Ithaca by Patrick Dillon

Author:Patrick Dillon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books

Arete tried not to worry too much about Nausicaa. Her daughter had fallen in love before—quite often, in fact. Arete had been bothered when Nausicaa had spent the entire day in the courtyard with the stranger. She didn’t like the way he had allowed the girl to bring him trays of food and comb his hair—that, she thought, was irresponsible in a man his age. Although she didn’t go as far as her husband in disapproving of fighting men, she shared his view that they were violent, self-centered, and destructive, and she certainly didn’t want Nausicaa running off with one.

But she had faith in her daughter’s essential good sense. Romantic she might have been, fond of stories, given to passionate enthusiasms and wintry sulks; but fundamentally she was a sensible Phaeacian girl growing up on a small island, princess of her little kingdom but utterly inexperienced in the world beyond its shores. That storm-tossed world—the world of fighters—was not for her, and deep down she knew it.

The arrival of that world, in the form of Odysseus, was troublesome. Like Alcinous, she had seen the stranger’s charisma working on the inexperienced Phaeacians. His moody stare, his bunched shoulders and balled fists, the jut of his beard and tilt of his chin as he’d glowered around the hall: they had responded to them like small dogs when a wolf stalks into their kennel. He was bigger than anyone there. They knew it. He knew it. Alcinous, too, knew it, which was why he was so keen to get Odysseus off the island.

When he’d begun his tale—his wholly ridiculous story of witches, demons, giants, dead souls, and the rest—Arete had felt his charisma herself. Of course she knew it was all nonsense. She had seen enough of the world, before her marriage, to have come across fighters before, with their tales of gargantuan slaughter and impossible trials, storms that emptied the sea, battles that filled rivers with blood. Heroic exaggeration was their stock-in-trade. She had even heard the tale of irresistible singers—“sirens”—before, from a Hittite captain who’d sworn it had happened to his brother. Fighting men were all guilty of boasting. It was normal to them, a kind of game. Only the small-town Phaeacians fell for such yarns.

She didn’t. She had felt the tug of Odysseus’s voice, though. Felt the pull of those murmured words, words spoken so softly they might have been meant only for himself, except that they coiled around you and drew you in. That was how the magic worked. Suddenly you felt the salt spray on your cheek, the thump of fear in your own breast. Suddenly you were there with him, clinging to the raft, rigid with fear as the cold ghosts slipped past you. That was what a talking man could do, and the magic of his words had worked on her too.

At a certain moment, though, Arete had begun to feel something else, something more detached. She had become aware, as if she’d been standing beside herself, watching, of Nausicaa’s spellbound awe, of her husband’s frown of concentration.

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