Ithaca (28 page)

“He's going to drop it,” someone jeers. There are whistles, catcalls.

And then suddenly it's over.

It ends so fast I have to blink and play it back in my head to see what happened. Irus lunged forward, aiming a vicious blow at Odysseus's head. It never landed. Faster than you could think, Odysseus stepped aside and whipped his own stick across Irus's belly with such force that in a second the beggar was coughing and retching on the ground. That's all I see: Irus kneeling in agony. Then the hall erupts. It's like Irus's pain triggers something in them. Young men swarm over the chairs and engulf the beggar like hounds bringing down a boar. Irus tries to crawl toward the door, covering his face with his arms, but he can't shake them off. I can't even see him as the men rain down blows, fighting among themselves to reach their victim. He gets halfway to the door but no farther. Someone kicks him onto his side, and I see a chair raised to smash down on his head. There's a shriek of laughter as Irus screams.

I can't watch after that. They aren't men. They're animals—animals singling out the loser, who becomes the target, becomes prey. A bird with a broken wing, a dog with a hurt leg. Weakness triggers something that belongs not to people's rational minds but to those crueler and darker instincts that relish blood, forget danger, crave violence. For a moment, as he lies under the blows, Irus's terrified eyes catch mine, and I shy away from their contact.

Because I know I can't help? Or because I can see myself there if things go wrong tomorrow—myself twitching under the same mob, a deer brought down by wolves.

I look at my father instead. Odysseus has sunk to the ground, holding his leg as if he's been hurt. I'm thinking,
He made it too easy; he should have spun the fight out
. Then I notice Antinous
watching him too. Alone among the young men he hasn't gone after Irus.

“He hurt me,” Odysseus quavers.

“He didn't touch you,” Antinous says contemptuously, and cocks his head. “You know how to fight.”

“I fought in the war.”

“Who with?”

“Nestor.”

“What's your name?”

“Aethon.”

“Why do you beg if you can fight like that?”

“My leg. I was wounded in the war.”

“Your leg.” Antinous looks away. I think he's going to ask more questions, but suddenly he seems bored. “You can stay for the evening,” he announces, like it's up to him. “Someone lay him a place. It's time we ate. Other people fighting makes me hungry.”

The second part of our plan is accomplished: Odysseus is inside the palace. Tables are set in order. Melanthius leads cooks in from the kitchen, carrying wooden trays of meat and bowls of olives. Cups are filled. Irus is still lying in the corner of the hall, his face unrecognizable under a mask of blood. He's still alive, twitching, so I send two of the servants to do what they can for him. Then I see my father go up to Antinous.

I catch something odd in his expression. I can't place it at first. Then I get it: his eyes are gleaming with mischief.

He sits down and takes a roll from a basket. Antinous frowns.

“Did you ever meet Odysseus?”

My mouth is dry. This wasn't part of any plan.

“Once,” Antinous says shortly.

“Did you fight him?”

“I was a child. He gave me a toy dagger.”

“Did you thank him?”

Antinous doesn't answer. My father leans forward and—to my astonishment—prods Antinous with the tip of his staff. “You should have thanked him.”

Antinous looks around again, his eyes narrowing. Then he looks back at his plate. “Don't push your luck, beggar man,” he says in a low voice.

I can't stand any more. I clap my hands and get the feast under way, but I don't let it last long. I send them away early, and for once they listen to me. There's no chance to speak to my father. When the torches are out, I climb the stairs to my room and close the door. In the corner there's a trapdoor leading to the roof, and I clamber onto the clothes chest and thrust it open.

A shaft of moonlight strikes me full in the face. When I haul myself up to the roof and stand up, Ithaca lies spread out around me, bathed in moonlight. There isn't a breath of wind. Above, Nirito towers into the air. Its valleys drop toward the sea in thick clefts of shadow. I can see the roofs of the town, glinting silver, and beyond them, the flat expanse of the sea, waveless and bright as a polished mirror. I don't think I've ever seen Ithaca so still. The hot night air feels as if it's welded to the land, as if the whole scene, mountain and sea, would ripple were a gust of wind to blow through it. The cicadas are silent. Shadows hang like sleeping bats around the cypress trees.

