The Lost Books of the Odyssey Read online

  The cable might be getting narrower. His legs might be weakening. He might feel the air stirring. Eyes closed, he hesitates and imagines the languor of falling. He sees himself snatching futilely at the cable, missing, how quickly it would dwindle, and how he would at last have the luxury of looking up at the world he was falling away from, secure in the knowledge that whatever else came the worst had happened. He steadies himself and takes another step.

  Once a generation the spring tide reaches the broken walls of Troy and it is granted him to recall that once he was Odysseus.

  THE BOOK OF WINTER

  I am not unhappy, despite the cold and the monotony. There are many things to love about this place—the susurrus of falling snow, the tracks of deer and hare encircling the house, the black rooks landing heavily on laden branches and sending down white showers. And at night the wolves prowl my doorstep, their fur crusted with snow, hungry winter revenants howling their hopeless laments. I dream of cold mists pouring from their open throats and enveloping the valley.

  The days are full, and I am never bored. Most of my waking hours are spent in contemplation of my circumstances. My conclusions, so far, are these: someone built this cabin, stocked it with food and fuel, and furnished it, however sparsely. This much is obvious—not even the most active imagination would have it that this house, made of sawn planks, was a natural structure, or that the firewood had split itself, or that the many pounds of biscuit had grown in their sacks like a fungus. What I do not know is the identity of the builder. He has taken no pains to reveal himself, and quite possibly wishes to remain unknown.

  He could have been a hunter who needed a forest lodge. He could have been a pioneer trying to cut a farm out of the woods, defeated in the end by the cold and the short days and the snow settling in drifts against the door. There are many possibilities that I have neither proved nor disproved, which stymies me, as the problem of the builder is logically prior to the other mysteries, such as the language of the wolves, what I will do when the biscuit runs out, and my own name.

  My ignorance is upsetting but I calm myself by reasserting my faith in logic. There is no action under the sun that does not entail myriad effects, all of which leave signs, and from this chain of signs all previous actions can be inferred. Perhaps at some point one loses the trail of causation because of one’s limited powers of thought or discernment, but building a house is a profoundly disruptive act—as with murder, there are a limited number of probable motivations.

  The builder, however mysterious, has at least left a clear sign of his presence. What sign have I left? I have melted snow, eaten biscuits and burned firewood. But what else is there to do? I ask the rooks and they tilt their heads inquisitively, but say nothing.

  I wonder if I am the builder. I do not know how to build houses, but I have forgotten a great deal—perhaps I have forgotten that as well. My hands are callused, but I cannot remember what it would feel like to lift a hammer. This does not mean I never knew. If I had tools I could use them and see if anything came back to me, or if they caused calluses and whether those calluses matched the ones I have now. Of course, I have no tools.

  I have many scars, the largest one a long white slash on my thigh. I try to read them, hoping for a memory of some accident or battle, but they are illegible.

  I wonder if I am a prisoner and this house is my jail. The door is always unlocked but I have only the one thin shirt—when I go outside the cold drives me back into the cabin within minutes. It would be a strange sort of prison that lasts only for a season, unless winter never ends here. I do not remember it beginning.

  I have asked the wolves about these things. They listen with their tongues lolling, giving every appearance of thoughtful attention, but when I am done they trot off into the trees without comment. The hawks turn their bright eyes on me and seem concerned with my plight but they too are silent. I sometimes think the falling snow murmurs to me in a language I cannot quite understand.

  The solution to my perplexity comes one morning when I ransack the cabin for what might be the hundredth time and on impulse drag the firewood bin away from the wall. Behind it I find a soot-smudged book coated with wood dust. I set it on the table and slowly rotate it, scrutinizing it from every angle, my breath quickening. Its binding is thick and pebbled and there is no title on the spine. Its pages are cut—someone has read it. I hope it is a diary, or a memoir, or at any rate some kind of an explanation. I open it reverently and read.

