That night, King Aeolus feasted his guest. We were invited, my father and I, along with other prominent men from the harbor. The king’s sons were there, along with a few dozen merchants from the Agora and landsmen from beyond the walls of Aeolia; an envoy of the Tyrrhenians sat nearby, a long-haired rogue clad in scarlet and cream, armed with a quick and infectious laugh. Across the table perched his dour Sikelian counterpart, a landed man from Panormos with beetled brows and thunderous eyes—both wanted something from the king, though I never learned what that might be.
Ah, child…that you should have lived in such times! The Aeolus of my youth was not a parsimonious king like his current namesake, but neither was he a spendthrift. He was a scrupulous host. If he pledged to entertain you for the evening, he made sure you went to your bed exhausted with food and drink. Nor did he stoop to the salaciousness tittle that passes for entertainment these days. No mere dancing girls and whores! No, he welcomed rhapsodes and philosophers to his board, but also footloose explorers and fortune-hunters—men of diverse parts who shared tales of far climes, and whose daring escapades were the stuff of legend.
This night, as mild as any I could remember, the king convened his symposium beneath the smoky rafters of an inner portico, overlooking one of the many gardens that the palace then boasted. It was a rare sight, dear Eirene: lamps wrought of gilded copper and bronze dripped pale golden light while braziers of old iron spewed a pleasant haze of sweet smoke into the air. Unseen, the Etesian chimes sang of their own accord, a never-ending chorus of soft silver notes directed by the god of the Four Winds.
And the food! Groaning tables of it—all manner of meat and bread, vegetables and sweetmeats, cheeses and stews. The king himself gave me a honeyed date rolled in sesame that was the most sublime thing to have ever passed my lips. I have never tasted its equal. He made me another gift, as well. A silver bracelet, its ends capped by carved rams’ heads. Yes, the very same one your mother wears. When King Aeolus placed that upon my arm I thought my father would burst from pride.
“You did a fine thing, son of Lykaon,” he said to me, as the collected guests rapped their cups against the wooden tables. “A fine thing, indeed.” I did not tell him of the god’s influence, of the divine hand that moved me, for I did not want him to think me mad or brimming with hubris.
As for the evening’s guest of note, Polyphemus sat largely to himself. He ate sparingly and drank more water than wine. He was civil toward the king, and polite to the balance of the assembly, but he remained subdued as the night wore on. Some years later, after we had heard part of the song composed by that poet from Ionia—the one where Polyphemus was a monstrous son of Poseidon who trapped Odysseus and ate four of his crew—my father told me that the king and most of the assembled men of Aeolia believed Polyphemus had brought his ills upon himself; they believed the gods had punished him for his lack of piety. Xenia is a sacred act, and no matter how rude a stranger might be, if he asks for hospitality it is wise to try and honor it in good faith. His argument that hospitality was not demanded by the gods in his land, my father held forth as an exemplar of hubris. “It is demanded by the gods of this land,” he would say, “and he should have known better of it.”
But I was just a boy, and I had a boy’s fervor, bolstered by three cups of well-watered wine, so I took it upon myself—as his guest-friend, of course—to draw the sullen giant into conversation. Without asking his leave, I sat myself next to him and began nattering away about the particulars of my life, expounding on my child’s view of the world as though I knew anything about the tragedies and travails that awaited my coming of age. And I asked him questions about his own upbringing, about the land of his birth and the cause of his exile. And Polyphemus, ever gracious, answered them without actually giving an answer. Try as I might, I could not pry any details from him. Exasperated, I sank back in my seat and admired the king’s gift, once more.
Suddenly, blind Polyphemus stiffened. He bolted upright in his chair, his head tilted at an odd angle as though something in one of the dozens of simultaneous conversations going on around us had caught his ear.
“Are you ill, sir?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“There is a woman, I think,” he replied, nodding across the portico. “Yonder. Can you see her?”
I stood and peered in the direction indicated. Indeed, I saw a woman: one of the king’s many servants—‘slaves’ would have been a more accurate term, but I was too young to realize it. I nodded. “I can see her.”
“Does she have skin like mine?”
I looked again. “Not so dark, but she is not an Aeolian, nor an Achaean. She might be Phoenician?”
Polyphemus gave a half-smile. “Her accent is of my homeland. Can you fetch her to me, son of Lykaon?”
That he could hear one voice through the babble of half-a-hundred others was a marvel in itself; I was too young to ask myself why he desired to have this woman brought to him, and being eager to please, I patted his hand in fellowship ere haring off through the crowd of dinner guests. Men I did not know, who were deep in their cups, bellowed my name or thumped my shoulder as I passed, as though I were some tow-headed touchstone of good luck. I passed my father, who debated good-naturedly with both the king and the Tyrrhenian envoy; all three men winked and smiled at me as I threaded my way across the portico.
The woman—she couldn’t have been more than ten years my senior, if even that—leaned against a column, talking with the Sikelian envoy. She laughed at something he’d said, and then added her own comment. I heard a hint of the same accent I’d heard in Polyphemus’s voice; she was dark-skinned, though, as I said, not so dark as he, with sharp features and hair so straight and black it looked like a curtain cut from the fabric of Night. And like stars in Night’s curtain, small silver spangles threaded through her tresses caught and reflected the soft light of the lamps. I think back, now, and I recall two things: her kohl-rimmed eyes were as black as pitch, and they lacked even the slightest flicker of warmth. Zeus’s tender mercies, child, but she looked at me as I approached like I was naught but a walking pile of dog-shit, waiting to insinuate myself onto the bottom of her sandal.
Still, I did not shirk my duty to my guest-friend.