by Pat Barker
Breathing in the warmth of the memory, I’d forgotten where I was, until suddenly the door was thrown open and Odysseus stood there, beckoning me to come inside.
22
For hours, Achilles had stood in the stern of his ship watching the progress of the battle, divided between exasperation and triumph. The trench was a fucking disaster—as he’d known it would be; the fighting was now quite literally bogged down, the men floundering in mud. You might just as well have sent a messenger to Priam saying: Don’t worry, old man, we know we can’t win.
Well, then: wine, food, celebration…! Fat chance. The atmosphere at dinner was positively funereal. It turned out he wasn’t the only one who’d been watching the battle, but not everybody was equally happy with the prospect of a Greek defeat. Patroclus hardly spoke. In fact, he’d said scarcely anything all week, which might suggest the situation was static. Huh! It wasn’t static at all. His silences were getting steadily louder.
After dinner, Achilles made a few attempts at conversation, got no response, so he picked up his lyre and started to play. As always, after the first few notes, he lost himself in the music. The fire roared, the dog resting its head on Patroclus’s knee sighed with contentment, the last few notes of the song wound down into stillness…Achilles was about to speak, but Patroclus held up his hand. Sounds on the veranda: the slapping of sandalled feet on bare boards. They exchanged glances. Nobody came to see them at this hour; in fact, nobody came at all. Achilles put the lyre aside, just as the door burst open, letting in a blast of cold air. The torches shuddered, sending shadows leaping across the walls. The dogs bared their teeth and began circling, until Patroclus, recognizing the men hesitating on the threshold, said, “Friends!”—and reluctantly, grumbling deep in their throats, the dogs fell back.
Odysseus stepped into the firelight, closely followed by Ajax. Odysseus: short, lean, muscular; Ajax: immensely tall, freckles dotting his nose like gnat bites, grinning to reveal a mouthful of large white uneven teeth.
“Come in, come in.” Achilles jumped up and started pulling chairs closer to the fire. “Sit down, Ajax, you’ll crack your head.”
Patroclus forced the door shut against the wind. Instantly, the flames grew tall again, the tapestries stopped flapping and in the pause that followed Achilles’s greeting, the oddity of Odysseus and Ajax being there at all began to sink in.
“Something to eat?” Achilles said, still smiling, but wary now, as he hadn’t been a moment before.
Ajax rubbed his knees. “No, thanks, I’m fine.”
“Not for me,” Odysseus said, lowering himself carefully into a chair.
“You’re wounded,” Achilles said.
“Just a scratch.”
Achilles looked from the bandaged arm to Odysseus’s face. “A bit more than that, here…”
He reached out as if to remove the bandage, but Odysseus pulled away. “No, really, it’s nothing.” He draped his cloak across the injured arm. “Have you been watching the battle?”
“Off and on.”
“They’re camped on the other side of the trench.”
“Really? As close as that…?”
“Fuck’s sake, man, you can hear them!”
“Now you come to mention it, I think I did hear something—a while back.”
Patroclus finished handing round cups of wine. Achilles raised his, Odysseus and Ajax raised theirs…And nobody could think of a toast.
After a moment’s hesitation, Odysseus put his cup on the table beside him. “Come on, Achilles, you know why I’m here.”
“I don’t, I’m afraid. You’re the clever one, Odysseus. Ajax and me, we just muddle on as best we can.”
Hearing his name, Ajax looked up, but couldn’t think of anything to say. Odysseus braced himself against the back of the chair—he was in a lot more pain than he was letting on—and forced a laugh. “Have you put on weight?”
Achilles shrugged. “Don’t think so.”
“Are you sure?” Odysseus bunched his fingers at his waist. “I’d have said half a stone at least.”
“My armour still fits.”
“Oh, you try it on, do you?” He flicked a glance at Patroclus. “Well, a quiet life obviously suits you. You both look very well.”
“And you look like shit, so why don’t you get to the point?”
“I’m here on behalf of Agamemnon.”
“Who’s wounded in both legs and can’t walk?”
“Do you really expect him to come himself?”
“Yes.”
Odysseus shook his head. “What I don’t understand is how you can sit there and do nothing while literally a few hundred yards away the whole bloody Trojan army’s getting ready to attack. All right, perhaps you don’t watch the fighting—perhaps your conscience won’t let you—but you can’t tell me you don’t know what’s going on.”
“My conscience is fine, thank you.”
Patroclus leant forward. “I hope—”
Achilles waved his hand. “Oh, don’t worry, we’re not quarrelling. Odysseus and I go back a long way, we understand each other very well.” He glanced at Odysseus. “Don’t we?”
“I used to think so.”
Achilles reached for the wine. “Go on, then, let’s hear it.”
“I’m authorized to make you an offer. In return for you leading your Myrmidons into battle tomorrow morning—”
“Tomorrow morning?”
“Afternoon might be a bit late! Look, do you want to hear what he’s offering or not?”
