Ithaca (22 page)

“What dus 'e want?”

“I am a stranger here. I ask for a guest's welcome.” The tramp's eyes were startlingly blue.

“Dus 'e, now?” Eumaeus spat in the mud, contemplating the hunched figure in front of him. He sighed. “Then I s'pose 'e better come inside, 'asn't 'e? Which is 'ow soft I am.”

He led the way across a muddy courtyard surrounded with prickly pear. Its deep ruts had hardened to a crust of mud. Broken barrows and pieces of fencing lay in piles, along with wagons that had lost their wheels, a dung heap under a cloud
of flies, and a hayrick on a pole stuck drunkenly in the ground. The hut itself was low and misshapen, the two windows onto the courtyard uneven, the roof crooked. Inside, it was pitch dark after the hot sunlight. The back wall was cut from the living rock, with a hearth of rough stones on which smoked a fire of olive wood. There was a table down the middle, and the old man's bed, a pile of greasy sheepskin, lay in one corner. Hams and loops of sausages hung from the roof, and the hut smelled strongly of pig. Of dead pig, in fact—the carcass of a porker, throat gaping, hung from one of the beams over a wooden bucket brimming with bright crimson blood.

“I'll cook 'er for yer, seein' yer a guest. I gutted 'er already.” Eumaeus snatched the porker down from its hook, skewered the pink carcass expertly on a long bronze spit, and set it on two metal cradles on either side of the fire. In a moment the skin began to blister and spit. Pig grease dripped into the flames, spluttering and filling the low hut with the stench of burned meat.

“Won't take more'n an hour. I'd have the boy turn it, but I sent 'im to town. Bit o' burn won't hurt.” He gave the spit a deft quarter turn and the porker's feet swung upward toward the ceiling. “Nor will a bit o' wet. I 'spose you need a bit o' wet after yer journey.” Eumaeus went to some shelves hacked crudely into the walls and pulled down an old goatskin worn shiny on both sides. He turned to see his visitor still standing in the doorway.

“Sit down, won't yer?” he blazed angrily. “Yer wants to be a guest, yer can be a flippin' guest. Sit down.”

He banged two rough pottery cups onto the table, a blackened and filthy plank propped up on trestles in the center of the room, and filled them with wine from the neck of the skin. “'E won't like it,” he commented, shoving one of the cups toward the guest. “I makes it myself.”

The guest took the cup and drank. “It's good,” he said.

“Then 'e's drunk some rank filth on 'is travels, is all I can say. Lived even rougher'n 'e looks. 'Ave some bread.” Eumaeus pulled over the rump of a huge, stale loaf, more brown than white, wiped his bloodied slaughtering knife on a cloth, and hacked off two crooked slices. “Week old,” he said proudly. “Yer needs all yer teeth to get through that. I'd give 'im oil to dip it in, but I ain't got much, and yer ain't worth it.”

The stranger, too occupied in chewing the dry bread to speak, nodded his thanks.

“See?” Eumaeus said happily. “'E'll be a week on that slice.”

The guest swallowed and coughed. “It's good,” he said weakly.

“Good if 'e's a moth-eaten ol' tramp who don't see food more'n once a fortnight. Meat'll be ready in a while, an' I bet it's the first 'e's tasted in a year, which is 'ow soft I am.” Reaching out one mud-caked boot, he kicked the spit around another quarter turn. The porker's ear flopped sideways, sizzling in the flames. “Who is 'e, then?” he asked. “Where's 'e come from? Tell us yer story.”

The stranger took a deep breath. “I come from Crete,” he said.

“Crete?”

“Crete. The island.”

Eumaeus nodded. “Go on, then.”

“I come from Crete,” the stranger began again. “My father was rich, but I was not his true son . . .”

“Bastard, then,” Eumaeus put in. “We calls a spade a spade, round 'ere.”

The stranger looked at him through his puzzled old eyes. “A bastard,” he agreed.

