Penelope's Web

by Christopher Rush

  ‘You’d better have a bath,’ she said.

  What – like Agamemnon?

  ‘A bath?’

  ‘Yes, first thing in the morning, the maids will see to it. Tonight they can see to your feet and spread a bed for you.’

  Spread their legs for me. I’ll fuck the arses off them, the bitches.

  ‘Give you a good rub-down.’

  Give them a good rub-up. A right fucking drubbing, before I murder them. A drabbing. A stabbing.

  ‘Would that compensate for your foul treatment here?’

  Foul thoughts, compensation.

  ‘A foot-bath would be fine – except I’d hate those maids to handle me, even my feet. Especially my feet. But if you happen to have some respectable old woman . . .’

  Penelope smiled.

  ‘I have just the woman for you. She was my husband’s nurse, held him when he was born, bathed him when he was a boy. She’s well through now, I’m afraid, but she’s one of the old faithfuls, the best in that respect, so I keep her on. She’s a little rough, you know, but she’s devoted to my husband’s memory, and you have such news of him, she’ll be delighted to do this for you, if you don’t mind telling her your story and listening to her gossip. I’ll ask her. Eurycleia!’

  ‘You don’t have to ask me. I heard.’ She came hobbling out of the shadows.

  ‘Heard everything you said about me. I’m never far away. And I’m far from through, I’ll have you know, though I may have a coarse tongue. So what? I’ll wash this poor old-timer’s feet with pleasure. Small wonder he doesn’t want those whores to touch him. He can see for himself where they’ve been.’

  ‘Thank you, old mother.’

  ‘It’s a joy. I’ll do it for you like I did it for my lovely Odysseus, so often that I knew every scrape and scar of his body’s history. I could chart you his childhood from that body of his, every cut and bruise from his boyhood days, oh yes, every scrape and scar.’

  Every scrape and scar. Fuck! I’d forgotten about the scar! She’d see it and recognise me.

  Enter now the boar, the perfect web-fellow. What’s a web without a boar?

  I am visiting Autolycus, my grandfather, my mother’s father, the best thief and liar of his age, consummate in craft. I know where my many wiles come from, and I know that my grandfather’s gifts came from Hermes. Autolycus was the one who named me, named me after the story of his life, in which he’d made many enemies. So that’s what he called me on the day I was born: Odysseus, the son of suffering, child of antagonism and distrust.

  I’m out with the hounds on the woody heights of Parnassus, accompanying my uncles, Autolycus’s sons, and the dogs are hot on the scent. We come to a thicket, and they go mad with excitement – it’s clear he’s in there, but they can’t get in, it’s so dense. He gets out though, instead of lying low, and comes at us on the charge, his back bristling, his eyes on fire, unafraid. He’s a big one, a brute, but I’m keen to do my stuff and show my mettle, so I run at him with my spear and stab him in the shoulder, bringing him down –

  But not before he’s gored me. The lunging tusk catches me just above the knee, a long bright slash. It’s a flesh wound and doesn’t maim me, but it marks me for life, though the bone is spared, and it’s this old scarred gash that Eurycleia’s wrinkled hands now passed over as she reached my knee, not even seeing it. She didn’t have to – the feel of it was enough.

  She gasped and let go of my foot. The bronze basin rang and clattered, the water slopping across the floor. The old crone’s eyes went wide. So did her toothless mouth. I put my hand over it.

  ‘That’s right, old mother, you’re speechless. Stay that way. Keep your mouth shut, or by God it will be my hands on your throat, not your gob!’

  Unable to speak, her eyes darting, she waved an arm in the direction of Penelope, sitting pensively over by the fire. I grabbed her by her scrawny old neck and kept my other hand on her mouth.

  ‘Do you want to destroy me? Say a word to anybody, a single soul, including your mistress, and I’ll throttle you. Understand?’

  I took my hands slowly away from her face. There was no fear in it.

  ‘I know you will. I know you would. But you won’t have to. Not with me. As you well know. I’m made of iron. I’m as dumb as stone. Except when I tell you exactly which bitch is which. That’s all you’ll hear from me.’

