The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus Read online

  All of this was a strain on the nerves. I started to cry, as I would do so often in the future, and was taken to lie down on my bed.

  Thus I missed the race itself. Odysseus won it. He cheated, as I later learned. My father’s brother, Uncle Tyndareus, father of Helen—though, as I’ve told you, some said that Zeus was her real father—helped him to do it. He mixed the wine of the other contestants with a drug that slowed them down, though not so much as they would notice; to Odysseus he gave a potion that had the opposite effect. I understand that this sort of thing has become a tradition, and is still practised in the world of the living when it comes to athletic contests.

  Why did Uncle Tyndareus help my future husband in this way? They were neither friends nor allies. What did Tyndareus stand to gain? My uncle would not have helped anyone believe me simply out of the goodness of his heart, a commodity that was in short supply.

  One story has it that I was the payment for a service Odysseus had rendered to Tyndareus. When they were all competing for Helen and things were getting more and more angry, Odysseus made each contestant swear an oath that whoever won Helen must be defended by all of the others if any other man tried to take her away from the winner. In that way he calmed things down and allowed the match with Menelaus to proceed smoothly. He must have known he had no hope himself. It was then—so the rumour goes that he struck the bargain with Tyndareus: in return for assuring a peaceful and very profitable wedding for the radiant Helen, Odysseus would get plain-Jane Penelope.

  But I have another idea, and here it is. Tyndareus and my father, Icarius, were both kings of Sparta. They were supposed to rule alternately, one for a year and the other the next, turn and turn about. But Tyndareus wanted the throne for himself alone, and indeed he later got it. It would stand to reason that he’d sounded out the various suitors on their prospects and their plans, and had learned that Odysseus shared the newfangled idea that the wife should go to the husband’s family rather than the other way around. It would suit Tyndareus fine if I could be sent far away, me and any sons I might bear. That way there would be fewer to come to the aid of Icarius in the event of an open conflict.

  Whatever was behind it, Odysseus cheated and won the race. I saw Helen smiling maliciously as she watched the marriage rites. She thought I was being pawned off on an uncouth dolt who would haul me off to a dreary backwater, and she was not displeased. She’d probably known well beforehand that the fix was in.

  As for me, I had trouble making it through the ceremony the sacrifices of animals, the offerings to the gods, the lustral sprinklings, the libations, the prayers, the interminable songs. I felt quite dizzy. I kept my eyes downcast, so all I could see of Odysseus was the lower part of his body. Short legs, I kept thinking, even at the most solemn moments. This was not an appropriate thought it was trivial and silly, and it made me want to giggle but in my own defence I must point out that I was only fifteen.

  VII. The Scar

  And so I was handed over to Odysseus, like a package of meat. A package of meat in a wrapping of gold, mind you. A sort of gilded blood pudding.

  But perhaps that is too crude a simile for you.

  Let me add that meat was highly valued among us - the aristocracy ate lots of it, meat, meat, meat, and all they ever did was roast it: ours was not an age of Haute cuisine. Oh, I forgot: there was also bread, flatbread that is, bread, bread, bread, and wine, wine, wine. We did have the odd fruit or vegetable, but you’ve probably never heard of these because no one put them into the songs much.

  The gods wanted meat as much as we did, but all they ever got from us was the bones and fat, thanks to a bit of rudimentary sleight of hand by Prometheus: only an idiot would have been deceived by a bag of bad cow parts disguised as good ones, and Zeus was deceived; which goes to show that the gods were not always as intelligent as they wanted us to believe.

  I can say this now because I’m dead. I wouldn’t have dared to say it earlier. You could never tell when one of the gods might be listening, disguised as a beggar or an old friend or a stranger. It’s true that I sometimes doubted their existence, these gods. But during my lifetime I considered it prudent not to take any risks.

