The Odyssey Read online

  9

  Poseidon’s Revenge

  Zeus’ messenger was an unwelcome visitor to Calypso. She wept, she stormed, she pleaded, but at last she had to submit and let Odysseus go. She allowed her trees to be felled and bound together into a raft, and she even wove a sail to hang from its mast. But all the time she coaxed and wheedled: ‘Don’t you love me just a little? What don’t you like about me? I’ll change! You could love me if only you would make the effort. I’d make you immortal. Don’t you want to be immortal? Do you want to die one day and go down into the Underworld for ever? Do you want to go out there and face Poseidon? He’ll remember you! He’ll never forgive you!’

  ‘Madam, I am very grateful to you for saving my life,’ said Odysseus, straining to push his raft into the water. ‘I shall certainly remember you for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Will you? Oh, will you really?’ She stood on tiptoe in the shallows, her hand peaked over her eyes, and waved him goodbye until his sail was no more than a white speck on the horizon. ‘He would have loved me, if only he had stayed another few weeks,’ she said to herself. Then her attention was caught by a fork of lightning which stabbed the northern ocean.

  A fork? It was a trident – the golden trident Poseidon brandishes to quell the rebellious sea beasts and tame the shark. Out of the east came a herd of sea horses, arching their foaming white manes and trampling the sea into a dented and buckled grey. Wrecked galleys and fishing boats, which had lain empty and broken on the sea floor, were scooped up now and hurled across the water.

  By the light of lightning bolts which rained down around him, Odysseus saw the frightened, colourless eyes of fishes, and the suckered arms of reaching squid. The waves that folded over him were shot through with eels and peppered with sharp barnacles and razor shells. The troughs that swallowed him were deeper and darker than Charybdis, and the currents beneath dragged him three times round the ocean like dead Hector was dragged three times round the walls of Troy.

  Then the barbs of Poseidon’s trident set the ropes alight which bound together Odysseus’ raft. The logs floated apart, smouldering, and Odysseus was thrown into the gnashing sea and swallowed, body and soul.

  He shed his sandals and heavy skirt and warrior’s sword. They dropped away beneath him into the bottomless dark. He held his breath until he felt something wind around his chest that he took for an octopus. And only then did he despair and breathe in deeply and fill his lungs with water so as to be quicker drowned.

  The water tasted like air – like sweet, fresh air! And no sea monster had hold of him. Something pale and smooth brushed against him, but it was only a girl with a fish’s tail and long strands of seaweed hair. Her scarf was round his chest, and she towed him playfully by its ends, her cheek pressed close to his. When they broke surface, the lightning illuminated a fearful reef on which the storm waves were dashing themselves into glittering clouds of spray. Odysseus too seemed bound to be broken against the razory rocks, and yet the girl continued to wriggle and giggle and tow him about in the loop of her magical scarf.

  The night was pale with weariness, but the sun was not yet up. The land beyond the reef came gradually into view, detail by detail – a gap in the reef, a steep hill, a river estuary.

  Suddenly, the sea nymph’s game was over and like a child tiring of a toy, she swam off, pulling her scarf behind her. Without its magic he was once again spluttering and floundering, half drowned by each ferocious wave. Only weary and desperate swimming brought him at last into the river. On hands and knees he crawled up the icy watercourse before pulling himself ashore and into a low tree: he was afraid of wild animals eating him from head to foot before he could even wake up.

  In the event, it was not a wild animal which woke him but a troop of girls come to wash and do their washing at the river. One took off her gown and, not seeing him, accidentally draped it over his face in hanging it from the tree. He woke in panic, dreaming he was back in Calypso’s cave, being smothered by woven carpets. In fighting off the gown, he fell out of the tree and into the river with a loud splash.

  When he spluttered to his feet, he was surrounded by young women submerged up to their shoulders, like him, and all staring with round, startled eyes. ‘How dare you, sir!’ said the tallest. ‘Were you spying on us?’

  Odysseus shook the water out of his ears. ‘Certainly not, madam! I don’t mind if I never see another young woman in all my life. They only make for trouble. Falling in love with me and so forth.’

