Ithaca

by Patrick Dillon

  Three pelicans fly low over the sea’s surface, their slow wings almost grazing the waves. I feel lonelier than ever before. My father might have been missing, but at least I was sure what he was—brave, admired, unbeatable. Now I don’t even know that. I don’t know who Odysseus is—even my missing father has gone missing. If he doesn’t come back to Ithaca, I’ll never know what he was like.

  I try to imagine Odysseus clutching the steering oar as Ithaca disappeared behind him. Did he look back? Look back at the crowded quayside and the huddle of cottages, the plane tree whose branches shade the square, and the white house from whose window Penelope would never stop watching for him? Or did he just square his shoulders and keep his eyes on the horizon ahead? What did it feel like simply to sail away? Sometimes I’ve helped fishermen with their nets. That’s the farthest I’ve ever been from the shore of Ithaca.

  The pelicans are almost out of sight. I pick up a stone and flick it over the sea, watching it skip twice before disappearing beneath the wave’s smooth surface.

  By the time I get back to the big house, dusk is falling and torches have been lit at the main gate. A great fire is blazing in the middle of the courtyard, its flames crackling as high as the gallery above and painting the walls with savage shadows. Antinous is watching it with satisfaction, one hand raised to shield his sweating face from the heat. Tables have been dragged into the courtyard. Young men are drinking and rolling dice. A dog, tethered to one table leg by a leather leash, barks monotonously at the moon, which is just rising in a swollen, perfect orb above the roof.

  I pause under the colonnade, watching the fire. Eurymachus sees me and comes over. Tall and good-looking, Eurymachus is a favorite to everyone—even, perhaps, my mother. He’s the only one of the young men who ever tried to befriend me. I remember talking about my mother for hours on end while Eurymachus nodded sympathetically. He really seemed to care how she felt. Sometimes he’s tried to keep the others in check.

  “I saw you out on the rocks,” Eurymachus offers. “Needed some time alone? I don’t blame you. Thinking about your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “I know what it’s like. I lost my own father, you know, at about your age. Did I ever tell you that?”

  “Often,” I snap, and turn away. I need time to think. I watch Antinous, over by the fire, wave his hands for silence.

  “Our lamb,” he announces in his most irritating manner, “will not be ready for another hour. I suggest we use the time to amuse ourselves. My friends, I propose a story.”

  There’s a shout of approval. Some of the men start rhythmic clapping. Everyone in Greece loves a story, and a new storyteller arrived in the harbor only yesterday. A young man dressed in a threadbare robe is pushed through the crowd to the front. He’s blind, like many of the storytellers, and carries his instrument in a travel-stained sack tied with rough cord. As he fumbles the sack open, he raises his head to the crowd. “Which story shall I tell?” His voice half-chants, half-drones his repertoire. “The story of Achilles’s fury, or the gods’ battle with horse-monsters? The golden apple, or the tale of Jason and his voyage to the east?”

  I haven’t planned what I’m going to do. It’s as if the words come out all by themselves. Before anyone can speak, I step forward and say, “Tell them the story of Odysseus.”

  There’s dead silence. I can hear the crackle of flames on the fire. I can even hear my own heart beat, but it’s too late to go back. Suddenly I remember what Mentes said: that I have my father’s gift for words. Maybe that gives me courage. “Tell my father’s story,” I repeat. “This is his house. Tell his story. Tell how he fought in the Trojan War and planned the fall of Troy. Tell how he slaughtered his enemies.”

  “Tell how he died,” calls a voice from the back.

  “Odysseus isn’t dead,” I say quietly. Somehow I know that so long as I keep my voice calm, the young men will go on listening. “He’s alive,” I repeat firmly. “And there’s something you should know.” I pause. My mouth is dry. Greece, which seemed so small when I was sitting on the rocks, suddenly seems to have expanded into a universe. “Tomorrow I’m going to leave Ithaca. I’m going to travel wherever I have to, go to every island in Greece if I must. I’m going to find my father and bring him home.”

  I’ve said it. I didn’t mean to. I didn’t think I’d reached any decision out there on the rocks. But as soon as the words are out I realize I never had any choice. There’s no turning back, and I’m glad of it. In dead silence I walk out on them, walk out through the side door into the moonlit olive grove, and it’s only there I stop, with cicadas shrilling about me, and my heart beating as if it’s going to explode.

