The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

by Margaret Atwood

  It’s true that the herald Medon revealed this plot to me as well, just as the songs relate. But I

  already knew about it from the maids. I had to appear to be surprised, however, because otherwise

  Medon who was neither on one side nor the other would have known I had my own sources of information.

  Well, naturally, I staggered around and fell onto the threshold and cried and wailed, and all of my maids my twelve favourites, and the rest of them—joined in my lamentations. I reproached them all for not having told me of my son’s departure, and for not stopping him, until that interfering old biddy

  Eurycleia confessed that she alone had aided and abetted him. The only reason the two of them hadn’t told me, she said, was that they hadn’t wanted me to fret. But all would come out fine in the end, she added, because the gods were just.

  I refrained from saying I’d seen scant evidence of that so far.

  When things get too dismal, and after I’ve done as much weeping as possible without turning myself into a pond, I have always—fortunately been able to go to sleep. And when I sleep, I dream. I had a whole run of dreams that night, dreams that have not been recorded, for I never told them to a living soul. In one, Odysseus was having his head bashed in and his brains eaten by the Cyclops; in another, he was leaping into the water from his ship and swimming towards the Sirens, who were singing with ravishing sweetness, just like my maids, but were already stretching out their birds’ claws to tear him apart; in yet another, he was making love with a beautiful goddess, and enjoying it very much.

  Then the goddess turned into Helen; she was looking at me over the bare shoulder of my husband with a malicious little smirk. This last was such a nightmare that it woke me up, and I prayed that it was a false dream sent from the cave of Morpheus through the gate of ivory, not a true one sent through the gate of horn.

  I went back to sleep, and at last managed a comforting dream. This one I did relate; perhaps you have heard of it. My sister Iphthime who was so much older than I was that I hardly knew her, and who had married and moved far away came into my room and stood by my bed, and told me she had been sent by Athene herself, because the gods didn’t want me to suffer. Her message was that

  Telemachus would return safely.

  But when I questioned her about Odysseus was he alive or dead? she refused to answer, and slipped away.

  So much for the gods not wanting me to suffer.

  They all tease. I might as well have been a stray dog, pelted with stones or with its tail set alight for their amusement. Not the fat and bones of animals, but our suffering, is what they love to savour.

  XVII. The Chorus Line: Dreamboats, A Ballad

  Sleep is the only rest we get;

  It’s then we are at peace:

  We do not have to mop the floor

  And wipe away the grease.

  We are not chased around the hall

  And tumbled in the dirt

  By every dimwit nobleman

  Who wants a slice of skirt.

  And when we sleep we like to dream

  We dream we are at sea,

  We sail the waves in golden boats,

  So happy, clean and free.

  In dreams we all are beautiful

  In glossy crimson dresses;

  We sleep with every man we the

  We shower them with kisses.

  They fill our days with feasting,

  We fill their nights with song,

  We take them in our golden boats

  And drift the whole year long.

  And all is mirth and kindness,

  There are no tears of pain;

  For our decrees are merciful

  Throughout our golden reign.

  But then the morning wakes us up:

  Once more we toil and slave, ‘

  And hoist our skirts at their command

  For every prick and knave.

  XVIII. News of Helen

  Telemachus avoided the ambush set for him, more by good luck than good planning, and reached home in safety. I welcomed him with tears of joy, and so did all the maids. I am sorry to say that my only son and I then had a big fight.

  ‘You have the brains of a newt!’ I raged. ‘How dare you take one of the boats and go off like that, without even asking permission? You’re barely more than a child! You have no experience at commanding a ship! You could have been killed fifty times over, and then what would your father have to say when he gets home? Of course it would be all my fault for not keeping a better eye on you!’ and so on.

  It was not the right line to take. Telemachus got up on his high horse. He denied that he was a child any longer, and proclaimed his manhood he’d come back, hadn’t he, which was proof enough that he’d known what he was doing. Then he defied my parental authority by saying he didn’t need anyone’s permission to take a boat that was more or less part of his own inheritance, but it was no thanks to me that he .had” any inheritance left, since I hadn’t defended it and now it was all being eaten up by the Suitors. He then said that he’d made the decision he’d had to make he’d gone in search of his father, since no one else seemed prepared to lift a finger in that direction. He claimed his father would have been proud of him for showing some backbone and getting out from under the thumbs of the women, who as usual were being overemotional and showing no reasonableness and judgment.

  By ‘the women’, he meant me. How could he refer to his own mother as ‘the women’?

  What could I do but burst into tears?

  I then made the Is-this-all-the-thanks-I-get, You have no idea what I’ve been through for your sake., no-woman-should-have-to-put-up-with-this-sort of-suffering, I-might-as-well-kill-myself speech. But I’m afraid he’d heard it before, and showed by his folded arms and rolled-up eyes that he was irritated by it, and was waiting for me to finish.