  ‘I can’t imagine why,’ said one, with profound scorn.

  ‘Caliope, hush! The laws of hospitality demand that we should be polite to this fellow, no matter what. Do you have a name, old man?’

  ‘Old man?’ Odysseus’ jaw dropped. He scrambled out of the river and picked up a mirror which belonged to one of the girls. He did not recognize the face he saw in it. It was wrinkled and chapped by the sun and sea water. The beard and hair were grey, the eyebrows caked with salt, and the eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot. It dawned on him, too, that he was dressed only in his shirt, and that his bony, fish-nibbled knees were knocking together. He dropped the mirror. ‘Ladies! How can you ever forgive me for my behaviour? How can I ever make you believe that I am Odysseus, King of Ithaca, returning from the Trojan Wars?’

  Then all the girls but one burst out laughing. The tallest said, ‘If you were to turn your back while we got out of the river, we might just believe you were a gentleman!’

  An hour later, Odysseus was riding in the back of a cart, in among the wet washing of the Princess Nausicaa and her waiting-women as they drove back up to the palace of King Alcinous on the island of Scheria. And there Odysseus presented himself – a humble, nervous, shame-faced, worn and weary man in a torn and dirty shirt.

  King Alcinous was a man with treasure houses and armouries, a thousand acres of farmland and a fleet of red-prowed ships rocking in a stone-built harbour. His household numbered a hundred servants, and his temples made ceaseless sacrifice to the gods. His merchant ships, criss-crossing the oceans, carried the King’s fame as far as Africa and the Pillars of Hercules.

  But when he saw small Odysseus, bent and ragged and covered in saltwater sores, he got up from his place at table and took him by the shoulders. ‘You told my daughter Nausicaa that you are Odysseus, King of Ithaca, and I see in your eyes that you spoke the truth. Sit down now and eat and drink. I shall have fresh clothes brought for you and a ship made ready and filled with a few humble gifts. When you are rested, if you can bear to tell us your adventures, we would be most privileged. Your name is famous from shore to shore of the world’s central sea.’

  Then the ragged King of Ithaca was moved to tears. He embraced Alcinous. ‘I will tell you everything and miss nothing out,’ he said, drying his eyes. ‘But first tell me one thing. If you have heard of my name, do you know of my little three-island kingdom? It’s called Ithaca, you know, and I would dearly like to see it again.’

  ‘But of course I know it, dear friend! Wooded Zanthe is just over the horizon, and beyond that is Cephalonia and beyond that Ithaca with its towering Mount Neriton. A day’s rowing by my best men will bring you safe home to your lovely queen.’

  The banquet that King Alcinous mounted that night was sung of by poets and bards in songs and ballads until, in due course, it echoed off the Clashing Rocks, rang in the sea caves of Calypso, rose up to the ears of the gods and was swept by River Ocean into the shadow of the Underworld. Between courses of food and between the dances of dancing girls and the playing of musicians, Odysseus told his adventures.

  Telling them was rather like reliving them, but he missed nothing out – how and why his friends and companions had died one by one, and where his voyages had taken him. The ladies hid their faces when he described the monsters. Grown men wept when he described the loss of twelve ships with all their crews. A whole night it took to tell the whole story – and yet the whole of it was not yet told, for still Odysseus was separated from his wife and son and three-i
sland kingdom.

  So at dawn he boarded the ship which Alcinous gave him, and lay down on the foredeck, on a pile of blankets and embroidered clothing which Princess Nausicaa herself laid ready. The hold was filled with copper cauldrons, chests of silver, and gifts of linen and perfumes for Penelope. Every young oarsman in the Scherian navy wanted a place in the ship, and the crew was chosen by drawing lots. Never a word was spoken about Poseidon or his unsatisfied revenge.

  For ten years Odysseus had slept no more than a bird on the wing. Now, after a night’s storytelling, he slept so deep and dreamlessly that he did not wake even when the Scherian ship beached in a gravel cove – even when the rowers carried him, foredeck treasure and all, out of the ship – even as they heaved their red-prowed ship back into the surf and rowed away singing songs about the ten-year voyage they called the Odyssey.

