“Ah, yes…”
Eumaeus told him then—all of it. How Penelope had had the idea of using the young princes as hostages, how well it had worked until their balls sprouted hair and they—over a hundred of them—now had designs on his wife. Worse—that men had come from overseas to vie for her hand…living off his food, fucking his slave girls, drinking his wine and using his palace as their own. As Eumaeus painted the picture, so the rage in Odysseus grew…even if Penelope remained faithful to him, he felt all the helpless anguish of the cuckold. For if men had moved into his home and lorded it over his island…what was he, then?
“There’s only one decent one amongst them,” Eumaeus said. “Amphinomus of Megara. I hope our queen choses him. His main rivals are Antinous—a brute—and Eurymachus who fancies himself as smart as our dead king Odysseus.”
“Odysseus isn’t dead,” Odysseus retorted. “I’ll go to the great house and deliver the news to Penelope myself.”
“No,” Eumaeus eyed him. “You won’t. I’ve seen too many itinerants turn up and use false news of the man to garner favour. Even now Telemachus is on a fool’s errand looking for him, spurred on by dodgy omens and desperate hope.”
“The king of Ithaca lives, I tell you!”
“You’re my guest-friend,” Eumaeus said. “By the gods. But don’t push it.”
Odysseus feigned anger—and decided to test the trust he had engendered. Eumaeus feared the gods. Eumaeus counted guest-friendship a virtue—something these suitors clearly did not. “Ill-fortune brought me here, friend,” he said, rising to his feet. “But I’ll not outstay my welcome, nor would I seek to fleece a decent woman. I will present myself at the great house and offer my labor to these suitors. I have a strong back and am not without skill…”
“Peace!” Eumaeus snapped. “I’m old. Each year that goes past, another part of the rigging that holds my temper in place frays. You too, ’eh? Don’t go to the great house, friend,” he leaned forward, all earnestness. “I judge you a good man—and the suitors are not. You get involved with those boys, it’ll end up bad for you.”
Odysseus adopted a mollified air, but left enough reproach in his gaze to make it believable. “What am I to do then?”
“Strong back and not without skill, turned up on my door at the whim of the Earth-Shaker?” He shrugged. “Stay here for a spell. Help out in the farm. Let’s see what winds blow after that. I’ll pay you and keep you in food. And wine,” he added, pouring another sup.
He offered his hand: Odysseus took it—and the deal was sealed. Despite wanting to crash through the walls of his palace and reclaim what was his, he knew that this approach was smarter. He was the great tactician, after all. He needed to learn more about the lay of the land, the mood of the people. He would live as one of them, keep his head down and plot.
He had one chance to reclaim his love and his land and he would not risk it all now to satisfy his impatience.
Working on a pig farm was not the easiest of tasks. But Odysseus turned his hand to it with good cheer—well, he feigned good cheer at least. Inside, he seethed with anger at the news of the suitors and his lost throne. An anger that his frequent conversations with Eumaeus fed to make it as hot as a bronze forge.
The island, he learned, once prosperous under his stewardship, was now poor. Only through the industry of women did Ithaca possess some wealth—trading tapestry for coin. No more raiding, that was for sure. The fields had been left fallow—men hardly bothering to work because the suitors were pissing away their labors. Only this Amphinomus had taken it upon himself to try to put things in order; from Eumaeus’s reports, he seemed a “decent man”. But then, men were “decent” when they wanted to get between a woman’s thighs…and take a kingdom into the bargain.
It was becoming apparent to him that no one—outside of Eumaeus—gave a fig about Odysseus anymore. Indeed, if they did mention him, it was to curse the ill-luck he had brought the island. That his house was cursed and that perhaps—even if they were a bad lot—once Penelope had chosen one of those suitors, fortune could be regained. Each criticism, each complaint, each slight against his name pained Odysseus. Because he had never forgotten his people but his people had forgotten him. And he couldn’t even blame it on the short memories of men. He’d been gone for years.
And though he tried to see matters from the islanders’ point of view, each criticism was still like having a brazen tipped whip score his flesh: and of course, they didn’t know the half of it. They didn’t know the things he had done and the things he had justified. Perhaps they were right—perhaps it was his fault after all.
But for all that, he could not just slink away into the night like a whipped cur. He still had a son. And a wife. And he was still the King of Ithaca. But a man could not be a king without the support of his people.
He had to divine a way that their negative view of him could be undone. But first he had to persuade them that Odysseus was alive…and returning to Ithaca. To do it, he had to convince Eumaeus whose word he knew was valuable to the folk of the island. So he worked on him each night at dinner, drawing the older man into his confidence, telling him tales of “Odysseus’s heroic wanderings”—with emphasis on the heroic, even veering to the mythic.
He didn’t mention the lust-blinded misuse of Circe and how he’d justified it in his own mind, nor did he tell of the brutal, rage driven torture and murder of the Egyptian whose sheep he had stolen. Many a night he awoke, shaking off the specter of the Kyklops’s ruined face hovering over him in deathly outrage. But he’d justified that too.
Eumaeus was obstinate, but in the end, Odysseus could tell that his gift with words was wearing the old boy down. Of course it did. After all, he could almost hear his old friend saying, they didn’t call him “wily Odysseus” for nothing.
Such an epithet. One he had taken conceited pride in for so long. The man whose cunning had brought down mighty Troy. Now turning those skills to con a pig farmer into believing a legend of his own invention.
Day by day, he continued his verbal siege as they worked on the farm until at last Eumaeus rose from his task and beckoned him away from the pig pen.
“Look, Outis,” Eumaeus said, observing the unsaid pact between them. Odysseus had never given a name and Eumaeus was good enough not to probe—they’d agreed that Outis—NoOne—was a good compromise for now. And, after all—Odysseus had used it before. “I want to believe it. I do. But for years, we were long on hope and short on a king. Now—we’re short on hope and brimming with kinglets.”