  There was lots of everything at my wedding feast—great glistening hunks of meat, great wads of fragrant bread, great flagons of mellow wine. It was amazing that the guests didn’t burst on the spot, they stuffed themselves so full. Nothing helps gluttony along so well as eating food you don’t have to pay for yourself, as I learned from later experience.

  We ate with our hands in those days. There was a lot of gnawing and some heavy-duty chewing, but it was better that way no sharp utensils that could be snatched up and plunged into a fellow guest who might have annoyed you. At any wedding preceded by a contest there were bound to be a few sore losers; but no unsuccessful suitor lost his temper at my feast. It was more as if they’d failed to win an auction for a horse.

  The wine was mixed too strong, so there were many fuddled heads. Even my father, King Icarius, got quite drunk. He suspected he’d had a trick played on him by Tyndareus and Odysseus, he was almost sure they’d cheated, but he couldn’t figure out how they’d done it; and this made him angry, and when he was angry he drank even more, and dropped insulting comments about people’s grandparents.

  But he was a king, so there were no duels.

  Odysseus himself did not get drunk. He had a way of appearing to drink a lot without actually doing it. He told me later that if a man lives by his wits, as he did, he needs to have those wits always at hand and kept sharp, like axes or swords. Only fools, he said, were given to bragging about how much they could drink. It was bound to lead to swilling competitions, and then to inattention and the loss of one’s powers, and that would be when your enemy would strike.

  As for me, I couldn’t eat a thing. I was too nervous. I sat there shrouded in my bridal veil, hardly daring to glance at Odysseus. I was certain he would be disappointed in me once he’d lifted that veil and made his way in through the cloak and the girdle and the shimmering robe in which I’d been decked out. But he wasn’t looking at me, and neither was anyone else. They were all staring at Helen, who was dispensing dazzling smiles right and left, not missing a single man. She had a way of smiling that made each one of them feel that secretly she was in love with him alone.

  I suppose it was lucky that Helen was distracting everyone’s attention, because it kept them from noticing me and my trembling and awkwardness. I wasn’t just nervous, I was really afraid. The maids had been filling my ears with tales about how once I was in the bridal chamber—I would be torn apart as the earth is by the plough, and how painful and humiliating that would be.

  As for my mother, she’d stopped swimming around like a porpoise long enough to attend my wedding, for which I was less grateful than I ought to have been. There she sat on her throne beside my father, robed in cool blue, a small puddle gathering at her feet. She did make a little speech to me as the maids were changing my costume yet again, but I didn’t consider it to be a helpful one at the time. It was nothing if not oblique; but then, all Naiads are oblique.

  Here is what she said:

  Water does not resist. Water flows. When you plunge your band into it, all you feel is a caress. Water is not a solid wall, it will not stop you. But water always goes where it wants to go, and nothing in the end can stand against it. Water is patient. Dripping water wears away a stone. Remember that, my child. Remember you are half water. If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it. Water does.

  After the ceremonies and the feasting, there was the usual procession to the bridal chamber, with the usual torches and vulgar jokes and drunken yelling. The bed had been garlanded, the threshold sprinkled, the libations poured. The gatekeeper had been posted outside the door to keep the bride from rushing out in horror, and to stop her friends from breaking down the door and rescuing her when they heard her scream. All of this was play-acting: the fiction was that the bride had been stolen, and the consummat
ion of a marriage was supposed to be a sanctioned rape. It was supposed to be a conquest, a trampling of a foe, a mock killing. There was supposed to be blood.

  Once the door had been closed, Odysseus took me by the hand and sat me down on the bed. ‘Forget everything you’ve been told,’ he whispered. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, or not very much. But it would help us both if you could pretend. I’ve been told you’re a clever girl. Do you think you could manage a few screams? That will satisfy them they’re listening at the door and then they’ll leave us in peace and we can take our time to become friends.’

  This was one of his great secrets as a persuader - he could convince another person that the two of them together faced a common obstacle, and that they needed to join forces in order to overcome it. He could draw almost any listener into a collaboration, a little conspiracy of his own making. Nobody could do this better than he: for once, the stories don’t lie. And he had a wonderful voice as well, deep and sonorous. So of course I did as he asked.