  They were almost home. They sang in time with the beat of their oars, and the song filtered down through the water and set the blue strands of Poseidon’s hair swaying. The Sea God, who had been sleeping, stretched out in the sea’s deepest trench, roused up, and listened with only half an ear.

  ‘Odysseus is home again –

  Safely home with wife and kin!

  We his oarsmen share his fame:

  Name us when you tell of him!

  His voyaging is over now.

  Pushing through Poseidon’s sea

  See! Our crimson-painted prow

  Ends the hero’s Odyssey!’

  Poseidon’s roar set the sea boiling. His head broke through the waves not a stone’s throw from the ship, and his hands encircled it like green Charybdis.

  Such was the phosphorescence that shone around him that the fast-ship of Scheria and all its crew were engulfed in light. Such was the look in his eyes, scowling at them across the scarlet prow, that their hearts turned to stone with the weight of terror.

  Not only their hearts turned to stone: the chests which cradled them, the legs braced against the base boards, the base boards themselves; the arms which were hauling on the oars, the oars themselves. The whole ship, from prow to stern, was turned to stone – even the water which had buoyed it up – so that it stood on a stem of rock: a black islet flaking red paint into the sea.

  In future years, sailors passing it would offer up devout prayers and sacrifice to Poseidon, but murmur under their breath, ‘Hail to the brave men of Scheria and to King Alcinous whose kindness is commemorated for ever by this sad, black rock!’

  10

  A Husband for Penelope

  On the night that Odysseus told his adventures to King Alcinous, his Queen Penelope was also awake, working at her loom in the moonlit window of Pelicata Palace. She, too, was weary after years of sleeplessness – all those lonely nights spent unpicking the threads she had woven during the day. She was determined that the veil must never be finished.

  The suitors had begun to wonder, years before, why the veil was so long in the weaving. Most thought that some magic force must be unravelling the work to spite them. But two were not superstitious at all. They kept a watch on Penelope while she worked, waiting to catch her out unthreading when she should be threading. They were baffled.

  Now a new idea came to them.

  If Penelope had not been so weary, nodding over her moonlit work, she might have heard their clumsy footsteps on the stairs and their creeping in at the door. Suddenly they burst into the room and picked up the loom and pitched it through the wide window.

  ‘You are found out, madam! Your deceit is uncovered! Who’d have thought it? You’re as cunning as that dead husband of yours, the wily old Odysseus. Well, the game’s over. The veil’s finished. Today’s the day you’ll choose a husband, lady, so you’d best take a close look at each of us. Choose me and I won’t tell the others what a sly deceiver the Queen Penelope is.’

  ‘But I will!’ said his companion peevishly. ‘I mean to have her before you!’ And they went away, arguing and bickering.

  ‘Do your worst!’ called Penelope after them. ‘I am Penelope, daughter of Icarius and wife of Odysseus! How could I agree to marry any of you? Not one of you would make so much as a fit sheath for Odysseus’ sword!’

  The word quickly spread of Penelope’s ruse, and the suitors emptied the larders in preparation for one last magnificent feast at which the marriage would be settled once and for all.

  When Odysseus woke, lying on the heap of embroidered garments, he could not, for a moment, remember where he was. The shape of the mountain which towered over him was somehow familiar.

  ‘Mount Neriton!’ He was home on Ithaca – alone on a gravel foreshore, with no one to thank for his safe return and no one to greet him either.

  Fear shook his heart when he thought how long it had been since he learned of the suitors besieging Penelope. Could she possibly have gone on believing in him, waiting for him, fending off the advances of the ruthless princes? Surely by now she had been forced to marry. He shuddered at the thought, then quieted his beating heart and thought of a plan.

  Hiding the treasure given him by King Alcinous, he put on again the tattered, filthy shirt in which he had been found by Nausicaa. He dirtied his face, wrapped his head in a piece of old sacking, and climbed familiar pathways to the home of an old friend.

