Valerio Manfredi: Odysseus: The Return

‘Look! We’ve entered a sheltered place,’ I said to Eurylochus. ‘Behind us you can hear the sound of the waves breaking, but it’s smooth as oil in front.’

‘A natural harbour of some sort. Can you see anything?’

‘No.’

The torch I was holding went out, but we continued on slowly in the thick fog and absolute darkness until the ship’s keel grazed the low, sandy ground of a beach. A god had guided us there: there was no other explanation.

‘Come forward,’ I shouted to the other ships following ours. ‘We’ve found land!’

One after another, the ships were brought ashore, bows scraping the beach. The men laid their cloaks out on the sand and fell asleep. The air had changed; it was warmer now, and not so humid. The clouds had thinned out and the dim light of the sky revealed low, dark hills. The place seemed uninhabited. I untied the comrades who we’d rescued from the land of the flower-eaters.

I spoke to them. ‘I had to do what I did because you weren’t yourselves any more. You seemed to have lost your minds. I am responsible for your lives. We’ve lost too many comrades already. I could not find it in my heart to tell your parents that you had refused to return, uncaring of their pain.’ There was no answer from them. Their dark silence made my heart ache. They were acting as if they’d lost the only good thing remaining in their lives. But everything was strange that night: the fog, the darkness, the sounds. . Later we heard distant cries, hoarse growling, like hungry lions roaming in the blackest night, but different in some way, almost human. None of us had ever heard anything like it before.

We awoke when Aurora rose to illuminate sea and land. I looked around: my comrades were getting up, one after another, gathering together, speaking to each other. There were still a great many of us; we were still an army. With the light everything looked different, more natural, and I realized that we were beached on a low island, fertile, but not cultivated. There were a great number of wild goats and the vegetation was abundant.

I walked all the way around the coast and saw that the mainland was close. It was vast, covered with luxuriant bushes and trees. I ordered my comrades to take their bows and arrows and to hunt goats on the island. I would go to the mainland with the crew of my ship.

The men tried to dissuade me. They asked me to wait until we had feasted on meat roasted over the embers, and the strong red wine that still filled our jars. But my desire to explore the vast, unknown land before us was greater than any hunger. I wondered who inhabited it: were they men who respected the law and feared the gods, or violent, ferocious savages who only obeyed those stronger than they were? Even if we were to meet up with the latter, I was not worried about any danger. The night before I’d fallen asleep thinking of Penelope, of my parents and my son, trying to imagine what he might look like now. I had not been at all frightened by the dark, moonless night, the unfamiliar, fog-covered land. Every sound, every smell, every stone on that island roused my curiosity. It made me realize how great the world was, how much the gods of the origins had created and how little we knew. How much I could have learned in ten years, if I hadn’t spent them fighting under the walls of Troy, breathing in nothing but dust and the stench of blood in that thin strip between city and sea!

I set sail in the afternoon with my crew after we had prepared and loaded the ship. I left Eurylochus in command of the others, who would wait on the island for our return. I brought some of the men who had been among the flower-eaters with me, hoping that activity, and perhaps a bit of adventure, would shake them out of their lethargy. We pushed off and crossed the strait that separated us from the mainland. As we approached, we could see that the land was rich with vegetation but there were no traces of villages or even houses. The only feature of note was a cave, half hidden by trees and bushes, near a promontory.

We went ashore at a small bay that lay beneath a high cliff, nearly a mountain. We took a skin of wine with us to offer to the inhabitants of that land, if there were any to be found, in order to win their favour. The buzzing of the cicadas was the only noise to be heard. We found no other boats, no nets. There were no leafy shelters to protect us from the summer sun, the winter rain or wild animals. Sometimes I still ask myself whether I really lived that adventure; whether I felt what I felt and saw what I saw . . We spotted some grapevines, but they were wild as well, with clusters of big, hard, sour grapes. One of the men who had scouted forward reported that he had found a dirt path. We followed him. This is the way that the story returns to my mind every time. It is thus that the images infest my dreams, forcing me to wake up soaked in cold sweat.

We arrived at the entrance to the cave that we’d seen from the sea. And here we finally saw signs of human life: the space inside was divided into pens which held lambs and goats. Everywhere there were big wheels of cheese resting on drying racks to age. But all the objects were enormous in size: the jars full of curdled milk and whey, the axes for chopping down trees. . Who could be living in such a place? No sooner had my comrades taken a look around than they became spooked and insisted that we grab anything that was worth taking and run back to the ship. But it was too late.

We heard the bleating of a big flock and a footstep so heavy it made the earth quake. A pile of long tree trunks was dumped through the opening to the cave as if it were a bundle of sticks. Wood for the fire. I could see the panic on my comrades’ faces. At the door to the cave stood a hulking black shape without features or expression. A giant.

We dashed to the deep recesses of the cave, looking for a place to hide, but it wasn’t long before the lord of that dreadful place decided to light a fire. The flames blazed up, illuminating the entire space, and it was impossible to stay hidden. But even more impossible to stay still. The monster noticed some of us moving, and with a sort of roar ( was that the bellowing voice we’d heard the night before on the island? ) asked us: ‘Who are you, foreigners? Sailors or pirates? Where is your ship?’ I was in a peculiar state, of understanding with different ears and seeing with different eyes, in which one of a myriad of possible realities becomes the only one in a mere instant and excludes all the others. Terror gripped me because the light had made his face visible now as well. He had a single eye beneath his brow which glowed like an ember but stared fixedly in a vacuous way. His hair was long, bristly and uncombed, his chest was enormous and his arms shaggy, his bare feet were caked with the dung of sheep and goats. He let off an intolerable stench.

Without coming too far into the open, I replied that we were the survivors of a shipwreck and that we’d entered to ask for help and hospitality in the name of the gods. Athena. . why wouldn’t you speak to me? He burst out laughing, a thunderous laugh that ended in the hoarse snarl of a vicious beast. When I understood it was too late. He grabbed two of my comrades, one in each hand. He crushed the first in his fist. The crunch of bones breaking rent my heart. He flung the other one against the stone wall so hard that the man’s brain spattered our faces. He devoured them both. The sound of their raw flesh being chewed up in his open maw makes my blood boil even now that I’m so cold. . We watched in horror as his beard became soaked with blood.

I alone, I believe, had realized which of us were gone — who the monster had seized to grind between his teeth. It was two of the men who had tasted the red blossoms. They had gone stone still at the sight of the giant and it had been easy for him to snatch them. They hadn’t even tried to bolt away or to slip into one of the cracks in the cavern walls. And this thought brought tears to my eyes. They had experienced a different way of existing, free of anguish and troubles, and my tearing them from this sweet oblivion had killed them.