One day Telemachus joined me at the secret port. Perhaps he’d spotted me from above, from crow’s rock, and he felt like spending some time in my company.
‘Atta,’ he said, ‘why don’t you and I go to the continent together? We could visit King Nestor in Pylos and King Menelaus in Sparta. I know they’d greatly enjoy banqueting with you, talking and joking, maybe even having a good cry. It would be good for you and for them too. I’ve sent out messages with the news of your return. They know that you’ve exacted justice in your home and made peace with your people. But I realized from their responses that many things were already known to them and they were ardently hoping you would make the journey to see them in person. You went through so much together during the war. You fought to save each other’s lives, didn’t you? Don’t you think that seeing them again would be a good thing? It would be like the trip you took with your father when you were young.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘perhaps we should go. There’s still so much that needs saying, and it would strengthen the ties of friendship that join us. I’ll think about it and I’ll set a date for our departure, but not too soon, I don’t want to leave your mother alone just yet. She was alone for much too long. I want to wait for all the old wounds to heal. Then we can go.’
Telemachus tipped his head towards me thoughtfully.
‘What about my grandfather Autolykos?’ I asked him. ‘Whatever happened to him? I didn’t meet him among the shades of the dead that I summoned up from Hades.’
‘He died when I was still very little. Or maybe he just disappeared. No one knows for sure.’
‘But I saw my mother’s shadow. I spoke to her and she to me. She told me the truth. Why didn’t she say anything about him? Why didn’t I see him?’
‘Maybe he didn’t want to make himself seen. You always said he was an irascible, capricious old man. Maybe dying didn’t make him any better.’
He smiled and so did I, but that night, resting alongside my wife, I dreamt something different. I thought that my grandfather might still be alive, in some particular, mysterious form. One day, perhaps, I’d go to the continent and pay a visit to his fortress on Parnassus, as sullen and stony as he had always been.
At times my thoughts turned to what I had gone through, what I had seen. At night I dreamt of the storms, the battles, the distant, diverse worlds I had seen. I woke up covered with sweat or shouting. Penelope would hold me and promise in a low voice: ‘It’s all right now. It’s all gone. You can rest easy now, sleep, my darling.’ But then I would go for several nights without dreaming at all, and the days that followed seemed empty and monotonous. The images of the past seemed to be fading and, somehow, I mourned for them.
It would happen, every now and then, that sailors landing at the great port would ask if it were true that wanax Odysseus had returned. Had he truly wiped out all the queen’s suitors? Did he reign unopposed over the island? Sometimes they would ask to meet me, but I would rarely make myself available.
I would often go to the spot where the Phaeacians had left me sleeping on the shore and where I’d met my goddess when I awoke. I dearly hoped I would chance upon the shepherd boy who’d spoken to me then: my goddess, who had disguised herself as the gods are wont to do if they show themselves to a mortal. I missed her greatly and feared she would never appear to me again. Without the sense of her presence I felt very alone.
Then one day, without warning, something happened . . .
It was evening, just after dusk. I was walking along the shore, not far from the secret port. The moon was full and the sky was cold and clear. From the cabins scattered over the mountain slope came the barking of dogs and bleating of sheep, and from the sea the sound of waves lapping. The pebbles at the shoreline shone like precious gems in the light of the moon.
All at once I noticed something coming in slowly on the waves. I waded in up to my knees and pulled the object out of the water: an oar, it was, large and solid, made of ash. Not from a fishing boat, but from a ship!
I felt my heart leap in my chest and my breath stopped short. What wrecked ship had cast off an oar that had made its way to the shores of my island, to my very feet? I ran my hand down the shaft and then up again, to the handle, and my fingers curled around a figure carved into the wood. The light of the full moon was bright enough for me to make it out. I recognized it: a butterfly.
Polites’ oar!