  That’s when the flaw in my plan hits me, and I wish I could stuff the words back into my mouth. I can talk all I like about searching every island in Greece. How am I going to leave Ithaca when I don’t even have a ship?

  As chief of Ithaca, Odysseus kept five warships beached permanently in the harbor. He could have them at sea an hour after ringing the bell that hung on the roof of the big house, men straining at the oars while Odysseus steered. That—so everyone says—was Odysseus at his happiest, legs planted on the deck, body swaying to meet the waves.

  For the Trojan expedition, merchants queued in the town square to lease him the extra ships he needed. When he was still two short, he rejected all but three of the unseaworthy tubs, cranked lighters, and overblown fishing boats they offered him, then sent men to fell pine trees on the mountainside, shave sweet curls of wood from the planks, and boil pitch to caulk the new ships. All within a week. Odysseus was never without a ship to put to sea in.

  It isn’t quite like that for me.

  There are fishermen’s caïque drawn up on the beach in dozens, brilliantly painted, but they’re too small for the deep-water journey to Pylos. There are usually three or four merchant ships in the harbor, round-bellied but sturdy, most of them with ten or twelve oars per side and a single square sail hoisted on a stumpy mast amidships. Any of those would do well enough—I don’t exactly need a war galley. But none of the merchants would detour south to Pylos, and I don’t have the money to charter a vessel like that.

  Colonists stop at Pylos on their way west. Their ships are crammed with children and animals, bags of seed, bleating young goats. But they’re heading away from Greece toward a new life—not back to Pylos.

  The young men in the big house all arrived by ship. There are always half a dozen light racing galleys hauled up on the sand, with bored-looking sailors playing dice next to them or dozing under makeshift awnings. But they’re the last people in the world who would want to lend me a ship to find my father—even if I could swallow my pride to ask.

  The only ship I can call my own is a wreck.

  It’s an old war galley Odysseus rejected sixteen years ago, and its remains have lain on the sand at the far end of the beach ever since, timbers bleached the color of bone by sixteen summers, seams gaping, lizards scuttling through holes where planks have been pried off for firewood. I remember playing in the wreck as a child, pretending I was a fighter sailing off to war. I could never move the steering oar—it was always buried too deep in sand—but I gripped it anyway. I pretended to steer and stared up at the stump of mast as if a sail billowed from it, then jumped down onto the beach to look up at the carved beak, from which every shred of paint had been scoured by winter gales.

  I can’t imagine the work it would take to make that wreck float at all, let alone brave the Ionian Sea.

  No ship, no crew. I go back to my bedroom but don’t sleep much. I doze off just before dawn, then an owl wakes me, hooting softly as it returns from its night’s hunt. It’s as I blearily open my eyes that I see the answer. The town council.

  Greek chiefs aren’t like kings. They don’t control things outright. People—towns, islands—accept their leadership . . . but only so long as they lead well. Big decisions get put to the vote at noisy meetings, where every detail is debated endlessly and furiously. T
hat’s how it is in Ithaca, anyway. My grandfather Laertes once told me it was Odysseus’s skill at managing those meetings that gave him such power over the island.

  “He always spoke last,” Laertes said. “A good trick—remember it. Odysseus would see which way the meeting was going, then stand up and turn it, just like you’d steer a boat. You should have heard the speech he made the day they voted for war. I was there. People weren’t sure before then—most of them had never heard of Troy or Agamemnon. It was going badly. Then Odysseus stood up, and by the time he finished, I swear that old men who could hardly walk would have strapped on their swords and hobbled down to the boats to fight if he’d only let them.”

  Since Odysseus’s disappearance—and with Penelope refusing to declare him dead so that a new chief could take over—the town council, gathered under the huge old plane tree in the square, has made most of the decisions on Ithaca. I remember my mother taking me when I was a child. She was always treated with deference—everyone loves Penelope—but I never heard her speak. Me, I’ve always looked forward to meetings. I love the packed benches dragged from the tavern for the occasion, and the old men clicking their fingers to applaud speeches they like, or hooting if they disapprove. Decisions on even the simplest matters can take all day. Sometimes it’s late into the night, with oil lamps winking on window ledges, their light glimmering on the animated faces of the fishermen, old women, and tired children in the square before a vote is taken and the tavern-keeper rolls a barrel of wine out into the square to seal the agreement.

