“And this is how that wretched Odysseus found us: a scattered and solitary people in a land too rich by far, all of us ripe for the harvest.”
Polyphemus sighed and sipped his wine. After a moment, he continued: “My own holding lay hard by the sea, near the rocky beach where the Lord of Chaos, cursed Apophis, cast me after I fled my homeland. I made my home in a cave, lord. The fearsome Kyklops, as you name me, lived in a hole in the ground.” Blind Polyphemus chuckled, though I knew not why. “It was not dank or wet as you surely imagine, but spacious and well-ventilated, with shafts that allowed fresh air in and smoke from my cooking fires out. Near the entrance I had pens for my flocks—I’m a shepherd, you see—while I dwelt deeper inside, with a wife I’d bought from Phoenician traders and a pair of former slaves who had run away from their Sikelian master, and who served me for wages. It was a decent life. More than that, no exile in a foreign land could ask.
“Then, a fortnight ago, a man came to us.”
Polyphemus stood; King Aeolus leaned back, watching him through eyes gone cold as he paced in a tight circle.
“An Achaean, he was. A bedraggled fellow with an unkempt beard, who stank of brine and pitch. He named himself Aristaeus, and he demanded hospitality—xenia, as you call it—for him and his mates, who sheltered on an island not far from shore. He did not ask it, mind you! He did not sweeten his words with the honey of flattery, or even employ simple good manners! No! He demanded cheese of me, and milk, and dripping joints from a dozen of my best lambs! He added to the insult he paid me by demanding that I send my woman among them, to sing and dance for their amusement!” Polyphemus’s lips curled into a snarl of contempt. “My spear stood close at hand. This fellow looked from it to me; he bared his teeth and boasted of his prowess before the walls of Troy. Aristaeus told me how many shades he had sent down to the river of the underworld. He thought me an impotent shepherd—never reckoning that I’d lost my eye in service to Pharaoh ere his bitch of a mother had ever shat him out. He believed himself quick-handed as he reached for my spear.”
Polyphemus stopped.
“He paid for his folly, and died with my knife in his heart.”
Murmurs of outrage arose from the onlookers. Polyphemus cocked his head, his ears marking the sound. “Aye, I struck the impudent wretch down even as he stood on the threshold of my own home! What of it? My gods are not your gods; they do not bid me take in every cast-off and every stray who crosses my path, in vain hope it is not some black-hearted robber I let sleep under my roof, but blessed Horus in disguise. What rubbish! The gods of my homeland do not walk, either seen or unseen, among mere mortals. This man got his due. I bid my servants take his body down to the shore and cast it into the sea, as a warning to his comrades: let neither god nor man come to me as an insolent beggar!
“Alas.” The blinded man resumed his seat, suddenly weary beyond measure. “Perhaps I should simply have knuckled under and granted his ridiculous demands. For when the Achaeans came again, they came for blood.
“To my everlasting shame, I was not there to greet them when their black prows smote the rocky beach, when the first ruddy-cheeked Achaeans boiled over the strakes to claim my land like a spear-won prize. I was inland, tending my flocks and spreading news of the Achaeans to my neighbors. It was one of these, his woman cackling like a stormcock, who drew my eye to a smear of black against the blue vault of heaven—the smoke of a burning.
“I sprinted back, but did not arrive in time to save them, my makeshift family. The Achaeans brought fire with them, and murder. My servants they butchered in the garden close at hand to the mouth of my cave, jointing them like lambs and leaving them unburied, their shades cursed to wander. They stole everything of value, from cheeses and crocks of sweet whey to the bundles of shearling from last season’s sheep to the frame my woman used to weave carpets.”
Polyphemus grew silent, his scarred brows drawn together. Finally, he continued: “I found her, my woman, at the well, where she’d gone to draw water for a bath. Nefer, I had called her, and she seemed well-pleased with this name. I found her…and the three Achaeans who had slain her, but only after sating their crude lusts. They sat by her corpse, drinking water and laughing.
“I came upon them like a storm. The eldest I caught as he rose to meet me, the blade of my spear splitting his liver. His life fled upon a torrent of dark blood. The second had the naked chin of a youth, though the tongue in his head cursed like a salty old knot. He clawed for the hilt of his sword. Ere he bared a hand-span of bronze, though, I struck. Low did my spear-point dart, beneath the edges of his linen corselet; it ripped through the meat of his inner thigh, severing the great artery, there. I left him to die as he’d left my dear Nefer. The last wretch turned his back to me and tried to run. I caught up to him in three strides and tripped him up. He crashed to the ground, begging his gods to save him. There was no softness in my heart, only a fierce red fury. He cried out for mercy as I stabbed down at him—my first blow pierced his side; my second cracked open the keel-bones of his chest; my third blow cut the sinew of his neck, laying open those channels in the flesh that freighted blood between heart and head. His pleas for mercy became wordless gurgling as he drowned in a tide of gore.
“I paused to look at the violated body of my woman, my Nefer. And that moment where my heart cooled, where grief replaced fury, proved my undoing. A bronze-headed javelin pierced my hip even as a stone, hurled from a sling, brought me down.”
Polyphemus looked up. “Shall I recount the litany of tortures perpetrated against me by these pitiless Achaeans? Shall I relive for you the ignominy of being strung up by my ankles, or the cold terror one feels when a knife’s blade touches your manhood? Or shall I wax poetic about the excruciating pain of having strips of skin peeled away? No? Then let me at least share with you how they blinded me.