Odysseus: The Oath

by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

  The Trojan warriors could oversee our whole camp from the highest towers of the city. A few of them cautiously pushed open the gates and ventured out to gather hastily their fallen from the field of battle so they could be given proper funeral rites.

  As soon as night fell, high plumes of smoke and flames shot up from a hill dark with black cypresses near the eastern bastion of the citadel of Troy. If I had taken a group of bold warriors up there and attacked all those who were attending to the funeral honours for their fallen, we would have caught them completely unawares and killed a great many, but I told myself there had to be a limit to the wickedness of war.

  Not enough time had passed yet. Things would change, later.

  Columns of smoke rose from our camp as well. Young men reduced to ashes who would never return home, whose mothers and fathers would never see them again. Their ashes were gathered in bronze jars and buried. This was what we had decided: we would not send back ships carrying the ashes of the dead. Their families would have to build empty tombs on the seashore to wet with their tears.

  Late that night, Agamemnon sent heralds to summon the kings to a war council. He wanted to know how many had fallen on our side and theirs, and to get information on how the Trojans fought: were they good in the fray? In hand-to-hand combat? How many chariots had they sent out onto the field of battle? He praised Achilles, Menelaus, Ajax and Diomedes and finally me as well, for protecting our warriors and keeping the Trojans at bay. We all congratulated each other, then sat down to eat and drink; we had to regain our strength. Nestor asked me then what I made of the fact that the Trojan fleet hadn’t sailed out against us.

  ‘Yes,’ Agamemnon said as well, ‘how do you explain that?’

  ‘I think they’ve hidden their ships,’ I offered. ‘They knew they couldn’t get the better of us, and instead of witnessing the fleet’s destruction they must have scattered their ships among the coastal cities allied with Priam.’

  Agamemnon pondered my words for a while and so did Nestor; it was he who spoke again: ‘Maybe we should attack and seize those cities one by one. We would eliminate Priam’s friends and destroy the fleet wherever we find it. We could lay siege to each of the cities in turn until it falls.’

  The kings began to discuss this idea and others, and their opinions differed greatly. Achilles wanted to assault the walls of Troy without delay. Menelaus was behind him, and everyone could understand why: he wanted to take the city by storm, exterminate its inhabitants, chop Paris into little pieces and feed him to the hounds, get Helen back, take her home and forget about everything, if he could manage it.

  But it wasn’t so simple. The city was defended by a mighty wall with ramparts and by palisaded gates. The Trojan army was powerful and Priam certainly had many friends, perhaps even the great king of the Cheteians, who sat on a stone throne in his city of stone in the heart of Asia. In the end, the prevailing opinion was that it was best to start by raiding the cities allied with Priam or at least those closest to our position. But the bulk of our forces would remain to hold the siege of Troy.

  The decision proved to be a wise one. Over the first year of war, Achilles and Patroclus, at the head of their own fleet and that of Protesilaus, attacked a number of cities on the coast and plundered them, destroying all of their ships. The only thing that stopped the onslaught was the winter, when the cold breath of Boreas began to sweep the sea with violent gusts. They brought a great deal of booty back to camp with them, a part of which was left to Agamemnon, his right as supreme commander of the army.

  The following spring, Achilles, Patroclus, Menestheus and others seized the greatest and most prosperous city of the coast near Troy. It was called Thebes and it rose at the foot of a mountain called Plakos inhabited by Cilicians from the southern sea. Achilles himself killed the king and sold the inhabitants as slaves. It was a great victory, but I took no joy in it. The murdered king was called Eetion and he was the father-in-law of Hector, Priam’s firstborn and heir to the throne of Troy. I had seen Hector’s wife Andromache when I first went to Troy to try to stop this war and to ask for Helen’s return. I remembered her as being very beautiful, with a deep, melancholic gaze.

  The violent death of her father, Eetion, king of Hypoplacian Thebes, kindled even more hatred for us in Troy and made the fight even more vicious. The Trojans made continuous sorties to try to force us back into the sea or set our ships on fire. We responded by trying to wipe out their army and attacking the defences they had built outside the city, aiming to breach the walls of the lower city. The struggle was becoming more bitter by the day.

