I tell it as it was. “Long time we sat in the dark and sleepful hall: hem-holding Menelaus, drowseless Nestor’s-son, Telemachus perhaps. When windy Orion raised his leg over Lacedemon I put by groan and goblet saying, ‘I tell it as it is. Long time I wondered who was the fooler, who fool, how much of what was news to whom; still pinning Helen to the pitchy poop I said, “When shifty Proteus vowed he had all time to listen in, from a leaden heart I cried: ‘When will I reach my goal through its cloaks of story? How many veils to naked Helen?’
“ ‘ “ ‘I know how it is,’ said Proteus. ‘Yet tell me what I wish; then I’ll tell you what you will.’ Nothing for it but rehearse the tale of me and slippery Eidothea:
5
“ ‘ “ ‘Troy was clinkered; Priam’s stones were still too warm to touch; the loot was depoted on the beach for share-out; Trojan ladies keened and huddled, eyed us with shivers, waiting to be boarded and rode down the tear-salt sea. We were ten years out; ten days more would see our plunder portioned, our dead sent up, good-trip hecatombs laid on the immortal gods. But I was mad with shame and passion for my salvaged wife; though curses Greek and Trojan showered on us like spears on Scamander-plain or the ash of heroes on our decks, I fetched her to my ship unstuck, stowed her below, made straight for home.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Hecatombs to Athena!” Odysseus cried after us.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Cushion your thwarts with Troy-girls!” Agamemnon called, dragging pale Cassandra—’ ”
“ ‘ “Bitch! Bitch!”
“ ‘ “ ‘—by her long black hair. To forestall a mutiny I hollered back, they could keep half my loot for themselves if they’d ship the rest home for me to emprince my loyal crew with. As for me, all my concubines and treasure waited below, tapping her foot. Wise Nestor alone sailed with me, who as Supervisor of Spoils had loaded first; last thing I saw astern was shrewd Odysseus scratching his head, my brother crotch; then Troy sank in the purpled east; with a shake-plain shout, I’m good at those, I dived below to reclaim my wife.
“ ‘ “ ‘Call it weakness if you dare: unlike the generality of men I take small joy in lording women. Helen’s epic heat had charcoaled Troy and sent ten thousand down to Hades; I ought to’ve spitted her like a heifer on her Trojan hearth. But I hadn’t, and the hour was gone to poll horns with the vengeful sword. I thought therefore to knock her about a bit and then take at last what had cost such a fearful price, perhaps vilifying her, within measure, the while. But when I beheld her—sitting cross-legged in the stern, cleaning long fingernails with a bodkin and pouting at the frames and strakes—I forebore, resolved to accept in lieu of her death a modest portion of heartfelt grovel. Further, once she’d flung herself at my knees and kissed my hem I would order her supine and mount more as one who loves than one who conquers; not impossibly, should she acquit herself well and often, I would even entertain a plea for her eventual forgiveness and restoration to the Atrean house. Accordingly I drew myself up to discharge her abjection—whereupon she gave over cleaning her nails and set to drumming them on one knee.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Let your repentance salt my shoeleather,” I said presently, “and then, as I lately sheathed my blade of anger, so sheathe you my blade of love.”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “I only just came aboard,” she replied. “I haven’t unpacked yet.”
“ ‘ “ ‘With a roar I went up the companionway, dashed stern to stem, close-hauled the main, flogged the smile from my navigator, and clove us through the pastures of the squid. Leagues thereafter, when the moon changed phase, I overtook myself, determined shrewdly that her Troy-chests were secured, and vowing this time to grant the trull no quarter, at the second watch of night burst into her cubby and forgave her straight out. “Of the unspeakable we’ll speak no further,” I declared. “I here extend to you what no other in my position would: my outright pardon.” To which, some moments after, I briskly appended: “Disrobe and receive it, for the sake of pity! This offer won’t stand forever.” There I had her; she yawned and responded: “It’s late. I’m tired.”
“ ‘ “ ‘Up the mast half a dozen times I stormed and shinnied, took oar to my navigator, lost sight of Nestor, thundered and lightninged through Poseidon’s finny fief. When next I came to season, I stood a night slyly by while she dusk-to-dawned it, then saluted with this challenge her opening eyes: “Man born of woman is imperfect. On the three thousand two hundred eighty-seventh night of your Parisian affair, as I lay in Simoismud picking vermin off the wound I’d got that day from cunning Pandarus, exhaustion closed my eyes. I dreamed myself was pretty Paris, plucked by Aphrodite from the field and dropped into Helen’s naked lap. There we committed sweet adultery; I woke wet, wept …”
“ ‘ “ ‘Here I paused in my fiction to shield my eyes and stanch the arrow-straight tracks clawed down my cheek. Then, as one who’d waited precisely for her maledict voice to hoarsen, I outshouted her in these terms: “Therefore come to bed my equal, uncursing, uncursed!”
