Odysseus: The Return

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  As the days passed I became increasingly weary. My limbs ached and my eyes burned as if they were full of sand, but I tried to keep them open as long as possible so a sudden storm would not take me by surprise. When, exhausted by my long vigil and the strain of handling the raft alone, fatigue got the better of me, I’d let myself sleep but I never allowed myself total unconsciousness. I was sleeping but aware at the same time. For as long as I could manage it.

  Once, in a rare moment of complete abandonment, it felt as though I were walking down the beach on Calypso’s island and I heard her voice in my heart. She was saying: ‘Poseidon, the blue god, will soon make his return from the land of the burnt faces.’

  I jerked awake and understood my goddess’ secret warning: with the return of the spring, Poseidon would leave the company of the Ethiopians. He’d enjoyed the hospitality of those simple, innocent people over the winter months, as was his wont, but now he was likely to be on his way back to his own sea. Would he spot me? Would my tiny raft attract his attention? I went straight to the helm and released the steering oar from its lock so I could govern it with my own hands. I grasped the yard line in my left hand to be able to turn the sail into the direction of the wind. I’d used my knife to carve a notch in the mast for every day gone by. Seventeen cuts that formed no scar on the dry wood.

  I had been sailing for seventeen days and sixteen nights with the same, constant wind and I had never sighted a single ship or boat. As I scanned the horizon in the hope of making out some sign of human presence, I thought I could see the outline of a land mass emerging from the waves. An island or the extreme tip of the continent? My heart started pounding. Could I put my misadventures behind me? Was my ill fortune ending? After all, hadn’t the prophecy proved true? Here I was returning late and broken after losing all my comrades. What else could my implacable enemy possibly want from me?

  Alas, I was wrong. His ire was not yet spent.

  At first I heard the sound of distant thunder, a low rumbling. Then a black cloud started to advance from the north, on my left. A sudden burst of wind made the mast groan and creak in its base. It made a quarter-turn and the sail swung almost fully in the direction of the wind. The raft veered to the right, the left side rose from the surface of the sea, the right sank and water flooded inside. Although I had taken such care to bind the logs tightly, they started knocking against one another.

  The sea swelled, the waves whipped up higher and higher, lightning tore through the black cloud that covered the sky and thunder crashed over my head with a deafening roar. Night descended black all around me and I knew I was lost. My heart shouted: ‘This is the end! I’ll never manage to save myself this time. It would have been a thousand times better to die on the fields of Troy, fighting under the sun with my comrades of a hundred battles, clad in blinding bronze. The gods trifle with me!’

  I yelled out, into the furious sky and sea: ‘Come on then! Kill Odysseus! What are you waiting for? You have wind, lightning, thunder, billows! Don’t you have the guts? I’m alone, naked, nothing but a puny man. You’ve taken everything from me, take my life! There’s nothing else left.’

  The titanic forces were listening. A gust of wind arrived screaming, flew from one cresting wave to the next, sliced through the foam and sent it spraying like thin mist into the black air. It hit the sail full force, cracked the mast and carried them both far off like a winter leaf in a stormy night. A swell came rushing in, tall as the walls of a fortress, crashing into the raft and disintegrating it. The logs burst apart, with only a few ropes holding them together here and there.

  I was thrown into the sea and sank into a vortex that dragged me down deeper and deeper, into an abyss of darkness and silence. I could not make my way to the surface. I was losing my senses and any notion of my existence. And yet, some mysterious force breathed life into my limbs, my arms moved, grasped, reached, stronger and faster, until I burst out of the whirlpool.

  I spat salty water, floundered, found myself once again in the terrifying roar of wind and sea in the eye of the storm. As I was pulled upwards by a gigantic wave, I saw below me what was left of my raft and I began to swim with all my strength to reach it. I grabbed the last remaining side rail and hoisted myself aboard. Four logs were still held together by the ropes and pins wedged into the wood, and I caught my breath. I breathed in deeply, waiting for my heart to slow its furious pounding.