  I suffered my first losses as well. It had never happened to me before, and my grief was made worse because the dead were from Ithaca. I knew their parents, their wives, I had seen their children born. I would avenge them by killing the same number of enemy combatants, for this was the law of war: to perpetuate the slaughter, although we knew it would not serve to bring those who had been killed back to life. What hurt me most was looking at their faces; they’d always been so ruddy, their colour deepened by the sea air and the sun. They were so pale, the dead. A colour hard to define but one that only the dead have. Pale heads!

  Achilles relentlessly continued to attack cities and pillage them. He came back from one of these rampages with a beautiful maiden for Patroclus, to give him pleasure on long nights – her name was Iphi; long-legged, she was, with high, firm breasts – and another for himself, splendid high-waisted Diomedea.

  What I remember most from the beginning of the war, more than the battles and the blood, more than the victories and defeats, more than my own exploits and those of my comrades, are the words. Everyone talked to me.

  Even Ajax of Salamis, who was not a talker, but a man of unbeatable strength, a walking mountain. I believe that none of the kings and princes of the Achaians ever achieved feats as prodigious as his, or bore up under such great toil alone, without asking for help from either man or god. And yet he was as simple-hearted and innocent as a child. While Ajax occupied his place on earth like a boulder, Achilles was light, swift as the wind, deadly and ruthless, yet as fragile as a clay cup. He killed so as not to be killed; he fought to escape the Chaera of death, who was always present at his side. He saw her, sometimes, racing beside him on a chariot pulled by four stallions as black as a crow’s wing, wielding her scythe. Only she could keep up with him, as he urged on Xanthus the blond and Balius the dappled, making them fly over the field of blood, his steeds answering him with words that only he could understand. It wasn’t that he wanted to cheat the Chaera of her due, but he was holding out for glory. The last moment of his life would be, had to be, like a dazzling strike of lightning. He would not be forgotten, would not vanish into oblivion.

  Menelaus, consumed with bitterness and humiliation . . . he often confided in me: his nightmares, his doubts, his dreams. He didn’t talk that way to anyone else. One day he said to me: ‘You were next to me that day. Why did Helen choose me? Why did she choose me, only to betray me and abandon my home?’ I looked into his eyes and he seemed sincere. Was it really possible, I asked myself, that a thousand ships and fifty thousand warriors had crossed the sea to Asia for the sole purpose of reclaiming a man’s wife? I searched my heart for other reasons, truer reasons, reasons which were not apparent. The real motives of men and gods. But I couldn’t find them. Not then, not yet.

  ‘Don’t torment yourself,’ I answered. ‘Look around you: one thousand ships have crossed the sea with myriads and myriads of warriors. Do you really believe that all of this – the finest youth of Achaia pouring their blood onto this sun-scorched field – has happened for the reason we pretend to believe? Is there any way to explain this? No, Menelaus, there is not. You may think you know why we’re here, but you don’t. We’re here without knowing why we came, or what we’re doing here. We’re like twigs at the mercy of a raging river. We endure hardships, fear and hunger, we toil and strive, suffer wounds . . . only to finish in the mouth of implacable Hades. Someone
else wanted this . . . something else, something that is irresistible and overwhelming. Something faceless and voiceless. Our only defence is to stay together, like we are now, to stay with our comrades and friends and ward off darkness and fear.’

  ‘But we’d made a pact . . .’

  ‘There’s no mere pact that could keep fifty thousand warriors here for all this time, is there? Can you explain why we didn’t sail back before the winter began? What has kept us here? I don’t know. Do you, perhaps? Does Agamemnon, king of Achaian kings? Menelaus, if you know, tell me, now. I want to know why I’m here to lose my life. Helen’s not enough.’

  Menelaus was silent, and I’ll never know whether it was because he didn’t want to say or because he didn’t know.

  I spoke again: ‘Haven’t you noticed something strange going on? Something that makes you uneasy, fills your heart with anxiety?’

