A Thousand Ships(79)

So it was at Eumaeus’ hut that he received his homecoming. Not at first (this last part of the story is all I have heard so far). At first, he was almost torn apart by dogs. He had forgotten – of course he had – that the swineherd’s dogs were not the same ones that had barked at strangers when he was last on Ithaca. Dogs cannot wait as long as wives: these hounds were the pups of the pups of the original dogs, I should think. When they saw a strange man approach them, they snarled and barked and threatened to rip him apart. Only when Eumaeus placated them did they agree to allow the stranger to pass. Odysseus assumed the hounds were vicious, until the following morning when he heard the quick footsteps of a young man coming towards the hut. The dogs did not bark or growl, but emitted a single joyful yelp to welcome home their friend, Telemachus. Odysseus is not always a man to reveal his thoughts, as you know. But I believe this moment – when his son was acknowledged by the Ithacan dogs which did not know their old master – was upsetting for him. It was still more distressing to see how his son greeted Eumaeus, as a son might greet his father. His own child, fully grown, a young man, embracing another man and sharing with his old servant the stories a boy would tell his papa. Odysseus is the master of discretion when he chooses. But on this occasion, the tears spilled from his face and collected in his beard. His son thought of another man as his father. Odysseus could conceal his true identity no longer. He wanted to be embraced and welcomed home. So he revealed to Telemachus what he had yet to reveal to me. This – I might add – is absolutely typical.

He asked Telemachus questions all night long: how were things in the palace, had the queen ever remarried, who were the suitors of whom Eumaeus spoke who courted her night and day? The swineherd said they were drinking all the queen’s wine and eating all her pigs, one by one, day by day. Was it true? How many were they? How strong, how well armed? He was already planning his revenge on the men who had dared to think of marrying his wife. There are some who will say this was cruel and unjust. Odysseus had been gone for twenty years: who didn’t think he was dead? I doubted he lived, his father doubted, his mother had died doubting he would ever return. And I know his son, Telemachus, doubted too (although it would be ungracious of me to mention this). It is no wonder the young men of Ithaca wanted a chance to become its king: how much reverence could they really have for a ruler they had never seen?

If anything could have happened differently (and I hope you don’t mind me mentioning this, Athene), I wish that Odysseus had felt able to take me into his confidence earlier. It is one thing to know that your husband is fighting a war across the wide, dark sea. It is another to know he is delayed by monsters, gods and sluts at every stage of his journey home. But it is one last twist of the knife to discover that he would reunite himself with his child before his wife. I know what he will say when I raise this with him one day. He will say he had to be sure of the outcome before he embarked on the battle. He was always such a cautious man, always testing his options. But here he was, so near to me, and yet I was completely alone. The one person I might have looked to for comfort was our son, and Odysseus kept him from me, too. Only for a day or two, I know. But Telemachus was and is my only child. My chance to have any more sons or daughters was taken from me when Odysseus set sail for Troy. And he must have known – they both must have known – that after years of waiting for a husband who didn’t return, the loss of my son as he adventured around Greece trying to find his missing father was an injury too far. I would forgive my son anything, of course: what mother could not? But of all the things Odysseus did in his absence, I will find this last little cruelty one of the hardest to forgive. I know – again – what his defence will be: it was only a few days, it was for the greater good. Easy for him to say, when he had not spent twenty years waiting. I cannot shake the sense that Odysseus was more concerned with a successful revenge than with a successful reunion with his wife.

And that is the second reason for my prayers, Athene. I do give thanks to you for bringing him home. But who is it that has returned? My husband: the clever, conniving, desirable, paternal, filial man? Or a broken warrior, so bludgeoned by bloodshed that he sees every problem as one to be solved with a sword? Because the man I loved twenty years ago loathed the prospect of battle. He pretended to be mad to avoid sailing to Troy. Does he even remember that? I do. And he was never a coward: you know that as well as I. But still, he shunned the war for as long as he could. And I heard all those reports of his wily ambushes, his tricks and guile, and I thought – every time – that’s my man. That’s my Odysseus, always coming up with the cleverest scheme, always saving the day with his wits. At some point, did I stop noticing how many people died with each of his plots? Did I think that was an incidental consequence, when actually it was the whole point? When he lost all his men on his journey home, was that even an accident? What if – Athene, I wish I didn’t have to voice these thoughts, but they will plague me until I put them into words – he jettisoned his men, rather than losing them? What then?

Forgive me, goddess: I broke off my prayer for a moment. No disrespect was intended. Where was I? Oh yes. Odysseus’ disguise fooled every person he saw. Even those of us – like me – who knew him best of all. The one creature he could not trick was Argos. Is that because – with all your cleverness assisting him – you forgot the dog might remember who he was? I don’t mean to suggest it was your fault, of course. But Argos had been a puppy when Odysseus set off to Troy. He had trained the little hound and made it obedient to his commands. And then he left and the puppy became a dog and eventually the dog went grey around the muzzle and began to trot more slowly. It is a rare mutt that lives more than twenty years. But live he did, so that when Odysseus walked past him, on his way from Eumaeus’ hut towards our palace, his scent caught in the old dog’s nose. Argos hasn’t barked for a year or two now, and he did not bark then. Instead, he wagged his tail – once, twice – and dropped his ears, as if waiting for Odysseus to reach down and scratch between them. My husband saw the tail and the ears move and he knew – in that moment, he knew – that this elderly mutt was the puppy he had left behind. He wanted to pet the animal, but feared giving away his true identity. And a moment later, it was irrelevant because Argos – who was so old and frail and unused to shock – breathed his last. It is manifestly absurd that in this whole horrific saga of war and tragedy, it is the death of his old dog which has upset me almost more than anything. But it has, and there is no denying it. The dog waits a lifetime for his master’s return and then dies when his wish is fulfilled. Even the bards would think it too sentimental to include in their songs.