by John Dolan
Odysseus knows better. This is a sideshow. They’re going to lose badly today. He has to be ready to hold the army together when that happens.
Akilles, far off in his tent, hears the cheering and shrugs. He knows his mother hasn’t let him down. He sips wine and waits, wishing ill to his former comrades.
Paris, slapped into dignity by the Greeks’ roaring laugh, slows down as he approaches the Trojan shields. He wants to make this look like he’s simply calling time, to consult with his brothers. Hektor steps out to meet him, in a rage. After all the disasters Paris has already brought down on the family, he has to shame them too? Hektor is a good man, and he hasn’t scolded Paris for bringing ruin on the city. After all, Paris is a prince; he can do as he pleases. But this is too much. Nine years of pent rage spew up out of Hektor’s lips as he grabs Paris and hisses at him:
“You miserable pervert! Lecher, you’ve never cared about anyone but yourself! Always primping in the mirror, flirting with any woman who looked at you, no matter whose property she was! We should have stoned you to death as the law commands when you brought a noble-born man’s wife back here. And now you won’t face the man you robbed? Go out there and fight Menelaos!”
Paris says, “Yes, I admit all that’s true … but you just don’t know. You never met Afroditi, you don’t know how good it feels; it’s a whole different world. You’re always talking about your duties, always doing the right thing; you just don’t know … But you’re right, I have to go back out there. But let’s use this combat to make a deal with the Greeks. Tell them that if I die today, you give Helen back to them and they go home. That will make up, maybe, for what I did to the family.”
Hektor grabs the chance. He has to make a deal fast, before the two armies swarm each other. The Greeks are so excited by Paris’ cowardice that they’re already throwing sling-stones and firing arrows at the Trojans, and the Trojans are getting angry too, ready to charge downhill at the Greeks. Hektor pushes the Trojans back, using his spear like a staff, then says, “Wait, hold the line! Paris will fight for us.” Then he goes out to negotiate with the Greeks.
Hektor walks halfway to the Greek shield wall and calls, “Paris agrees to fight Menelaos, but let us agree that this fight will settle the war. Paris against Menelaos, the two men whose quarrel started all this. Let everyone on both sides put down their weapons, sit on the ground, and watch them fight. Winner takes the woman and all she has; everyone else goes home, and the war is over.”
Menelaos has been waiting all this time, standing alone in front of the Greek horde. He’s not the fastest thinker among the Greeks, but he likes this idea of fighting the man who stole his wife, with everyone watching. He’ll kill that preening pretty-boy, and everyone will see he’s not just a punch line. When your claim to fame is being the most famous cuckold in the world, and everyone whispers that it’s because you didn’t know how to please your wife, life is rather unpleasant. He hears the snickers when he walks past the tents. He’s heard the Menelaos jokes: “Helen is complaining the way wives do, ‘Look, I don’t have a thing to wear!’ Menelaos walks behind the screen where she keeps her finery, says, ‘What are you talking about, wife? Look, here’s a fine gown, and here’s another—oh, hello, Paris!—and here’s a nice shawl, and another gown …”
He’s been hearing those jokes in his head in his sleep for nine long years. And now he has Paris right here, with everyone watching. It’s a joy that almost makes him sick, for fear someone will take it away. Why can’t they just get on with it?
But this negotiation is a serious business, and that means priests and kings. The priests have to drag bulls and sheep to the space between the armies, where the two men will try to kill each other, and kill the animals, and move the meat around in the divinely approved manner.
And the kings have to parade before the two armies. Helen is there, with old Priam and the rest of the Trojan royals. Menelaos sees her, all right. When Paris is dead, and she is his property again, he will have a great deal to say to her. Not now. Now his job is to kill the pretty boy.
But he has to wait forever. The priests take their time, the smoke rises to heaven, the soldiers point to Helen and Priam, telling the same cuckold jokes Menelaos has been hearing for nine years. It will never stop. Maybe it would be better if Paris kills him. Maybe then it would stop. But no, from what Menelaos has heard about the afterlife, it’s even worse than this one, about like being on a becalmed ship in the dark, forever. Not much to look forward to.
Finally, the preliminaries are over. Priam and Helen return to Troy. Hektor handles the toss to see who gets to throw the first spear, because they all trust Hektor.
Paris wins the toss. He steps back, makes his run, throws. The spear hits Menelaos’ shield and scores a long tear in it without sticking.