  Menelaus looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time, as if he were realizing that I could feel things that escaped other people. He said: ‘They say that the goddess Athena speaks to you. Is that true?’

  ‘It’s not important what people say about me, what’s important is what’s happening here. Can’t you see that time is escaping us? Can you remember what happened just seven days ago? Or four, or two? How long have we been here?’

  Nothing but a blank stare met my words.

  ONE NIGHT I ventured as far as the walls of Troy to see if I could hear the voice of the city. Nothing, not a sound; nothing but silence hovered over the sleeping city. It seemed to be uninhabited, empty. That silence made me shiver. Could we be besieging a ghost city? But then I remembered that I’d seen the city myself, gone through the gate, lodged in Antenor’s house, spoken to him for long nights. I walked and walked until I found myself under the citadel and called out Helen’s name. I wanted her to hear our voices as she lay in Paris’ arms, I wanted her to remember a day long ago: a boy and a girl in a horse pen as the sun was setting . . .

  When I got back to camp it was the middle of the night and I called out to my sentries so they wouldn’t kill me. That night, which night?, I felt my father’s absence acutely. How many nights had he lain awake, like I did now, his eyes staring wide into the dark?

  DIOMEDES WAS CERTAINLY not a man of many words, but I’ll always remember them nonetheless. After the initial attack, when Agamemnon was reviewing his vast army for the first time, the high commander turned to Diomedes and said, to rankle him, I presume: ‘Why do you hesitate? Why are you afraid of jumping into the fray?’

  ‘I fear nothing,’ Diomedes snorted. ‘Don’t forget that I’m the only one who fought and won a battle before coming here. I avenged my father at Thebes of the seven gates.’

  Agamemnon fell silent and continued to advance on his chariot in front of the drawn-up ranks of the Achaians. Diomedes turned towards me and it was as if he were seeing me for the first time.

  ‘You were there,’ he said, and I understood what he meant.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I was.’

  ‘What were you doing at Argus?’

  ‘I was with my father. We were taking Eumelus of Pherai back to his parents, Admetus and Alcestis. You remember, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ he replied. ‘Everyone was looking for that boy . . .’

  ‘But no one ever found him.’

  ‘You have something that I don’t have,’ said Diomedes. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I know that the mind is a weapon more powerful than any sword or spear or claw or fang.’

  ‘Together we could be invincible.’

  ‘I could be invincible on my own,’ I answered, ‘but if you like I’ll very happily be your comrade. Our fathers were together on the Argo.’

  ‘All of our fathers were together on that ship,’ he replied with a smile, and he got on his chariot alongside Sthenelus, his driver, ready for combat.

  24

  ACHILLES CONQUERED CITY AFTER CITY on the coast, but the war wasn’t going any better for us. Even more warriors flocked to Troy from other countries to assist Priam in driving off the foreign invaders. Even the gods, at that stage, had decided whose side they were on, and you could feel it in the air and in the turns of events. The weather. Unexpected manifestations of the earth and sky, thunder and lightning, even an earthquake that made our horses restive and made the sea boil around us. Messages from the gods that the soothsayers were only too eager to interpret. Agamemnon had brought his own seer to Troy, Calchas, a man he despised but whom he kept at his side, afraid to do otherwise; it was Calchas who had pronounced that horrific prophecy when the dead calm of the sea had left the fleet wind-bound in Aulis at such length.

  Once, fed up with the priest’s manner and his empty words, I challenged him myself: ‘Tell me something useful, o prophet, how many figs are on this tree?’

  He regarded me icily, and drew close: ‘My art does not serve to count figs, but that’s something you know well. Do you think I haven’t heard you when you speak to a certain someone that the others don’t see?’

  I was stunned. We had been under a great, lush fig tree and I don’t know how or when we had come to find ourselves walking along the seashore as the moon was rising. I knew in that very moment Penelope was searching for my thoughts, the sting of nostalgia . . .

  ‘Isn’t that true?’ he continued as if we still found ourselves under that fig tree.

  I did not answer. I didn’t want others to get between me and my goddess.