  I do not know how much time passed as the wreck of my raft, without a steering oar or a mast or a sail, was carried away on the seething waves. I had no idea of where I was. Tossed in every direction, I felt that my bones were surely broken. I was bleeding everywhere and my skin was scraped raw. Then something happened that left me so astounded I forgot the fury of the hurricane. From the water shot a black coot, like an arrow loosed from a bow. It alighted on the railing. The wind ruffled its feathers, white at the neck, and promised to blow the bird away at any moment. That tiny creature resisted as though it had the claws of an eagle. In its beak was a length of lightweight cloth. A voice sounded in my heart: ‘Wrap it around your loins and throw yourself into the sea.’

  My goddess, finally!

  I tried to get closer, pulling myself hand over hand along the railing and shouting: ‘It’s you!’ I stretched my fingers out towards the water-soaked cloth. As soon as I touched it, the coot let it go, rose up in flight and then dived back into the water. It disappeared.

  ‘What did you say?’ I shouted. ‘I’m to throw myself into the water, with this? Is this a trick?’ I stayed on the raft, biding my time, watching and waiting until I could make out the stretch of land that I’d spotted in the distance before the storm had come. I understood that what my heart had heard was the truth. My goddess had shown me the way and given me help to get there. The little that was left of my raft took the full brunt of a violent wave and shattered into pieces. I dived into the sea and swam for some time under water. I needed to hide, to vanish. My enemy had to be convinced that revenge had been served. I would emerge now and then only to dive back under. In doing so, I could see that I was getting nearer to the coast.

  When I was rather close, I became alarmed first by the churning sand on the seabed and then by the sight of a wall of rock bristling with jagged points, pinnacles and sharp spurs. I realized that the sea was dashing me against a reef. I’d be cut to pieces. So my trials were still not over. I was very close by then, too close. A wave a bit stronger than the others flung me against the rocks. I hung on hard with my bare hands, but the undertow snatched me away again. The skin of my hands was scraped and I was bleeding profusely as the sea dragged me off. The salty water burned my raw flesh like fire. I screamed with pain but did not give up my unending fight against cruel destiny. I swam along the coast to get clear of the reef, seeking a less hostile spot to get ashore, but the light of day was fading and soon it would be night. I was seized by anguish; I realized that if the reef continued at any length I would become lost, my strength would fail me and after so much struggling I would drown. But then I remembered that the coot had brought me a piece of cloth to wrap around my loins; my goddess had wanted me to know that I would be saved.

  All at once the sky opened and tattered holes in the clouds let through the rays of the setting sun, allowing me to get a clear view of the coast. The cliffs were lower and the reefs were thinning out, and when the sun was no more than a red slice on the horizon beneath a dark swarm of galloping clouds, a low, sandy beach opened up before me. The limpid waters of a river glistened and flowed into the sea. I could feel fine gravel under my feet, and then sand. I was touching bottom. I began to walk, slowly at first and then more quickly until I was out of the water and on dry land.

  I’d been in the water for what seemed like an endless time, but my throat was parched. I put my head into the river and began to drink in long gulps. I felt alive again. I stood up and prayed: ‘Oh god of this river that has welcomed me and sated my thirst, you whose waters have saved my life, accept my gratitude and have pit
y on me, your humble servant, tossed up onto this land by the sea after having lost all I ever had.’ I fell to my knees and wept, sobbing, shaken to the very core of my being.

  When I got up again a voice sounded in my heart: ‘Return what I gave you. Walk backwards to the water’s edge, remove the cloth and toss it behind you into the sea!’ It was the coot. He had come to take back the miraculous cloth that had led me to safety. I did what my heart ordered. One step after another I walked backwards towards the lapping waves. They had shed their devastating power and were gently dampening the sand. I took off the cloth I’d wrapped around my loins and, without turning, threw it into the water behind me. I heard the cry of a bird, then nothing.