Now it’s Menelaos’ turn. He’s sick with eagerness, praying hard to Zeus: “Father, God, Zeus, please, please, listen to me for once: The man I’m aiming at, he was a guest in my house! A guest! If anything means anything, a man’s house, his wife—I may not be as smart or handsome as some people but the man was my guest! Give me his worthless life!”
Paris is waiting, hunched low. Menelaos throws. It’s a good throw, right through the shield, through the breastplate. But Paris is a prince; princes practice fighting all day, from the cradle. Paris knows what to do. He flips his torso as Menelaos’ spear screeches through his shield, as the shield slows it down and gives him time to dodge. He’s not hurt, though he has to throw away his shield.
Menelaos can’t believe it. A perfect throw! Nine years he’s dreamed of this chance, and now that he’s done it, the gods have denied him. He was born to be humiliated.
He pulls out his sword and lunges. But swords are bad weapons; the metal-workers haven’t really got it figured out yet, the tech support isn’t there yet. When you hit someone on the helmet, the sword usually …
Menelaos’ sword hits Paris on the helmet, and shatters.
That’s it. That’s the moment Menelaos’ last faith in god and man explodes into rage: “Damn every one of you, gods and people, and you, Zeus, especially! You’re supposed to protect a man like me who keeps the rules and makes the sacrifices and does what he’s supposed to do, and now, I wait nine years and you warp my throw and then the sword breaks like a stick?”
The only things Menelaos trusts now are his own two hands. He reaches out and grabs Paris, who’s wobbly from the whack on the helmet—grabs him by the helmet and starts dragging him back toward the Greek line. The Greeks are cheering hard now, all the cuckold jokes forgotten. “Yeah! Bring him! Drag him like a calf, Menelaos!” Menelaos finally feels something besides shame. This is joy! To hear the cheers of the army, and know that for once, someone else is the butt of the joke. Paris, the big stud—he has to be the punch line now, as he’s dragged by the helmet, woozy, helpless! A few more steps and Menelaos will have him safe inside the Greek shields, and then the Trojans will have to beg to get their stud back alive. Or Menelaos will make him die slowly, screaming, to make up for all those jokes.
But Paris has a friend, a goddess: Afroditi, the sweet cheat. She wafts down to the battlefield, snips the strap of Paris’ helmet with her nail scissors so it comes off in Menelaos’ hand, and takes Paris up with her, vanishes him. If there’s one thing she’s good at, it’s hiding men, and she hides her favorite stud now, so that right there, in broad sunlight, with two whole armies watching, Paris is gone. It’s ridiculous! It’s impossible! Suddenly Menelaos is holding an empty helmet—he’s the punch line again, the fool, the cuckold.
Helen saw it all, from the city wall. Her stud lover Paris, dragged through the dust by her ex-husband, Menelaos. All the maids were giggling at her, just loud enough for her to hear. She gave up everything for Paris, and he’s a loser. Had to be rescued by that immortal slut, Afroditi.
So when Afroditi suddenly appears to Helen, disguised as an old nurse, Helen isn’t in the mood for more God antics. Afroditi, putting on an obviously fa
ke old-crone voice, tugs at Helen’s robe: “Come to your chamber, my lady! Paris is waiting for you there, clean and eager! You’d never think he’s just been in a fight! He’s more like a young man at a dance!”
Helen shrugs off the Goddess’ hand: “Oh, stop this nonsense! I know it’s you, Afroditi; your illusions are getting sloppy. And I’m not going to that coward’s bed. Oh, I should have stayed in Sparta, with Menelaos! He’s the better man, even if he isn’t exactly exciting! You took me up in your love-bubble with Paris and dropped me here, far from home. If you like Paris so much, you bed him, you can have him! Be his wife, be his slave-girl better yet, but I’m not going anywhere!”
Afroditi is angry, and lets the disguise slip away. She looms before Helen, a very dangerous bitch-giantess: “Little hussy, you’ll regret it if you disobey me. I told you: Go to Paris, now.”
Helen goes, still sulking. She sits in the bedroom facing Paris, but she won’t look at him. Afroditi has arranged for sweet perfumes to suffuse the room, it’s so warm in there that clothes suddenly seem like a bad invention, and there’s a pulsing music coming from everywhere. Helen’s not impressed with these tricks, though. Not today.
