John Powys - Atlantis

“They seem to have told you the truth, child,” replied Odysseus. “But now that you’re here the best thing you and I can do is to arrange a definite plan of campaign for ourselves at the ‘agora’ tomorrow. So sit you down here and have a sip of my wine. This is our Eurycleia. Yes, give her one of those cups you like using best yourself, Nurse.”

Unlike many men of genius, whether in thought or in action, Odysseus was always vividly aware of the feelings of women; and he now glanced from Pontopereia to Leipephile and back again to Pontopereia.

“This lady,” he explained to the latter, “is the betrothed of our young friend Nisos’ elder brother, who, quite naturally, takes the side of their father Krateros Naubolides in our little island-feud. The pleasantest thing for you, my dear child”—he was addressing Leipephile now—“will be to have a quiet supper by yourself tonight and to go to bed early; for in this way you’ll escape being torn between your loyalty to us and your affection for our opponents.”

The tall simple girl didn’t appear to object in the very least to being thus lightly dismissed from so momentous a Council of War; and after a nod from Eurycleia had confirmed the king’s word, and after the kindly-natured Zeuks had muttered something about her being sure not to forget to have a good supper, she went off at once.

Then at last the party round the old Nurse gathered closely together to plan, as Odysseus had declared it was essential they should do, the general outline of his appeal to the people. But Odysseus had still got at the back of his consciousness a rooted feeling that there was something in Eurycleia’s mind with regard to all that had happened and all that was happening which it was important for him to know.

But it was not until he and Zeuks had mapped out pretty definitely their plan of campaign for to-morrow’s meeting in the “agora”, and had decided to send the heralds at early dawn round the whole island to announce it, that in a single hurriedly pronounced word the old Nurse revealed what it was. Telemachos! Yes, it was his son; his son, who like a wooden dagger, with a handle at one end and a point at the other end, had got himself caught fast in the consciousness of the old nurse. Yes, it was the “eidolon” of his son Telemachos she had in her mind, teasing and perplexing her with misgivings of every sort.

It must have been approaching the hour for supper when Odysseus discovered what Eurycleia had in her mind. “One thing seems certain,” he said, “and that is that this appalling Enorches hasn’t made the faintest, no! not the very faintest impression on him! What does he think of that retreat of his, which this devil of a priest has certainly curtailed to pretty small quarters?”

“Another thing seems certain too,” added the old Nurse; and going to the door at the back of her room she opened it and called down the passage. Then with the servant who answered her call she held a brief conversation, in the middle of which, telling the girl to wait a moment, she returned to Odysseus. “It seems certain to me,” she told him gravely, “that your son really must, for all his philosophizing, feel lonely sometimes and want to get a glimpse of his Dad. I know I want to get a glimpse of him ; and I think the Lady Penelope would feel that old Nurse Eurycleia ought to have this wish gratified. Do you mind if I send somebody — Tis, if he’s about just now — to bid him come to supper tonight? There’ll be as it is two women-guests and only one man-guest, so he will make up the table; and you at the head and your own Nurse at the foot will behold the board complete. So may I send Tis or somebody to bid him to come?”

Across Odysseus’ countenance flapped like the wings of a black crow a momentary shadow of serious discomfort; but he had the strength to blot it out so completely that it was as if it had never been there. He nodded with the crushing acceptance and finality of Zeus. “Send anyone you wish and tell them in the Kitchen to prepare supper for two men and two women in addition to thee and me.”

The old lady went back to the waiting serving-girl with this message. “She says Tis is there and she will tell him to go,” she reported to the King on her return; and so it was settled, and that very evening Telemachos came. Nor among those sitting round the table in the throne-room at the end of the corridor of Pillars was there one who regretted this sudden resolve of the old Nurse to see her last Infant of the House as a noble-looking middle-aged man of fifty, sitting side by side with Zeuks, and opposite Okyrhöe and Pontopereia.

And the best of it was that the routine of custom in that royal dwelling made the whole thing easy. For the people in the Kitchen were always wont to bring the dishes up to a table just behind the royal throne and leave them there: from which position Leipephile and Arsinöe and Tis himself carried them round and then stood behind the throne of Odysseus while all the guests ate and drank at their leisure.

As might have been expected Okyrhöe was deeply impressed by the handsomeness and dignity of Telemachos; and as for Pontopereia she couldn’t resist permitting a passionate prayer to Athene to embody itself in words in her mind: a prayer that if she should be called upon to utter words of prophetic insight in the presence of this silent, austere, good-looking man, with such broad-shoulders and such an intensely abstracted look on his stern face, she might be true to herself, true to her inspiration, and true to the great goddess who would use her as a reed through which to pour forth the rhythmic waves of her message to the world.

Their meal that night was indeed only half through when, constrained by a sudden urge whose origin was wholly obscure to her, Pontopereia asked Telemachos a plain direct unequivocal question.

“What would you say, My Lord Telemachos, was the real heart of your teaching? I mean the sort of thing you would have to explain to any student of philosophy, whether a boy or a girl, who wished to be considered as your proper disciple?”

Telemachos glanced quickly and a little uneasily at his father as if to assure himself that the old man would not mind his launching out upon such a topic at such a time; but as he received no warning against it, and, in place of that, saw something resembling the flicker of a benevolent smile cross his progenitor’s face, he addressed himself to Pontopereia with sincere pleasure.

And the truth was that the longer she listened to him the more did Pontopereia feel drawn to the man and thankful she had risked her question. “He’s lonely;” she told herself, “he’s lonely and unhappy. He’s invented this philosophy of his to fill a void. His philosophy is his kingdom, his wife, his children, his weapons, his ships, his ploughs, his horses, his granaries.” And indeed his words, when he spoke, almost humorously fulfilled her prediction.

“I would tell this imaginary disciple of mine, lady‚” he said, “to make philosophy a substitute for every kind of success he can possibly want — no! more than a substitute, a fulfilment! I would say: ‘What do you really want from life?’ You’ve probably never asked yourself! Few of us do when we’re young. But anyone who has watched you will know you’ve wanted the satisfaction of your hunger, your thirst, your lust, your hunting spirit, your fighting spirit, your collecting mania, your athletic mania, your building mania, your passion to be beautiful, to be a great artist, to be desired by many. Well, and what have you already attained in regard to this desire of yours? You’ve got the rudiments, the embryonic beginnings of all of them. You’ve got a body and a soul. You are a human being. You are living on the earth with the ocean around the earth, and the sun and the moon above the earth, and the stars above the sun and the moon, and the eternal ether above the stars.