  ‘She loves you and protects you. You feel when she is close, but I can feel her when she’s present as well, you know. I envy you seeing her. Tell me, what is she like?’

  ‘Be careful of what you ask,’ I replied. ‘If she wanted to be seen by you, you wouldn’t have to ask me anything.’

  He dropped his head and we continued walking. ‘I have a proposal to make,’ he said, breaking the silence. ‘You tell me what will be the day of my death and I’ll tell you yours.’

  ‘No one wants to know when the day of his death will be,’ I replied.

  ‘Then we’ll tell each other without moving our lips, without pronouncing a word. That way each of us will know the truth, but will be free to ignore it.’

  ‘What good would it do us?’ I asked. ‘Here it’s easy to die. Every day.’

  ‘It will allow us to understand if we really are different from all the others. It’s a very rare gift that the gods have given us. There are borders that only a very few are allowed to cross. You are one of them.’

  ‘I’ll accept your challenge if you will answer this question of mine: why does the passage of time escape me? Why don’t I know how long I’ve been in this place, and why don’t any of my comrades ever talk about it either?’

  ‘Because there are two borders in our world: time and place. You have crossed the border of time and what feels like a month for you can be a year for the others. Or the opposite. And one day you will cross the other border as well. You’ll cross an invisible line to reach places that no one else can see. Athena . . . perhaps it is she who wills this. I know no more than that.’

  I turned towards him and as soon as I looked into his eyes a dark, bottomless well opened up. I gave him an answer, and he to me. But his answer was not a day or a year. It was an image, one I thought I’d already seen. I wouldn’t think about it again for a very long time afterwards.

  THE WAR went on, ever harsher, ever more violent and cruel, ever more difficult. We hated it. In order to sustain such a huge army we had to sack everywhere around us. We took crops, herds, flocks, while the bronze and copper, the silver and gold and the beautiful women were all for the kings. I wanted the war to end, so I fought on the field with all my might, and my men with me. I had to be an example for them: I had to share the strain, the danger, the long nights awake on guard. I shared their food as well. Only when I was invited to the table of Agamemnon with the other sovereigns did I eat roasted meats and drink pure, inebriating wine, in endless banquets which perhaps helped us to forget wh
at was happening.

  One night I realized that there was a guest whom I thought I would never meet again: the minstrel without listeners from the port of Troy, the one who had offered to sing for me alone. I remembered his song as a long lament, as a mysterious, harmonious weeping, a melody he had drawn out of my own heart. How could he have entered our camp? Was it a divinity in disguise, plotting calamity for us? Or a friendly god coming to our aid? Would Calchas notice him?

  He didn’t sing until the banquet was over, and I leaned close to hear every sound that came from between his teeth. No one else listened, not Diomedes, not Achilles, not Great Ajax, not the handsome king of Crete, Idomeneus. Not Nestor, knight of Gerene. Beautiful slave girls had joined us and even Nestor, who was so old, was eager to indulge in the pleasures they offered. I noticed that the poet was looking straight at me and that his lips were moving without making any sound. I saw, and I understood a single word: Anterior. When he walked off I ran after him. ‘When?’ I asked.

  He did not turn. ‘Now, at the wild fig tree,’ he said and disappeared into the darkness before I could say another word.

  I went to my tent, put on a dark, hooded cloak and girded my sword. I left the line of ships dragged up on the dry beach and started off into the countryside. I could feel the presence of many troubled shadows as I walked, ghosts of heroes fallen in the cruel fray, and I could feel their pain inside me as they mourned their lost lives.

  The wild fig was an enormous tree, so big that one hundred men could have found shelter in the shade of its leafy boughs. Ever since we had come ashore so long ago, it had been a landmark for us in the middle of the plain, and it bore the signs of our many battles: arrowheads still stuck in the trunk and spear tips as well, deep wounds and gashes in the bark and wood. And yet it was thriving, and laden with fruit that the birds ate. I saw a shadow and remained at a distance, saying: ‘A poet asked me to come to this meeting, noble Antenor. I came because I was certain you would not betray the bond of hospitality.’