I set out lunch, and we ate in near silence. The rain tapered off. I could not bear the thought of being shut up all afternoon and drew my son out for a walk along the shore. The sand was hard and wet, and our footprints looked as though they had been cut with a knife. I linked my arm through his and was surprised when he let it stay. His tremor from yesterday was gone, but I knew it would return.
It was only a little after midday, yet something in the air felt dusky and obscuring, like a veil across my eyes. My conversation with Penelope was tugging at me. At the time, I had felt clever and swift, but now that I ran it back through my mind, I realized how little she had said. I had meant to question her, and instead I found myself showing her my loom.
He had talked his way past the witch instead.
“Whose idea was it to come here?” I said.
He frowned at the suddenness of my question. “Does it matter?”
“I am curious.”
“I can’t remember.” But he did not meet my eyes.
“Not yours.”
He hesitated. “No. I suggested Sparta.”
It was the natural thought. Penelope’s father lived in Sparta. Her cousin was a queen there. A widow would find welcome.
“So you said nothing of Aiaia.”
“No. I thought it would be…” He trailed off. Indelicate, of course.
“So who first mentioned it?”
“It may have been the queen. I remember she said that she would prefer not to go to Sparta. That she would have a little time.”
He was choosing his words carefully. I felt a humming beneath my skin.
“Time for what?”
“She did not say.”
Penelope the weaver, who could lead you over and under, into her design. We were passing through thickets, angling upwards beneath the dark, wet branches.
“It is strange. Did she think her family would not have wanted her? Was there a rift with Helen? Did she speak of any enemies?”
“I don’t know. No. Of course she did not speak of enemies.”
“What did Telemachus say?”
“He was not there.”
“But when he learned you would come here, was he surprised?”
“Mother.”
“Just tell me her words. Say them exactly as you remember.”
He had stopped on the path. “I thought you did not suspect them anymore.”
“Not of vengeance. But there are other questions.”
He took a deep breath. “I cannot remember exactly. Not her words, nor anything at all. It is gray like a fog. It is still gray.”
The pain had risen in his face. I said no more, but as we walked my mind kept picking at the thought, like fingers at a knot. There was a secret beneath that spider-silk. She had not wanted to go to Sparta. Instead she had gone to her husband’s lover’s island. And she wanted time. For what?
We had reached the house by then. Inside, she was working at the loom. Telemachus stood by the window. His hands were tight at his sides and the air was stark. Had they quarreled? I looked at her face, but it was bent to her threads and showed nothing. No one shouted, no one wept, but I thought I would have preferred it to this quiet strain.
Telegonus cleared his throat. “I’m thirsty. Who else would like a cup?”
I watched him broach the cask and pour. My son with his valiant heart. Even in grief, he sought to bear us all up, to carry us through one moment to the next. But there was only so much he could do. The afternoon wore on in silence. Dinner was the same. The moment the food was gone, Penelope rose. “I’m tired,” she said. Telegonus stayed a little later, but by moonrise he was yawning into his hands. I sent him off with Arcturos. I expected Telemachus to follow, but when I turned he was still at his place.
“I think you have stories of my father,” he said. “I would like to hear them.”
His boldness kept taking me by surprise. All day he had hung back, avoiding my gaze, diffident and nearly invisible. Then suddenly he planted himself before me as if he had grown there fifty years. It was a trick even Odysseus would have admired.
“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?”