walk by his side. The man loves his wife. It would be a great mistake for any foolish goddess to fall in love with him.’

  Athene widened her warrior-grey eyes. ‘A goddess love a mortal? How could such a thing ever happen, Father dear?’

  Behind a rainbow column of the House of the Gods, Poseidon crouched, greenly out of place in the dry realm of Heaven. He dripped wet blue rain on the landscape beneath as he rubbed his hands together and bared his teeth in a smile. ‘Now I shall have you where I want you, little mortal. Soon you will wonder why you ever prayed to leave Calypso’s isle!’