Pausing at times to ease his back, Odysseus embarked on a long list of the objects Agamemnon was prepared to give: tripods, textiles, gold, racehorses, women…Achilles listened intently, though when Odysseus finished speaking, he seemed to be waiting for something else. Something more.
“We-ell?” Odysseus said at last.
“That’s it?”
“I think that’s quite a lot.”
“None of it’s worth my life.”
Odysseus looked taken aback. “No, I know…But then, when have you ever fought for things? You fight for glory, for reputation.”
“Not anymore. I’ve had a lot of time to think, Odysseus. This isn’t my war, I don’t want any part of it. What have the Trojans ever done against me? Have they stolen my cattle, burned my crops—taken my prize of honour? No. Nothing, that’s the answer. They’ve done nothing.”
“Oh, come on, you’re gagging for it.”
“What? I’m sorry—what am I ‘gagging for’?”
“Fighting. You know you can’t get enough of it. It’s who you are. You live, breathe, eat, sleep war.”
“Not anymore.”
Odysseus sat back. Beads of sweat gleamed on his upper lip; he was finding it hard to control his temper. “Look, you agreed to fight, you signed up for it…You couldn’t bloody well wait.”
“I was seventeen.”
“I don’t care. You agreed to be part of this coalition—and you can’t back out now just because you’ve changed your mind. It’s not honourable, Achilles.”
“I didn’t back out because I changed my mind. I did it because his behaviour was outrageous. And don’t talk to me about honour when you come here representing a dog turd.”
In the silence that followed, Patroclus cleared his throat. “And Briseis?”
“Ah!” Odysseus said.
He struggled to his feet. Achilles reached out to help him, but then let his hand drop. Odysseus staggered to the door and, using his full body weight, pushed it open against the wind. Once again, the torches guttered and sent shadows fleeing across the walls. A few muffled words and he was back, dragging behind him a woman so heavily shrouded in white she might have been a corpse. He pushed her into the circle of light round the fire and, with all the panache of a conjurer, pulled off the veils. “Here
she is!”
Dazed as a rabbit in the sudden glare, the girl stared from face to face. Achilles’s knuckles whitened round his cup, but he said nothing. Odysseus looked baffled, obviously expecting a much more dramatic response, because after all this was the moment: Achilles’s prize of honour, the girl, the bloody girl, the cause of all the trouble, returned. With a king’s ransom thrown in. What more could he possibly want? And yet he sat there and said nothing.
Odysseus made himself go on. “And he’s prepared to swear a solemn oath in front of the entire army that he never touched her. She’s been living in his huts with the other women unmolested.”
“He never touched her?”
“That’s right. And he will swear to it.”
Achilles got up and went across to Briseis. They were so close now he could feel her breath on his face, but she wouldn’t look at him. He picked up one of the opals—warm from her skin—and cradled it in the palm of his hand, turning it this way and that until glints of fire shone through the milky haze. Abruptly, he let the stone drop, put his forefinger under her chin and gently raised her head until she was forced to meet his eyes…
A moment later, he turned to Odysseus. “Tell him he can fuck her till her back breaks. Why would I care?”
Briseis clapped a hand over her mouth. Immediately, Patroclus was by her side, putting his arm round her shoulders and leading her out into the corridor and towards the hall.
“All right,” Odysseus said, breathing deeply. “Perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea, but at least hear me out.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“When we take Troy—”
“ ‘When?’ ”
“Twenty women, your choice—well, obviously not Helen, but anybody else—seven fortified cities, as much gold and bronze as your ships can carry and—no, wait—Agamemnon’s own daughter as your wife. He’ll accept you as his son-in-law, equal in every respect to his own son—”
“Hang on a minute, let’s just see if I’ve got this right. I’m going to be equal in every respect to his own son?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Equal in every respect to a fifteen-year-old boy who’s never yet lifted a sword in anger?” Achilles leant in to Odysseus until their faces were only an inch apart. “And I’m supposed to be flattered?”
“And the daughter brings a huge dowry with her—and that’s on top of everything else. You can’t say it’s not generous.”
“Where’s it all coming from?”
“Well, from his stores, of course.”
“Yes—but how much of that comes from the cities I took? While he sat on his fat arse and did nothing.”
Odysseus sat down again and passed a hand across his eyes. “What do you want, Achilles?”
“Him. Here. I want an apology, I want him to admit he was wrong.”
Odysseus turned to Ajax. “Come on, we’re wasting our time.” He picked up his cloak and then, as if the thought had only just occurred to him, turned back. “Are you holding out for something else? Because if you are, for god’s sake, man, spit it out—we don’t have time to play games.”
“I want an apology. It’s quite simple. And cheap.”
“And I’m supposed to go back and tell him that?”
“Oh, I think we can do better than that. Tell him, if I was given the choice of either marrying his daughter or fucking a dead pig, I’d choose the pig every time. There, that should do it.”