Tears sprang to my eyes. How far had that oar travelled? What god had pushed it all the way to where I stood, on a night of full moon, on the shores of the secret port, on my own island? That oar was the last remnant of one of my ships swallowed up by the sea. It had been searching for me for years and it had finally found me, bringing me a mute but unmistakable message.
You will depart once again with an oar on your shoulder
And you will journey far into the continent
Until you find people who know not the sea
Who have never seen a ruddy-cheeked ship
Nor the oars which are its wings . . .
THE TIME had come to resume my journey. The last, the one that would take me to a desolate place at the ends of the earth where I would make a sacrifice to Poseidon, recognizing his victory and my defeat. Only thus would I be able to achieve peace.
I heaved the oar on my shoulder and walked towards home. It was time. Time to leave. Time to tell Penelope, to listen to her inconsolable weeping, to repeat that I’d be returning soon and that we would finally reign over a happy people.
She knew, she said, that it would happen. A lifetime of disappointments had tempered her and she showed great strength of spirit.
‘I’ll miss you,’ she said with quiet sadness.
‘I will miss you too,’ I told her. ‘These are the pains I must suffer to placate the wrath of an unjust god. Once we’ve made love again, you can start counting the days. Not many. You won’t see me leave, nor will I watch you as my ship draws away and you get smaller and smaller and further away from me. I couldn’t bear it.’
The second to know was my father.
‘When?’ he asked me.
‘Soon. The sooner the better. There’s no reason to put it off. I don’t know how long this journey will take, when or where I’ll find the man who will give me the signal that I’ve reached the end of the road. But I’m sure it will be arduous. It won’t be so easy to end my quarrel with the god that shakes the earth.’
‘Do you know what I think?’
‘No, atta, I don’t, but the look in your eyes tells me it isn’t pleasant.’
‘It’s neither good nor bad. It’s only a sensation, or a vision, perhaps.’
‘Speak, then.’
‘I’m remembering the dream you had at the Sanctuary of the Wolf King in Arcadia. I feel that it has something to do with this last adventure of yours.’
‘I will nurse that dream in my heart.’
‘If I’m right, I think it’s reasonable to believe I won’t see you again.’
‘Why are you saying such a thing?’
‘A presentiment.’
I lowered my eyes without being able to say another word.
It was he who spoke: ‘Let us say goodbye now, then.’
His eyes were shining. The hero Laertes, my father. Those marvellous blue eyes. We clasped each other tightly, and wept.
‘Farewell, atta,’ I said. ‘It is an honour to have been born of a father like you. The best I could possibly desire. It was worth coming into the world, just to know you.’
‘Farewell, pai. I want you to know that your return was the greatest joy of my life. I couldn’t have died without seeing you again. My only regret is that you didn’t come to me first, allow me to fight at your side and perhaps even to die the way I lived: as a king and a warrior. But I understand. You are the most famous of all mortals, you are the conqueror of Troy and you certainly have a plan now, as you did that day. My presence might have compromised it. I’m no longer the man I was.’
‘Don’t say
that, atta! It’s not true!’
‘Now you are departing for your last journey. You’ll choose the day and the time. It’s better that I don’t know, and that I don’t see you go. I don’t think my old heart could stand it. Follow your fate and the will of the gods. There’s no other possible way. My last thought will be for you. My spirit will be at your side forever.’
I left with a swollen heart, but that was the way it had to be.
I walked among the silvery olive trees, along the path we’d travelled so often together.
All at once I heard a scream behind me: the old Siculian servant who took care of him! My heart froze and I ran back as fast as I could. I could see him from a distance: on the ground, unmoving. His old servant was wailing in despair, leaning over him. She was letting out loud, shrill laments, in the way of her people.
My father’s voice rang in my heart: ‘Best that I don’t know and that I don’t see: my old heart wouldn’t be able to bear it.’
THE PYRE of the king of Ithaca was raised on the tallest height of the northern part of the island. I wanted everyone on the whole island to see the fire that carried the glorious spirit of the Argonaut hero towards the sky. An enormous stack of pine and olive trunks: the first beneath, the second on top.