  Somewhat later I found that Odysseus was not one of those men who, after the act, simply roll over and begin to snore. Not that I am aware of this common male habit through my own experience; but as I’ve said, I listened a lot to the maids. No, Odysseus wanted to talk, and as he was an excellent raconteur I was happy to listen. I think this is what he valued most in me: my ability to appreciate his stories. It’s an underrated talent in women.

  I’d had occasion to notice the long scar on his thigh, and so he proceeded to tell me the story of how he got it. As I’ve already mentioned, his grandfather was Autolycus, who claimed the god Hermes was his father. That may have been a way of saying that he was a crafty old thief, cheat, and liar, and that luck had favoured him in these kinds of activities.

  Autolycus was the father of Odysseus’s mother, Anticleia, who’d married King Laertes of Ithaca and was therefore now my mother-in-law. There was a slanderous item going around about Anticleia—that she’d been seduced by Sisyphus, who was the true father of Odysseus but I found it difficult to believe, as who would want to seduce Anticleia? It would be like seducing a prow. But let the tale stand, for the moment.

  Sisyphus was a man so tricky he was said to have cheated Death twice: once by fooling King Hades into putting on handcuffs that Sisyphus refused to unlock, once by talking Persephone into letting him out of the underworld because he hadn’t been properly buried, and thus didn’t belong on the dead side of the River Styx. So if we admit the rumour about Anticleia’s infidelity, Odysseus had crafty and unscrupulous men on two of the main branches of his family tree.

  Whatever the truth of this, his grandfather Autolycus who’d named him invited Odysseus to Mount Parnassus to collect the gifts promised him at his birth. Odysseus did pay the visit, during which he went boar hunting with the sons of Autolycus. It was a particularly ferocious boar that had gored him in the thigh and given him the scar.

  There was something in the way Odysseus told the story that made me suspect there was more to it. Why had the boar savaged Odysseus, but not the others? Had they known where the boar was hiding out, had they led him into a trap? Was Odysseus meant to die so that Autolycus the cheat wouldn’t have to hand over the gifts he owed? Perhaps.

  I liked to think so. I liked to think I had something in common with my husband: both of us had almost been destroyed in our youth by family members. All the more reason that we should stick together and not be too quick to trust others.

  In return for his story about the scar, I told Odysseus my own story about almost drowning and being rescued by ducks. He was interested in it, and asked me questions about it, and was sympathetic everything you would wish a listener to be.

  ‘My poor duckling,’ he said, stroking me. ‘Don’t worry. I would never throw such a precious girl into the ocean.’ At which point I did some more weeping, and was comforted in ways that were suitable for a wedding night.

  So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him more than that, loving and passionate ones and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.

  After some days had passed, Odysseus announced his intention of taking me and my dowry back with him to Ithaca. My father was annoyed by this he wanted the old customs kept, he said, which meant that he wanted both of us and our newly gained wealth right there under his thumb. But we had the support of Uncle Tyndareus, whose son-in-law was Helen’s husband, the powerful Menelaus, so Icarius had to back down.

  You’ve probably heard that my father ran after our departing chariot, begging me to stay with him, and that Odysseus asked me if I was going to Ithaca with him of my own free will or did I prefer to remain with my father? It’s said that in answer I pulled down my veil, being too modest to proclaim in words my desire for my husband, and that a statue was later erected of me in tribute to the virtue of Modesty.

  There’s some truth to this story. But I pulled down my veil to hide the fact that I was laughing. You have to admit there was something humorous about a father who’d once tossed his own child into the sea capering down the road after that very child and calling, ‘Stay with me!’ I didn’t feel like staying. At that moment, I could hardly wait to get away from the Spartan court. I hadn’t been very happy there, and I longed to begin a new life.