  The town council can vote me a ship and crew.

  Any of the island’s elders can call a meeting. Within an hour I’m up at the hut of Eumaeus, my father’s old farmer. Hanging over a sagging log fence, I explain what I want while he swills pig feed into a trough between two black sows.

  “Oh, they’ll give yer a ship, all right.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “To find Odysseus?” The old man straightens up, grimacing as his back stiffens. “Do anything for Odysseus, this island would. They’ll vote for yer. Vote for the chief’s son. You just tells ’em what yer arter, they’ll give yer a fleet.”

  The sows nose forward into the trough, grunting happily. I can remember when this pen was full of pigs, with dozens more snuffling for apples in the orchard behind. The young men’s feasts have taken their toll. Now Eumaeus won’t let Melanthius, the cook, anywhere near the pig farm. Our guests have to make do with lamb and kids.

  There’s something else I need to ask the old farmer. It seems odd, now, that I’ve never asked him before. I try not to sound too hesitant.

  “Eumaeus, what was my father like?”

  “What was ’e like? Odysseus? ’E’s the chief, ain’t ’e?”

  It isn’t quite what I was expecting. And suddenly the old man seems very busy with swill, sluicing his leather bucket in the water butt and shaking out every last drop.

  “Was he a great fighter?”

  “You know ’e was.”

  “Did he tell lies?”

  The old man shakes the bucket mechanically. I’m willing him to say no. Instead he puts the bucket down.

  “They was more like stories,” he says. “Always had the gift o’ the gab, Odysseus did.”

  “What do you mean?” My mouth is dry.

  “I don’t mean nothin’. ’E was a good talker, is all.”

  “Was he a liar?”

  Eumaeus looks me in the eye then. His eyes are as clear, as weathered, as the Ithacan skies under which he’s lived all his life. “Some trusted ’im, some didn’t,” he says. “Like anyone else. Far as I’m concerned, ’e’s the chief, an’ that’s all.”

  It can’t be all, though, can it? Walking down to the town, I can feel uncertainty humming inside me like a wire. I expected Eumaeus to scoff at the idea my father was a liar. Who was Mentes, after all? A stranger. A man who told lies himself, for all I know, a man with a grudge. But Eumaeus didn’t scoff. Lying in bed, playing the scene out in my head beforehand, I imagined him blazing up in fury at the least slur on my father’s truthfulness. Instead he plunged his bucket in water, avoiding my eye.

  On the outskirts of town I pass one of Odysseus’s old fishermen sitting on the porch outside his hut, stitching nets with a big wooden needle. Word of the town meeting, run ahead by one of Eumaeus’s boys, is already spreading.

  I stop. I wouldn’t normally. “You’re coming to the vote?”

  He nods, pulls his thread to its full extent, and tugs. Some of the old islanders don’t say much.

  “How well do you remember Odysseus?”

  “I remember ’im.”

  The knot of worry tightens inside me. It isn’t the response I want. Why haven’t I noticed it before? All my life I’ve been certain of Ithaca’s love for Odysseus. But why have I been so sure? My mother always said they loved him. So did Eumaeus, his favorite. But have I ever heard it from the other islanders?

  “What do you remember best?”

  The old man tugs at another knot, then tests the net by pulling at it with fingers like bronze claws.

  “’E talked too much,” he says.

  Sitting in the square later, as villagers slowly flock out of their houses, worry pulses inside me like a stubborn headache. I know my father is a hero. I’ve heard the storytellers’ tales. I’ve seen his hunting bow on the wall at home—I’ve even lifted his sword in the shrine. But now, unexpectedly, there’s another Odysseus taking shape behind that armored fighter. A shadow, a man with the same outline but a different core. Too clever, too good with words. A liar.