  That done, we settled down. Telemachus had a nice bath drawn for him by the maids. They gave him a good scrubbing, and some fresh clothes, and then they brought in a lovely dinner for him and for some friends he’d invited over Piraeus and Theoclymenus were their names. Piraeus was an Ithaca, and had been in cahoots with my son on his secret voyage. I resolved to have a word with him later, and speak to his parents about letting him run so wild. Theoclymenus was a stranger. He seemed nice enough, but I made a mental note to find out what I could about his ancestry, because boys the age of Telemachus can so easily get into the wrong company.

  Telemachus wolfed down the food and knocked back the wine, and I reproached myself for not having taught him better table manners. Nobody could say I hadn’t tried. But every time I’d remonstrated with him, that old hen Eurycleia had interposed. ‘Come now, my child, let the boy enjoy his dinner, there’ll be all the time in the world for manners once he’s grown up’, and much more in that vein.

  ‘As the twig is bent, so will the tree grow,’ I would say.

  ‘And that’s-just it!’ she would cackle. ‘We don’t want to bend the little twiggi, do we? Oh, nosie nosie no! We want him to grow straight and tall, and get the juicy goodness out of his nice big hunk of meat, without our crosspatch mummy making him all sad!’

  Then the maids would giggle, and heap his plate, and tell him what a fine boy he was. I’m sorry to say he was quite spoiled.

  When the three young men had finished eating, I asked about the trip. Had Telemachus found out anything about Odysseus and his whereabouts, that having been the object of his excursion? And if he had indeed discovered something, could he possibly bring himself to share this discovery with me?

  You can see things were still a little frosty on my part. It’s hard to lose an argument to one’s Teenaged son. Once they’re taller than you are, you have only your moral authority: a weak weapon at best.

  What Telemachus said next surprised me a good deal. After dropping in on King Nestor, who could tell him nothing, he’d gone off to visit Menelaus.

  Menelaus himself. Menelaus the rich, Menelaus the thickhead, Menelau
s of the loud voice, Menelaus the cuckold. Menelaus, the husband of Helen cousin Helen, Helen the lovely, Helen the septic bitch, root cause of all my misfortunes.

  ‘And did you see Helen?’ I asked in a somewhat constricted voice.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘She gave us a very good dinner.’ He then launched into some rigmarole about the Old Man of the Sea, and how Menelaus had learned from this elderly and dubious-sounding gentleman that Odysseus was trapped on the island of a beautiful goddess, where he was forced to make love with her all night, every night.

  By this time I’d heard one beautiful-goddess story too many. ‘And how was Helen?’ I asked.

  ‘She seemed fine,’ said Telemachus. ‘Everyone told stories about the war at Troy they were great stories, a lot of fighting and combat and guts spilling out—my father was in them—but when all the old vets started blubbering, Helen spiked the drinks, and then we laughed a lot.’

  ‘No, but,’ I said, ‘how did she look?

  ‘As radiant as golden Aphrodite,’ he said. ‘It was a real thrill to see her. I mean, she’s so famous, and part of history and everything. She was absolutely everything she’s cracked up to be, and more!’ He grinned sheepishly.

  ‘She must be getting a little older, by now,’ I said as calmly as I could. Helen could not possibly still be as radiant as golden Aphrodite! It would not be within nature!

  ‘Oh, well, yeah,’ said my son. And now that bond which is supposed to exist between mothers and fatherless sons finally asserted itself. Telemachus looked into my face and read its expression.

  ‘Actually, she did look quite old,’ he said. ‘Way older than you. Sort of worn out. All wrinkly,’ he added. ‘Like an old mushroom. And her teeth are yellow

  Actually, some of them have fallen out. It was only after we’d had a lot to drink that she still looked beautiful.’

  I knew he was lying, but was touched that he was lying for my sake. Not for nothing was he the great-grandson of Autolycus, friend of Hermes the arch-cheat, and the son of wily Odysseus of the soothing voice, fruitful in false invention, persuader of men and deluder of women. Maybe he had some brains after all. ‘Thank you for all you have told me, my son,’ I said. ‘I’m grateful for it. I will now go and sacrifice a basket of wheat, and pray for your father’s safe return.’

  And that is what I did.

  XIX. Yelp of Joy

  Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don’t? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. ‘Which prayer shall we answer today?’ they ask one another. ‘Let’s cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we’re at it, let’s destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!’ I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they’re bored.

  Twenty years of my prayers had gone unanswered. But, finally, not this one. No sooner had I performed the familiar ritual and shed the familiar tears than Odysseus himself shambled into the courtyard.

  The shambling was part of a disguise, naturally. I would have expected no less of him. Evidently he’d appraised the situation in the palace the Suitors, their wasting of his estates, their murderous intentions towards Telemachus, their appropriation of the sexual services of his maids, and their intended wife-grab and wisely concluded that he shouldn’t simply march in and announce that he was Odysseus, and order them to vacate the premises. If he’d tried that he’d have been a dead man within minutes.

  So he was dressed as a dirty old beggar. He could count on the fact that most of the Suitors had no idea what he looked like, having been too young or not even born when he’d sailed away. His disguise was well enough done I hoped the wrinkles and baldness were part of the act, and not real but as soon as I saw that barrel chest and those short legs I had a deep suspicion, which became a certainty when I heard he’d broken the neck of a belligerent fellow panhandler. That was his style: stealthy when necessary, true, but he was never against the direct assault method when he was certain he could win.