“ ‘ “ ‘The victory was mine, I still believe, but when I made to take trophy, winded Helen shook her head, declaring: “I have the curse.”
“ ‘ “ ‘My taffrail oaths shook Triton’s stamp-ground; I fed to the fish my navigator, knocked my head against the mast and others; hollered up a gale that blew us from Laconic Malea to Egypt. My crew grew restive; when the storm was spent and I had done flogging me with halyards, I chose a moment somewhere off snakèd Libya, slipped my cloak, rapped at Helen’s cabin, and in measured tones declared: “Forgive me.” Adding firmly: “Are you there?”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Seasick,” she admitted. “Throwing up.” To my just query, why she repaid in so close-kneed coin my failure to butcher her in Troy, she answered—’
“ ‘ “ ‘Let me guess,’ requested Proteus.”
“ ‘ “What I said in Troy,” said offshore Helen. “What I say to you now.” ’
“ ‘Whatever was that?’ pressed Peisistratus.”
“Hold on, hold on yet awhile, Menelaus,” I advise.
I’m not the man I used to be.
“ ‘ “ ‘Thus inspired I went a-princing and a-pirate. Seven years the north wind nailed us to Africa, while Helen held fast the door of love. We sailed no plotted course, but supped random in the courts of kings, sacked and sight-saw, ballasted our tender keel with bullion. The crew chose wives from among themselves, give me a woman anytime, had affairs with ewes, committed crimes of passion over fids and tholes. None of us grew younger. The eighth year fetched us here to Pharos, rich sea-quirks, mutinous, strange. How much does a man need? We commenced to starve. Yesterday I strolled up the beach to fish, my head full of north-wind; I squatted on a rushy dune, fetched out my knife, considered whether to slice my parchèd throat or ditto cod. Then before me in the surf, a sudden skinny-dipper! Cock and gullet paused on edge; Beauty stepped from the sea-foam; long time I regarded hairless limb, odd globy breast, uncalloused ham. Where was the fellow’s sex? A fairer yeoman I’d not beheld; who’d untooled him? As as his king and skipper I decided to have at him before myself, it occurred to me he was a woman.
“ ‘ “ ‘Memory, easy-weakened, dies hard. From its laxy clutch I fetched my bride’s dim image. True, her hair was gold, the one before me’s green, and this was finned where that was toed; but the equal number and like placement of their breasts, congruence of their shames’ geometry—too miraculous for chance! She was Helen gone a-surfing, or Aphrodite in Helen’s form. With a clench-tooth wrench I recollected what a man was for, vowed to take her without preamble or petition, then open my throat. Better, as I knew my wife no weakling, but accurate of foot and sharp of toe, I hit upon a ruse to have her without loss of face or testicle, and cursed me I hadn’t dreamed it up years past: as Zeus is wont to take mortal women in semblance of their husbands, I would feign Zeus in Menelaus’ guise! Up tunic, down I sprang, aflop with recommissioned maleship. “Is it Helen’s spouse about to prince me,” my victim inquired, “or some god in his fair-haired form? A lady want
s to know her undoer. My own name,” she went on, and I couldn’t.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Eidothea’s the name,” she went on: “daughter of Proteus, he whose salt hands hold the key to wind and wife. You won’t reach your goals till you’ve mastered Dad. My role in your suspended tale is merely to offer seven pieces of advice. Don’t ask why. Let go of my sleeve, please. Don’t mistake the key for the treasure. But before I go on,” she went on,’ ” ’ ” and I can’t.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “But before I go on,” she went on, “say first how it was at the last in Troy, what passed between you and Helen as the city fell.…” ’ ” ’
“Come on, ‘Come on. “Come on. ‘Come on. “Come on,” Eidothea urged: “In the horse’s woody bowel we groaned and grunt … Why do you weep?” ’ ” ’ ”
6
Respite.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “In the horse’s bowel,” ’ ” ’ ” I groan, “ ‘ “ ‘ “we grunt till midnight, Laocoön’s spear still stuck in our gut …” ’ ” “Hold up,” said Helen; “ ‘Off,’ said Proteus; “On,” said his web-foot daughter,’ ” You see what my spot was, boys! Caught between blunt Beauty’s, fishy Form’s, and dark-mouth Truth’s imperatives, arms trembling, knees raw from rugless poop and rugged cave, I tried to hold fast to layered sense by listening as it were to Helen hearing Proteus hearing Eidothea hearing me; critic within critic, nestled in my slipping grip …”
