but they lingered in the palace year after year, eating up our stores, demanding my mother choose one of them. She asked them to leave again and again, but they would not.” The old anger still burned in his voice. “They saw we could do nothing to them, a young man and a woman alone. When I reproached them, they only laughed.”
I had known such men myself. I had sent them to my sty.
But then Odysseus had returned. Ten years after he sailed from Troy, seven after he left Aiaia.
“He came in disguise as a beggar and revealed himself only to a few of us. We devised an opportunity: a test of the suitors’ mettle. Whoever could string the great Odysseus’ bow would win my mother’s hand. One by one the suitors tried and failed. At last my father stepped forward. In a single motion he strung the bow and put an arrow through the throat of the worst among them. I had been frightened of those men for so long, but they fell to him like grass before the scythe. He killed them all.”
The man of war, honed by twenty years of strife. The Best of the Greeks after Achilles, wielding his bow once more. Of course they had not stood a chance. They were green boys, overfed and spoiled. It made a good tale: the suitors, lazy and cruel, besieging the faithful wife, threatening the loyal heir. They had earned their punishment by all the laws of gods and men, and Odysseus came like Death himself to deal it, the wronged hero making the world right. Even Telegonus would have approved of such a moral. Yet somehow, it was a queasy vision for me: Odysseus, wading heart-deep in the halls he had dreamed of so long.
“The next day the suitors’ fathers came. They were all men of the island. Nicanor, who kept the largest herds of goats. Agathon, with his carved-pine staff. Eupeithes, who used to let me pick pears from his orchard. He was the one who spoke. He said: Our sons were guests in your home, and you killed them. We seek reparation.
“‘Your sons were thieves and villains,’ my father said. He gestured, and my grandfather threw his spear. Eupeithes’ face burst open, scattering the dust with his brains. My father ordered us to kill the rest, but Athena descended.”
So Athena had come back to him at last.
“She declared the feud finished. The suitors had paid fair price and there would be no more bloodshed. But the next day, the fathers of his soldiers began to come. ‘Where are our sons?’ they wanted to know. ‘We have waited twenty years to welcome them home from Troy.’”
I knew the stories Odysseus would have had to tell them. Your son was eaten by a cyclops. Your son was eaten by Scylla. Your son was torn to pieces by cannibals. Your son got drunk and fell from a roof. His ship was sunk by giants while I fled.
“Your father still had crew when he sailed from my island. Did none of them survive?”
He hesitated. “You do not know?”
“Know what?” But as I spoke, my mouth went dry as Aiaia’s yellow sands. In the wildness of Telegonus’ childhood, I had had no time to fret for what was out of my hands. But I remembered now Teiresias’ prophecy as clearly as if Odysseus had just spoken it. “The cattle,” I said. “They ate the cattle.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
A year those eager, reckless men had lived with me. I had fed them, cared for their illnesses and scars, taken pleasure in watching them mend. And now they were wiped from the earth as if they had never lived.
“Tell me how it happened.”
“As their ship was passing Thrinakia, a storm blew in and forced them to land. My father kept watch for days but the storm went on and on, stranding them, and at last my father had to sleep.”
That same old story.
“While he slept, his men killed some of the cows. The two nymphs who guard the island witnessed them and went to…” He hesitated again. I saw him consider those words: your father. “Lord Helios. When my father set sail again, the ship was blasted to pieces. All the men were drowned.”
I could imagine my half-sisters with their long golden hair and painted eyes, bent on pretty knees. Oh, Father, it was not our fault. Punish them. As if he had ever needed urging. Helios and his endless wrath.