“I’m telling you,” Odysseus said, tipping back a sack of water and taking a swig. “I heard of it in Aegyptos. Odysseus lives.”
Eumaeus grunted as was his wont and Odysseus was wise enough to leave well alone for now. However, over the coming days, he noted that the old boy was sharing his stories with passers by—and they would share the rumor with others, of that he was certain.
Even Odysseus himself began to talk of it publically—playing his part as lowly worker to be sure, but Eumaeus was indulgent and kind enough to let him speak. His stories flew from farm to farm.
And he was always on the look-out—Eumaeus’s place was a cross-roads of sorts, a fine seeding ground and as the story began to spread, Odysseus was seriously considering letting Eumaeus know the truth of his identity. As he mulled this over, feeding the pigs, he saw a young man approaching the farm, his gait familiar. Odysseus searched his memory, wondering if this could be one of his lost shipmates, but the lad was too young.
It hit him then like a hammer blow to the chest: Telemachus.
Odysseus stared at the young man he had left as a babe, open mouthed and dumbstruck as Eumaeus shoved him out of the way.
“Get inside, boy!” Eumaeus urged the prince, propelling him towards the hut. “The rest of you,” he addressed Odysseus and the two other helpers, “take some time for yourselves. The rest of the day.” The others needed no urging and made off, leaving Odysseus standing alone.
Do you need any more of a sign? Athena’s voice whispered in his mind. No, of course not. He sighed and clambered over the pig-sty fence and made his way to a nearby brook, washing the shit from body, scrubbing it from his feet. He dragged the knots from his hair and beard with his own hands and then, naked, he sat doing woman’s work, washing his tunic on the rocks, over and over again till it was at least free of the stench.
Odysseus rose to his feet and hunched his shoulders so that none from afar would see the truth and made his way back to Eumaeus’s hut. He pushed the door open, bathing the room with light from the day.
“… And he says that your father yet lives…” Eumaeus stopped mid-sentence and glared at Odysseus. “I said be off for the day.”
“And where was I to go?” Odysseus replied in his beggar’s voice. “This has been my home these past weeks.” But his eyes were on his son. He stepped inside and though he basked in the joy of seeing Telemachus alive, Odysseus felt it tempered with a slight disappointment because Eumaeus’s words were confirmed. He was no warrior. No leader of men. He did not exude the confident bearing of one who inspires others to follow him. To fight for him. To die for him.
A pang of guilt spread in his chest as he acknowledged his failure: it was his fault the boy never learned to hold himself like a king.
Telemachus looked down his nose at Odysseus. “Who’s this?”
“He’s Outis,” Eumaeus said with a chuckle. “A good man. You can trust him.”
“And you can trust me too,” Odysseus said in his own voice. He stepped inside and closed the door behind him, straightening his back and rising to his full height. And he looked Eumaeus directly in the eye for the first time since his return.
“By the gods,” the old man gasped. “Odysseus!” He shook his head. “But…how…”
“By the gods indeed,” Odysseus thought quickly. “I may have a gift for mimicry, but Athena herself disguised me until I knew it was safe.” He looked at Telemachus then. “My son,” he said—embarrassed that the words caught in his throat. But he needn’t have been.
Telemachus was up, on his feet and embracing him, tears running unchecked down his face. “My father!”
“My son,” he rasped, humbled by the unexpected wave of emotions that stole his breath—love and guilt, shame and regret, and most surprisingly of all, hope. It wasn’t too late to father the boy. Which meant it might not be too late for Penelope to embrace him as husband either. Eumaeus rose and put his arms around them both, he too in floods of tears.
“Now then,” he said, after they composed themselves, laughing ruefully at their display of emotion. “Tell me of your travels, son. Why did you leave Ithaca in the hands of these…suitors?” The word burned like foul wine on his tongue.
As the prince recounted his efforts, Odysseus took stock of the lad.
Lad.
Another pang as he acknowledged the truth of it. Telemachus should be a man in his own right at his age, but he was clearly not. Unformed and idealistic with no real grasp of the harsh world of men. As Eumaeus had said: it was because he’d grown up around his mother. It was not Telemachus’s fault. Odysseus should have been there, guiding him. Showing him how to fight. How to steer a chariot. How to till his own lands. How to be a leader of men. But Agamemnon’s War had put a stop to all that. Agamemnon’s pride had robbed the son of the father.
As had Odysseus’s own pride. He should have turned his ships for home as soon as the spoils of Troy had been placed on board. Instead…hubris…he’d opted for a few more raids on the way home to bolster his share. Ostensibly to enrich his people further. But moreso—if he was brutally honest with himself—to hear the men of Ithaca hail him above all the others. Now the men of Ithaca were all dead, lost piecemeal these long years. How many other Ithacan sons were growing up without the benefit of an older man? How many wives and mothers grieved because he—wily Odysseus—hadn’t had the sense to take his fair share and sail back to them?
He gritted his teeth as though by doing so he could clamp shut the maw of despair and guilt that opened up within him, forcing his ears to his son’s voice as Telemachus got to it. “I had thought to travel to your allies,” he explained. “Gather men to take back the kingdom from those that seek to wrest it from me.”
Odysseus raised an eyebrow. Perhaps he had been too quick to judge. “So you have spears?”
Telemachus looked down. “Your allies are weary of war,” he began and then launched into an epic tale of how he had travelled far and wide and how the once great men of Agamemnon’s war had grown old and unwilling (portraying himself in the best possible light, even though the mission had been an abject failure).
Odysseus smiled. Smiled because he didn’t want Telemachus to see that he was disappointed and because—listening to the story that portrayed his son as victim of capricious and cowardly kings—that they were not so unalike after all. “Then we shall have to gather spears of our own,” he stated.
“How?” This from Eumaeus. “I see now why you kept your disguise, Odysseus. There is not much love left for your house on Ithaca as I have told…NoOne,” he cracked a smile. “And even if there was, all the good men went with you to Troy. Are they all…?”
“Yes,” Odysseus saw their faces, vibrant and alive in his mind’s eye. And he recalled how they had ended. “They’re gone.”