“Have the men of Aeolia no pity?” Polyphemus asked. And my father, even as good and kind as I knew him to be, shook himself free of the horror he found in the stranger’s ruined visage, ducked his head, and spat.
“Did you take pity on our boats, Kyklops?” he said. “Did you offer succor to the men of Aeolia who wrecked upon your shore, these ten years past? Or did you put your heel to their necks and hold them under the water till they drowned, so you might have fair claim to their possessions?”
Then my father, Lykaon, son of Glaukos, who I thought the best of men, turned his back on the blind and pitiable stranger. The crowd of fishermen smelled the blood my father had left upon the water. I saw brazen flashes in the hazy morning sun, like the lightning that gathered out over the ocean, as men bared their knives. Polyphemus did not see. He merely stood there, blind and thin and feverish, racking his brain for the words that might assuage the long-simmering anger of the men of Aeolia.
Can I confide in you, dear child? Can I tell you something about that day that I have told no one else—not even my daughter, your beloved mother? I felt the hand of a god. That feathery touch that draws the essence of a man from this shell of flesh and allows the spirit of the divine to manifest and take control? I felt it, that day, as never before and never since. And though I was but a boy, it filled me with a man’s purpose and guided my steps. I threaded the labyrinth of kinsmen and neighbors, lips set in a thin line, my face a mask of will that showed little of the child beneath. I brushed past my father, who started and scowled. I have no recollection of it, but he told me later I rebuked him in a voice not my own.
The god, Zeus Xenios, perhaps, spoke through me: “You men of Aeolia are better than this!”
The crowd stopped, their anger forgotten; my father stopped, too. Their eyes watched in wonder as this small, brown child, naked but for a scrap of cloth about his loins and as precocious as the infant Hermes, marched up to the stranger. Thunder rolled in the distance.
“I apologize for my father’s rash tongue, Polyphemus,” I said, my words echoing still with the presence of the god. “You are welcome, here. Though I have no oikos of my own, I offer you my friendship, if you will have it.”
Polyphemus was as taken aback as the folk around us. Hesitantly, he reached down to touch my shoulder. Blood crusted the tattooed cheek below his gouged-out eye. “You,” he stammered. “You are the son of Lykaon?”
I nodded, but then realized he could not see the gesture. “I am Glaukos, son of Lykaon, son of Glaukos.” I took from around my neck a boy’s gimcrack—a pearlescent shell that hung from a thong of old fishing twine—and placed it in his long-fingered hand. “I make this gift to you, such as it is, so the gods might smile upon our association.”
He smiled, too, then, his teeth like ivory against dark skin. “You are well-spoken, young Glaukos,” he replied. His voice bore a deep timbre that belied his thin frame, which was knitted together by lean sinew and striated muscle. “I would be honored to be your friend.” He unwrapped the fringed shawl from about his neck and held it out to me. “A gift for a gift, so the gods of my home might know you as a man of honor.” The linen smelled faintly of sweat, of old spices, and of smoke. “I will not impose upon you, young Glaukos. If it is in your power, all I ask is your aid in reaching the palace of your king, good Aeolus. Alas,” Polyphemus said, “I come bearing ill tidings of a man of many twists and lies, and a warning.”
“I will guide you.” I felt the god’s hand withdraw, leaving my face hot and prickling with embarrassment. The realization of what I’d just done struck me like a physical blow. He had ordered me to stay put, but I had flaunted my father’s will—flaunted it in public, no less. Had I made a fool of myself? Had I brought shame upon our household? Hand of a god or no, I knew when I turned I would see the rage in my father’s gray eyes, so like the storm building off in the distance. I would be lucky to escape with just a beating. But, as I had taken a man’s portion I resolved myself to face the consequences like a man. “Come, my friend,” I said, taking Polyphemus’s hand—his other hand clutched the shell necklace to his breast, as though it were a thing of great importance. I turned…
The god whose hand had guided me must have left a bit of his strength behind. For without flinching, I raised my eyes to meet my father’s gaze. What I saw nearly robbed me of my resolve. Tears dampened his bearded cheeks. But, they were not tears of rage, or even of disappointment. No, they were the product of another emotion. Something I now realize runs deep in a father’s soul.
With a start, I realized it was pride.
* * *
2
* * *
When I was your age, dear Eirene, the city was a different place. There was no broad processional street leading from the harbor to the acropolis, paved with stones taken from the slopes of Mount Aetna on the mainland. There were more trees, fewer statues. Helios and Lord Poseidon were then, as always, our patrons. But my forefathers made do with temples hewn from wood and braced with local sandstone, not raised from the foundation to the roof peak in garish marble, like these our sons have built. And no walls separated the acropolis, with its palace and storehouses, from the rest of the city. We feared neither the Sikelians, nor the war-weary Achaeans, nor the Phoenicians with their red-hulled ships. The Aeolians of my youth traded with all and sundry. We were the children of a long peace, and prosperity was our portion—even if that prosperity wasn’t reflected in street and building.
From the harbor, in those days, one took a dusty cart track full of ruts and switch-backs into the city proper. It wound past a grove-shaded cemetery, where wind harps caught the breeze and sang a song of sorrow for the remembered dead. There were few houses on those lower slopes; mainly tumbledown shacks made from driftwood and old sailcloth, where the poorer daughters of Aphrodite practiced their trade. That was the way I went with blind Polyphemus. And we did not ascend the track alone.
“Sounds like quite a cavalcade,” he muttered. I had no notion what a “cavalcade” was, of course, but I imagine he meant the throng that followed us up from the harbor—my father among them. I nodded, and then felt the color rise in my cheeks as I realized, once again, that he could not see such gestures. I glanced back at my father, who gave me a reassuring nod.
“I think they’re just curious about the news you bear.”
“Perhaps,” he replied. “But I think they are more curious to see what your king does with me.”
My eyes widened in sudden panic. I had not thought of that; what penalty might the gods levy against the one who leads a professed friend to harm? Would they turn me into some faithless beast, whose false face brings nothing but woe? “Will…do you think he will do ill by you?”