When I had entered our bedchamber to give Penelope the news, she replied: ‘He had asked me to finish his burial shroud. He knew he would die soon and he also knew what would take his life.’ She detached the woven cloth from the loom. It was beautiful: you could see the ship, the Argo, and you could recognize my father, standing next to Jason and Hercules, by the light-blue cloak on his shoulders.
‘I finished it last night,’ she said, and wept, hiding her face in her hands.
His body, covered by the magnificent shroud, was carried up to the mountaintop on the shoulders of six warriors. At the start, the only ones following the bier were me, Penelope, Telemachus, Euriclea, Eumeus and Philoetius with their families, the servants and the handmaids, and this filled my heart with sadness. The funeral procession of a king and Argonaut hero like my father should have been very different. But then, as we advanced towards the site of the pyre, others joined us: men and women, noblemen and warriors but also farmers, fishermen and shepherds. The procession kept growing in size, turning into a long snake winding along the path, and I thanked the gods for each person who joined us. Many of them were aristocrats who had lost their sons in my act of vengeance. Their thoughts were not lingering there but on the times of their own youth, when they’d eagerly followed their king in his forays over the waves.
The procession halted when we reached the peak, and the body of my father, covered by the shroud woven by Penelope, was placed on the pyre. Telemachus and I laid his sword on his chest and lit the fire. It blazed the whole night, the wind dragging high licks of flames into the sky and with them the glorious spirit of King Laertes my father. The light emanating from the fire was seen from every corner of the kingdom.
When dawn lightened the sky, Telemachus and I took the king’s sword, ritually bent it in two with pincers and threw it into the sea. We put his ashes on his ship and waited until the wind began blowing east and north. We hoisted the sail, locked the steering oar in place and watched until it disappeared over the horizon.
It was the only fitting farewell to an Argonaut and hero.
I SPOKE for a whole day with Telemachus. I swore to him that I would return, that I would teach him the art of governing and the laws of honour, so that he would be a better king than his father and his grandfather. I would become his counsellor, and I would keep a small corner of the palace for Penelope and myself, the part where the royal bedchamber was.
‘One day, after we’re gone, the chamber will be yours. You’ll take your bride there and tell her the story of how it was built and how it became a secret pledge of eternal love and faith between your parents.’
‘I want to be the one who escorts you to the secret port, atta,’ replied Telemachus. ‘I will bear your shield and give you the final salute when you are ready to depart. Grant me this privilege, I beg of you. I waited for you my whole life. You wouldn’t believe how many times I asked my mother to tell me about you! I wanted to imagine you. I wanted to know what you looked like, what the light in your eyes was like, the speed of your thought, the strength of your arms. I recognized you when you returned and wept as I embraced you. I fought at your side covered with bronze as you slaughtered the shameless, arrogant suitors. Together we put the torch to the pyre of King Laertes your father and my grandfather, together we watched his ship disappear over the horizon. Let me be the one to see you off on your last journey, so that your image remains in my mind, engraved in my heart.’
‘I can’t. This is not a journey like any other and I must not waver. If I see you, my courage may fail me. Stay at the palace. In my absence you will be the king of Ithaca. You will administer the law, take care of the house and protect your mother. You’ll offer sacrifice to Athena for my safe return. You won’t need to carry my shield for me. I’ll be leaving with nothing but my bow, a dagger, and an oar on my shoulder, as the shade of Theban Tiresias prophesied when I summoned him from Hades. This one.’ I showed him the oar.
‘Where did it come from?’ he asked.
‘From one of my own ships. It belonged to Polites. I recognized it from the butterfly carved into the handle. It washed ashore right in front of me. A portent, certainly. A sign from the gods. I knew what it meant: that the time had come.’
Telemachus dropped his head and made no reply.
‘Come now, let’s go home,’ I said to him.