Paris is lolling on the bed, sure of himself as ever. Like he hasn’t just shamed himself, shamed her, losing in front of everyone and being rescued by Afroditi. Just lying there, grinning at her, ready for love. Well, it’s not going to be that easy for him this time.
She starts, “I thought you were so good with your hands. Isn’t that what you always said, how good with your hands you are? With your sword? If your precious Afroditi hadn’t scooped you up and saved you, you’d be dead out there. My poor Menelaos is a better man than you!”
Paris grimaces, “Woman, don’t start with me. It’s been a rough day. Menelaos had Athena with him, and she loves war, she’s born for it, freak that she is. There was nothing I could do, fighting both your damned ex and the goddess at once. Look, darling, there’ll be another day; I still have gods who like me.”
He grins and leans toward her: “And you like me too, don’t you?” She doesn’t answer, just huffs. Which is good enough for him. He pulls her toward him, and she goes—grumbling, but she goes. And they go at it.
4
AGAMEMNON
OUT ON THE BATTLEFIELD, no one knows what to do. Paris has vanished, Menelaos is standing there holding an empty helmet. Agamemnon tries to bluff it out, stomping out halfway to the Trojan line waving his arms and yelling, “You all saw it! My brother Menelaos is the winner! Give us back the woman, Helen, and we demand a ransom, too—but we’ll settle that later. The point is, we win!”
The Greeks all cheer. The Trojans aren’t sure what to do. There’s a lot of milling around behind their shields. Paris lost the fight, but where’s his body? Until they see his corpse, they’re not conceding. Zeus is watching it all, feeling bad. His wife Hera and her all-too-precocious daughter Athena! This is all their doing, because they hate the Trojans so much. Zeus likes the Trojans. Good pious people, always laid out some good fat meat for his sacrifices. But those two, mother and daughter, they just won’t rest till Troy is wiped out. He has another gulp of nectar and grumbles:
“Why can’t we just let Menelaos take his wife back? Then Troy won’t have to be wiped out. What did the Trojans ever do to you, anyway?”
Hera glares at him: “Do you know how hard I’ve worked, holding all these quarrelsome Greeks together for nine long years? I’m not wasting all that effort.”
Zeus is almost weeping now, drunk and maudlin: “I like Troy! They’ve always been good, loyal worshippers of mine. What if I took it into my head to destroy one of your favorite towns, how would you feel?”
Hera doesn’t hesitate: “My three favorite towns are Sparta, Argos, and Mycenae. You can destroy all of them, anytime you want, and I won’t say a word. But in return, let me have my way with Troy.”
Zeus is beaten. She called his bluff. She sees it and pushes her advantage: “So why not settle things right now? Send Athena, to trick the Trojans into shooting first, breaking the truce.”
Zeus has another gulp and grimaces. Athena … that girl, or whatever she is … she scares him sometimes. Just look at her, looming over her mother, that damned owl on her shoulder staring at him … his head still hurts where she chewed her way out to get born. Not worth it, opposing Athena.
So he nods, “Go down there then, girl. Talk your way into some Trojan’s head. You’re good at that.” And he has another gulp of wine.
Athena smiles, nods to her mother, and vanishes.
She comes to Earth clothed in fire this time. No sneaking about it. She wants everyone to know that one of the greatest gods has come, roaring down onto the dust plain like a blazing comet, a shaft of fire that disappears as it touches the ground.
Every man on the field knows something will happen now. Nobody knows what.
Athena turns herself to Pandarus, a Trojan ally from the back country. A hick, but a fine sniper, all hand-eye coordination, born with a bow in his hand like so many of these back-country Easterners. She has no trouble getting into his mind, what there is of it, whispering, “Listen, archer, don’t you see Menelaos standing out there in the open? What a target! You know who’d be grateful if you put an arrow right in his belly? Apollo, the patron of all bowmen. He’d reward you well if you took Menelaos out right now. And so would Priam and the Trojans. Do it! Do it now!”
Pandarus gulps once or twice—he’s one of those gawky kids, all Adam’s apple—and nods. He calls his hick friends to form a shield around him so no one will see him draw his bow. That bow is a thing of beauty, two huge ibex horns joined with sinew, strung with a thin strip of hide. He fits the arrow and pulls the bow back and back, into a circle, then a flattened oval, till you’d think it would fall apart, and then lets go.
