The Return From Troy

by Lindsay Clarke

  Meanwhile, the boy Hermes looked on with his sad Libyan eyes, comforting Calypso as best he could when she was left distraught by his unhappy master. One afternoon, towards dusk, when Odysseus had been missing for several hours, Hermes went looking for him. He found him diving in a fathom of clear water where the carcass of an old fishing boat lay submerged on the sea-bed among a spit of rocks at the foot of a cliff.

  Odysseus broke the glassy surface, gasping for air as he shook his head and saw Hermes staring at him.

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he shouted. ‘Come here and look at this.’ When the Libyan boy did as he was bidden, Odysseus said, ‘I think the bottom’s holed and some of the planks are rotten; but if I can dig the sand out of her bilge, I could haul her out and get her fixed up pretty quickly. What do you think?’

  Hermes shrugged. ‘You want to go fishing?’ he asked.

  Smiling, Odysseus shook his head and said, ‘I want to go home.’

  Nausicaa’s eyes were already filled with tears as she heard of the final bitter quarrel between Odysseus and Calypso. It had been, he said, impossible that she would not discover that he was working to build a boat, and he left her in no doubt of his intentions. Her rage was fired by grief. She would have taken an axe and smashed the planks to matchwood if Hermes had not prevented her.

  It was he who told her that a love that was not freely given was no love at all; that he had watched them both suffering now for many weeks; and that something must change were the affection they felt for each other not to burn itself out in hatred. It was Hermes who persuaded her, as she recovered from a frenzy of tears, to seek the guidance of the gods. He told her how the oracle had worked at Lake Tritonis. He brought her two pebbles, one black, one white.

  Carefully, Calypso formulated a question in her mind. With a prayer to the gods, she swirled the pebbles in a golden bowl till one of them jumped out. The black pebble lay on the ground before her.

  On the morning that Odysseus was to put to sea in the little cockleshell craft that he had rebuilt with the tools she brought him, Calypso stood beside him on the shore. She had made sure that plenty of food and water was stored in the locker at the stern. Everything was prepared but still she could not let him go.

  Holding him tightly by the wrist, she said, ‘There is still a thing between us. A thing that I have never dared to say to you.’

  ‘Say it now.’

  She looked away along the strand. Her breath was coming very fast. ‘When you stood before me in the House of Persephone,’ her voice was barely a whisper on the wind, ‘and your mother’s shade was speaking through me …’

  ‘Yes?’ he encouraged her.

  ‘You heard me say that the world you knew was gone forever.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Now she confronted his eyes directly for the first time. ‘It was not the Goddess who spoke those words,’ she said. ‘Nor was it your mother … ‘

  Odysseus stood, scarcely breathing, feeling the breeze against his face.

  Weeping silently, she glanced out into the shimmering blue light across the sea. ‘I forced myself to say them because it was what I wanted to believe … I wanted you to believe it too.’

  In the silence between them he heard the surf breaking against the shore.

  ‘That is why I knew that I must leave the Oracle,’ she confessed at last. ‘The Goddess left me in that moment … I knew she would not return. I had only you, and I wanted only you.’

  Odysseus released his breath in a sigh of pain. A moment later he said, ‘I think she has made us both suffer for putting our desires before her truth.’

  ‘No,’ Calypso shook her head, ‘it is we who make our suffering. I blame only myself.’

  ‘Then we must forgive each other,’ Odysseus said, ‘for I know how I have hurt and wronged you too.’

  They stood together in silence for a long time. With Hermes at her side, Calypso watched through blurred eyes as he pushed out the little boat and hoisted his sail. It flapped at first; then billowed in the breeze blowing off the land. The boat sallied among the breakers. In the moment before Odysseus pushed his prow eastwards round the steep fall of the cliff, he turned to bid a last farewell to the woman whose love he was betraying even as he sought to stay true to a deeper loyalty of the heart, but she had gone.

  Only Hermes stood waving on the shore.

  As he told his story in the great hall of King Antinous at Scheria, Odysseus could no longer remember how many nights he had passed at sea; only that he was exhausted, famished and parched with thirst by the time a big wave spilled his boat and he fetched up half-drowned on the Phaeacian coast.

