Homer’s Daughter (17 page)

The suitors' servants, meanwhile, had been preparing the usual enormous meal in the court of sacrifice. I gathered, from scraps of conversation overheard, that since Eumaeus had lately resisted all demands on him for hogs, the servants had been ordered to take them by force; that this morning it had come to a fight with Philoetius, who refused point-blank to supply further sheep or goats; and that his cousin had been severely wounded about the head. I heard no news of a beggar staying at Eumaeus's farm, but was certain that Aethon had obeyed my instructions and prudently kept out of the way. For he was a natural fighter, a champion, who could have routed the rabble of servants with a mere faggot, if so inclined. His clear eye and muscular arms… Cautiously examining myself, I decided that I must have well and truly fallen in love, else why should I place such confidence in Aethon's strength and courage? Having been denied this experience hitherto, I began to feel a little strange: not unsure of myself, but perplexed. Since Aethon's life and honour had suddenly come to mean as much to me as my own, I possessed (to speak fancifully) both an interior and an exterior soul… So it was good to remember that I had treated him firmly, which I must continue to do; and then, if Athene granted us victory over our enemies, and if I agreed to become his wife, he would never despise me, however un-disguisedly I loved him. Soon we should meet again, all being well, and I could then find out whether I had not been
mistaken in my first favourable estimate of his powers…

My reflections were interrupted by shouts from the court of sacrifice: the hunters streaming in. I took refuge in the Tower to avoid them. Eurymachus had stepped into a muddy pool, which the boar used as a wallow, and now rudely entered our women's quarters, his legs black with filth, demanding a foot bath. My mother was in the orchard giving directions to Dolius the gardener; my uncle Mentor was down the street looking over a team of mules which had been offered for sale; so that none of the family happened to be at home except Ctimene. I should have sent Eurymachus about his business; but being grateful to him, I suppose, for his intervention on her behalf, she told Eurycleia to fetch hot water and attend to him. Eurycleia knew her place and did not question the order, though obeying it with obvious distaste; she poured a bucketful of cold water into a large copper basin and sent a maid to the kitchen for the same amount of hot. When all was ready, Eurymachus seated himself on a stool and put both feet in the basin.

“You are very silent, old lady,” he sneered.

“I have little to say, young nobleman.”

“And sulky, too.”

“Do you blame me?” Eurycleia picked up a brush, seized his foot and began to scrub off the filth.

“Hey!” he cried. “Give over! Do you wish to flay me alive? What brush is that?”

“The hard brush for cleaning hogskins. Did you expect me to use a lady's sponge?”

Suddenly she screamed, let go his foot, grabbed the hem of his undershirt and pointed an accusing finger at a neat darn.
Eurymachus's heel struck the side of the basin, which upset, flooding the room with dirty water.

He caught her by the throat. “If you dare!” he muttered murderously.

Ctimene, standing by a window, misunderstood the situation.

“Upon my word, Eurycleia!” she exclaimed. “Have you gone mad? Is this the way to greet a nobleman? First you scrub his feet until you almost skin him and then you drop one of them and overturn the basin! Be careful or I shall have you whipped, for all your grey hairs.”

“And unless you keep your toothless mouth shut,” shouted Eurymachus, “you may get worse than a whipping: you may find yourself strung from a rafter!”

“My lord, I will be very discreet in future,” Eurycleia whimpered, pretending to be scared out of her wits. “I shall be as mute as a stone or a nugget of iron.”

“You can count on her perfect servility, my lord Eurymachus,” echoed Ctimene. “Fetch more warm water, at once, Eurycleia, and a soft cloth!”

The fact was that Eurycleia recognized the darn as her own handiwork, and the undershirt as one of the three taken by Laodamas when he disappeared. But how had it come into Eurymachus's possession? Was it murder?

A forced promise being no promise, Eurycleia gave me her news without delay, and asked whether my mother and Ctimene ought to hear it too.

“Ctimene is not to be trusted with a secret,” I said. “And perhaps it would be best to wait until Clytoneus comes home before telling my mother anything. We must soften the blow.”

“You think then that Laodamas…?”

I nodded miserably.

