Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad - The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Telemachus would return safely.

But when I questioned her about Odysseus was he alive or dead? she refused to answer, and slipped away.

So much for the gods not wanting me to suffer.

They all tease. I might as well have been a stray dog, pelted with stones or with its tail set alight for their amusement. Not the fat and bones of animals, but our suffering, is what they love to savour.

Sleep is the only rest we get;

It’s then we are at peace:

We do not have to mop the floor

And wipe away the grease.

We are not chased around the hall

And tumbled in the dirt

By every dimwit nobleman

Who wants a slice of skirt.

And when we sleep we like to dream

We dream we are at sea,

We sail the waves in golden boats,

So happy, clean and free.

In dreams we all are beautiful

In glossy crimson dresses;

We sleep with every man we the

We shower them with kisses.

They fill our days with feasting,

We fill their nights with song,

We take them in our golden boats

And drift the whole year long.

And all is mirth and kindness,

There are no tears of pain;

For our decrees are merciful

Throughout our golden reign.

But then the morning wakes us up:

Once more we toil and slave, ‘

And hoist our skirts at their command

For every prick and knave.

Telemachus avoided the ambush set for him, more by good luck than good planning, and reached home in safety. I welcomed him with tears of joy, and so did all the maids. I am sorry to say that my only son and I then had a big fight.

‘You have the brains of a newt!’ I raged. ‘How dare you take one of the boats and go off like that, without even asking permission? You’re barely more than a child! You have no experience at commanding a ship! You could have been killed fifty times over, and then what would your father have to say when he gets home? Of course it would be all my fault for not keeping a better eye on you!’ and so on.

It was not the right line to take. Telemachus got up on his high horse. He denied that he was a child any longer, and proclaimed his manhood he’d come back, hadn’t he, which was proof enough that he’d known what he was doing. Then he defied my parental authority by saying he didn’t need anyone’s permission to take a boat that was more or less part of his own inheritance, but it was no thanks to me that he .had” any inheritance left, since I hadn’t defended it and now it was all being eaten up by the Suitors. He then said that he’d made the decision he’d had to make he’d gone in search of his father, since no one else seemed prepared to lift a finger in that direction. He claimed his father would have been proud of him for showing some backbone and getting out from under the thumbs of the women, who as usual were being overemotional and showing no reasonableness and judgment.

By ‘the women’, he meant me. How could he refer to his own mother as ‘the women’?

What could I do but burst into tears?

I then made the Is-this-all-the-thanks-I-get, You have no idea what I’ve been through for your sake., no-woman-should-have-to-put-up-with-this-sort of-suffering, I-might-as-well-kill-myself speech. But I’m afraid he’d heard it before, and showed by his folded arms and rolled-up eyes that he was irritated by it, and was waiting for me to finish.

That done, we settled down. Telemachus had a nice bath drawn for him by the maids. They gave him a good scrubbing, and some fresh clothes, and then they brought in a lovely dinner for him and for some friends he’d invited over Piraeus and Theoclymenus were their names. Piraeus was an Ithaca, and had been in cahoots with my son on his secret voyage. I resolved to have a word with him later, and speak to his parents about letting him run so wild. Theoclymenus was a stranger. He seemed nice enough, but I made a mental note to find out what I could about his ancestry, because boys the age of Telemachus can so easily get into the wrong company.

Telemachus wolfed down the food and knocked back the wine, and I reproached myself for not having taught him better table manners. Nobody could say I hadn’t tried. But every time I’d remonstrated with him, that old hen Eurycleia had interposed. ‘Come now, my child, let the boy enjoy his dinner, there’ll be all the time in the world for manners once he’s grown up’, and much more in that vein.

‘As the twig is bent, so will the tree grow,’ I would say.

‘And that’s-just it!’ she would cackle. ‘We don’t want to bend the little twiggi, do we? Oh, nosie nosie no! We want him to grow straight and tall, and get the juicy goodness out of his nice big hunk of meat, without our crosspatch mummy making him all sad!’

Then the maids would giggle, and heap his plate, and tell him what a fine boy he was. I’m sorry to say he was quite spoiled.

When the three young men had finished eating, I asked about the trip. Had Telemachus found out anything about Odysseus and his whereabouts, that having been the object of his excursion? And if he had indeed discovered something, could he possibly bring himself to share this discovery with me?

You can see things were still a little frosty on my part. It’s hard to lose an argument to one’s Teenaged son. Once they’re taller than you are, you have only your moral authority: a weak weapon at best.

What Telemachus said next surprised me a good deal. After dropping in on King Nestor, who could tell him nothing, he’d gone off to visit Menelaus.

Menelaus himself. Menelaus the rich, Menelaus the thickhead, Menelaus of the loud voice, Menelaus the cuckold. Menelaus, the husband of Helen cousin Helen, Helen the lovely, Helen the septic bitch, root cause of all my misfortunes.

‘And did you see Helen?’ I asked in a somewhat constricted voice.

‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘She gave us a very good dinner.’ He then launched into some rigmarole about the Old Man of the Sea, and how Menelaus had learned from this elderly and dubious-sounding gentleman that Odysseus was trapped on the island of a beautiful goddess, where he was forced to make love with her all night, every night.

By this time I’d heard one beautiful-goddess story too many. ‘And how was Helen?’ I asked.

‘She seemed fine,’ said Telemachus. ‘Everyone told stories about the war at Troy they were great stories, a lot of fighting and combat and guts spilling out—my father was in them—but when all the old vets started blubbering, Helen spiked the drinks, and then we laughed a lot.’

‘No, but,’ I said, ‘how did she look?

‘As radiant as golden Aphrodite,’ he said. ‘It was a real thrill to see her. I mean, she’s so famous, and part of history and everything. She was absolutely everything she’s cracked up to be, and more!’ He grinned sheepishly.

‘She must be getting a little older, by now,’ I said as calmly as I could. Helen could not possibly still be as radiant as golden Aphrodite! It would not be within nature!

‘Oh, well, yeah,’ said my son. And now that bond which is supposed to exist between mothers and fatherless sons finally asserted itself. Telemachus looked into my face and read its expression.

‘Actually, she did look quite old,’ he said. ‘Way older than you. Sort of worn out. All wrinkly,’ he added. ‘Like an old mushroom. And her teeth are yellow

Actually, some of them have fallen out. It was only after we’d had a lot to drink that she still looked beautiful.’

I knew he was lying, but was touched that he was lying for my sake. Not for nothing was he the great-grandson of Autolycus, friend of Hermes the arch-cheat, and the son of wily Odysseus of the soothing voice, fruitful in false invention, persuader of men and deluder of women. Maybe he had some brains after all. ‘Thank you for all you have told me, my son,’ I said. ‘I’m grateful for it. I will now go and sacrifice a basket of wheat, and pray for your father’s safe return.’