  ‘And I think I would have died there,’ he said, looking back gratefully into Nausicaa’s eyes, ‘had you not come so bravely to my aid.’

  Firmly she controlled the waver in her voice. ‘How could I have done otherwise?’ she said, and raised her eyes in a brave smile. ‘In return, I ask only that you will not forget me when you come home to your wife.’

  Wondering once more at the undemanding candour of the affection there, Odysseus studied her young face. ‘Since coming to Scheria,’ he answered, ‘I have vowed to forget nothing of what has happened to me during all these years away from Ithaca. But of all the people I’ve met, and all the marvels I’ve seen, I know that my greatest pleasure will always lie in memories of you.’

  An hour before dusk, two days later, the ship on which Telemachus had sailed back from Pylos beached in a quiet cove on Ithaca. During the course of the voyage he had consulted his friend Peiraeus and the soothsayer Theoclymenus about the best course of action to take on his return.

  ‘Antinous and the others are bound to be suspicious of what you’ve been doing,’ Peiraeus warned. ‘They didn’t like it when you asserted yourself at the council. I think you’re going to have to be very careful.’

  Theoclymenus asked who he was referring to; when he understood more of the situation on Ithaca, he nodded and said, ‘Now I see it.’ He looked across at Telemachus. ‘I didn’t care to say so before, but when we met, I sensed a shadow across your life. Peiraeus is right. These men are dangerous to you.’

  ‘That’s why I’ve decided not to go straight back to the palace,’ Telemachus said.

  ‘That makes sense,’ Peiraeus said, ‘but what will you do instead?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to imagine what Odysseus would do. It’s obvious I can’t take on that gang alone, so I’m going to need all the help I can get. I’ve just remembered how quickly Antinous backed down at the Spring Festival when the shepherds came to my aid. My grandfather told me that Eupeithes did the same thing years ago, after that business with the Taphian pirates. I think if I can rally enough support among the common people, we might force them to back down again.’

  Peiraeus nodded thoughtfully. ‘But remember there’s a lot more at stake now. It’s the kingship they’re after. They won’t give that up easily.’

  ‘Which is why I intend to rally the shepherds in my father’s name.’ Telemachus glanced away over the receding horizon. ‘I know that he’s not coming back, but they don’t know it, and people like Eumaeus and Philoetius won’t settle for anyone else as king if I can make them think there’s half a chance he’ll return.’

  So it was agreed that Telemachus would leave the ship where his landing would not be seen, and make his way to the hut of Eumaeus the swineherd, who was best placed to help him gather support among the common people. Peiraeus would take the ship on into port and begin to spread the word that there was now good reason to believe that Odysseus was still alive. His story would say that Odysseus had been detained on Ogygia by the enchantment of a witch; and the hope was that the prospect of Telemachus returning with his father would discourage the more faint-hearted suitors and unsettle them all.

  Darkness was falling by the time Telemachus crossed the wooded hillside beyond Crow Rock to where Eumaeus kept his large herd of pigs penned behind a fence of split oak and a neat series of stone walls hedged with
wild pear-trees. He approached downwind of the swineherd’s hut, trying not to disturb the boars where they were snouting through the turned ground of their sties; even so, the dogs must have heard him and began to bark. Somewhere a sow was upset by the racket and her piglets began to squeal. A moment later the door of the hut creaked open and Eumaeus was standing there with an oil-lamp in his hand.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he called.

  Telemachus stepped out of the gloom, hissing, ‘It’s me, Eumaeus. I’ve come back. I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Eumaeus grunted and turned back into his hut. Puzzled by the delay, Telemachus waited in the familiar, rich smell drifting from the sties until the door swung open again and Eumaeus said, ‘All right, you can come in now.’

  When he stepped inside the hut Telemachus was surprised to see another figure sitting by the table with a trencher of pork and some slices of bread before him. He wore what appeared to be a torn and dirty blanket hunched up around his shoulders. Casting a quick glance at the youth, he pushed his fist to his brow in a gesture of salutation and then returned his attention to his meal.