  By dusk I have read the book through. It is the story of Odysseus, soldier and diplomat, a man of versatile intelligence who connived to destroy a sacred city in the East and made the long trip home over many trying years.

  I wonder what the book was meant to tell me. The allegorical possibilities are many, and the number of codes it could conceal are infinite, but it could be a simpler, more nearly literal message—perhaps it is, in some small way, my story. I could be the orb-eyed cyclops in his cavern, for like him I am remote from mankind, and for all I know would be angry at visitors, but I have two eyes. I could be Telemachus, who is lost in his own land. I could even be Penelope, a prisoner in my home, courted by the cold wind and winter. Is my house Ithaca Hall? The Phaeacian castle? Are the wolves Scylla, the cold Charybdis?

  I re-read the book. Once again it ends with Odysseus allaying Poseidon’s wrath by walking inland with an oar over his shoulder until someone mistakes it for a winnowing fan. The shock of revelation is so great that I go out and stand for a minute in the cold, the sharp wind and harsh light making my eyes water, before coming back in to read the ending again. At last, I know myself. I hug myself with delight at having finally solved the riddle. Modesty had kept me from believing it, or at least from admitting it to myself, but now all is clear. The essential insight is that the text is corrupt, or, if not corrupt, then incomplete, or of a calculated obscurity. Immortal Poseidon’s wrath was implacable—in order for Odysseus to escape from his vengeance once and for all it was necessary that he cease to be Odysseus. What would the cleverest of the Greeks have done in that situation? He would have gone somewhere remote, far away from gods and men and, somehow, forgotten everything, and thereby been himself no more. I can only speculate on how he managed to attain his amnesia. I do not know that I would now have the courage to go through with it—I can see that already much has changed for me. And then, I would be most unwilling to let go of my revelation.

  Perhaps he went through each scene of his life and held it fixed in his mind’s eye until it disappeared. Eventually even his most vivid memories (the first time he touched Penelope’s skin, falling overboard and gasping just as a wave broke over his face) would fade to burnt-out after-image. Then, perhaps, he contaminated and diluted the remaining fragments of memory, rearranging them in every possible permutation: Penelope as a vapid giggler with apple-green eyes, Penelope as a heavy immovable woman whose chief pleasure is resentment, Penelope as a young wanton who in middle age comes to cherish respectability above all things. Eventually, memory is subsumed in white noise.

  Even this, though, would be not quite enough. There must have been some final discipline that destroyed the last vestiges of self, but, whatever it was, it was so thorough that I lack the capacity even to imagine it.

  With relief, I open the stove and feed the book to the flames. It is the last link to who I was, and there is just enough left of me to see it. The book blackens, writhes and disappears. Now every debt is paid, every sin erased and I can begin anew, I who was once Odysseus and now am no one.

  BLINDNESS

  I could have lived among light and ambrosia, bright forever-young things coming and going on each other’s arms and the wine and the night inexhaustible. But that world was flat to me, and for all that my father is great among them I wanted no part of it. Even if she had been true (I am not considered handsome, never have been) I think I would have preferred my island, my farm, and my solitude. I have never had the island altogether to myself but I made my neighbors dislike me f
rom the first—from time to time a farm-wife dropped by as in duty bound but I offered no more than politeness required, or a little less, to ensure my privacy. Sometimes in the distance I heard a girl’s sweet singing and I needed no more company.

  I lived in a cave as it was easier than a proper house, cool in summer and warm in winter. I tended my goats, made cheeses, split firewood and fished. I fancied myself a philosopher although for the most part my philosophizing consisted of staring out to sea, usually with a fishing pole in my hand, thinking of nothing. The sun would bore into my brain over the hours and drive out everything except a ringing brightness, making everything look hollow or flat.

