“Rough and rugged,” my Odd Zeus had grunted. “And don’t think I can see through your questions. Keep digging.”
“Where is your home?” pressed Nausithous, obediently thrusting his spade.
“Where every man’s home is—in that place where lies his heart. And since I bear my heart with me, caged in these rough and rugged ribs, my home is here,” he lifted a handful of soil, then threw it, “and there, and wherever I set foot.”
Then the boys were proud, because Odysseus’s home was here. They did not understand, as I did, his meaning. So strong was his love that he brought it with him wherever he went. Only he had caged his heart.
I wept that night so bitterly that my breath came in tiny, desperate gasps. My love’s heart was a prisoner. And I held the key.
Which made me the jailer.
Dinner that night was as lively as ever. Odysseus chatted, posing riddles and puzzles to us all as if he plucked them from the sky. “Do you know why gold is such a pale metal?”
Grinning, Nausinous fed him the dutiful, “Why?”
“Because it is scared to death of those who will own it.” He tapped my one son on the head, then turned to the other. “I talked to Aeson today, down by the wharf. Asked him how his fishing went. He said, ‘What we caught, we threw away. What we didn’t catch, we kept.’”
Though I feigned indifference, I was as confused as my sons. They tried several answers until he hinted by scratching himself. “Lice!” they roared, and he laughed, and they with him. Even the servants were mirthful. Such a gift, laughter. One he used so carelessly.
That is unkind. He was generous. Such is the nature of true gifts. The gifted find their talents natural, and uncostly. For them, there is always more laughter. It is only us mere mortals who fear the day the laughter ends.
‘Mere mortal’. I am descended from a goddess, who was herself birthed by a Titan. My subjects call me “divine lady” and “holy queen”. I am revered. But just one look at that ebony-headed conjurer of smiles and one could see true divinity.
If only I had been allowed to see the man.
I glimpsed him, from time to time. In moments when he thought me asleep, or when caught unawares, staring off into the West. Then I could see past the Trickster, catch fleeting sight of the scarred and haunted sailor.
The scars were terrible. There were scars from swords and scars from scourges. Scars from spears, and scars from fire. They left a history imprinted on his skin, written in a language I could read, and he would not translate. Not for my sons, who begged the stories of glorious deeds in far-away lands. Not even for me during those nights when I lay tracing those scars with my fingers, my hair draped across his arm, my body nestled against his. His scars promised a story he never told.
He hinted, of course. His trickster nature could not help but drop tantalizing clues. I remember once, when Nausithous was perhaps thirteen, he asked about war. “Is it not a man’s duty to be a soldier?”
And my Odd Zeus had answered him with a fable. “I remember once, a quarrel between the Horse and the Stag. The Stag taunted the Horse, and raked his flanks with those fine antlers. Enraged, the Horse came to a Hunter to crave his aid in being revenged upon the Stag. Agreeing, the Hunter said, ‘If you desire to conquer the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I may keep steady upon you as we follow after the enemy.’ Well, naturally the furious Horse agreed to the conditions, and so the Hunter soon saddled and bridled him, and together they overcame the Stag. Then the Horse said to the Hunter, ‘Now, get off, and remove those things from my mouth and back.’
“‘Not so fast, friend,’ answered the Hunter. ‘I have now got you under bit and spur, and prefer to keep you as you are at present.’”
The story finished, Nausithous had puzzled at it. “What does that have to do with soldiering?”
“The moral is, if you allow men to use you for your own purposes, they will use you for theirs. Though soldiers fight for their own glory, they are inevitably fighting someone else’s war.” His face had clouded, and he had shaken his head as if casting off a gnat. “But enough of horses and wars. Shall we have a race?”
Races. Contests. Sport. That was how he quelled in them the desire to go off in search of adventure. “Adventure comes to all,” he would say. “And the best adventures need not be soaked in blood.” And they would plead for his tales, and he would laugh and invent some new story.
Tonight, he was in a riddling mood:
A natural state, I’m sought by all.
Go without me, and you shall fall.
You must do me when you spend,
And abuse me when you drink to no end.
What am I?
My boys offered guess after guess. It was surprising to me that I knew the answer. Knew, but did not say. But then, “balance” was on my mind.
The most important portents come from within. Being divine, my priests had taught me from childhood to know myself, listen to moods, instincts, body, mind.
Harmony on the island came from harmony within its queen. For seven long years I had been happy, and the island had prospered. But of late I was disordered, out of joint. Unbalanced.
I thought of Pandora, and her jar. In some tellings, she opened her treasure and released evil to the world. But those are tales meant to vilify women. Pandora was the giver of life, the font of all things. Her jar was meant to be opened.
But not the jar of Odysseus. At least, not to me. Free with all in him, save that one inch that is his composure.
I had seen him come close to losing his magnificent self-possession. Each year, on the eleventh day of Cancer, as Orion rose as a whole in the morning, he was ever testy and short. And once when a negligent mother left her babe to wander into the road before a team of horses, he berated her with such vehemence that I thought he might flay her alive with just his tongue.
But such lapses were rare. The remaining time he was preternaturally calm—calmer than I, who had railed at undeserved faults about the making of the food or the quality of the stitching. I wept before him, and he soothed me, without ever asking what the matter was. For he was too wise, and surely knew.
I cried because he would not weep before me. If he would only weep, then I could be sure of him. If he would only share his pain, then would we be true partners.
Instead he gave me smiles, and broke my heart. Oath-breaker. He cannot help it.