  ‘I didn’t think there’d be anyone with you,’ Telemachus said.

  ‘It’s only a beggar who knocked on my door in the name of Zeus,’ Eumaeus said. ‘I’ve given him food and shelter for the night. But what about you, young master? I thought you were out on the high seas looking for your father.’

  ‘I was, and I’ve had word of him, but …’ Telemachus glanced uncertainly towards the stranger. ‘I need to talk to you alone, Eumaeus.’

  ‘Oh never you mind him,’ the swineherd answered. ‘He’s fallen on hard times, that’s all, after being shipwrecked in the war. He’s a good enough fellow in his way. Says he knew your father well when they was at Troy together.’

  ‘This is Odysseus’s boy, is it?’ the beggar asked from where he wiped his greasy lips with the back of his hand. ‘Good man your father was! Always kept an eye out for me.’

  ‘What’s on your mind, boy?’ Eumaeus said. ‘You’ve got an agitated look about your eyes.’

  ‘Can we trust this man?’ Telemachus demanded. ‘My life may hang on it.’

  ‘He’s all right,’ Eumaeus nodded reassuringly. ‘I’ve told him about the troubles we’ve got here on Ithaca. You can speak free.’

  ‘If you’re about your father’s business, boy,’ the stranger said, ‘you can trust me as sure as if Odysseus was here himself.’

  Telemachus frowned at the man uneasily; but the swineherd’s instincts were usually sound, and he was eager to tell him of his plans; so he took the cup of wine he was offered and began to explain that he needed help in recruiting the support of the island’s shepherds to throw the suitors out of the palace. ‘I know that my father’s alive,’ he said. ‘I heard it from King Menelaus in Sparta. Once the shepherds know it, surely they’ll stand up for him against that rabble?’

  ‘You’ve been in Sparta, boy?’ It was the stranger who spoke.

  ‘I have.’ Again Telemachus frowned at the man uncertainly.

  ‘And what word did Menelaus have of your father?’

  Telemachus glanced back at Eumaeus, who nodded once more in reassurance. ‘That he’s been on Ogygia for many years. Under a spell of enchantment.’

  ‘A spell of enchantment, eh? Well, I reckon it would take something of the sort to keep Odysseus away from his wife and son.’ The stranger sniffed and pushed his plate away. ‘And on the strength of this report you mean to rouse the island against those louts who are making your mother’s life a misery? Is that it?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I mean to do … if I can.’

  ‘You have doubts?’

  Telemachus flushed. ‘I came here to talk to my friend Eumaeus, not to you, however well you may or may not have known my father.’ j

  ‘Oh we were very close, he and I. And I can see you’ve got something of his spirit. But I wonder if you’ve inherited his brains? It seems to me this plan of yours might start a bloody war across this island. Is that what you want?’

  ‘I want that rabble out of my house. I want my mother to be able to breathe freely again. I want to believe that I’ll sit on the throne of Ithaca one day. And I can’t see how else to do these things. If I have to fight for them, then I’ll fight.’

  ‘And not worry too much about who else gets killed, eh?’

  ‘My father didn’t seem to worry too much about that when he took off for Troy. Why should I start worrying now?’

  The stranger heaved an audible sigh and sat, nodding, at the table.

  ‘This fellow’s been a warrior in his time.’ Eumaeus put in. ‘You might do well to listen to him, Telemachus.’

  Becoming more heated, Telemachus said, ‘It’s the Feast of Apollo the day after tomorrow. They’ll be demanding a decision from my mother.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Eumaeus said, ‘but we need to think about it carefully.’

  ‘It’s too late for thought. We have to do something.’

  ‘People who don’t think,’ said the stranger, ‘tend to do the wrong thing.’

  Telemachus ignored him. Turning to Eumaeus, he said, ‘How are things at the palace?’ he asked. ‘Is my mother all right?’

  Eumaeus scratched his head, ‘She’s as well as can be expected with a gang of drunkards eating her out of house and home. Apart from worrying herself sick about you, that is. You’d have been wiser to tell her what you were doing, boy.’

  ‘Then she would have tried to prevent me,’ the youth retorted. ‘Like Mentes said, there’s a time when a man has to stop listening to his mother.’