Odysseus had already turned to go, when, unexpectedly, Ajax spoke. “Men are dying out there, not Trojans, not the enemy, your own side, men who looked up to you—men who bloody near worshipped you—but you don’t care, do you? You don’t care about anything except your honour—and getting an apology. They’re dying, Achilles. You could save them—and you won’t. Where’s the honour in that?” He was on the verge of tears. “I’m ashamed of being your cousin. I’m ashamed I ever called you a friend.”
He snatched up his cloak and, wiping tears and snot away on the back of his hand, plunged out into the night.
23
Patroclus said: “I think I’d better go back in.”
I nodded, and went on sitting at the small table where he’d placed me. After a few minutes, I was able to look around. The dinner plates had been cleared away and fresh rushes spread on the floor, but there were still some platters and wine jugs lined up on the sideboard at the far end of the hall. I walked down between the two long tables and peered into the jugs until I found one still half full and poured myself a cup. The wine had been standing too long and had a vinegary edge to it, but it would have to do. I drank long and deep, wiped my mouth, poured another cup.
It had all happened so quickly: hauled from darkness into light, stripped of my veil, displayed barefaced like a whore in the marketplace…Like being in the arena that first day all over again. And, at the end, that one moment of disturbing intimacy when Achilles had looked straight into my eyes and suddenly there was nobody else in the room and I knew I couldn’t lie.
Tell him he can fuck her till her back breaks.
More wine. I found another jug and poured the dregs into my cup. A door banged and immediately I froze, the cup an inch from my lips. I was expecting Odysseus to appear, but when I went out onto the veranda, it was Ajax I saw—pacing up and down twenty or thirty yards away, thumping one clenched fist repeatedly into the palm of his other hand. Patroclus came out and tried to talk to him, but Ajax just shook his head and went on pacing. After a while, Patroclus gave up and came back towards the hut. When he saw me standing there, he took the cup from me and sniffed: “Ugh, god, I think we can do better than that.”
He led me back into the hall and, from a cupboard under the sideboard, brought out a flagon of wine—the best—the wine I used to serve to Achilles at dinner. He poured two generous cups and handed one to me. We sat at the small table looking down the length of the hall. I said: “You gave me wine the first night I was here. I was sitting in the back room, absolutely terrified.” I glanced sideways at him. “I couldn’t think why you’d do that for a slave.”
“You know why.”
I didn’t, unless he was referring to the time he’d been alone and frightened in Achilles’s father’s palace, with no future, no hope and no friends. I hoped he meant that—anything else would have been too difficult.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“Why? You haven’t done anything.”
“Odysseus shouldn’t have brought you.”
No, I thought, it could all have been decided without me. Would that have been better? Perhaps. If I hadn’t given the game away, Achilles might have believed Agamemnon. It was a big thing to undertake: the swearing of a solemn oath in front of the gods. He might well have thought Agamemnon couldn’t be lying.
Voices from the other room. “What’s going on, do you know?”
“Well, they’re still talking…I thought Odysseus was going to leave a while back, but he didn’t.”
The voices were coming closer. We stood up as Odysseus, looking suddenly much older, came into the hall.
“I’ll see you to the gate,” Patroclus said.
“No need.” Curt, dismissive.
“No, Achilles would want me to.”
Odysseus came closer. Letting his contempt show, he said: “Do you do everything Achilles wants?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned on his heel and strode off down the hall. I knew I had to follow him.
It had begun to rain, that very fine rain that looks like mist, but soaks you to the skin in seconds. Odysseus and Ajax set off to the gate, carrying the torches—Agamemnon’s heralds had long since returned to his compound—leaving Patroclus and me to stumble along behind as best we could. Patroclus grabbed a torch from a sconce outside one of the huts and held it high above our heads. Occasionally, as we walked, his cloak would brus
h against mine, but apart from that there was no physical contact. We didn’t talk much either. In fact, I’m not sure we spoke at all. I suppose some people would have attempted easy consolation: It won’t be for long, don’t worry, we’ll sort something out…And so on. But he didn’t, and for that I was grateful.
We left him at the gate of the compound. I turned and looked back at his tall figure circled in light, but Odysseus called my name, sharply, like somebody bringing a dog to heel, so I knew I had to look forward again. It was a very subdued, bedraggled little group that straggled on around the curve of the bay. Waves racing in fast, breaking in overlapping arcs of foam around our feet, and always that steady, fine rain falling. I floundered through wet sand until, in the end, I simply took my sandals off and walked barefoot. After all, it scarcely mattered what I looked like now. Neither Odysseus nor Ajax showed any interest in me. I had simply ceased to exist.
I was afraid. I’d been afraid since Lyrnessus fell. No, longer than that—years. I’d been afraid ever since the cities of the Trojan plain started falling to Achilles; every burning, every sacking, brought the war closer. But my fear that night was of an altogether different order, more sharply focused than it had ever been before. I knew my presence in his compound no longer reflected well on Agamemnon. Rather the opposite, in fact; I was a constant reminder of the quarrel that had brought the Greek army to the brink of defeat. My only potential use, my only value to him—since he certainly didn’t want me in his bed—had been as a possible bargaining chip in future negotiations with Achilles. Now, even that was gone.