Menelaos is standing out there between the two shield walls in a rage. Perfect target. But Athena is watching over him. She tracks the arrow in slow motion as it pushes through the air toward Menelaos. To her, there are eons of time between the moment it left the bowstring and the moment it slides through Menelaos’ linen shirt.
She guides it, slows it, sends it lovingly through Menelaos’ shirt near the belly. She enjoys this part a little too much, perhaps, every layer unfolded in a slow tease. She lets the arrowhead penetrate the belt buckle, then sends it burrowing through the second layer of leather Menelaos wears around his waist, and then gently scratches his skin with it, like a playful cat—just the point, not the barb, enough to draw a little blood.
And then she’s gone, back up to the Overworld to watch. Menelaos doesn’t even know he’s hit yet. He stands there between the two armies, bleeding like a woman, the red streaming down his legs.
Menelaos feels the wound, looks down, sees the blood. He sits, then lies down. Agamemnon, still orating at the Trojans, hears the Greeks’ cries, turns around, and sees his brother lying there with an arrow in his belly.
Agamemnon runs over to Menelaos, howling like a child: “O dear brother, I’ve been the death of you!”
Agamemnon is shrieking: “I’ve ruined us all! This was my war and I’ve lost it all, and now you’re going to die! Oh, my poor Menelaos! We’ll bury you out here in the dust fields and some damn Trojan kids will play on your grave and laugh and say, ‘Agamemnon’s brother is buried here’ …”
Menelaos isn’t listening to his brother. He’s feeling the wound, and soon realizes the arrow barely broke the skin. The barb didn’t go in, that’s the main thing. No barb, no problem. It’s just blood, and a man has blood to spare. Agamemnon is still holding him, howling: “… You’ll lie forever here in the middle of nowhere! They’ll say, ‘He died in Asia, back when the Greeks wasted their strength trying to take Troy and then sailed away, a failure!’ That’s how I’ll be remembered, as a failure! ‘Agamemnon, the Big Failure,’ that’s what they’ll call me!”
Menelaos lifts himself up on one elbow, growls: “Shut up! You’re scaring the army! It’s not dee
p, it’s nothing! Stop talking!”
Agamemnon turns and screams, “Somebody get the surgeon! The one who got those magic herbs from the Centaurs!” Machaon, a hereditary healer, runs up and kneels by Menelaos. “It’s just a scratch,” he says, disgusted with Agamemnon’s dramatics. He yanks the arrow out with one quick pull. “That’s all; he’ll be fine. I can apply some magic ointment to take away the pain …”
Agamemnon is still ranting: “Yes, yes! The ointment! My poor brother!”
The first time in nine years of battle, Agamemnon’s blood is really up. He’s watched thousands of Greeks die, but now that his own kin is wounded, it’s suddenly real to him. He stomps around, yelling: “Ready to attack! The Gods will be with us! They’ll never back cheaters like those Trojans!”
He runs up to Ideomenus, lord of the Cretans, and yells, “Look at you all, waiting around! You’re always the first in line when I pass the wine around at my feasts, Ideomenus, but look at you now, too scared to attack!”
Ideomenus is used to Agamemnon’s nonsense. He just shrugs, tells Agamemnon, “Go motivate somebody else. We’re ready to move when the army does. We can’t do anything till then.”
Agamemnon is already gone, running down the line looking for someone else to shriek at. He finds old Nestor getting his chariots in a line. Nestor’s giving a speech, as usual, reminding the drivers to keep a straight line, “… Yes, that’s how we won battles in the old days, boys, all in a good straight line!”
Agamemnon runs up and hugs the old bag of bones till Nestor’s thin shoulders ache, and yells, “Oh Nestor, wise old advisor! If only your body matched your mind!”
Nestor wriggles out of the bear-hug and mumbles: “Oh, I may not be as young as I was, but …”
Agamemnon has already run off to bother Odysseus and his men. They’re ready; they’ve been ready for a half-hour, waiting for the call to advance. But Agamemnon just sees them standing still and launches into a rant: “Odysseus! I should’ve known! Cunning as usual, waiting for everyone else to go first, let someone else absorb the Trojans’ spears! You’re quick enough when I pass around the wine at a banquet, aren’t you, but now …” Odysseus has had enough of Agamemnon for one day, and shoves him off: “What are you talking about? We’re ready to move with the army. Go bother someone else!”