Odysseus: The Return by Valerio Massimo Manfredi

Author:Valerio Massimo Manfredi [Manfredi, Valerio Massimo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780230769366
Publisher: Macmillan

15

I DIDN’T SEE NAUSICAA AGAIN. She wasn’t present at the final banquet that the king and queen gave in my honour, inviting the elders and the counsellors, but it was better that way. Neither she nor I would have been able to face the evening without distress because every instant would have had us longing to be alone, to talk, or not to talk at all, just to look into one another’s eyes. And if my heart was already practised at losing or separating from a loved one, hers was not. It was the first time she’d fallen in love, with a nameless man who appeared out of nowhere on the shores of the island so far away from all other places, and who proved to be none other than the victor of the war that was already on the lips of all the poets.

Despite all that abundant food, between one libation of red wine from the king’s own jugs and the next, all I could think of was leaving. The uncertainty of how I would find my wife again, my son, the father who was like a god for me, was agonizing. And an acute sense of melancholy was welling up inside me at the thought that Nausicaa would be sad and alone for who knows how long . . . until a new, real love drew her thoughts to a husband and a family, children to watch grow and to love. My face would fade, then; my features would dissolve into the mist of time. She would forget me.

The rich gifts that Alcinous had heaped upon me were already stowed under the benches on the ship, and he’d asked the elders to add more of their own: urns and craters, cups and jewellery, treasure which put the plunder I had been carrying back from Troy to shame.

The banqueting mercifully drew to a close and the time for my departure finally arrived.

I approached the king and queen for our final farewells: ‘Wanax Alcinous, wanaxa Arete, rulers of this magnificent land, perhaps there is nothing that I can wish for you that you don’t already have, but I want to say that no matter where I may be, whether I have returned to the homeland I yearn for or whether my destiny has thrust me back again to the ends of the earth, you will always be in my heart. From the moment I leave these shores until the last instant of my life. May the gods protect you and make everything your hearts desire come true.’ I kissed the queen’s hand as, I think, a tear fell upon it.

The king accompanied me in person to the threshold. Before parting for the last time I said to him: ‘There’s something I’ve never dared to ask you, great king, but since I’ll never see you again I’ll do so now. Tell me, how does it feel to sit alongside a god in his true being?’

Alcinous shook his head slightly and the curls of his long hair danced around his face.

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