  I was naked, like the day I was born in the palace up on the mountainside. I no longer had a single ship, warriors or weapons, nor treasure plundered from a conquered land. I was alone, without a companion and without a rag to cover myself. I was crusty with salt, my beard was long and my hair was tangled, and yet, for the first time in many years, I felt free. As if I had been born into a new life.

  I walked to the edge of an oak forest and advanced among those ancient trees, treading on the thick layer of dry leaves that rustled under my feet and then, when my knees would no longer hold me up, I lay down, covered myself with leaves, gathered more under my head to serve as a pillow and I stretched out to rest on that dark, unfamiliar soil. Just then the moon was rising from the sea.

  12

  I WAS AWAKENED BY A SUDDEN, shrill scream. I sprang to a sitting position and then to my feet. My hand moved instinctively to the sword I no longer had. Where had I ended up this time? In a savage land? Were more difficulties in store for me, more grief? Almost instantly, the cry repeated itself, but I realized it was many voices, all together, girls’ voices, silvery. I walked towards the sound, which had the light-hearted, carefree tone of youth. And I saw a group of girls playing with a ball. The ball had fallen into the river and that’s what their cries were about. One of them had waded into the current to fetch it. She tossed it back to the others and they gleefully resumed their play. Anyone who dropped it was out.

  At a short distance, hanging from a line stretched between two wild olive-tree trunks, were some linens drying in the sun. Just a bit further away, two mules yoked to a little cart were tranquilly browsing on wild fennel and chicory. Behind them I could glimpse cultivated fields, vineyards arranged in orderly rows on the slopes of mild hills, olive groves glittering in the clear, sharp morning light. The air was fresh and cool and colours shone brightly in the wake of the storm.

  Tears came to my eyes. How long had it been since I’d viewed such a scene? Surely not since my boyhood on Ithaca, with her secret little bays, the coloured gravel at the shore, the torrents that carried the island’s waters off to the sea. My heart swelled with emotion.

  I had been washed ashore in a prosperous, orderly land, governed by fair laws and wise rulers, a land in which the young could play carefree.

  The girls soon tired of running and shouting and went to sit in the shade. One of them began singing a song and the others joined in. The melody was delightful, but there was a melancholic undercurrent to the harmony that reminded me of watching the colours of the sun sinking into the sea. Then they started chatting and telling each other stories.

  They spoke a language similar to mine and I realized I could understand it; it was rich and sonorous with an odd, almost musical cadence. A language that seemed very ancient, making me think that the land where I’d been washed up was remote and isolated. The girls’ clothing was also different, and quite unusual. I’d never seen such fabrics before. One of them, the lovely, luminous girl who had been singing, was sitting on a boulder and telling her friends about a dream she’d had: ‘A girl came to wake me. She resembled a friend of mine who had just got married; it was her voice and it looked like her, but there was something different and strange about her. She said: “What are you still doing lazing in bed? It’s time you found a husband for yourself! Your clothing, and that of your brothers and your father the king, have been gathering dust. You know how much those boys like to dance, and how your father prides himself on wearing fresh garments to the council of elders. Why don’t you go to the river to wash them? It’s a lovely, sunny day. They’ll dry in a moment and the breeze will refresh them with the scent of flowers.”’

  ‘Really?’ one of her companions broke in. ‘You mean we’re here because a friend of yours appeared to you in a dream?’

  ‘Well, yes, but it was her and it wasn’t her. I felt a chill and a strong sensation . . . as if I were in the presence of royalty.’

  My heart started at hearing those words, as I watched the face and eyes of the girl telling the story. I knew exactly what she meant: I’d felt the same thing myself, many times, when my goddess, Athena of the blue-green eyes, touched me. It was she who had sent those girls there to the shore, to help me!

  The girl who’d spoken was different from all the rest: her gown was striking and made of precious material; she wore golden earrings and bracelets and rich purple sandals. She truly had the bearing of a princess. The girls playing with her must be high-born as well, judging from their mannerisms and the confidence they had with the pretty one who had spoken. Another group of girls, dressed more humbly, were sitting together at a short distance; handmaids, young slaves in the service of the others. Every now and then one of them would get up to check whether the clothing hanging on the line was dry.

