THE ODYSSEY — AI Adaptation
Book 19: The Scar

Odysseus stayed behind in the hall, turning over in his mind, with Athena beside him, how to kill the suitors. He spoke quietly to Telemachus.

"We have to move the weapons. Carry every piece of armor inside, out of sight. When the suitors notice and ask where it's gone, put them off with soft words. Tell them you stored it away from the smoke, since it's not the gleaming armor your father left when he sailed for Troy: it's gone black and grimy wherever the fire's breath has reached it. And tell them something more, the bigger reason: you're afraid that one night, full of wine, they'll start a quarrel, wound each other, and ruin both the feast and the courtship. Iron has a way of drawing a man's hand toward it."

Telemachus listened to his father and obeyed. He called the nurse, Eurycleia.

"Nurse, keep the women shut in their rooms while I move my father's fine armor down into the storeroom. It's been sitting here neglected, dulled by smoke, ever since my father went away. I was only a child then. Now I want it put where the fire can't reach it."

"I only wish, child," Eurycleia answered, "that you'd take charge of the whole house and guard everything that's yours. But who will go with you and hold the light? You won't let the slave women come out, and they would have lit the way."

"This stranger will," said clear-thinking Telemachus. "I won't let any man who eats my bread sit idle, no matter how far he's traveled to get here."

She had no answer to that. She bolted the doors of the great hall.

Then Odysseus and his shining son sprang up and began hauling in the helmets, the round shields, the sharp spears. And ahead of them walked Pallas Athena, holding a golden lamp, filling the room with a beautiful light.

Telemachus stopped, staring. "Father — I'm seeing something I can't believe. The walls, the beams, the pinewood rafters, the tall pillars, they're all glowing as if a fire were burning inside them. Surely there's a god in the house, one of those who hold the wide sky."

"Quiet," said crafty Odysseus. "Hold the thought and ask nothing. This is how the gods of Olympus work. Now go and lie down. Leave me here — I want to test the slave women and your mother a little. She'll question me about everything, crying."

Telemachus crossed the hall by torchlight and went to the room where he always slept. There he lay down and waited for morning. And Odysseus was left in the hall, turning over in his mind, with Athena beside him, how to kill the suitors.

  

Then Penelope came down from her room, lovely as Artemis, as golden Aphrodite. They set her chair by the fire where she always sat, a chair worked with ivory and silver, made long ago by a craftsman named Icmalius, with a footstool built into it, and a thick fleece thrown over it. There she sat down. The white-armed slave women came in from their quarters. They cleared away the heaps of bread and the tables and the cups the proud men had drunk from, dumped the burnt-out embers on the floor, and piled fresh logs on the fire baskets for light and warmth.

And Melantho turned on Odysseus again. "Still here, stranger? Still going to plague us all night, prowling around the house, eyeing the women? Get out the door, you wretch — be glad you got a meal. Or you'll go out with a burning log thrown after you."

Odysseus glared at her. "Strange creature — why do you come at me with such spite? Because I'm filthy, because my clothes are rags, because I beg from town to town? I have no choice; that's what beggars and wanderers are. I lived in a fine house once, a rich man among men, and I gave plenty to wanderers like me, whoever came, whatever they needed. I had slaves beyond counting, all the things people have who live well and are called wealthy. Then Zeus, son of Cronus, tore it all away — because he chose to. So watch yourself, woman. One day you may lose every bit of the shine you flaunt now over the other slave women. Your mistress may turn on you in anger. Or Odysseus may come home — there's still hope of that. And even if he's dead and never coming back, there's his son, Telemachus, grown now by Apollo's grace. Nothing the women do wrong in this house escapes him anymore. He's no longer a child."

Penelope heard him and rounded on the attendant. "Bold bitch — don't think I haven't noticed what you're doing. You'll wipe it off on your own head. You knew perfectly well, because I told you myself, that I meant to question this stranger in my hall about my husband. I am sick with grief."

Then she said to her housekeeper, Eurynome, "Bring a chair with a fleece on it, so the stranger can sit and tell me his story and hear what I have to say. I want to ask him things."

Eurynome was quick. She set down a polished chair, threw a fleece over it, and Odysseus, who had borne so much, sat down.

Penelope began. "Stranger, first let me ask you this myself. Who are you? Where do you come from? Where is your city, and who are your parents?"

"My lady," Odysseus answered, "no one on the whole wide earth could find fault with you. Your fame reaches the sky itself, like the fame of some faultless king who rules many strong men, fearing the gods, upholding justice, so that the black earth gives him wheat and barley, the trees bend with fruit, the flocks bring forth steadily, the sea gives up its fish, all because of his good rule, and his people thrive under him. So ask me anything else here in your house, but don't ask my family and my homeland. Don't fill my heart with more pain than it already carries. I have so much to grieve over. And it isn't right to sit crying and wailing in someone else's house. Endless mourning only makes things worse. One of your slave women might be angry with me (or you yourself) and say I'm awash in tears because I'm heavy with wine."