  One day I came home and found my cave full of visitors. They had been regaling themselves on my larder and greeted me with swollen-cheeked, stupidly beaming faces, their lips greasy with my mutton, invoking the formulas of guest friendship and waiting for their welcome. I gave them no welcome but curses and, still sun-struck and sea-addled, hit one of them with my staff. I only meant to scare him but I have always been strong and he fell and knocked his head on the wall with the sound of a stone landing at the bottom of a deep well. They would have taken him and gone (or tried to—my blood was up) but their captain, who had a face full of guile, begged my pardon, apologized for the intrusion, called me lord and with all humility proffered a skin full of strong wine as a belated host gift. It had been a long time since I had tasted wine and I was a little mollified (not to mention ashamed of myself for overreacting). We sat down to drink, and for the sake of politeness I asked them who they were and where they came from. The captain said his name was Nobody (a strange moniker, I thought at the time, but it would have been unseemly to comment) and that he and his men had sailed from Crete to trade for amber and linen but on their way had found nothing but trouble—pirates of opportunity, perilous storms, comrades washed overboard in the night and their course lost these many months past. Nobody droned on about his adventures and sleep came to me as I sat watching him across the fire. How painful it is that his sly fox face was the last thing I ever saw.

  I woke to blood and agony and darkness. Staggering to my feet, I lashed out and felt my fist connect with resilient flesh. I put my hands around the spear with which I had been mutilated; vitreous humor trickled down my face and I knew with nauseous certainty that I would never see again. I drew out the spear and lay about with it, feeling their bones crack through the shaft. I bellowed and pressed the attack, not caring if I blundered into an outstretched sword. Commotion, hoarse panicked voices and motion in every direction. With mortal intent I made a mighty thrust toward the closest whisper but struck the wall—the spear broke in two and I was left holding a fragment of the haft, just big enough for a torch. I stopped and listened—it was silent but for my heart and my breathing. They had gone.

  I put my hands to my ruined face, then bound the wound as best I could and staggered down the steep path to the sea. I thought I heard their oars on the water and raged at them, wading out into the surf, flailing at the waves, finding stones by touch and hurling them. I might have heard Nobody’s voice but with the breakers and my shouting I could not be sure.

  They were gone and I got cold. I was not quite brave enough to drown myself. I shouted for my father—I did not love him much but he knew his duty and I thought he would avenge me. If he heard me, he gave no sign. I crept back to my cave and the pain, which had been waiting at a distance, engulfed me.

  Fever came. I lay by the fire, chilled to the bone, too weak even to go to the well. At first the fever was low and I was transcendently calm and thought I had at last found true philosophy. As the fever rose and rose I started to shake uncontrollably. A young man with golden hair appeared, standing patiently in the shadows, watching me, leaning on a staff around which snakes twined (of course, if there had been such a man, I would not have seen him). In the dream, as the pain deepened he came more and more into the light and I thought he would speak to me but just then my father arrived and sent him away. He laid his vast hand on my forehead, as cool as the deeps of the sea, and I told him that it was Nobody who did this to me and must die.

  The fever broke soon after that and I lay awake and alone in my cave, facing a future of darkness. I groped in the dust and found cheeses, my staff, a bucket, the empty wineskin, the cold ashes of the fire, a pile of furs, and the sharp end of the spear that had blinded me, still sticky with dried blood and matter. I sat down and I think I would not have got up again if not for my goats, who butted their heads against me and clamored to be milked. This I managed to do, and then shooed them off to their pasture and laid out their salt while they bleated and had their little quarrels.

  The days were long and there was no sun to dazzle me. I wondered incessantly about the man who had brought me a sack of wine, a tale and blindness. In my mind I replayed everything he had said, trying to reconstruct each tone and nuance. He had not uttered a single true word, of course, but we are revealed in our lies. His and his men’s clothes had been thrice-patched stuff but their helmets and arms were keen edged and mirror polished. They had carried their arms with a total casualness, their weapons extensions of themselves, like veterans old in war. They had accents, the like of which I had never heard before, so I reckoned Nobody and his men must be from far away, out toward the edge of the world.