“ ‘May be,’ Peisistratus suggested, ‘you can trick the tale out against all odds by the following device: to Eidothea, let us say, you said: “Show me how to trap the old boy into prophecy!”; to Proteus, perhaps, for reasons of strategy, you declare: “I begged then of your daughter as Odysseus Nausicaa: ‘Teach me, lady, how best to honor windshift aid from your noble sire’ ”; to Helen-on-the-poop, perhaps, you tell it: “I then declared to Proteus: ‘I then besought your daughter: “Help me to learn from your immortal dad how to replease my heartslove Helen.” ’ ” But to us you may say with fearless truth: “I said to Eidothea: ‘Show me how to fool your father!’ ” ’
“But I asked myself,” I remind me: “ ‘Who is Peisistratus to trust with unrefracted fact?’ ‘Did Odysseus really speak those words to Nausicaa?’ I asked him. ‘Why doesn’t Telemachus snatch that news? And how is it you know of fair Nausicaa, when Proteus on the beach at Pharos hasn’t mentioned her to me yet? Doesn’t it occur to you, faced with this and similar discrepancy, that it’s you I might be yarning?’ as I yarn myself,” whoever that is. “ ‘Menelaus! Proteus! Helen! For all we know, we’re but stranded figures in Penelope’s web, wove up in light to be unwove in darkness.’ So snarling him, I caught the clew of my raveled fabrication:
“ ‘ “What’s going on?” Helen demanded.
“ ‘ “ ‘Son of Atreus!’ Proteus cried. ‘Don’t imagine I didn’t hear what your wife will demand of you some weeks hence, when you will have returned from Egypt, made sail for home, and floored her with the tale of snatching yours truly on the beach! Don’t misbehave yesterday, I warn you! We seers—’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “My next advice,” Eidothea advised me, “is to take nonhuman form. Seal yourself tight.” How is it, by the way,’ I demanded of Proteus, ‘You demand what you demand of me in Menelaus’s voice, and through my mouth, as though I demanded it of myself?’ For so it was from that moment on; I speeched his speeches, even as you hear me speak them now.” “Never mind that!” ’ ‘Who was it said “Never mind!”?’ asked Peisistratus. ‘Your wife? Eidothea? Tricky Proteus? The voice is yours; whose are the words?’ ‘Never mind.’ ‘Could it be, could it have been, that Proteus changed from a leafy tree not into air but into Menelaus on the beach at Pharos, thence into Menelaus holding the Old Man of the Sea? Could it even be that all these speakers you give voice to—’ ” “Never mind,” I say.
No matter. “ ‘ “ ‘ “Disenhorsed at last,” I declared to scaled Eidothea, “we found ourselves in the sleep-soaked heart of Troy. Each set about his appointed task, some murdering sentries, others opening gates, others yet killing Trojans in their cups and lighting torches from the beacon-fire to bum the city. But I made straight for Helen’s apartment with Odysseus, who’d shrewdly reminded me of her liking for lamplit love.”
“ ‘How—’
“ ‘Did I know which room was hers? Because only two lights burned in Troy, one fired as a beacon on Achilles’ tomb by Sinon the faithful traitor, the other flickering from an upper chamber in the house of Deiphobus. It was by ranging one above the other Agamemnon returned the fleet to Troy, but I steered me by the adulterous fire alone, kindling therefrom as I came the torch of vengeance.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Why—”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Did Odysseus come too? Thank Zeus he did! For so enraged was Deiphobus at being overhauled at passion’s peak, he fought like ten.” ’ ”
“ ‘ “Not only fought—” “ ‘ “But I matched him, I matched him,” I pressed on, “all the while watching for my chance to sink sword in Helen, who rose up sheeted in her deadly beauty and cowered by the bedpost, dagger-handed. Long time we grappled—” ’
“ ‘ “ ‘I’m concerned about my daughter’s what- and whereabouts,’ Proteus said—” ’
“ ‘Could it be,’ wondered Peisistratus, in whose name I pledged an ox to the critic muse, ‘Eidothea is Proteus in disguise, prearranging his own capture on the beach for purposes unfathomable to mortals? And how did those lovers lay hands on arms in bed? What I mean—’
“ ‘ “Dagger I had,” said Helen, “under my pillow; and Deiphobus always came to bed with a sword on. But I never cowered; it was the sheet kept slipping, my only cover—”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Take it off!’ cried subtle Odysseus. Long time his strategy escaped me, I fought Deiphobus to a bloody draw. At length with a whisk my loyal friend himself halfstaffed her. Our swords were up; for a moment we stood as if Medusa’d. Then, at the same instant, Deiphobus and I dived at our wife, Odysseus leaped up from where he knelt before her with the sheet, Helen’s dagger came down, and the ghost of her latest lover squeaked off to join his likes.” ’ ” ’
“ ‘Her latest lover!’ Peisistratus exclaimed. ‘Do you mean to say—’
“ ‘ “That’s right,” Helen said. “I killed him myself, a better man than most.”