  ‘Then Mentes was wrong,’ the stranger said. ‘You should always listen to her — though whether you do as she says is another matter.’

  ‘You may have known my father,’ Telemachus snapped at him, ‘but that doesn’t give you the right to speak to me as though you were.’

  The beggar scraped back the bench on which he sat and got to his feet. As he did so, the dirty blanket dropped from round his shoulders revealing a richly embroidered robe beneath. Staring directly at Telemachus with narrowed eyes, he said, ‘I am your father, boy. Odysseus has returned to Ithaca.’ But his eyes were smiling as he added, ‘It would be good if you showed him a little respect.’

  The two of them talked far into that night while old Eumaeus slept, but at first their exchanges were uneasy. Telemachus took a long time to recover from the shock that had been sprung on him, while at times Odysseus was so emotional that he could hardly speak at all. There was so much to say, and all of it so hard to say, and he could feel the heat of his son’s unspoken anger tautening the air between them. So his joy in his son mingled with pangs of sorrow and self-accusation for all the lost years when he might have been watching this fine boy grow into the figure who sat nervously across from him, wanting to love this father he had never known, yet uncertain how it could be done.

  Eventually the boy demanded an answer to the question with which he had been living almost all his life: ‘Why didn’t you come home a long time ago?’

  It took a long time for Odysseus to answer, and when he was done he was still uncertain whether or not his son understood that to live one’s life is not so simple as a youth who has barely embarked on it might think.

  He ended his account of himself by telling how a Phaeacian ship had dropped him in the quiet Bay of Phorcys early that morning. ‘They’re good people,’ he said, ‘but they like to keep themselves apart from the world, so I couldn’t persuade them to stay. They gave me precious gifts of silver cauldrons and tripods which I concealed in the Cave of the Nymphs.’ He glanced up at his son. ‘If anything happens to me, you should look for them there. Then I met a shepherd boy outside the Temple of Athena who told me what was happening here; so I sought out my old friend Eumaeus, knowing I could count on him to shelter me till I worked out a plan of action. No one but you two knows that I’m back yet — not even your mother. But I’m glad that the gods have given you and me th
is chance to get to know one another before we do what we have to do.’

  And only then, with their attention concentrated on the urgent task awaiting them did they begin to connect with greater confidence. Odysseus questioned Telemachus carefully about conditions in the palace, wanting to know more about each of the suitors who had taken up residence there, and where their main strength lay. Because Eumaeus had already told him that Antinous was the principal troublemaker, he was unsurprised by his son’s hostility towards him.

  ‘Perhaps I should have taken him to the war with me after all,’ he said. ‘I might have made something of him.’

  ‘He’s worthless,’ Telemachus replied. ‘No one can do anything with that sort of vicious bully.’

  Remembering that, in any case, almost everyone who had gone to Troy with him was dead, and that he was lucky to be alive himself, Odysseus drew in his breath and said, ‘What about Amphinomus?’

  ‘He’s a snake. In some ways he’s the most dangerous of them all.’

  Worried by the pang of hatred that had crossed his son’s face, Odysseus forced himself to ask why Telemachus should think so. Heatedly the boy glanced away unwilling at this moment to look directly into his father’s troubled eyes.

  ‘Because most of the others are mere brutes, ‘he said, ‘but Amphinomus … Amphinomus has wormed his way into my mother’s affections.’ When he looked up again, Telemachus saw the pain his words had caused. Wondering whether he had already said too much, he glanced away, scowling. ‘It’s a rats’ nest. We have to clear it out. That’s why we have to rouse the shepherds.’

  Odysseus studied his son for a long time in silence. Much of him felt proud that the youth was showing so resolute a spirit — he was growing into the kind of young warrior he would have been glad to have fighting at his side at Troy. Already he loved the boy, though he could see he was going to have to work hard before Telemachus would feel free to express his own love in return. He could see too that the boy’s passions were volatile, and too visible across his honest features; and there was so much anger in the flash of his stare and the dour set of his jaw. Telemachus had courage, yes, but of the impetuous kind that could cause harm where it meant to do only good.