“Only let Eurymachus ask for another bath!” she cried. “I'll take net and axe and butcher him, as Clytaemnestra butchered Agamemnon. My heart growls in my breast like a bitch with puppies when a stranger approaches.”

“No, dear Eurycleia, the blood vengeance falls to Clytoneus and me. If we delay, my brother's ghost will plague us mercilessly; indeed, it must be he who has brought all this recent unhappiness into the Palace. We shall call on you when we need your services.”

In summer, as I reminded my uncle Mentor, the best times for slipping unobserved out of the Palace are an hour after midnight, when everyone but the porter is asleep; and an hour after dinner, when everyone is taking a siesta, the porter included. We chose siesta time. I had told my mother where I was going and why. She kissed me fondly but made no comment, except: “Ctimene will have to be persuaded that you are down with a dangerous fever.”

“If only Halius will help us!” my uncle muttered as we skirted the stables, keeping under cover of the olives. Both of us wore stout shoes and the clothes we kept for rough work: darkish frieze unrelieved by any trimming that shone or sparkled. He took his sword with him and a bag of provisions; I had a dagger concealed beneath my dress.

We contrived to reach our private jetty unobserved. The dinghy was ready, and in it we rowed across the southern harbour to the farther beach, thus avoiding the town gates. Then we struck inland, and by the grace of Athene did not meet a soul in our walk over the marshes. Presently we had left the city of Eryx on the left hand and were on the slowly rising track leading to Hypereia and the Temple of Aphrodite beyond. The sun shone blisteringly hot, but this was a journey from which we could not turn back, though the sweat broke from my brow and rolled in rivulets down my dusty cheeks.

“Uncle,” I said at last, “when Clytoneus and I were little children and went on picnics, you used to help us along by telling us stories. My favourite was the one about the King who would not die. Tell it me again.”

“In this heat, and up this hill? Panting like hounds after a chase?”

“I will carry the bag if you do as I ask. I want to be reminded of the days before I had a care in the world.”

“Very well, I consent. No, my dear, I can manage the bag as well. Soon we shall be among the sweet-smelling pines, and then I shall not mind so much… Yes, the King was called Ulysses. Ulysses is said to have been the grandson of Autolycus and an ancestor of the Phocaeans.”

“Like Odysseus.”

“Like Odysseus,” my uncle agreed, “and some people therefore confuse Odysseus with Ulysses. This is the story as I heard it from the mystagogues of Aegesta, in explanation of the ballet formerly danced there in the height of summer:

“Autolycus the Phocian was a past master in theft, Hermes having given him the power of transmogrifying whatever
beasts he stole from horned to unhorned, or from black to white, and contrariwise. Thus, although Sisyphus, King of Corinth, his neighbour, noticed that his own herds grew steadily smaller, while those of Autolycus increased, he was for months unable to convict him of felony; and therefore, one day, engraved the inside of all his cattle's hooves with the monogram
or, some say, with letters spelling ‘Stolen by Autolycus'. That same night Autolycus helped himself as usual, and at dawn hoofprints along the road gave Sisyphus sufficient evidence to summon witnesses of the theft. He visited Autolycus's stables, identified his stolen beasts by their marked hooves and, leaving his supporters to remonstrate with the thief, hurried around the house, entered the portal, and while a hot argument raged outside, seduced Autolycus's daughter Anticleia, wife to Laertes the Argive. She bore him Ulysses; the manner of whose conception accounts for the cunning that he habitually showed, and for his nickname, ‘Hypsipylon', which means ‘Of the High Portal'.

“Now, one day Zeus fell in love with Aegina, the daughter of the River God Asopus, and disguised as an Achaean prince, secretly carried her off. Asopus set out in grief to search for Aegina, and first visiting Corinth, asked King Sisyphus if he knew her whereabouts. ‘I do,' answered Sisyphus, ‘but you must buy the information by furnishing my citadel with a perpetual spring.' To this Asopus agreed, and made the Spring of Peirene bubble up from behind Aphrodite's temple. ‘You will find Zeus embracing your daughter in a wood five miles to the westward,' said Sisyphus, ‘and, by the bye, he has forgotten to bring along his almighty weapons.'