  ‘No need for that either. I’ve seen for myself.’

  ‘There’s a couple of others you should know about, when the day comes.’

  ‘The day has come – almost. It’s almost dawn. So finish this foot-bath and get yourself some sleep. Tomorrow is a busy day.’

  The old gammer grinned – a ghastly grin, toothless, wicked. It frightened me more than the thought of what lay ahead. She hobbled off to fetch more water. When she’d finished and rubbed in the olive oil, she mopped up the spilled water.

  ‘It won’t be water I’ll be swabbing up tomorrow,’ she whispered, still grinning.

  ‘It won’t be you doing the swabbing.’

  Penelope is never done. Still weaving in her head, night and day, and deep into the night. And into her web now flies a little brown bird, a nightingale. And yet it’s not a bird really, it’s the daughter of Pandareus, sitting among the green leaves of spring, perched in a tree. She’s pouring her heart out, singing her song of sorrow for Itylus, whom she bore for King Zethus, and her little throat is throbbing because this is the son she killed so carelessly, so foolishly, and Penelope trills and turns and tosses, just like the nightingale, torturing herself with longings and indecisions. Should she remain in the palace, keeping her husband’s estate intact and his bed inviolate? Or should she put an end to the suitors and leave now with the best of them, and the most generous with his gifts? Amphinomous has given the dress laden with pearls.

  Was that all he gave you, then? And what about the golden chain with amber beads? That was a generous present. What about Eurymachus, the whoremaster? Who was the more generous? Who was better in bed?

  Which of them fucked you?

  The question filled my throat, like the song of the nightingale.

  Did you fuck them both?

  My mouth brimmed.

  While I was fucking Circe? And Calypso? Did you fuck them both at the same time? Did you fuck all of them in the same bed? My bed? Our bed? Did you fuck them one by one? All together? Did you suck their cocks?

  I ground my teeth.

  ‘I can’t sleep.’

  I bet you can’t.

  ‘All my nights are restless now.’

  Lack of cock?

  ‘I have bad dreams.’

  Not enough cock.

  ‘I had one dream . . .’

  One dream. One more for the web. Twenty geese string out now, stretching under her hand, her busy hand, her cunning hand. What has that hand been up to? A skein of twenty, leaving her hand, leaving her head, craning, stretching their long necks, stretching the web.

  ‘I do keep twenty geese, as it happens. They swing by from the pond to peck up the grain. I like to watch them. I love their cries, like trumpets in the sky. Sometimes you can’t see them, especially in the nights, and it’s as if the stars were singing to you. It’s as if the heavens had a voice. What are they, these geese?’

  Your longings. Your lovers. I can hear them too, crowding out my head, filling it to bursting, to madness. I know all about their fucking trumpets.

  ‘And in my dream an eagle came down and attacked them.’

  You bet he did.

  ‘I saw him. And he had my husband’s eyes.’

  Of course he did.

  ‘Down he swooped from the high hills, all claws and beak, ripping into them, screaming, scattering them like snowflakes, the feathers flying, a blizzard of death. He took his fill of them, then up he soared, leaving them in heaps, and he was soon a speck in the sky.

  ‘I wept aloud in my dream, and the ladies gathered round me as I sobbed over my slaughtered geese. Then I woke up and the women
were standing round my bed, concerned by my cries. But when I looked out into the yard, there were my geese, perfectly unharmed, pecking away at the grain, as always.’

  As ever.

  ‘Can you interpret it?’

  An eagle with her husband’s eyes. It needs no genius to interpret that one, does it? If this is a burnished horn dream and not an ivory one that issues in emptiness and lies, then the suitors are doomed. Her lovers are dead men. They’re like the geese.

  ‘The suitors are the geese.’

  They are the geese. They’re fucked, and she knows it. Has she informed them already? Has she seen through the disguise? Has she tipped them the wink? One of them? The most generous? The best in bed? Remember Agamemnon. Take care now.

