– was a younger son of King Priam and was understood to be very good looking. It was love at first sight. For nine days of feasting – laid on by Menelaus because of this prince’s high standing – Paris and Helen had made moon-eyes at each other behind the back of Menelaus, who hadn’t noticed a thing. That didn’t surprise me, because the man was thick as a brick and had the manners of a stump. No doubt he hadn’t stroked Helen’s vanity enough, so she was ripe for someone who would. Then, when Menelaus had to go away to a funeral, the two lovers had simply loaded up Paris’s ship with as much gold and silver as they could carry and slipped away.
Menelaus was now in a red rage, and so was his brother Agamemnon because of the slight to the family honour. They’d sent emissaries to Troy, demanding the return of both Helen and the plunder, but these had come back empty-handed. Meanwhile, Paris and the wicked Helen were laughing at them from behind the lofty walls of Troy. It was quite the business, said our guest, with evident relish: like all of us, he enjoyed it when the high and mighty fell flat on their faces. Everyone was talking about it, he said.
As he was listening to this account, Odysseus went white, though he remained silent. That night, however, he revealed to me the cause of his distress. ‘We’ve all sworn an oath,’ he said. ‘We swore it on the parts of a cut-up sacred horse, so it’s a powerful one. Every man who swore it will now be called on to defend the rights of Menelaus, and sail off to Troy, and wage war to get Helen back.’ He said it wouldn’t be easy: Troy was a great power, a much harder nut to crack than Athens had been when Helen’s brothers had devastated it for the same reason.
I repressed a desire to say that Helen should have been kept in a locked trunk in a dark cellar because she was poison on legs. Instead I said, ‘Will you have to go?’ I was devastated at the thought of having to stay in Ithaca without Odysseus. What joy would there be for me, alone in the palace? By alone you will understand that I mean without friends or allies. There would be no midnight pleasures to counterbalance the bossiness of Eurycleia and the freezing silences of my mother-in-law.
‘I swore the oath,’ said Odysseus. ‘In fact, the oath was my idea. It would be difficult for me to get out of it now.’
Nevertheless he did try. When Agamemnon and Menelaus turned up, as they were bound to do – along with a fateful third man, Palamedes, who was no fool, not like the others – Odysseus was ready for them. He’d spread the story around that he’d gone mad, and to back it up he’d put on a ridiculous peasant’s hat and was ploughing with an ox and a donkey and sowing the furrows with salt. I thought I was being very clever when I offered toaccompany the three visitors to the field to witness this pitiful sight. ‘You’ll see,’ I said, weeping. ‘He no longer recognises me, or even our little son!’ I carried the baby along with me to make the point.
It was Palamedes who found Odysseus out – he grabbed Telemachus from my arms and put him down right in front of the team. Odysseus either had to turn aside or run over his own son.
So then he had to go.
The other three flattered him by saying an oracle had decreed that Troy could not fall without his help. That eased his preparations for departure, naturally. Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?
xii
Waiting
What can I tell you about the next ten years? Odysseus sailed away to Troy. I stayed in Ithaca. The sun rose, travelled across the sky, set. Only sometimes did I think of it as the flaming chariot of Helios. The moon did the same, changing from phase to phase. Only sometimes did I think of it as the silver boat of Artemis. Spring, summer, fall, and winter followed one another in their appointed rounds. Quite often the wind blew. Telemachus grew from year to year, eating a lot of meat,