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Then Odysseus—” began Eidothea.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Then Odysseus disappeared, and I was alone with topless Helen. My sword still stood to lop her as she bent over Deiphobus. When he was done dying she rose and with one hand (the other held her waisted sheet) cupped her breast for swording.” ’ ”
“ ‘ “I dare you!” Helen dared.’
“ ‘Which Helen?’ cried Peisistratus.
“I hesitated … ‘The moment passed … “ ‘My wife smiled shyly … “My sword went down. I closed my eyes, not to see that fountain beauty; clutched at it, not to let her flee. ‘You’ve lost weight, Menelaus,’ she said. ‘Prepare to die,’ I advised her. She softly hung her head …” ’ ” ’
“ ‘How could you tell, sir, if your eyes—’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “My next advice,” said Eidothea,’ ” ’ interrupting once again Peisistratus …”
Respite.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “I touched my blade to the goddess breast I grasped, and sailed before my flagging ire the navy of her offenses. Merely to’ve told prior to sticking her the names and skippers of the ships she’d sunk would’ve been to stretch her life into the menopause; therefore I spent no wind on items; simply I demanded before I killed her: ‘With your last breath tell me: Why?’ ” ’ ” ’
“ ‘(“) (’((“What?”))’)(“)’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Why?’ I repeated,” I repeated,’ I repeated,” I repeated,’ I repeated,” I repeat. “ ‘ “ ‘ “And the woman, with a bride-shy smile and hushèd voice, replied: ‘Why what?’
“ ‘ “ ‘ “Faster than Athena sealed beneath missile Sicily upstart Enceladus, Poseidon Nisyros mutine Polybutes, I sealed my
would-widen eyes; snugger than Porces Laocoön, Heracles Antaeus, I held to my point interrogative Helen, to whom as about us combusted nightlong Ilion I rehearsed our history horse to horse, driving at last as eveningly myself to the seed and omphalos of all.…”(’((“(((’))) )) )
7
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘By Zeus out of Leda,’ I commenced, as though I weren’t Menelaus, Helen Helen, ‘egg-born Helen was a beauty desired by all men on earth. When Tyndareus declared she might wed whom she chose, every bachelor-prince in the peninsula camped on her stoop. Odysseus was there, mighty Ajax, Athenian Menestheus, cunning Diomedes: men great of arm, heart, wit, fame, purse; fit mates for the fairest. Menelaus alone paid the maid no court, though his brother Agamemnon, wed already to her fatal sister, sued for form’s sake on his behalf. Less clever than Odysseus, fierce than Achilles, muscled than either Ajax, Menelaus excelled in no particular unless the doggedness with which he clung to the dream of embracing despite all Helen. He knew who others were—Odysseus resourceful, great Great Ajax, and the rest. Who was he? Whose eyes, at the wedding of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, had laid hold of bridesmaid Helen’s image and never since let go? While others wooed he brooded, played at princing, grappled idly with the truth that those within his imagination’s grasp—which was to say, everyone but Menelaus—seemed to him finally imaginary, and he alone, ungraspable, real.
“ ‘ “ ‘ “ ‘Imagine what he felt, then, when news reached him one spring forenoon that of all the men in Greece, hatchèd Helen had chosen him! Despite the bright hour he was asleep, dreaming as always of that faultless form; his brother’s messenger strode in, bestowed without a word the wreath of Helen’s choice, withdrew. Menelaus held shut his eyes and clung to the dream—which however for the first time slipped his grip. Dismayed, he woke to find his brow now fraught with the crown of love.’ ” ’ ” ’