  The meeting starts at midday, with the sun at its zenith, driving the square under the plane tree into deep black shade, people packing the benches around it. I sit with my back to the tree. Its roots coil and plait around me like serpents burrowing their way into the ground. There are no rules about who can attend a town meeting. Children scramble on and off the benches. Visitors are welcome—people even give them a respectful hearing if they choose to speak. Women heckle from the upstairs windows of the tavern. I’ve seen meetings turn in seconds from orderly debates into screaming matches, even fistfights. Speakers get booed off. Arguments cause family feuds that run for years. But this should be over quickly. All I’m asking for is a ship.

  I watch Mentor, one of Odysseus’s old friends, take his place in the front row, accompanied by his wife and four sons. I wish my mother were here, but she stopped attending meetings a year ago, and I couldn’t bear to add my troubles to her sorrows. I watch widows dressed in black clamber up onto the tables at the back of the square. The sight of them makes me confident. These are the women whose husbands and sons sailed for Troy and never came back. Surely they’ll support a mission to find them? Then I see some of the young men from the big house, Antinous and Eurymachus among them, swagger into the square and take their places around the gathering. Not together—at strategic points, which means they’re planning something—and that makes something lurch inside me. Antinous gives me an airy little wave as he sits down. He’s wearing a bright red cape, and carrying—his latest affectation—a little tabby kitten he found in the storeroom and tamed. His plump, bejeweled fingers are scratching the creature’s ears as the gathering falls silent.

  I stand up. A novice. I’ve never addressed a meeting before. Every eye on Ithaca is staring at me, and my legs are trembling—I can’t stop them. I notice little things—a woman in a window at the back of the square, whispering something to her friend. Then I see all the other eyes again, waiting for me to start.

  “Sixteen years ago . . .” A bad start. Voice croaky, and too quiet. “Sixteen years ago . . .” Bellowing it—too loud, sounding like a child.

  And suddenly it’s going wrong. I know it from the first word. People aren’t listening. Mentor looks nervous, which makes me feel worse, and I hear my voice wobble. There’s no clicking of fingers, no rumble of approval as I list everything Odysseus did for the island. Maybe I do have a gift for words, but not today, not
here. When I rehearsed the speech in the orchard, I imagined people stamping their feet as I reminded them how Odysseus rebuilt the harbor; they growled assent when I talked about the decision to go to war, wiped tears from their eyes when I mentioned Penelope. They even laughed at my only joke.

  It isn’t like that. I outline my plan for the journey, but by now the young fishermen at the back have lost interest and are whispering and giggling among themselves. My joke dies in silence.

  I planned to wind up with an appeal to the islanders’ sense of duty. Something tells me that’s wrong. I always believed the Ithacans worshipped my father, but looking around the benches, I see that those familiar faces hold expressions I’ve never noticed before: bitterness, anger, resentment. It’s as if I’ve never looked at them properly, as if they’ve suddenly turned into strangers; or as if they always were strangers and have suddenly turned into what they are—people.

  “So what I really wanted to say,” I end up, “is I need to go and find my father. My mother needs it. And I need you to help me. Please.”

  It sounds flat and I know it. Mentor claps twice. No one else does. I lean back against the tree, shirt soaked in sweat, exhausted. For a moment there’s silence, then suddenly everyone’s shouting at once.

  It’s an old woman who wins the floor. She lives in a hut at the end of the beach. I don’t know her that well, but she’s stabbing her shriveled finger at me and screaming, “Three sons . . . he took all my sons.” Another woman follows, her voice rising to become the lament of the old beggars you see clustering the market gates—“No husband to care for me, no sons to look after me in my old age . . .” And sitting under the plane tree in the middle of a town meeting, I suddenly understand: Odysseus was the chief who took their men to war and never brought them back.

  It’s as if the floodgates have opened. A young fisherman stutters about the four brothers who never came back from the war, and he has everyone in tears. Eumaeus is sitting there in blank shock. Mentor, my father’s old friend, does his best to change the mood. Face flushed with anger, he makes a long speech about the duty the islanders owe their chief. There are a few abashed faces around the square, but people keep interrupting. Eumaeus speaks gruffly and inaudibly. To my surprise, Eurymachus lifts his hand and makes a short, polished speech urging the islanders to give me their support. As he sits down, he catches my eye and gives a sympathetic shrug.