  VIII. The Chorus Line: I Was A Princess, A Popular Tune

  As Performed by the Maids, with a Fiddle, an Act and a Penny Whistle

  First Maid:

  If I was a princess, with silver and gold,

  And loved by a hero, I’d never grow old:

  Oh, if a young hero came a-marrying me.

  I’d always be beautiful, happy, and free!

  Chorus:

  Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave

  The water below is as dark as the grave,

  And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat

  It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us all

  Second Maid:

  I fetch and I carry, I hear and obey,

  It’s Yes sir and No ma’am the whole ing day;

  I smile and I nod with a tear in my eye,

  I make the soft beds in which others do

  Third Maid:

  Oh gods and oh prophets, please alter my life,

  And let a young hero take me for his wife!

  But no hero comes to me, early or late

  Hard work is my destiny, death is my fate

  Chorus:

  Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave

  The water below is as dark as the grave,

  And maybe you’ll sink in your little blue boat

  It’s hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat.

  The Maids all curtsy.

  Melantho of the Pretty Cheeks, passing the hat:

  Thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you.

  Thank you. Thank you.

  IX. The Trusted Cackle-Hen

  The sea voyage to Ithaca was long and frightening, and also nauseating, or at least I found it so. I spent most of the time lying down or throwing up, sometimes both at once. Possibly I had an aversion to the ocean due to my childhood experience, or possibly the sea-god Poseidon was still annoyed by his failure to devour me.

  Thus I saw little of the beauties of sky and cloud that Odysseus reported on his rare visits to see how I was feeling. He spent most of the time either at the bow, peering ahead (I imagined) with a hawklike gaze in order to spot rocks and sea serpents and other dangers, or at the tiller, or directing the ship in some other way I didn’t know how, because I’d never been on a ship before in my life.

  I’d gained a great opinion of Odysseus since our wedding day, and admired him immensely, and had an inflated notion of his capabilities—remember, I was fifteen so I had the greatest confidence in him, and considered him to be a sea captain who could not fail.

  At last we arrived at Ithaca, and sailed
into the harbour, which was surrounded by steep, rocky cliffs. They must have posted lookouts and lit beacons to announce our approach, because the harbour was thronged with people. A certain amount of cheering went on, and a lot of jostling among those who wanted to see what I looked like as I was led ashore visible proof of the fact that Odysseus had succeeded in his mission, and had brought back a noble bride and the valuable gifts that came with her.

  That night there was a feast for the aristocrats of the town. I appeared at it, wearing a shining veil and one of the best embroidered robes I had brought with me, and accompanied by the maid I had also brought. She was a wedding present to me from my father; her name was Actoris, and she was not at all happy to be there in Ithaca with me. She hadn’t wanted to leave the luxuries of the Spartan palace and all her friends among the servants, and I didn’t blame her. As she was not at all young even my father would not have been so stupid as to send a blooming girl with me, a possible rival for Odysseus’s affections, especially since one of her tasks was to stand sentinel all night outside our bedroom door to prevent interruptions she did not last long. Her death left me all alone in Ithaca, a stranger among strange people.

  I did a lot of secluded weeping in those early days. I tried to conceal my unhappiness from Odysseus, as I did not wish to appear unappreciative. And he himself continued to be as attentive and considerate as he had been at first, although his manner was that of an older person to a child. I often caught him studying me, head on one side, chin in hand, as if I were a puzzle; but that was his habit with all, I soon discovered.

  He told me once that everyone had a hidden door, which was the way into the heart, and that it was a point of honour with him to be able to find the handles to those doors. For the heart was both key and lock, and he who could master the hearts of men and learn their secrets was well on the way to mastering the Fates and controlling the thread of his own destiny. Not, he hastened to add, that any man could really do that. Not even the gods, he said, were more powerful than the Three Fatal Sisters. He did not mention them by name, but spat to avoid bad luck; and I shivered to think of them in their glum cave, spinning out lives, measuring them, cutting them off.