"Stranger," Penelope said, "the gods destroyed whatever beauty I had, my face and my body, the day the Argives sailed for Troy, and my husband Odysseus with them. If he came home and took my life back into his hands, my name would shine again, and shine more brightly. But now I only grieve — so many troubles a god has poured on me. All the chiefs who rule the islands (Dulichium and Same and wooded Zacynthus) and the men who hold sunny Ithaca itself, they all court me against my will, and they're eating up my house. So I have no care to spare for guests, or for people begging help, or for heralds who serve the people. I waste away, longing for Odysseus.

"They press me to marry, and I spin out tricks. First a god put it in my mind to set up a great loom in the hall and weave a wide, fine cloth. And I told them: 'Young men, my suitors, since Odysseus is dead, wait. Don't rush this marriage until I finish the cloth. I don't want my thread to go to waste. It's a burial shroud for the hero Laertes, for the day death takes him in its long, bitter sleep. I won't have the women of this land blame me, saying a man who won so much was laid out with no shroud.' That's what I said, and they believed me. So by day I wove at the great loom, and at night, by torchlight, I unraveled it. For three years I fooled them, and they trusted me. But when the fourth year came, with its turning seasons, the wearing-down of the months, the heaping up of days — then, through my slave women, those uncaring dogs, they caught me at it and came in shouting. So I had to finish it, whether I wanted to or not.

"And now I can't escape the marriage, and I can't find another scheme. My parents push me hard to marry, and my son is bitter, watching them devour his inheritance. He understands now, a grown man able to care for the house, and Zeus grants him honor. But even so, tell me your family, where you're from. You weren't born from the old oak in the story, or from a rock."

"My lady, honored wife of Odysseus," he answered, "won't you stop asking about my family? All right — I'll tell you. But you'll give me more grief than I already carry. That's how it always is, when a man has been away from home as long as I have, wandering through so many cities, suffering. Still, I'll answer what you ask.

"There's a land called Crete, out in the middle of the wine-dark sea, beautiful, rich, washed all around by water. The people there are past counting, ninety cities, and the speech is mixed, tongue laid over tongue: Achaeans, the proud native Cretans, the Cydonians, the Dorians in their three tribes, and the noble Pelasgians. The greatest city is Cnossus, where Minos ruled — Minos who spoke with great Zeus every nine years. He was the father of my father, brave Deucalion. Deucalion had two sons: Idomeneus and me. Idomeneus sailed for Troy in his curved ships with the sons of Atreus. My name is Aethon. I'm the younger; he was older and the better man.

"It was in Crete that I saw Odysseus, and gave him gifts of friendship. A gale had driven him off course past Cape Malea on his way to Troy and forced him in to Crete. He barely got clear of the storm and put in at Amnisus, by the cave of Eileithyia, where the harbors are hard and dangerous. He went straight up to the town asking for Idomeneus, calling him an old and honored friend. But Idomeneus had already sailed for Troy ten or eleven days before. So I took Odysseus to my own house and treated him well, hosted him warmly, for I had plenty. And for the men with him I gathered barley and bright wine from the town's stores, and oxen to sacrifice, so they ate their fill. Twelve days the Achaeans stayed, because a great north wind held them, so fierce a man could hardly stand up. Some cruel god had raised it. On the thirteenth day the wind dropped, and they sailed."

He made the lies sound like the truth, and as she listened the tears ran down and her face seemed to melt. As snow melts on the high mountains when the east wind thaws what the west wind piled up, and the rivers run full with the melting, so her lovely cheeks melted with the tears she shed, crying for the husband who was sitting right beside her. Odysseus pitied his wife as she cried, but his eyes stayed still as horn or iron under his lids. By trickery he hid his tears.

When she had had her fill of crying, she spoke again. "Now, stranger, I think I'll test you, and find out whether you really did host my husband and his men, as you say. Tell me what kind of clothes he wore, what he looked like, and the men who came with him."

"My lady, it's hard to say after so long," Odysseus answered. "It's twenty years now since he left and went away from my country. But I'll tell you the picture in my mind. Odysseus wore a heavy purple cloak, doubled over, fastened by a golden brooch with a double clasp. On the face of it was a clever design: a hound holding a dappled fawn in its front paws, gripping it as it struggled. Everyone marveled at it — the way both were made of gold, the dog throttling the fawn, the fawn kicking with its legs to break free. And the tunic against his skin (I noticed it) soft as the skin of a dried onion, and bright as the sun. Many women looked at him with longing.

