John Barth - Lost in the Funhouse

“ ‘Born with horns on!’

“I did my thing then, told a story with everyone in it who might be the mystery guest and looked to see which name brought tears. ‘While I was pirating around,’ I said, ‘my wife’s sister murdered my brother on the grounds that she’d committed adultery for ten years straight with my cousin Aegisthus. Her son Orestes killed them both, bless his heart, but when I think of Agamemnon and the rest done in for Helen’s sake, I’d swap two-thirds of what I’ve got to bring them back to life.’

“I looked for the stranger’s tears through mine, but he only declared: ‘Lucky Achilles’ son, to come by such a treasure!’

“ ‘Yet the man I miss most,’ I continued, ‘is shifty Odysseus.’ “ ‘Oh?’

“ ‘Yes indeed,’ I went on,” I go on: “ ‘Now and then I wonder what became of him and old faithful Penelope and the boy Telemachus.’

“ ‘You know Telemachus?’ asked Telemachus.

“ ‘I knew him once,’ said I. ‘Twenty years ago, when he was one, I laid him in a furrow for his dad to plow under, and thus odysseused Odysseus. What’s more, I’d made up my mind if he got home alive to give him a town here in Argos to lord it over and leave to his son when he died. Odysseus and I, wouldn’t we have run through the grapes and whoppers! Pity he never made it.’

“The boy wet his mantle properly then, and I thought: ‘Hold right, son of Atreus, and keep a sharp lookout.’ While I wondered what he might be after and how to keep him from it, as I had of another two decades past, Herself came in with her maids and needles, worst possible moment as ever.

“ ‘Why is it, Menelaus, you never tell me when a prince comes calling? Good afternoon, Telemachus.’

“Oh, my gods, but she was lovely! Cute Hermione drew princelings to Sparta like piss-ants to a peony-bud, but her mother was the full-blown blossom, the blooming bush! Far side of forty but never a wrinkle, and any two cuts of her great gray eyes told more about love and Troy than our bard in a night’s hexameters. Her figure, too — but curse her figure! She opened her eyes and theirs, I shut mine, there was the usual pause; then Telemachus got his wind back and hollered: ‘Payee- sis tratus! What country have we come to, where the mares outrun the fillies?’

“Nestor’s-son’s face was ashen as his spear; ashener than either the old taste in my mouth. If only Telemachus had been so abashed! But he looked her over like young Heracles the house of Thespius and said, ‘Not even many-masked Odysseus could disguise himself from Zeus’s daughter. How is it you know me?’

“ ‘You’re your father’s son,’ Helen said. ‘Odysseus asked me that very question one night in Troy. He’d got himself up as a beggar and slipped into town for the evening …’

“ ‘What for?’ wanted to know Peisistratus.

“ ‘To spy, to spy,’ Telemachus said.

“ ‘What else?’ asked Helen. ‘None knew him but me, who’d have known him anywhere, and I said to my Trojan friends: “Look, a new beggar in town. Wonder who he is?” But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t trick Odysseus into saying: “Odysseus.” ’

“ ‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ begged Peisistratus, disbrothered by the war; ‘what I don’t understand is why you tried at all, since he was on a dangerous mission in enemy territory.’

“ ‘Nestor’s-son,’ said I, ‘you’re your father’s son.’ But Telemachus scolded him, asking how he hoped to have his questions answered if he interrupted the tale by asking them. Helen flashed him a look worth epics and said, ‘When I got him alone in my apartment and washed and oiled and dressed him, I promised not to tell anyone he was Odysseus until he went back to his camp. So he told me all the Greek military secrets. Toward morning he killed several Trojans while they slept, and then I showed him the safest way out of town. There was a fuss among the new widows, but who cared? I was bored with Troy by that time and wished I’d never left home. I had a nice palace, a daughter, and Menelaus: what more could a woman ask?’

“After a moment Telemachus cried: ‘Noble heart in a nobler breast! To think that all the while our side cursed you, you were secretly helping us!’

