Ithaca by Patrick Dillon Page B

crammed into a corner of the tavern, have I heard storytellers describe the city the Greeks hurled themselves against year after year? How often have I closed my eyes as the thrum of their instruments quickened pace and their voices tumbled over the words, picturing hordes of Trojan soldiers bursting from its gates? Troy, the city that emptied Ithaca of men and filled it with widows’ black. Troy, from which my father was meant to return.
    But in all this time I’ve never seen a Trojan.
    She isn’t a servant girl, I realize suddenly. She’s a slave. We don’t have slaves on Ithaca, but they exist all over Greece. Prizes of war—high-born women, some of them, laboring in their conquerors’ houses, and sometimes in their beds. There aren’t many male slaves. When a town is sacked, the men are slaughtered. It’s the women who become possessions, machines, trophies.
    That explains the look of desolation. Who has she lost? A father, brothers. She was there—that’s the thought I can’t get over. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard the story of Troy’s last night, imagined the shrieks and the crackle of fire, seen flames leaping from houses and burning temples, pictured oil blazing in the streets from smashed shops, piles of bodies, soldiers breaking down doors and dragging Trojans out intothe streets. She was there. A child, maybe, but that last night is still in her mind, seared there forever. She was there, dragged out into the street with her mother sobbing and the body of her father, slashed by Greek swords, slumped on the floor of a home she’ll never see again.
    She was there. And so was my father.

    In the great hall of Nestor’s house, two massive pine logs smolder on the hearth. Beyond it a table is spread with dishes of meat and baskets of bread. Servants—slaves—are pouring wine from pitchers. Cooks turn fat little sausages on a griddle.
    A young man, a fighter with hair oiled and his arms covered in tattoos, greets me and pours me wine. “Are you really Odysseus’s son?” He sounds eager, almost shy. “What was he like?”
    â€œI never met him. He left Ithaca before I was born.”
    â€œWhat do you think happened to him?”
    Bewildered, I stare at him. “That’s what I came to find out.”
    â€œAre you Odysseus’s son?” A girl in a long robe. And there are others behind her, a whole crowd pressing around me. “Do you know what happened to Odysseus? Where is Odysseus?”
    Nestor rescues me. The crowd parts for him, and I find myself clasped in a weak embrace that leaves behind it an old man’s smell and the feathery brush of Nestor’s parchment lips.
    â€œTelemachus. And Mentor. So great a pleasure. I am only sorry I can give you no news of Odysseus. No fresh news. Let me tell you about the last time I saw him . . .” Nestor leads me to the high table and settles himself comfortably against a pile of cushions, waving to a servant for wine. “On the beach at Troy, in fine spirits . . . as we all were, you can imagine. He had a bandage on one arm, his left, a wound from the night Troy fell. His men were stacking treasure in the ships. There isnothing left of Troy, you know, not even a village. No one to live there. It is gone as if it never existed, a graveyard, even the temples of the gods destroyed . . .” He frowns suddenly. “I fear that is the source of Odysseus’s trouble. A vengeful god punishing the man who planned Troy’s fall, for it was Odysseus’s stratagem, you know, his plan , explained to us in council two nights before, that caused Troy’s downfall. I can’t say no one added to it. I myself made some helpful modifications , which, I flatter myself, contributed to its success . . . perhaps even ensured its success. Odysseus, though, was the guiding spirit. A clever man, which is why hope must still remain. If anyone could get