The Lost Books of the Odyssey - By Zachary Mason Page 0,39
of the world they knew, and Odysseus and his men took heart, got directions and advice, and sailed off in the expectation of finding familiar lands that never, in the event, materialized. And so, gradually, the longing for Ithaca’s shores was supplanted by the wish for any kind of an end to wandering.
When Odysseus and his men washed up on Alcinous’s island he received them graciously, being particularly attentive to Odysseus—he mentioned in passing that he had a daughter but had not yet found the right husband for her. Odysseus weighed the benefits of a new marriage against the open trackless sea and, his spirit much eroded, asked to meet her. A wedding was soon arranged and consummated and not long after the rest of the Greeks followed suit. They had children, bought land, acquired standing and thought less and less and finally never of their wives in Ithaca. They told and retold their travel tales so many times that they became less memories than fables, even to the tellers. The hardness of their youth and of the War left them slowly, but it left them, and eventually there was not a head among the crew that was not white and their swords gathered dust on their mantels.
Like their wandering, this seemed as if it must go on forever but ended abruptly. One night Odysseus had a dream that Athena was standing smiling over him, leaning on her spear, her eyes like white coals. He could feel the chill radiating from her. She had been speaking but he could not remember anything she had said, though his mind was full of a confusion of demons haunting narrow sea-lanes, a witch in silver bowers praying in a wolf’s voice to the moon, and the echoing screams of men packed close in a low-ceilinged room as black arrows sprouted from their throats and hearts. She whispered, “It’s time to go.”
He sat up, wide awake—there was no one but his wife Nausicaa, asleep beside him. The moon shone full through the window and he was as alert as if it had been noon. Odysseus stood straight for the first time in years, throwing off the stoop that he now realized had been a concession to the expectations of age. He took his sword down from the wall, drew it and turned it in the moonlight, the metal flickering like water. He hesitated, enjoying the stillness of the house and regretting the warmth of Nausicaa’s bed. Then he went out, closing the door carefully behind him and, leaning into the strong wind blowing through the empty streets, walked out of the city and along the strand to the spot where the ship had beached. The racing wind that threatened to tear his cloak away had exhumed it and a loose pennant flapped wildly on its mast. His surviving men were there, standing straight as pine trees, and he could not tell if the white in their hair was age or moonlight. Without a word, they set their shoulders to the ship and pushed it toward the sea, wallowing in the sand, redoubling their efforts as her hull touched water. They clambered aboard as the tide took her and pulled her past the breakers and out to sea, bound, they thought, for Ithaca.
ODYSSEUS IN HELL
A man picks his way along a steel cable strung over a refulgent blue abyss, a ship’s oar over his shoulders for balance. The cable groans and sighs in the infinitesimal breeze. It is so narrow that the man is, when he thinks of it, surprised he is able to keep his footing. Miles in front of him the horizon is shrouded in bright clouds. It may well be the same behind him but he has never looked back. The cable sags, very slightly, just discernibly over the course of what may be hours, or days—he is descending.
Above him (he sees this out of his peripheral vision—to look up would be fatal) is an irregular dark massiveness suggesting mountains. There are iridescent patches that could be lakes or possibly cities. Below is open sky, gradations of deep featureless blue. Now a weariness comes over him and he stops to rest, squatting and balancing the oar across his shoulders, gripping the cable with feet and hands, peering down into the void in which he finds a measure of comfort.
He has been walking and balancing for a long time and his mind wanders. For the most part his reflections are vacant or circular