  I didn’t let on I knew. It would have been dangerous for him. Also, if a man takes pride in his disguising skills, it would be a foolish wife who would claim to recognise him: it’s always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.

  Telemachus was in on the deception: I could see that as well. He was by nature a spinner of falsehoods like his father, but he was not yet very good at it. When he introduced the supposed beggar to me, his shuffling and stammering and sideways looks gave him away.

  That introduction didn’t happen until later.

  Odysseus spent his first hours in the palace snooping around and being abused by the Suitors, who jeered and threw things at him. Unfortunately I

  could not tell my twelve maids who he really was, so they continued their rudeness to Telemachus, and joined the Suitors in their insults. Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks was particularly cutting, I was told. I resolved to interpose myself when the time was right, and to tell Odysseus that the girls had been acting under my direction.

  When evening came I arranged to see the supposed beggar in the now-empty hall. He claimed to have news- of Odysseus he spun a plausible yarn, and assured me that Odysseus would be home soon, and I shed tears and said I feared it was not so, as travellers had been telling me the same sort of thing for years. I described my sufferings at length, and my longing for my husband better he should hear all this while in the guise of a vagabond, as he would be more inclined to believe it.

  Then I flattered him by consulting him for advice. I was resolved—I said to bring out the great bow of Odysseus, the one with which he’d shot an arrow through twelve circular axe-handles an astounding accomplishment and challenge the

  Suitors to duplicate the feat, offering myself as the prize. Surely that would bring an end, one way or another, to the intolerable situation in which I found myself. What did he think of that plan?

  He said it was an excellent idea.

  The songs claim that the arrival of Odysseus and my decision to set the test of the bow and axes coincided by accident—or by divine plan, which was our way of putting it then. Now you’ve heard the plain truth. I knew that only Odysseus would be able to perform this archery trick. I knew that the beggar was Odysseus. There was no coincidence. I set the whole thing up on purpose.

  Growing confidential with the purported seedy tramp, I then related a dream of mine. It concerned my flock of lovely white geese, geese of which I was very fond. I dreamt that they were happily pecking around the yard when a huge eagle with a crooked beak swooped down and killed them all, whereupon I wept and wept.

  Odysseus-the-beggar interpreted this dream for me: the eagle was my husband, the geese were the Suitors, and the one would shortly slay the others. He said nothing about the crooked beak of the eagle, or my love for the geese and my anguish at their deaths.

  In the event, Odysseus was wrong about the dream. He was indeed the eagle, but the geese were not the Suitors. The geese were my twelve maids, as I was soon to learn to my unending sorrow.

  There’s a detail they make much of in the songs. I ordered the maids to wash the feet of Odysseusthe-mendicant, and he refused, saying he could only allow his feet to be washed by one who would not deride him for being gnarled and poor. I then proposed old Eurycleia for the task, a woman whose feet were as lacking in aesthetic value as his own.

  Grumbling, she set to work, not suspecting the booby trap I’d placed ready for her. Soon she found the long scar familiar to her from the many, many times she’d performed the same service for Odysseus. At this point she let out a yelp of joy and upset the basin of water all over the floor, and Odysseus almost throttled her to keep her from giving him away.

  The songs say I didn’t notice a thing because Athene had distracted me. If you believe that, you’
ll believe all sorts of nonsense. In reality I’d turned my back on the two of them to hide my silent laughter at the success of my little surprise.

  XX. Slanderous Gossip

  At this point I feel I must address the various items of slanderous gossip that have been going the rounds for the past two or three thousand years.

  These stories are completely untrue. Many have said that there’s no smoke without fire, but that is a fatuous argument. We’ve all heard rumours that later proved to be entirely groundless, and so it is with these rumours about me.

  The charges concern my sexual conduct. It is alleged, for instance, that I slept with Amphinomus, the politest of the Suitors. The songs say I found his conversation agreeable, or more agreeable than that of the others, and this is true; but it’s a long jump from there into bed. It’s also true that I led the Suitors on and made private promises to some of them, but this was a matter of policy. Among other things, I used my supposed encouragement to extract expensive gifts from them scant return for everything they’d eaten and wasted—and I draw your attention to the fact that Odysseus himself witnessed and approved of my action.

  The more outrageous versions have it that I slept with all of the Suitors, one after another over a hundred of them and then gave birth to the Great

  God Pan. Who could believe such a monstrous tale?

  Some songs aren’t worth the breath expended on them.

  Various commentators have cited my mother-in law, Anticleia, who said nothing about the Suitors when Odysseus spoke to her spirit on the Island of the Dead. Her silence is taken as proof: if she’d mentioned the Suitors at all, they say, she would have had to mention my infidelity as well. Maybe she did mean to plant a toxic seed in the mind of Odysseus, but you already know about her attitude towards me. It would have been her final acid touch.