The island's asleep, its people and creatures sleeping with it. Suddenly I feel something wet on my cheek. I didn't even know I was crying. But this is my home and I'm not ready to leave it yet. I look up at the familiar stars: the Bear, Cassiopeia, Andromeda. I want to show Ithaca to Polycaste. I don't want to die in a brawl in the great hall.

There's no point giving in to hopelessness. I'm not going to die, I tell myself. We'll make a fight of it, however hard the odds. I feel the anger still burning steadily within me, and that
gives me some comfort. I settle down to wait. Gradually the courtyard falls silent and the sentry makes his last rounds. I can see the flicker of flames on the courtyard wall and watch it grow dim. An owl hoots softly from the olive groves. Only when the palace is silent do I get up to go.

There are trapdoors all over the roof, above staircases and corridors. On the far side, there's one that reaches the stair where Eurycleia stood to listen to my speech this morning, and where I watched the beggars fight. From there I can get to the armory, where I had all the weapons taken this morning. I'm going to take weapons for the three of us—me, Odysseus, Eumaeus—and hide them in the hall. The rest will be locked up to stop anyone from using them in the fight tomorrow. The visitors will have the weapons they always carry, but nothing else.

Crouching, I hurry across the roof, staying well away from the parapet above the courtyard. Beyond it I pull open the trapdoor and lower myself down, scrabbling with my feet until I touch the rung of a ladder.

That's when I hear voices.

They're coming from below. One person on the landing where I was standing earlier, the other in the hall. The voice in the hall is too faint to make out, but the one on the landing I recognize straightaway. My mother.

I ease myself down the stair until I can hear properly, with my mother's voice close below me.

“Sixteen years,” she's saying. “He left sixteen years ago.”

“Sixteen years,” a man's voice echoes, and suddenly I'm gripping the balustrade, because it's my father talking.

I peer down into the hall. Odysseus, still in his beggar's rags, is sitting in dark shadow under one of the columns. His face is out of sight—I guess that means Penelope can't see him either. I can just make out his legs sprawled in the glow of firelight and the open satchel next to them.

“Did you ever meet Odysseus?” Penelope asks.

“Yes.” His voice sounds low and grating. Can't she recognize him? Did Odysseus look so different, sound so different, sixteen years ago? All at once I realize that I'm never going to know my father. This beggar, this old man, maybe. But I'll never find the Odysseus—young, strong—who left Ithaca for Troy.

“I fought alongside him,” he says.

“Tell me a story about him.”

My father clears his throat. “We were making a night attack. Waiting in a ditch near Troy, the walls in front of us. It was cold, frost on the ground, frost on the bushes. Our cloaks were thin. I thought we'd die of cold even if the Trojans didn't get us. Odysseus kept thinking about Penelope . . .”

“How do you know?” my mother laughs. “How could you tell what he was thinking? You're just saying what I want to hear.”

Odysseus doesn't answer.

“Whenever strangers come here,” Penelope says, and I notice how normal—how sane—her voice is. “Whenever ships come into port, I always ask them, ‘Have you seen Odysseus?' ‘Did you meet Odysseus?' You'd be surprised how many did. So many men fought in the war. So many had stories about him. Tell me more.”

No answer from the hall.

“Was he clever?” Penelope prompts.

It's a moment before I hear Odysseus's voice from the shadows. “Always.”

“Brave?”

“Mostly.”

“Was he honest?”

For a long time there's no answer. “No,” Odysseus says at last, and I hear him sigh. “He told lies.”

Penelope laughs, a shrill sound from close below me. “People always said that about him. I told them, ‘They're just stories.' I pay no attention.”

“He needed to be loved,” Odysseus says. “He wanted everyone to hang on his every word, and they did. It was the look in their eyes, the way he could hold them when he talked. He sat outside his tent, on the shore at Troy, he started talking, a crowd would gather. He'd see their eyes in the firelight, the way they listened. His voice was like the crackle of flames. His stories warmed them. It didn't matter whether they were true or not . . .” His voice breaks suddenly. “But they weren't. Or weren't always.”