  I was about to leave the forest, to go and speak to them, but then I remembered that I was completely naked. They would be frightened and start screaming, they’d run straight off to tell their parents who would hunt me down and beat me bloody. I couldn’t approach them as I was, but I felt as though I could collapse at any moment. I was starving, exhausted and needed help. I had no choice, I would have to leave my hiding place and ask them for something to cover myself with, at least. I looked around, broke off a laurel branch to cover my loins, and came forward. I must have been a horrible sight: encrusted with salt and seaweed, my hair tangled, my eyes red and lips cracked.

  It went exactly as I had imagined. As soon as they saw me, the girls started screaming, terrified, and scattered in a panic. Some of them, perhaps, had run off to seek help.

  But not all of them: one alone, the most beautiful one, was left standing, unafraid. She regarded me more with curiosity than with anxiety. I was ashamed of my revolting appearance. I didn’t know what to do. Should I embrace her knees, like a supplicant? No, she would take offence at the touch of such a vile-looking stranger. Better to speak to her at a distance.

  ‘I beseech you, hear my words, wanaxa, whoever you may be, whether a mortal woman or a goddess who inhabits the heavens. You are so beautiful that only Artemis, the goddess who runs in the forest, could resemble you . . .’ I saw the hint of a smile and took a step towards her. One only. ‘Do not disdain me for my miserable appearance. I have been at the mercy of sea and storm and fought hard against them. My craft capsized and broke into pieces and I floundered in the waves until last night, when the sea pitched me onto this beach. I lost everything, even the clothing on my back . . .’ I bent my head. ‘Give me a rag to cover myself, one of the cloths you use to cover the drying linens. That’s all I need. I was a powerful man once, the chief of many warriors. Many ships followed mine. Now I have nothing.’ The tears falling from my eyes as I spoke were real ones. Hot and bitter, I could feel them at the sides of my mouth. I could not say another word. I stood there, unmoving, a leafy branch my only defence from abjection.

  The other girls had begun to creep closer. Perhaps they were ashamed at leaving their mistress on her own, or perhaps they were merely curious to see the foreigner that the sea had thrown up onto the sand.

  ‘Come closer,’ she said. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  I took a few steps forward. From that distance I could not hide my bristly hair and shrivelled skin. I must have looked like an old man.

  ‘I’ll have my m
aidservants wash you. You can put this on.’ She took from the line a magnificent white robe of fine linen, and a cloak to cover my shoulders. She added a little jar of clear oil.

  ‘No, wanaxa, it’s best that girls who do not yet have husbands do not see the nudity of a grown man. I’ll wash myself.’ I stretched my hand out and took the garment and the oil. Then I drew back until my back bumped against a sandy hard surface, a rock jutting up on the beach. The river curled around it, creating a little pool, before flowing out into the sea. There, sheltered from all eyes by the rock, I washed myself. I held my face under water for a long time so my beard and hair would soften and I sank my fingers into the sand again and again until my nails came out white and clean. There was a lavender bush growing on the side of the rock in the bright sun and I rubbed a spike of it on my chest and my limbs. Then I spread the oil on my skin, which became softer, looking more like a young man’s.

  I left the pond and leaned against the rock face to dry off, and then I put on the white robe. At that moment I felt a chill, a sensation of cold and then of heat, and I heard the fast beating of wings. I turned just as a coot took flight from the river’s surface and disappeared into the forest.

  I walked back towards the lovely princess. She was intent on watching a duck swimming down the river with her ducklings and she raised her eyes upon seeing my shadow. An expression of surprise crossed her face. She was looking at a man, not a derelict. She ordered a stool to be brought for me and had me sit at a big flat stone where abundant food and a jug of water were waiting for me. I was famished and I could feel the strength flowing back into my limbs as I ate the bread, roast meat and fruit she’d offered. When I had finished this meal, I asked her: