It was thus that I came to understand the immense strength and shrewd mind of Penelope. I realized that her plan was a hundred times more potent than my own, and more devastating. By proposing such a trial to the suitors, by watching as they puffed and panted to no avail, by maintaining her silence behind the veil as she looked on, she was saying: ‘You want me in your house and in your bed? Then show me what you’re worth. I’m accustomed to a man of rare strength, power, ingenuity. Go to it then, string the bow, young lions! Let your arrow fly and hit the target. Can you really not manage such a task?’
Leodes tried next. Among all of them, he seemed the most benign. He was never insolent or offensive. He respected the queen and looked at her with adoring eyes. It didn’t matter – his gentle nature would not help him escape the Chaera of death. An instant sufficed for him to understand that the enormous bow had an invincible and nearly magical resilience. Inside it was the grim, vicious soul of a marauder. He let go of it almost at once and I heard him murmur: ‘If it becomes impossible to achieve what you’ve longed for your whole life, it is better to die . . .’
I wanted to feel compassion for him, but there was no room left in my heart for such a feeling. The time for mercy was over.
Antinous seemed to have heard him as well. He said: ‘Your mother did not give birth to you so you would become a great archer. But where you have failed, another one of us may succeed.’ He turned to the others: ‘Friends! What a fool I’ve been! I’d forgotten that today is the feast day of Apollo the archer. How could we dream of competing with him? We should never have entertained such a thought! Let us give the bow a rest for today and wait until tomorrow. Surely the god will then grant one of us the strength to succeed.’
I scanned the room for Telemachus but could not find him. I sought out Eumeus’ gaze and he nodded once, solemnly. My boy was in the Hall of the Argonauts.
I turned towards the suitors then and appealed to them using modest words. ‘Strange as it may seem to you, noble lords,’ I said, ‘I once possessed a bow similar to this one, long ago, when I was a prosperous man, and my hands long to grasp such a fine weapon again. I’m sure that the archer god will give the victory to one of you tomorrow, but in the meantime I beg you, let me have a go! I want to see if there’s still anything left of my green years in these tired old arms.’
The words were not out of my mouth before I could feel the eyes of my proud wife upon me, and they burned me like a blazing brand.
‘Are you demented, you old fool?’ shot back Antinous. ‘How dare you even ask such a thing? I would never allow you to touch that bow, and I’ll make you deeply regret you ever thought of it.’
Penelope spoke up: ‘The guest certainly does not mean to challenge you, nor does he aspire to gain any advantage by handling that bow. I don’t see why he can’t be permitted to try.’
Eurymachus couldn’t keep still. ‘Let me tell you why, your highness,’ he cried out. ‘What would people say if word got out that a beggar succeeded where the most noble youth of the kingdom had failed?’ He turned, then, to rail at me: ‘And listen up, you ragball, back off! If you dare touch that bow you won’t leave this house alive.’
‘Enough threats!’ cried out Penelope. ‘Our guest would certainly not pretend to have my hand in marriage, even if he were to succeed. I don’t see why we should forbid him from trying. Eumeus, hand him the bow. Until tomorrow it is I who command in this house.’
She stood, crossed the hall and ascended with a light, majestic step to her rooms. My queen was giving me the time and space to redeem myself in her eyes, the chance to wipe out all those years of solitude and humiliation.
Eumeus obeyed her orders and put the bow in my hands. I greased it with a piece of meat fat and warmed it, passing it again and again over the flames of the hearth, to make it more flexible. The princes were watching my movements with great curiosity. They were beginning to suspect that I was not what I had seemed. The time was right. I grasped the top horn with my left hand and the string with the right and, raising my leg, I leaned my knee into the horn just under the grip, where the two opposing forces met. I pushed hard. The bow bent, moaning. The top horn obeyed my hand and lowered to hook the string. I saw Phemius’ fingers running along the strings of his lyre and mine did the same on the bowstring. The cord vibrated. A dull rumble at the centre, shriller and louder higher up.
In the deep silence that followed my gesture, I nocked the arrow and took aim.
I let it fly.
Whistling, the arrow shot through all twelve rings and hit the target.
The men in the hall were looking each other in the eye. They had finally understood, but it was too late. The dusky red sun flooded the hall with bloody reflections. When I turned, Telemachus was there on my right, clad in blinding bronze.
21
I STRIPPED OFF MY RAGS and showed them that I was clad in bronze as well. I was no longer an old man, nor a beggar. I was the king of Ithaca and the beast that had grown inside me on the fields of Troy had been awakened.
Antinous was just bringing a cup full of wine to his mouth. I seized the quiver and dumped its contents onto the ground. Tens of bitter shafts bounced on the floor. I nocked one of them to my bowstring and let fly. It struck him at the base of his neck. He collapsed to the ground, blood spouting from his mouth and nose. He gave the table a kick and all the food rolled off on top of him, soaking up his blood.
The others were struck dumb. They turned to me incredulously, believing I’d made some kind of mistake. ‘What have you done, you villain?’ one cried out, and then another. ‘You’ve killed the strongest young hero in Ithaca. That’s your last try with the bow!’ ‘You’re dead, foreigner,’ came another voice. ‘We’ll chop you to pieces and feed you to the dogs and vultures!’
‘No!’ I cried out. ‘You’re wrong. The contest is over and now we’re going to start another game: shooting at live targets!’
They had still not recognized me. They were too young when I had left.
‘I’m your king!’ I shouted. ‘You thought I’d never return from the war. You’ve devoured all my wealth, you’ve plotted to murder my son, you’ve gone to bed with my slaves, you’ve threatened my wife. Dogs! You’re dead! All of you! I won’t stop until I’ve slaughtered every last one of you.’
Instinct drove them to the walls where the arms had always hung, but they found only the shadows of weapons. Green terror gripped them.
Eurymachus, the most fast-thinking among them, turned to me, drawing closer: there he was, on my arrow’s path. What should I hit? His neck, his breastbone, his liver?
‘Stop! Wait! If you are truly Odysseus, listen to my words. We didn’t think it possible for you to return after twenty years. No one could have imagined it.’ His hands were open, held out in front of him as if to protect himself. He wanted to make me take the time to reflect. ‘We insulted you, humiliated you, I can’t deny it, but we didn’t know it was you! You looked like another. We would never have acted thus had we known, you must believe me . . .’
The bastard was clever – he could talk.
‘It was Antinous who thought all this up, who convinced the rest of us. We’ll pay you back, we’ll make reparation for everything we’ve consumed and much, much more. Our fathers are rich, powerful men. You know some of them, don’t you?’
He was coming closer and closer.
‘Antinous is dead. Forgive your people. We beg you, great king!’
But the arrow had already taken flight. I couldn’t have called it back had I wanted to. It went through him from front to back. He went down screaming. A man with an arrow stuck in him can suffer for hours. Philoetius put an end to his pain.
I might have stopped, then, because I’d killed the two most insolent, but I saw that the others were reacting, or at least trying to. They had only their daggers, but they must have thought they could outnumber us, and were already grabbing the tables to use as shields. Some of them were trying to drive me away from the thresho
ld. I knew that if they were to get out the door, they would run for the city and come back in force with their fathers, brothers, relatives in tow.
No one could be allowed to escape.
Telemachus brought one of them down with his spear. Eumeus and Philoetius were used to slaughter, the wild splattering of blood. They seemed perfectly at ease.
‘Pardon your people, great king!’
Whose voice was that now? Was it Mentor’s? Athena’s? My own, perhaps? Only my own? I watched as they fell, thrashing in pools of their own blood. They looked paler to me, and much younger than they were in reality.
That image makes me suffer. I can hear their shrieks, still now, after I’ve fallen asleep. But my goddess had certainly willed it to happen, otherwise how could four men have prevailed over thirty or fifty or . . . how many were there?
Telemachus ran to the armoury and swiftly returned with more spears and shields for the cowherd and the swineherd and even for me. We joined in a tight formation, one alongside the other, and we counter-attacked. The clash raged on and on, for how long I do not know.
Suddenly, as if by magic, we saw that some of them were wielding heavy weapons.
‘Where did they get those?’ I shouted. ‘If they manage to find arms, we’re all dead.’
Telemachus pounded his fist against his thigh. ‘Forgive me, father!’ he cried out. ‘In my haste I may have left the armoury door open! Someone must have got in.’
‘Eumeus, Philoetius, go there, immediately,’ I ordered. ‘If you find anyone, capture him.’
They rushed to the armoury while Telemachus and I continued to drive back the suitors from the front door. I thought of Penelope. Where was she? Could she hear the cries of agony and massacre?
I’d run out of arrows, but Eumeus and Philoetius were returning, carrying weapons they’d found in a corridor that had not been used for many years.
‘It was Melanthius,’ said Philoetius, panting under the weight of the arms he carried and his haste. ‘We’ve strung him up by the legs. He’s hanging under the ceiling beams. You’ll decide what his punishment will be when this is over.’
We threw ourselves back into the fray. I was relentless, unstoppable, striking down one after another. The princes fought recklessly, with a strength born of desperation, but none of them knew what it meant to measure himself against the fury of a real warrior in the thick of battle. None of them had ever seen combat. They must have known they had no hope. It was only a question of time. Although they still greatly outnumbered us, they had lost their cohesion and were like crazed animals in a slaughterhouse. One of them tried to jump up towards a loophole that promised to get him outside, but Eumeus nailed him to the wall with a blow of his axe. He sank to the floor with a thud.
More screams. Cries of utter agony. They were trying to make themselves heard so that someone outside, anyone, would run to the city and sound the alarm.
A groan.
Eurymachus . . . could he still be alive? Hadn’t Philoetius finished him off?
Ghosts, shadows, were already flitting amongst us. Mentor . . . was that Mentor? Had Athena transported his semblance all the way here, to my house? What remained of my old counsellor? He vanished, just as a swallow swooped between us (was it him, her, a swallow?) in frenetic, syncopated flight, showing first the white of its belly, then the black of its back. It went to perch on the main beam supporting the ceiling. From there it let out shrill cries. I could see it gasping with its beak open.
The princes tried time and again to unite, using their improvised shields to wall themselves off, shouting to brace themselves: ‘All men to the front! We have to push them out the door. If we can get out we can run for help! We’re dead if we don’t. Move it! Get on with it!’
But their companions continued to fall around them, pierced by spears, hacked by axes, run through by swords. The whole floor was steaming with blood. I’d already seen that scene. I knew it from my nightmares. When I had called up Agamemnon’s shade from Hades, this was how he described his shipmates, massacred in his own palace. Was I avenging them as well?
Telemachus was mercilessly wreaking vengeance on the suitors for every humiliation suffered, every jeer, offence, insult. My eyes fell upon Phemius, the singer. His hands plucked away at the lyre strings as though they were moved by their own energy. Each finger was a creature acting on its own, while his gaze was lost in the mists of terror.
I found before me Leodes, the soft-hearted suitor, least odious among them all. I had heard him invoke death for not having attained the goal of his life, the winning of Penelope, but now that the Chaera was looming over him and darkness was about to descend, he scrabbled to escape. He let his weapons fall to the ground and threw himself at my feet. He implored me to spare his life, trembling, declaring that he had never disrespected the queen, that he had always tried to convince his fellow suitors to follow his example, but I didn’t let him finish: with a blow of my sword I took off his head. His moaning had not touched me.
We continued in our work until every last one of them lay lifeless on the floor.
I had reconquered my home, avenged my honour and that of my family, taught future generations a terrible lesson.
Phemius was still alive: was it his turn? He had, after all, gladdened the arrogant suitors during their banquets. He had never rebelled. There he was, shaking, leaning against one of the pillars that stood around the hearth and supported the ceiling. He heard my footsteps drawing closer and he came out into the open. He threw himself at my feet and embraced my knees. ‘Have pity,’ he said, ‘my king!’ And he burst into tears.
How distant were the days of my childhood, the days in which the cool water of the fountain was enough to wash my innocent hands, and the adventurous stories that Phemius told me were enough to set me dreaming. He was trembling like a leaf and weeping. A long sigh pulled the last of my fury out of my mouth, the last poisonous exhalation from my chest. We stared at one another in the red light of dusk and tears glistened in my eyes and his. In his gaze I saw the days and nights of times past, peaceful images of my island and my family, celebrations and feasts. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes, but a voice rang out in my heart: ‘No one can raise his hand against the poet. He is sacred, because his song brings relief for all mortal anguish.’
Phemius walked away from me. His head bowed and his shoulders curved, he made his way across the bloody floor. The house turned dark, blackness descending all at once on my house, on the atrium and the courtyard, over the whole island, just as Theoclymenus, the murdering prophet, had foretold.
I called Euriclea, and she came down from the women’s quarters with a lantern in hand. When her eyes took in the massacre, the bodies strewn all over the floor, she gave a whoop of joy. She took to dancing, with her lantern in hand, as if prey to delirium.
‘Stop that!’ I shouted. ‘You cannot dance on the dead! These youths do not deserve to be derided. They have paid for their offences with their lives. Respect them.’
Euriclea stopped and her head dropped in shame.
‘I need you, mai. Call the maidservants and order them to carry out the corpses. Have them laid side by side outside under the courtyard portico.’
Euriclea called the women, who had been upstairs closed up in their rooms. At the sight of the massacre they burst into tears. Sobbing, they dragged the bodies out, and when they saw the black sun sinking towards the horizon, that unreal darkness, they cried even harder. It must have felt like they were taking the dead straight to Hades.
I looked out and my own heart trembled in my chest to see that darkness so long before nightfall, and so different from the night. It was as if a black veil had fallen upon the sun. It obscured the light but did not put it out entirely. The moon was still visible, as were the most luminous of the stars. No one was laughing about Theoclymenus’ black vision any more. And there was still so much to do. ‘Mai,’ I ordered, ‘have them take up the broken plates and wash the floor down, first with brushes and
then with sponges, until it is perfectly clean. They’ll do the same with the tables. When they have finished, you will pick out those who sided with the suitors, betraying their queen, and separate them from the others. Have them stand in a row outside, in the courtyard.’
The maidservants trembled upon hearing those words, imagining what was to come.
When they had finished their work, Euriclea had all of them line up outside in the courtyard. The sun was back, once again illuminating the island, but its light was dull, dense, bloody. They were wailing their hearts out and shaking in terror as Euriclea raised her finger against them: ‘You, you . . .’ They knew that that brief word meant a death sentence.
The red sun of twilight had been stripped of its veil, but there was little left of its downward course towards the surface of the Ocean. I turned to Eumeus and Philoetius then, and told them to stretch a sturdy ship’s rope from a column of the portico to the pillar at the courtyard’s entrance gate, high above the ground, and to tie a number of knots along its length. One for each of the unfaithful, traitorous handmaids: there they would hang, with their hands tied behind their backs. The line was high enough so that none of their feet could touch the ground. When they were finally abandoned to their destiny, dangling from the rope that stretched from one side of the courtyard to the other, they kicked up their heels as their toes strove instinctively to touch ground, but not for long. They soon stopped moving and swung lifelessly from their nooses. All their energies had fled from their bodies and their shades had already descended to Hades, chasing after those of the suitors who had preceded them. I could almost hear their sighs.
‘It’s Melanthius’ turn!’ exclaimed Eumeus. ‘Let’s go and get him.’ He ran off, followed by Philoetius. When they returned they were dragging the goatherd with his hands and feet bound. He screamed with pain at every yank. His arm bones had popped out of his shoulder joints as he hung from the ceiling beam and his face was already a mask of pain, but the worst was yet to come. The punishment for a man who betrays his king, in the full consciousness of what he is doing, was well known. Eumeus and Philoetius cut off his nose, his ears and his genitals and tossed them to the dogs. Then they threw him onto the dungheap, where he would bleed to death.