“I knew that.”

“He told me . . .” There's a deep sigh from the shadows in the hall. “He told me he betrayed his wife and son.”

I listen until the silence seems so tense it might almost crack.

“He kept a woman in the town,” Odysseus goes on. “He had a child.”

“I know about that too.” Penelope's voice is suddenly cold.

“Didn't you mind?”

“Of course I minded.”

“Did you think of leaving him?”

“If he'd stayed, I would have left him.” She pauses. “When I had the whole of Odysseus, losing half of him seemed like the end of the world. When he was gone, half seemed better than nothing.”

“How could you still love him?”

“People can't decide that.” Her voice mocks him. “You can make yourself like someone or respect them. But you can't make yourself love or not love.”

“Would you still want him if he did come back?” Odysseus's voice is hoarse now. “Let me tell you, I met him again. After Troy, I was traveling. We were on an island. You should have seen him then. He was broken. Strength gone, courage gone, he was a shell. He couldn't talk, even, just sat by the fire, watching it burn. Would you want Odysseus if he came home like that?”

“
No
!”

Penelope hisses it so furiously I can barely hide my gasp. For what seems an age, silence creaks around us, the trickle of time flowing past something, a stone in the current, that can never be unsaid. No sound comes from my father.

It's a long time before she goes on. “But my son tells me he won't come back. Thank you for talking to me.” Her voice has become distant—the chief's wife talking to the beggar in the hall. “I'm going to my room now. Good night.”

I hear her footsteps rustling away down the corridor. I almost run down to my father, but something stops me. I'm thinking, all those years, Penelope knew what Odysseus was like, knew about his deception as well as his bravery, knew his brilliance, knew his lies. To me, she always described Odysseus the way the storytellers did—as a fighter, a hero. That was the father she wanted me to have, but she knew the other side of Odysseus as well. Sixteen years of waiting, sixteen years of love, but now I know there were other feelings woven into that patient vigil: anger, bitterness, sorrow. What does she want now? What will Penelope do when she recognizes Odysseus, the man who betrayed her? Odysseus is her unfinished business, the thread still left in her hand with the tapestry incomplete. All this time I've been wrong about my mother. It isn't only for love that she's sat at her loom for sixteen years. She's been waiting for an ending.

I don't go down to my father. Only he can decide what to make of what he's heard. This is between him and Penelope. Instead, I stay leaning against the balustrade, watching the hearth and listening to his breath rasp in and out, until the flames burn low and the sound mingles with the slow breathing of dogs around the fire.

I
don't sleep. I'm exhausted, but there's too much on my mind. Just before dawn I fumble my way down to the armory, pick three swords and three spears, wrap them in sacking, and carry them to the hall, where I hide them beneath the woodpile. My father appears to be asleep, and I don't wake him. I lock the rest of the weapons in the armory and hide the key under a stone.

By then it's almost daylight, and from below I can hear the first noises of the town waking up. There's a streak of light coloring the sky behind the mountain. I set off downhill, making for the shore. The road's still dark, overhung by thick trees. I hear bleating ahead, smell the hot reek of sheep, and step onto
the grass to let the flock flow past me, its shepherd too weary to greet me with more than a nod. The sheep are being driven to the big house to be slaughtered for the funeral feast. They'll be dead by noon. I walk on through the rutted mud they've left behind. The town's first cottages are silent, but as I pass, a shutter swings open. A woman comes out onto the porch in her nightgown, yawning and stretching. I can almost smell the fusty warmth of her sleep. She greets me with a smile and stoops to lift a bucket of water, splashing it over her arms. For a moment I imagine Polycaste again, washing her arms in the mountain streams where we camped on the way back from Sparta. By the time I reach the square there's enough light to see the tavern-keeper hooking his shutters against the wall. Cats slink along the roadway, searching for breakfast. A dog lifts its head to look at me, then lowers it, trembling, to the ground. I stand under the spreading branches of the plane tree. There are birds twittering among the leaves, a bright, harsh sound. One drops to the ground, cocks its head at me, then flutters back to its perch.