“When I opened my eyes I saw Peisistratus rubbing his, image of Gerenian Nestor. ‘It still isn’t clear to me,’ he said, ‘why the wife of Prince Paris — begging your pardon, sir; I mean as it were, of course — would wash, oil, and dress a vagrant beggar in her apartment in the middle of the night. I don’t grasp either why you couldn’t have slipped back to Lord Menelaus along with Odysseus, if that’s what you wanted.’

“He had other questions too, shrewd lad, but Helen’s eyes turned dark, and before I could swallow my wine Telemachus had him answered: ‘What good could she have done the Argives then? She’d as well have stayed here in Sparta!’ As for himself, he told Helen, next to hearing that his father was alive no news could’ve more delighted him than that the whole purpose of her elopement with Paris, as he was now convinced, was to spy for the Greeks from the heart of Troy, without which espionage we’d surely have been defeated. Helen counted her stitches and said, ‘You give me too much credit.’ ‘No, by Zeus!’ Telemachus declared. ‘To leave your home and family and live for ten years with another man, purely for the sake of your home and family …’

“ ‘Nine with Paris,’ Helen murmured, ‘one with Deiphobus. Deiphobus was the better man, no doubt about it, but not half as handsome.’

“ ‘So much the nobler!’ cried Telemachus.

“ ‘Nobler than you think,’ I said, and poured myself and Peisistratus another drink. ‘My wife’s too modest to tell the noblest things of all. In the first place, when I fetched her out of Troy at last and set sail for home, she was so ashamed of what she’d had to do to win the war for us that it took me seven years more to convince her she was worthy of me …’

“ ‘I kiss the hem of your robe!’ Telemachus exclaimed to her and did.

“ ‘In the second place,’ I said, ‘she did all these things for our sake without ever going to Troy in the first place.’

“ ‘Really,’ Helen protested.

“ ‘Excuse me, sir …’ said presently Peisistratus.

“ ‘Wine’s at your elbow,’ I declared. ‘Drink deep, boys; I’ll tell you the tale.’

“ ‘That’s not what Prince Telemachus wants,’ Helen said.

“ ‘I know what Prince Telemachus wants.’

“ ‘He wants word of his father,’ said she. ‘If you must tell a story at this late hour, tell the one about Proteus on the beach at Pharos, what he said of Odysseus.’

“ ‘Do,’ Peisistratus said.

“ ‘Hold on,’ I said,” I say: “ ‘It’s all one tale.’

“ ‘Then tell it all,’ said Helen. ‘But excuse yours truly.’

“ ‘Don’t go!’ cried Telemachus.

“ ‘A lady has her modesty,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll fill your cups, gentlemen, bid you good night, and retire. To the second—’

“ ‘Who put out the light?’ asked Peisistratus.

“ ‘Wait!’ cried Telemachus.

“ ‘Got you!’ cried I, clutching hold of his cloak-hem. After an exchange of pleasantries we settled down and drank deep in the dark while I told the tale of Menelaus and his wife at sea:

3

“ ‘Seven years,’ ” I say et cetera, “ ‘the woman kept her legs crossed and the north wind blew without let-up, holding us from home. In the eighth, on the beach at Pharos, with Eidothea’s help I tackled her dad the Old Man of the Sea and followed his tough instructions: heavy-hearted it back to Egypt, made my hecatombs, vowed my vows. At once then, wow, the wind changed, no time at all till we re-raised Pharos! Not a Proteus in sight, no Eidothea, just the boat I’d moored my wife in, per orders. Already she was making sail; her crew were putting in their oars; my first thought was, they’re running off with Helen; we overhauled them; why was everybody grinning? But it was only joy, not to lose another minute; there was Helen herself by the mast-step, holding out her arms to me! Zeus knows how I poop-to-pooped it, maybe I was dreaming on the beach at Pharos, maybe am still; there I was anyhow, clambering aboard: “Way, boys!” I hollered. “Put your arse in it!” Spang! went the mainsail, breeze-bellied for Sparta; those were Helen’s arms around me; it was wedding night! We hustled to the sternsheets, never mind who saw what; when she undid every oar went up; still we tore along the highways of the fish. “Got you!” I cried, couldn’t see for the beauty of her, feel her yet, what is she anyhow? I decked her; only think, those gold limbs hadn’t wound me in twenty years …’