“Asopus started in pursuit, surprised Zeus in the very act
of seduction, and forced him to flee ignominiously. But Zeus, when out of sight, transformed himself into a boulder and stood motionless until Asopus had rushed by. Then he stole back to Olympus and from the safety of its ramparts pelted Asopus with thunderbolts. The poor fellow still limps because of the wounds he received, and pieces of coal are often fetched from his river bed. Zeus then ordered his brother Hades to drag Sisyphus down to Hell and there punish him eternally for the betrayal of divine secrets. Yet the undaunted Sisyphus put Hades himself in handcuffs by persuading him to explain their use and then quickly locking them. Hades was thus kept a prisoner in Sisyphus's home for some days—a ridiculous situation, because nobody could die even if he had been beheaded or torn to pieces. At last Ares, God of War, whose interests were threatened, came hurrying up, set Hades free, and delivered Sisyphus into his clutches.

“Sisyphus, however, had another trick in reserve. Before descending to Hell, he forbade his wife Merope to bury him, and on arrival at Hades's palace, went straight to Persephone, complaining that as an unburied person he had no right in her dominions: he should have been left on the farther side of the River Styx. ‘Let me return to the upper world,' he pleaded, ‘arrange for my burial and avenge the neglect shown me. My presence here is irregular. In three days' time I shall be at your service.' Persephone was deceived and granted his plea, but no sooner did Sisyphus find himself once again under the light of the sun than he repudiated his promise. Finally Hermes was called upon to drag him back.

“Ulysses proved to be a true son of Sisyphus: for he would not die despite the continuous hostility of all the gods and
men whom his father had gulled. The God Apollo, in the likeness of a boar, rushed at him while he was hunting on Mount Parnassus and ripped his thigh, as he had ripped the thigh of Adonis. But Ulysses, though he carried the scar to his grave and, indeed, won his name from it—for Ulysses means ‘Wounded Thigh'—cured himself with the herb moly, the gift of his great-grandfather Hermes, who alone protected him. On Hermes's advice he enlisted a band of exiles and adventurers with whom he took ship and escaped from Greece, hoping to found a colony in some region over which the Olympians had no power. They sailed to many islands: first to the island of Ogygia, whose queen Calypso enticed Ulysses into a huge cave and offered him the apple of immortality if he would lie with her, which he did. Yet he was not deceived and though eating the apple, also ate of the moly and thus counteracted Calypso's spell of death. Thence they sailed to the Island of the Cimmerians in the extreme north, where night and day meet in twilight and massive icebergs, as they are called, float about in a foggy sea, crushing ships between them. Next, they cast anchor in the harbour of Far Gates, where Charybdis, the daughter of a cannibal king, welcomed him to her bed: and that evening would have sucked his blood and eaten him raw, but the taste of moly was on his breath and she desisted.

“Thence they sailed to the Island of Wailing, whose queen Circe entertained him well, then struck him with a wand, intending to turn him into a hog; but against the moly her spells had no effect. And thence to the Island of the Sirens, where the bird women sing sweetly among the bones of the dead; but he stopped his ears and those of his comrades with wax. And
to the Aeolian island, where the souls of men are winds; there the queen who entertained him tried to steal his soul and confine it in a leathern bag; but again the moly preserved him. And to the Island of Dogs, where the lovely Scylla, having taken him as a lover, suddenly transformed herself into a pack of six white, whimpering, red-eared hounds, and pursued him with foam-flecked jaws; but the moly threw them off the scent. Finally the same herb preserved him from the White Goddess Ino, who sat on the gunwale of his ship disguised as a fascinating mermaid, then wound her scarf about him and dragged him to her deep-sea cavern; having moly between his lips, Ulysses did not drown. Seven times during his voyage he had avoided death, and on every occasion had sacrificed a propitiatory goat to Father Zeus. Now he reached Ogygia in the far west, where the sacred cattle of the Sun are herded by the Nymph Lampetië. These he stole, as Hercules had previously also done, and came safe away, though Lampetië had tied his hair to the bedpost while he slept, and summoned her brother Eurytion to behead him. But the hair untied its own knots, the moly being all-powerful. Then the Gods, in admiration of Ulysses who had sacrificed the stolen cattle to all of them together, invited him to live on Olympus; for it was fated that he should never die.”