Eumaeus nodded happily and prodded the porker around another quarter turn. “Get on with it. We ain't got all day.”

“I had no land of my own so I became a traveler, a soldier of fortune . . .”

“Mercenary,” said Eumaeus, frowning. “Tricky buggers, mercenaries.”

“. . . which is how I reached Troy, fought in the war, and
then
. . .” said the stranger, speaking faster because he could see Eumaeus was about to interrupt again, “set off on my travels. I won't recount them all. I made a fortune in Egypt. I was shipwrecked . . . a lightning strike at sea, sail gone, mast gone, half the crew dead. I won't tire you with all the troubles I've seen, the miles I've tramped, the ports I've washed up in. A month ago I reached Kythera. I sailed from there on a Lastragonian ship.”

“A Lastragonian ship.” Eumaeus frowned. Suddenly he shoved back his bench and looked under the table at his visitor's feet. He gave them a long, hard stare, then straightened up, leaned forward with his hands on his knees, and stared unblinking into the guest's face.

His visitor pushed his chair uneasily back from the table. “That is my story,” he said. “Now tell me about Ithaca. Who is the chief here?”

“Odysseus—everyone knows that. 'Cept 'e ain't 'ere. Everyone knows that too. 'E's missin'.”

The visitor's eyes narrowed. “Do you have any news of him?”

The old man simply shook his head.

“What do you think happened to him?”

“I say 'e's dead,” the old man growled. “What else would keep 'im away from 'is 'ome? Dead, like as not. Or dead near as can be, which is to say, 'e can't walk, or 'is back's broken, or 'e's captive in a dungeon somewhere, or they made 'im slave and sold 'im to the 'airy folk as live out east, either way 'e ain't 'ere, is 'e?” And Eumaeus looked around the hut as if to prove his point.

The old tramp's face was impassive. “What does his wife think?”

“Still waitin' for 'im, though I don't knows 'ow long. What is it? Cryin' now, is it? 'Ere.”

He threw the bloodstained cloth at the stranger, who took it and pressed it to his face.

The stranger wiped his eyes, streaking the tears. “Does he have any children?”

“A boy. Telemachus.”

“Tell me about him.”

“'E's just a kid. Good 'eart. Clever, same as 'is dad. Soft, though. 'E never learnt to fight. No one to teach 'im, wiv his dad gone. Oh, don't start up again . . . what's wrong wiv 'im?” Eumaeus turned the spit angrily, and grease sizzled into the fire.

“What would happen,” said the tramp, his voice trembling, “if Odysseus came back today?”

Eumaeus didn't answer for a moment. He leaned forward and prodded the porker with the tip of his knife, watching the juices run pink. Then he reached for the goatskin and filled their cups. The wine and the heat of the fire had turned his forehead scarlet.

“I don't know,” he said slowly. “I used ter, once, but I don't knows anymore. I wish 'e ain't gone away, that's for sure. Then the big 'ouse wouldn't be full o' filthy buggers eatin' 'is pork, leastwise tryin' to eat it, what they comes 'ere, I tells 'em, ‘Find yer own blasted pigs' . . . they don't likes it, but they don't like my dogs, neither. Sheep, though, they's barely a sheep left on the island. Oil, corn. Wine in the cellar, Medon tells me, ‘One more month o' this, the chief comes 'ome, 'e'll be drinkin' water like a dirty beggar . . .'”

“Who are the men in the house?”

“Guests. Strangers. Flippin' vultures, I calls 'em. Arter Penelope, they is, to make 'er a new 'usband.”

“Does she listen to them?”

“Not 'er. Not yet, anyways.”

“Why don't the islanders stop them?”

