Valerio Manfredi: Odysseus: The Return

‘Land!’ shouted Perimedes. ‘To starboard!’

‘Cythera,’ said Eurylochus. ‘I’ve seen it many times. The wind is pushing us further away.’

And so it was, unhappily. No force could have challenged the wind and the waves. We sailed in this way for nine days and nine nights of tempest, without ever stopping. My comrades could not fish as they had become accustomed to doing, by throwing out nets or casting out lines with barley kernels soaked in water as bait. We had very little food left. I was eating my heart out with pain, rage and despair.

On the tenth day, the wind dropped all of a sudden and the sea calmed until it became a shiny bronze plate. Slivers of light slipped around the ships, their dark profiles beaded in the deep blue.

I hoisted the signal for assembly and the ships gathered together, all within reach of my voice.

‘Have you lost any men?’ I shouted.

‘No, wanax !’ replied the commander of the second ship.

‘No, wanax !’ replied the commanders of the other five, one after another.

‘Neither have we!’ I said. ‘We’re all still here and this is good luck indeed after such a storm. Now put your backs into the oars and we’ll forge on. Land is surely close by. There are birds in the sky and you can smell it in the air.’ An odour of unfamiliar herbs. But we could see nothing. A thick mist had risen in front of us and we were surrounded by water on every side. I signalled to the helmsman to head into the mist that hovered above the sea. The others followed us.

Never before and never again have I felt the way I did at that moment. Alone, afraid, cold and my heart was empty, as if my blood and every other humour had been drained from my body. The way a man feels when he collapses to the ground pierced by a spear or the sharp tip of an arrow, as his life escapes, streaming, out of the wound. How often I’d seen it! I seemed to be caught in a dream, of the kind that fills you with anguish. One knows that the visions of the night are false imaginings, insubstantial, and yet the suffering they inflict on your heart could kill you. I called out to my comrades: ‘Eurylochus! Antiphus!’ Why couldn’t I see anyone? Could I be alone on my ship? Who was at the oars, driving it on? I could see the prow slip forward, cleaving the water which fell to either side without making a sound. I could see myself running back and forth in the mist and yet I knew full well that I was standing still at the bow, scanning the impenetrable fog. What was that disc of pale light fluttering in the mist? The moon? The sun? Shrieks. Birds scattering, terrified. Splashing. Who, what, had fallen into the still water? Was this a portal into some other place? Was I alone? The other ships, where were they? Elpenor! Antilochus! Euribates, where are you all? Answer me, it’s your king who’s calling! I could see someone passing by. . a shadow nearby, slipping away, walking. Who are you? He didn’t turn. I turned. He disappeared. Athena, where are you, where are you? You’re hiding! Why won’t you come out?

How much time passed? I don’t remember. Hours, days. . Waves lapping, water whispering. Suddenly a shock to my heart, like the blow of a dagger. I shouted so loudly that my throat bled and then. . I was out!

Land before me, sea behind me and the wall of fog, thick and smoky. The waves then, finally, the lapping at the shore, the scent of earth, tongues of sea lengthening onto the glittering golden sand. Now I could see my comrades rowing, striking the sail. Hadn’t they heard me shout out? Couldn’t they see my mouth bleeding? I washed it out with seawater. My throat burned.

‘We’ll moor aft!’ I ordered. ‘Drive the stakes into the ground, drop anchor forward! Antilochus, on me!’

He ran over: ‘ Wanax , look!’

One of our ships was emerging from the fog at a certain distance. It looked like it was coming from Hades: half was in the light, the other half invisible. The men looked like ghosts.

Another, further east. Both spotted us and joined us. Then no more. We waited and hoped for a long, long time.

‘Where are the other ships?’ I asked Eurylochus.

He looked bewildered.

‘Where are they?’ I insisted. ‘They were so close. We all made it through the storm, all the ships had assembled, I spoke to the crews. You all heard me.’

‘We heard you, king.’

‘Then how could we have lost four ships with all their men?’

Eurylochus shook his head: ‘You know as well as I do. We were in a dark place.’

We disembarked. What land was this? Who lived here? What language did they speak? There was a wide sweep of tall grass and patches of sand here and there. Towering palm trees swayed in the morning breeze. In the distance, a grove of tamarisks. And creatures we had never seen before. They looked like little hairy men, with tails. Shiny eyes, piercing and unsettling. They squawked, they screamed, they jumped from one branch to another.

‘Monkeys,’ said Eurylochus. ‘Among all animals, the ones that resemble us most. Disagreeable things. Clever, bold and rude. I sailed as far as Crete once to buy some terebinth oil and an old beggar had one.’

‘Send out men to look for water and food,’ I ordered. ‘A party to the east and one to the west. Tell them to come back as soon as they’ve found what we need. The others will drop the nets and try to fish. In the meantime, start a fire. Everyone will keep his arms at the ready.’

They all fanned out and I stayed close to the ship. As I looked around, I realized that nothing looked familiar: the air was different from the air I’d always breathed, the rays of light appeared to be shed by a different sun. The atmosphere was close, suffocating and time seemed to stretch out immensely. The thought of the ships and comrades I’d lost was unbearable.

A shout startled me and I saw Elpenor making wide gestures from up on a sandy rise at the end of the long beach, to the west. I ran towards him.

‘ Wanax , look!’ he said when I was close enough to hear. I turned around. In the distance, perhaps a thousand paces from us, were the rest of our ships. Beached stern to, all four of them.

‘Follow me,’ I ordered. ‘But don your armour first.’ Elpenor and the group of men with him set off with me on foot. I sent one of them back to warn the others not to move. They were to wait for us where they were until we returned.

When we reached the ships we found no one inside. We searched them one at a time without finding any signs of violence or disorder. The oars were in their rowlocks, the sails had been taken in, the steering oars tied to the rails. The trunks full of Trojan plunder at the prows were undisturbed. The only sound to be heard was the sea pounding untiringly against the keels and the wind whipping the shrouds. The rest was silence.

‘But. . where are they? Not hunting or looking for water, they would have left someone on guard. They haven’t fallen into the sea because the ships have been left in perfect order and secured with their anchors forward just as they should be.’

I saw terror in the men’s eyes. They could face any kind of danger, but the unknown or unexplainable filled them with fear. Had our comrades been kidnapped, carried off? By harpies, by fog demons?

‘Listen to me,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing like what you’re imagining. Here the ground is rocky, but if we go inland it’s grassy. We’ll search for traces of their footprints and follow them until we’ve found our mates. Keep your weapons at hand. We don’t know what land this is or who lives here.’

As I was speaking, the man I’d sent off to the ships came running back. I told him about what we’d found and that we would soon be setting off to search for the missing men. He was to go back and tell his comrades to put out to sea, bring the three ships around to the stretch of beach where the empty ships were at anchor, and moor them there. A single set of guards would suffice for all of them.