  The ancient pig-man still lived in his bare, uncomfortable cave, tending the palace pigs as he had when Odysseus left for war. There were few pigs left, though the herd had once been huge: the suitors gorged themselves daily on pork and bacon. As Odysseus approached the cave, he heard the drone of voices – a young man and an old one – and his own name was mentioned more than once …

  ‘It would be different if Odysseus were here,’ said the old pig-man.

  ‘Would it? Would it? All my life I’ve heard so, but Odysseus is nothing but a name to me. I don’t even remember his face.’

  ‘Why, lad, you only have to look in the mirror to see what Odysseus looked like. You’re the picture of your father.’

  Odysseus ripped aside the ragged curtain across the doorway of the cave. ‘Telemachus? Is this really Telemachus?’

  The young man leapt to his feet, half drawing his sword, thinking to be ambushed (as he had been ambushed before by the suitors). The pig-man leapt between them. ‘Aha! I know that voice!’ he said, peering into the newcomer’s face with a big winking grin. ‘No need for the sword, Prince Telemachus. This is an old friend of mine. He’s been away travelling the world for a great many years.’

  Odysseus winked, too, at the old man and said, ‘And now I’m shipwrecked on your beautiful island and have no means of getting home. Would you help me to a new boat, Prince Telemachus, even though I’m a stranger to you?’

  Telemachus gave a snort of disgust. ‘You certainly have been gone a long time if you don’t know the state of things here on Ithaca. My word counts for nothing. After today I shall be lucky if I keep my skin. Now, if my father were here, he would give you a boat and everything you need to reach home. He’s a traveller himself, and must need the help of strangers.’

  ‘Who? Odysseus who fought at Troy?’ said Odysseus. ‘Did he never come home, then? Perhaps he’s dead.’

  ‘Then the Queen and I and Ithaca are lost. I won’t believe it … You know, your face is familiar. Have we ever met before?’

  Odysseus put one arm across his eyes to hide his tears of joy. ‘Not since you were a newborn baby, not for twenty years: not since the Trojan Wars began and every true man left his home and family and went to fight in the service of Agamemnon. Oh! You can’t imagine how hard it was to leave my wife and baby – or the trouble I’ve had in returning to them. Come here, son, and let me look at you. I am your father, Odysseus. I have come home at last!’

  Telemachus left the pig-man’s cave before Odysseus, and returned to the palace just as if nothing had happened. He said nothing to his mother, nothing to the suitors who jeered at him as he came in and jostled him with their elbows. The feast was ready at which Penelope must choose her new husband.
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  The suitors no longer tried to please or flatter her. She was now simply a prize one of them would win, and the wedding simply an excuse to eat and drink all they could lay hands on.

  The suitors hooted and laughed and drank so much that no one noticed a threadbare beggar creep into the yard and sit down by the door. No one, that is, but a big old dog lying out in the last heat of the sun. Its ribs were bruised by kicks from the suitors, and it swayed unsteadily on painful hips. But at last it reached the beggar and snuffed up his many smells. Then it laid its head in the beggar’s lap and its tail thumped the ground three times.

  ‘So you remember me, do you, Argos, my faithful old friend?’ said the beggar. ‘You remember how we used to go out hunting together when you were just a silly young puppy. We’ve had a hard life since then, you and I. What a lot of things we could tell each other, eh, old boy?’ And he fondled the dog’s ears until the faithful creature’s heart burst with joy and he died in the beggar’s lap.

  After a few minutes, the beggar lifted the shaggy head aside and entered the hall, bowing and creeping most humbly. He knelt beside each chair in turn. ‘Spare me a little meat from your plate, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Get outside with the other animals.’

  ‘Spare me a sip of wine from your cup, sir.’

  ‘What? And drink from it after? I’d catch something. Get away.’

  ‘Spare me that crust of bread in your fist, sir.’

  ‘I’ll spare it, yes,’ said the suitor, and threw it in the beggar’s face, then hurled apples and lemons against his back as he crept away.

  ‘Spare me a bite to eat, lady, and I’ll remember you in my prayers.’