Circe(95)

“You likely know all I have to tell already,” I said.

“No.” The word rang a little in the room. “He told my mother his stories, but whenever I asked, he said I should talk to a bard.”

A cruel answer. I wondered at Odysseus’ reasoning. Had it been merely spite? If there was some other purpose, we would never know it. All the things he had done in life must stand now as they were.

I brought my goblet to the hearth. Outside, the storm had returned. It blew in earnest, muffling the house in wind and wet. Penelope and Telegonus were only down the hall, but the shadows had gathered around us, and they felt a world away. This time I took the silver chair. The inlay was cool against my wrists; the cowhides slipped a little beneath me. “What do you want to hear?”

“Everything,” he said. “Whatever you know.”

I did not even consider telling him the versions I had told Telegonus, with their happy endings and non-fatal wounds. He was not my child; he was not a child at all, but a man full-grown, who wanted his inheritance.

I gave it. Murdered Palamades and abandoned Philoctetes. Odysseus tricking Achilles out of hiding and bringing him to war, Odysseus creeping at moondark into the camp of King Rhesus, one of Troy’s allies, and cutting the men’s throats while they slept. How he had devised the horse and taken Troy and seen Astyanax shattered. Then his savage journey home, with its cannibals and piracy and monsters. The stories were even bloodier than I had remembered, and a few times I hesitated. But Telemachus took his blows straight on. He sat silent, his eyes never leaving mine.

I saved the cyclops for last, I cannot say why. Perhaps because I could remember Odysseus telling it so clearly. As I spoke, his words seemed to whisper beneath mine. They had landed exhausted on an island and spied a great cave, heaped with rich stores. Odysseus thought it might be good for plunder, or else they might beg hospitality from its inhabitants. They began feasting on the food within. The giant it belonged to, the one-eyed shepherd Polyphemus, returned with his flock and caught them at it. He rolled a great stone over the entrance to trap them, then seized one of the men and bit him in half. Man after man he gobbled down, until he was so full he belched up pieces of limbs. Despite such horrors, Odysseus plied the monster with wine and friendly words. His name he gave as Outis—No one. When the creature fell at last into a stupor, he sharpened a great stake, heated it over the fire, and plunged it into his eye. The cyclops roared and thrashed but could not see to catch Odysseus and the rest of the crew. They were able to escape when he let his sheep out to graze, each man clinging to the underside of a woolly beast. The enraged monster called for help from his fellow one-eyes, but they did not come, for he cried, “No one has blinded me! No one is escaping!” Odysseus and his crew reached the ships, and when they were safely distant, Odysseus turned back to shout across the waves, “If you would know the man who tricked you, it is Odysseus, son of Laertes and prince of Ithaca.”

The words seemed to echo in the quiet air. Telemachus was silent, as if waiting for the sound to fade. At last he said, “It was a bad life.”

“There are many who are unhappier.”

“No.” His vehemence startled me. “I do not mean a bad life for him. I mean that he made life for others a misery. Why did his men go to that cave in the first place? Because he wanted more treasure. And Poseidon’s wrath that everyone pitied him for? He brought it on himself. Because he could not bear to leave the cyclops without taking credit for the trick.”

His words were running forward like an undammed flood.

“All those years of pain and wandering. Why? For a moment’s pride. He would rather be cursed by the gods than be No one. If he had returned home after the war, the suitors would never have come. My mother’s life would not have been blighted. My life. He talked so often of longing for us and home. But it was lies. When he was back on Ithaca he was never content, always looking to the horizon. Once we were his again, he wanted something else. What is that if not a bad life? Luring others to you, then turning from them?”

I opened my mouth to say it was not true. But how often had I lain beside him, aching because I knew he thought of Penelope? That had been my choice. Telemachus had had no such luxury.

“There is one more story I should tell you,” I said. “Before he returned to you, the gods demanded that your father journey to the underworld to speak to the prophet Teiresias. There he saw many of the souls he had known in life, Ajax, Agamemnon, and with them Achilles, once Best of the Greeks, who chose an early death as payment for eternal fame. Your father spoke to the hero warmly, praising him and assuring him of his reputation among men. But Achilles reproached him. He said he regretted his proud life, and wished he had lived more quietly, and happily.”

“So that is what I must hope for then? That one day I will see my father in the underworld and he will be sorry?”

It is better than some of us get. But I held my peace. He had a right to his anger, and it was not my place to try to take it. Outside, the garden rustled faintly as the lions prowled through the leaves. The sky had cleared. After so long among clouds the stars seemed very bright, hung in the darkness like lamps. If we listened, we would hear the faint twisting of their chains in the breeze.

“Do you think it was true, what my father said? That the good ones never liked him?”

“I think it was the sort of thing your father liked to say, and truth had nothing to do with it. After all, your mother liked him.”