"One more thing, and take it to heart: I don't know whether he wore these clothes from home, or whether one of his crew gave them to him on the swift ship, or some friend, since Odysseus had friends everywhere — few of the Achaeans were his equal. I myself gave him a bronze sword, and a fine purple double cloak, and a tunic down to his feet, and saw him off with honor onto his ship. And there was a herald with him, a little older than himself. I can tell you what he looked like: round-shouldered, dark-skinned, with thick curly hair. His name was Eurybates, and Odysseus valued him above all the others, because the man's mind matched his own."

Now the longing for tears rose in her even harder, for she knew the signs Odysseus had given were true. And when she had had her fill of crying, she said: "Until now, stranger, I pitied you. From this moment you'll be my friend, honored in my house. I gave him those very clothes you describe, folded them myself from the storeroom, pinned the bright brooch on as an ornament for him. And I'll never welcome him home again. It was a cruel fate that took Odysseus off in the hollow ship to that city I cannot even bear to name."

"Honored wife of Odysseus," he answered, "don't waste your lovely face with grief, don't melt your heart away mourning your husband. I don't blame you. Any woman cries for the husband she lay with, the man who fathered her children, even one far less than Odysseus, who they say was like the gods. But stop your crying and listen. I'll tell you the truth and hide nothing: I have heard, close by, in the rich land of the Thesprotians, that Odysseus is alive and on his way home. He's bringing back a great store of treasure, gathered through the country. But he lost his loyal crew and his hollow ship in the wine-dark sea, sailing from the island of Thrinacia. Zeus and the Sun were furious with him, because his men had killed the Sun's cattle. They all died in the heaving sea. But the waves threw Odysseus, clinging to the keel, up onto land, the country of the Phaeacians, who are close kin to the gods. They honored him like a god in their hearts, gave him many gifts, and wanted to bring him home safe themselves. Odysseus would have been here long ago, but he thought it better to keep traveling and gather more wealth. For no living man knows more tricks of profit than Odysseus. No one can match him.

"All this Pheidon, king of the Thesprotians, told me. And he swore to me (pouring out wine in his own house) that the ship was launched and the crew ready to bring Odysseus home. But he sent me off first, because a Thesprotian ship happened to be sailing for Dulichium with its fields of wheat. He showed me all the treasure Odysseus had gathered, enough to feed a family for ten generations, the riches lying in that king's hall. And he said Odysseus had gone to Dodona, to hear the will of Zeus from the great oak with its high leaves, whether to come back to Ithaca openly or in secret, after so long away.

"So he is safe, and he's coming, very soon now. He won't be kept much longer from his friends and his home. I'll swear it to you. Let Zeus be my witness first, highest and best of the gods, and the hearth of faultless Odysseus, where I've come: everything will happen as I say. Within this very turn of the year Odysseus will come, as one month dies and the next begins."

"May it come true, stranger," wise Penelope answered. "Then you'd soon know my friendship, and so many gifts that everyone who met you would call you blessed. But here is how my heart tells me it will really go: Odysseus will not come home, and you will not get your escort. There are no masters in this house like Odysseus was — if he ever was, to send an honored guest off properly, or welcome one in.

"But come, attendants, wash his feet, and make him a bed, with bedding and cloaks and bright blankets, so he can lie warm until Dawn climbs to her golden throne. And early in the morning, bathe him and rub him with oil, so he can sit beside Telemachus and eat in the hall. And it will go badly for any of those men who keeps tormenting him: whatever his rage, he'll do no more harm here. How else, stranger, will you learn whether I'm better than other women in heart and good sense, if I let you eat in my hall filthy and dressed in rags? Men's lives are short. A hard man, who deals harshly, is cursed by everyone while he lives, and mocked by all when he's dead. But a man without fault, who does no wrong: strangers carry his fame across the whole world, and many call him good."

"Honored wife of Odysseus," he answered, "cloaks and bright blankets became hateful to me the day I left the snowy mountains of Crete behind and sailed off in my ship with long oars. I'll lie as I've lain through many sleepless nights before. I've spent night after night in a rough bed, waiting for the holy Dawn. And having my feet washed gives me no pleasure either. No woman of your house staff will touch my foot, unless there's some old woman, faithful and wise, who has suffered in her heart as much as I have. Her I wouldn't grudge to touch my feet."

"Dear stranger," said Penelope, "no man so wise from a far country has ever come to my house as welcome as you, you speak so clearly and so well. I have an old woman with a careful mind, who raised that poor man well and cared for him, who took him in her arms the moment his mother bore him. She'll wash your feet, weak as she is now. Get up, wise Eurycleia, and wash this man. He's the same age as your master. By now Odysseus must look just like this in his hands and feet, for men age fast in hardship."