That night Penelope and I made love with consuming passion, and then lay one beside the other, holding hands like two children who are afraid of the dark.
‘From today I’ll count the days and nights,’ she whispered.
I answered: ‘Whatever happens, I know we’ll continue to love each other forever, beyond life and beyond death. We’re not like the others, my love, no two people have ever loved each other so much, rejoiced, hoped and suffered as we have. If I were to be reborn a thousand times, one thousand times would I want my destiny to be united with yours.’
I could hear her crying. I held her close in a long embrace, in heartbroken silence.
ON THE THIRD DAY I rose from my bed before dawn, without making a sound. I could hear Penelope breathing deeply in the darkness. Surely my goddess had showered sleep over her eyes. I descended the stairs, dressed, took my bow and slung it over my shoulder, hung the quiver from my belt, went under the portico and took the oar down from the wall. I was walking towards the door when I found Euriclea standing in front of me. She didn’t touch me, but looked at me with eyes full of tears, whispering: ‘Child, my child . . .’
I gazed back at her with tear-fogged eyes as well, and I nodded my head as I went out. All those memories, voices, dreams that I was leaving behind as I left her. ‘Mai,’ I said in my heart, ‘will I see you again?’
I walked past Argus’ grave and I imagined that he could see me from the other world. I brushed the mound with my hand as if I were petting him. I was leaving him behind, as I had Euriclea, the servants and the handmaids, Penelope. Had she really been sleeping? Or was she already crying in our empty bed? Telemachus must still be sleeping: the young sleep so soundly.
I started down the path that led to the secret port, where the day before I had left a boat that would take me to the mainland. My path took me close to Eumeus’ farm. I could see that he’d made many improvements, repairs, had planted a great number of trees. He was the owner of the property now, and you could see that. His dogs didn’t bark; they knew me. A strange feeling gripped me. Tears poured from my eyes, but I was seized by intense excitement. The very sound of my footsteps, the thought of another adventure that would take me to the ends of the earth, gave me a small secret thrill that I could not even confess to myself, as shame welled up in equal measure.
Day was breaking and a grey light began to replace the darkness
. Dogs barked from the farmhouses, birds practised a few notes as they readied to raise their song to the sun. I walked towards crow’s rock and began to descend the steep trail that led down to the secret port. I used the oar to steady myself so I wouldn’t fall.
All at once I heard a rustling of bushes alongside the path. An animal?
I pushed on, and continued to hear the same noise, as if someone were following me in the thick foliage. But where from? Uphill or down? Could it be Telemachus after all, coming up from the port? I could half see a ship at anchor.
‘Telemachus? Is that you?’
No answer but the sound of branches cracking. All of a sudden, a youth jumped out of the vegetation, wielding something in his hand. A club . . . It wasn’t Telemachus, I’d already seen those cold eyes: Euthymides, Antinous’ younger brother! He struck me with the club he held and then ran off. I fell to the ground and started to roll downhill, dragging a landslide of stones and pebbles with me. Darkness fell over me. How much time passed? How many days, how many nights? Was I alive? Was I dead?
I heard Telemachus’ voice calling me again and again and then a long despairing wail.
I felt at a certain moment that someone was raising up my shoulders and easing me onto a wooden plank. Was I going to my pyre? I tried to call out, to call for help, but I was shouting with no sound.
No. I heard the lapping of waves against the side of a ship, I was lying on the foredeck . . . but why couldn’t I move? Why could I hear such weeping all around me? I invoked my goddess from the depths of my abyss: ‘Open my eyes, daughter of Zeus, virgin Tritogeneia, let me see!’ Indifferent silence was the response.
Finally the ship hit something: the shore? Which shore? I was lifted again and carried up what seemed to be a steep path. I could feel the rays of the afternoon sun on my skin and smell the scents of pine, juniper and, later, of fir. It reminded me of something, that scent. I was familiar with it. From when? My first time on the mainland.