  And you – you too take care, because they’re all fucked. Mind you do not share their fate. Lady.

  No, no chance of that. She’s thought of one last plan, an escape plan, an exit strategy, a last attempt to wriggle out of her predicament and thwart the suitors. Well, that at least is what she says.

  ‘Can I tell you? Can you keep a secret?’

  Can I keep a secret! Little does she know.

  ‘It’s a trial-of-strength plan.’

  Like any good old Greek story.

  ‘And a test of skill.’

  Aren’t they all?

  ‘Odysseus used to set it up.’

  Did I really?

  ‘Because he knew nobody could compete with him.’

  That was cunning. Tell me about it.

  ‘He’d set up twelve pierced axes all in a row, like the props under a new keel, you know?’

  I know.

  ‘And he stood a good way off – and shot a single arrow through all of them, dead straight, every single hole, right through.’

  What a man.

  ‘He was the only one who could do it.’

  And the plan?

  ‘The plan is, I’m going to have these axes set-up, just as Odysseus used to do, and I’m going to insist that the suitors compete with each other in the same test of skill. Whichever man shoots an arrow through all twelve axes –’

  Will shoot his arrow into you.

  ‘It won’t be Cupid’s arrow, of course.’

  Of course not.

  ‘Unless it’s tipped with lead. Not gold – I’m long past that.’

  Hmm.

  ‘Except for my husband, naturally.’

  Naturally.

  ‘A good plan?’

  A good plan. But what if more than one of them succeeds in pulling it off?

  ‘Pulling it off? I doubt if any of them will get as far as pulling the string. Or even stringing the bow.’

  It’s that tough?

  ‘It’s a brute. They don’t know it, but only Odysseus could string that bow. And that’s the bow they’ve got to use. No other will be acceptable. Well?’

  Well. It’s incredible.

  ‘And it will happen.’

  Incredible.

  ‘But now I’ll leave you. I must withdraw aloft to my bed of sorrows.’

  Shame.

  ‘Watered by my perpetual tears.’

  Perpetual Penelope.

  ‘So many tears.’

  See how they fall.

  ‘Falling like rain.’

  The rainy Pleiades.

  ‘Falling every night.’

  Night must fall.

  ‘Night has fallen so hard, so hard on me every night, ever since the day my husband left me and sailed away to that – that awful place. I can’t even bring myself to say its name.’

  The doomed city.

  ‘But you must make yourself comfortable by the fire, now that Eurycleia has refreshed you. You at least may sleep in the arms of Morpheus.’

  What better?

  ‘None better. Goodnight, stranger.’

  Goodnight? I had no intention of sleeping. As for the suitors, snoring their heads off in their homes, little did they know that they were sleeping out their last drunken slumber, the last little sleep before the big one.

  FIFTY-SIX

  Two Odysseuses lie awake. One will fall asleep in the web of dreams, the other will plot black murder and call it revenge, wondering if he’ll get away with it, if he’ll still be alive afterwards to see another sun go down. He hears laughter, shrill and silvery, rippling through the dimness before the dawn. He lifts his head a little, watches through the glimmering slits of his eyes.

  That was me, brewing a bloodbath in my skull, planning mass murder. That’s when I saw them leaving the house, cackling through the hall and out into the courtyard, the whole troop of bitches, out on the prowl instead of looking after their mistress. Were they off to team up with their lover boys? I wanted to leap up and run after them, bar the gates, tear their heads off. I could hear the blood singing in my ears, behind my eyes, telling me to forbid their filthy cunts a final fuck. No, that was madness. Let them die the next night with the sperm still warm in their bellies – before both turned cold.

  That’s it then, stay cool, old man, it’s not worth it, don’t ruin it now, you’re too close. Tomorrow you can do what you like to them, let Nemesis enjoy the fare. Remember that cannibal? His one eye was like a cunt. You fucked it, fucked it up. You got the better of the bastard by keeping calm. Keep calm now. You got through it. You’ll get through this.