“Why should they?” Sweat poured down the old man's craggy face. His voice was beginning to slur from the wine. “I thought they all loved Odysseus. Turns out I was wrong, don't it? Why should they love 'im wiv their 'usbands gone and their sons dead? I tells yer, I don't know nuthin' no more. I thought 'e was a good master, maybe I wuz wrong about that, too. I thinks about Odysseus now, all I remember is talk. I thinks,
'E leaves 'is wife, 'e leaves 'is son . . .”

“He's sorry for that.”

The old man stared at him, openmouthed. Then he suddenly blazed, “Oh, yer'd knows that, would yer? Yer'd knows what Odysseus thinks?”

“Eumaeus.” The tramp rose to a crouch, clutching the old farmer's arm.

The old farmer snatched his arm away as if he had been burned. “'Ow does 'e know my name?”

“Because he told me about you. Eumaeus, I met Odysseus.”

The pork sizzled on the fire. Hot, greasy smoke filled the hut. Eumaeus didn't react, to start with. He simply pushed the stranger away and nodded.

“Now we knows where we is, anyways,” he said scornfully.

The stranger blinked. “Eumaeus?”

“D'yer know 'ow many types like you we 'as comin' 'ere to Ithaca?”

“What do you mean?” He sounded bewildered.

“‘I bring a message from Odysseus' . . . any number o' those. ‘I just seen 'im, 'e 'as a message for Penelope.' An' she swallers every word, fills their ragged little coats wiv gold. ‘Stay as long as yer likes.' Easiest blasted story in the world, ‘I saw Odysseus.'” Eumaeus snorted derisively and poured more wine
from the skin. “Then we 'as Odysseus hisself, half a dozen on 'em. One even 'ad the scar on 'is thigh, cut it 'isself. ‘I got it on my first boar 'unt,' 'e says. T'other one 'ad Odysseus's sword, 'e must 'a' nicked it. Gets 'is paws 'round Penelope, nearly fools all on us. 'E's 'alfway to 'er blasted bedroom, then I says, ‘Since when did Odysseus 'ave a blasted Egyptian tattoo on 'is bum, greasy bugger.' We gets 'im, we toss 'im off the cliff behin' the big 'ouse, an' no doubts we'll end up doin' the same wiv youse.”

The stranger stood up. “I'll go to Penelope myself. Now.”

One of the dogs growled. “You ain't goin' nowheres,” Eumaeus said quietly. “Yer'll stay 'ere where I can sees yer. Yer'll sleep in my corner wiv one dog on yer feet and t'other on yer blasted neck. Yer gets up in the night to take a leak, my dogs'll go wiv yer, an' if yer makes a run for it, they'll drag yer back by yer blasted little bangle.” The old farmer's voice rose to a growl. “What I didn't ask for no guest but now yer 'ere, yer can stays 'til I knows 'oo the blazes yer are.”

I
've learned something about the timbers of a ship. They're not dead wood, like the planks of a table. You can feel the wind hum in them and the waves vibrate through them. Laying your hand on a gunwale or oar isn't like touching a door. It's more like placing your fingers against a pine tree quivering on a mountainside.

Right now I can feel the steering oar stiffen and relax beneath my hand. The sea, smooth and heavy as oil, barely ripples as we slip along. There's only just enough wind to sail by. The crew is asleep next to their oars. Above us, stars are unfurled across the sky like a field of night flowers. They're so bright I can see the sail's shape as a patch of starless sky, filling
and sagging above me. The rhythm of the deck under my feet has become second nature, like the creak of my own heart.

One day I'm going to learn the names of all the stars. I know the polestar, of course—I'm steering by it now, toward Ithaca. I know Orion and the Bear and Cassiopeia. Mentor taught me the sailors' stars, the Hyades and Pleiades. I know Andromeda, just below Cassiopeia, because Polycaste showed it to me two nights ago.

“Four bright stars in a row. Just above the horizon. And Perseus above her. Like a fork.”

We both knew the legend. Andromeda boasted of her own beauty and was condemned by the sea god to be chained to a rock, where a monster would come and devour her. The fighter Perseus killed the monster and married her.