  My hatred of Nobody was impotent and all-encompassing. I wanted to be free of it, but always my mind went back to him. I told myself and the goats stories about him—one day he and his men were pirates from Corsica, vicious raiders out to prey on anyone they could overwhelm or surprise. The next they were a party of pilgrims bound for Delphi who had stopped on my island for water and found me only through misfortune. But their ragged clothes and gleaming weapons, their hardness and loneliness and hunger made me decide in the end that they were coming back from a long, bloody war, fought far from home, a war that left them with eyes as blank and hostile as birds of prey, raiding and killing as the opportunity arose, knowing no life but arms and no law but violence.

  I invented perils for his trip home—horrors rising up from the deep sea, the endless asphodel fields of the dead, sweetly singing witches to gull and bind him—but I could never quite bring myself to finally close the sea over his head or the jaws on his throat. Always I pulled him back, unwilling to let him escape into death. As his trials mounted (all of which scarred him, took some vital piece of him—I needed him alive, not whole), I saw that he must have some good reason to go on living, for, as I have often reflected, it is a simple thing to give oneself up to the sea. So I gave him an island like mine, not good for much but raising goats and men, and a wife of perfect steadfastness (the mirror image of the woman I knew so long ago).

  I invented perils for his trip home—horrors rising up from the deep sea, the endless asphodel fields of the dead, sweetly singing witches to gull and bind him—but I could never quite bring myself to finally close the sea over his head or the jaws on his throat. Always I pulled him back, unwilling to let him escape into death. As his trials mounted (all of which scarred him, took some vital piece of him—I needed him alive, not whole), I saw that he must have some good reason to go on living, for, as I have often reflected, it is a simple thing to give oneself up to the sea. So I gave him an island like mine, not good for much but raising goats and men, and a wife of perfect steadfastness (the mirror image of the woman I knew so long ago).

  In retrospect, it is obvious that “Nobody” was a nom de guerre, the alias of an anonymous raider. The choice of sobriquet suggests a man infatuated with his own cleverness. He carried himself like a warrior, but preferred getting me drunk to attacking me openly. His mind, I thought, must be like a city of a thousand twists and turns, founded on deceit, with never an open line of sight or a straight passage. Fluent in lies, he must have been the death of many men greater than himself. And he was loyal to his men, or so I liked to think, as it increased my pleasure in making monsters pluck them from his ships while he stood by helplessly, and in mak
ing their ghosts weep for burial.

  The island farmers are less timid now that I am blind. They bring me fruit and salted meat and listen with more than polite interest while I tell my stories. Some parts of the tale have gelled over the years, though others I improvise or vary as suits the audience’s mood or mine—even now it gives me pleasure to invent new sufferings for him. For all that, my bloodthirstiness has lessened—I no longer groan in my sleep or dream of catching him and wrenching out his bones. The ruin where my eye was is not painful anymore, and my days are calm, even joyful. Sometimes I think I am grateful, that sight would be a distraction.

  NO MAN’S WIFE

  In his sojourn in the land of the dead Odysseus saw Penelope among the listless shades. With his broadsword he cleared a path through the muttering ghosts but she receded, seeming not to see him. He called out her name and chased after her, leaving his men behind, catching up with her in a dark glade full of asphodel where she sat at a loom weaving a long shroud. He made to speak to her but, remembering the ways of the dead, used his sword to dig a small pit over which he opened a vein.

  She was drawn to the blood and drank, something like light coming into her eyes. “It is no kindness to bring the dead back to themselves. We are wretched but do not know it until you remind us. Why have you come to trouble me, stranger?” she said, looking up from where she knelt in the dust with red streaks on her white face.

  “I am a traveler from Troy who has come a long way with Odysseus, your husband,” he said. “What cruel fate befell you that the deep-thinking hero must now return to a cold and empty hall?”