  Would I? How to take them on, all of them, and not get killed? When to throw off my cover? Could I get more support? What about Eumaeus? He looked as if he could handle himself in a fight, but would he stick with it? Men in tight corners are notoriously liable to run. Or switch sides. I saw some of that at Troy, even among allies. Could he be trusted? Could I trust myself? Would Telemachus bear up? And what about afterwards, and the grieving families of those I killed? Even if I survived, I’d be targeted and I’d have an even bigger fight on my hands. How to hide on an angry island?

  The other Odysseus didn’t have these problems. Athene descended, hovered over him, and sorted it all out.

  ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I know what’s going on in that sleepless head of yours. All your fears and frustrations are known to me and your worries are needless. Haven’t I always looked after you? Have I ever deserted you? Am I not a goddess? Very well then, will this finally send you to sleep? Let me tell you that if they were fifty times as many suitors surrounding you, all armed and baying for your blood, you’d still scatter them like sheep. With my help you’ll see them off. All right? Now get some sleep. Tomorrow is a busy day. And tomorrow will soon be here.’

  The goddess closed his eyes in sleep and sped back up to Olympus. As easy as that.

  In the web, while I sleep, Penelope awakes. As faithful wives do when their beds are empty and their husbands missing in action. Worn out with weeping, she tries a prayer.

  ‘To Artemis, daughter of the greatest god: send me an arrow from your gentle bow, painlessly to penetrate my heart and pluck my spirit away. Or send the storm-wind to snatch me from my bed and vanish with me into the dark, drop me into the deepest sea, the ocean stream.’

  The orphaned daughters of Pandareus appear in the web, illustrating her despair. Here are Artemis and Athene, making them lovely and wise and rich in womanly skills beyond compare, and when the time comes for them to put a cloth between their legs, Aphrodite arranges glorious marriages for all of them. But on that very day the storm-fiends snatch the girls away to the abominable Erinyes, to serve their every need.

  ‘That’s what I want to happen to me,’ sighs Penelope. ‘Life in all its sweetness left me long ago.’

  Rather than serve a man inferior to the glorious Odysseus, she begs to be blotted out forever, to be stricken dead and sink deep into the bowels of the earth with her husband’s image intact in her heart.

  ‘And my belly will be spared the indignity of a breach of honour, for only Odysseus belongs down there.’

  Dawn came and flooded the east with gold. I could hear Penelope’s distress upstairs. I went out into the courtyard and stood in the thunder of th
e sunrise. Across the courtyard stood the handmills where the female slaves ground the grain into meal for the household bread. Since the suitors had been gathering at the palace, the rate of bread consumption had gone up a hundred times and the mills never stopped working. Twelve women toiled at them during the early hours, and this morning they had gone off to seek some sleep before the next shift, all except one who lacked the strength of the others, being old, and had failed to grind her share. She toiled on at her task, muttering and grumbling as she worked. I crossed over to her and stood in the doorway. The sky grumbled briefly along with her, though there wasn’t a cloud. The last stars rusted away. She unbent with a groan, one hand on her creaking back, and saw me watching her.

  ‘Hear that?’ she said. ‘That’s a sign.’

  ‘A sign of what, mother?’

  ‘Don’t you know? Any fool knows that. Thunder out of a clear sky – that’s god, that is, speaking to the wicked.’

  ‘And who are the wicked?’

  She cackled and spat.

  ‘Don’t you know that, either? You haven’t been here long enough to learn anything. They’re the ones who’ve been breaking my back night after night till I’ve no strength left to stuff their gobs and fill their fat bellies with fresh new bread. I just wish this were the last meal, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean the last meal you have to grind?’

  ‘I mean their very last meal – even better!’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘let’s hope the thunder’s an omen. And I’ll tell you this for nothing, old mother, beggar as I am – if Odysseus ever appears, I’m willing to bet one of the first things he’ll do will be to free you from this toil and end your backache with a softer form of work.’

  She laughed at that. ‘Aye, that’ll be right. Odysseus doesn’t even know I exist.’

  ‘You never know,’ I said. ‘He could be looking at you right now.’