The old woman covered her face with her hands and let the hot tears fall, and her grief came out in words. "Oh, my child — I can do nothing for you. Zeus must hate you above all men, though your heart fears the gods. No one ever burned so many rich thigh-pieces to Zeus who loves the thunder, no one gave such fine offerings, as you gave him, praying you'd reach a smooth old age and raise your son to glory. And now he's taken from you alone the day of homecoming. Maybe the women in some far country mock him too, when he comes to a great house, the way all these bitches mock you here. You won't let them wash you, to spare yourself their insults and their shame. But the daughter of Icarius, wise Penelope, has told me to do it, and I'm willing. I'll wash your feet, for Penelope's sake and your own, for the heart in me is stirred with grief. Now listen to what I'll say. Many worn-out strangers have come here, but I tell you, I never saw a man so like Odysseus — your build, your voice, your feet, as you are like him."

"Old woman," Odysseus answered, "that's what everyone says who has seen the two of us — that we're very much alike, just as you say so wisely."

The old woman took the gleaming basin she used for washing feet, poured in plenty of cold water, then added hot. Odysseus sat by the hearth, but quickly turned toward the dark, because it struck him all at once that when she had hold of his leg she might feel the scar, and everything would come out.

She came close and began to wash her master, and she knew the scar at once — the wound a boar had once cut into him with its white tusk, on Mount Parnassus, when he went there to his mother's father, Autolycus, and his sons.

Autolycus was the finest man alive at thieving and false oaths, gifts the god Hermes himself had given him, for Autolycus burned thigh-pieces of lambs and kids that pleased him, and the god went with him gladly. Once Autolycus came to the rich land of Ithaca and found his daughter's son just born. As he finished his supper, Eurycleia set the baby on his knees and said, "Autolycus, now find a name yourself to give your daughter's child. You prayed hard for him."

Autolycus answered, "Son-in-law, daughter — give him the name I say. I've come here a man at odds with many, men and women both, across the wide earth — so let his name be Odysseus, the man of anger. And when he's grown and comes to his mother's family's great house on Parnassus, where my treasures are, I'll give him some, and send him home rejoicing."

So Odysseus went there, when he was grown, to get those gifts. Autolycus and his sons greeted him with handshakes and kind words, and his grandmother Amphithea threw her arms around him and kissed his head and both his fine eyes. Autolycus told his sons to prepare a feast. They led in a five-year-old bull, skinned it, butchered it, cut it skillfully into pieces, put them on spits, roasted them well, and shared out the portions. So all day until sundown they feasted, and no one's heart lacked a fair share. When the sun went down and darkness came, they lay down and took the gift of sleep.

When rosy-fingered Dawn appeared, they set out to hunt: the hounds, and the sons of Autolycus, and noble Odysseus with them. They climbed the steep wooded slope of Parnassus and soon reached its windy folds. The sun was just touching the fields, rising from the deep slow stream of Ocean, when the hunters came down into a glen. The dogs ran ahead, hunting the scent, and behind them came the sons of Autolycus, and Odysseus close on the dogs, shaking his long-shadowed spear.

There, in a thick lair, lay a huge boar. No wet wind blowing ever pierced that thicket, no blazing sun struck it with its rays, no rain got through, so dense it was, and heaped deep with fallen leaves. The boar heard the thud of the men's and dogs' feet as they closed in. He charged out of his den to face them, bristles raised along his back, fire in his eyes, and stood close. Odysseus rushed in first, lifting the long spear in his thick hand, eager to strike — but the boar was quicker, and gored him above the knee, ripping a great gash in the flesh as it lunged sideways, though it didn't reach the bone. Odysseus drove the spear into its right shoulder, and the bright point went straight through. The boar dropped in the dust with a squeal, and its life flew away.

The sons of Autolycus tended to it, and bound up the wound of faultless Odysseus skillfully, and stopped the dark blood with a chant. Then they brought him quickly to their father's house. Autolycus and his sons healed him well, gave him splendid gifts, and sent him home to Ithaca rejoicing. His father and his honored mother were glad to see him back and asked him about everything, how he'd gotten the scar. And he told them the whole story: how the boar had gashed him with its white tusk while he hunted on Parnassus with the sons of Autolycus.

This was the scar the old woman touched with her flat hands, and she knew it. She let the foot drop. The leg fell into the basin, the bronze rang, it tipped over, and the water spilled on the floor. Joy and pain seized her at once. Her eyes filled with tears, and her voice caught. She reached for his chin and said: "You really are Odysseus, dear child — and I didn't know you, not until I touched all of my master."

She looked toward Penelope, wanting to tell her that her husband was here in the house. But Penelope couldn't look that way or notice anything. Athena had turned her mind aside. And Odysseus reached out, gripped the old woman's throat with his right hand, and with his left pulled her close, and said: "Nurse, do you want to destroy me? You nursed me at your own breast. Now, after twenty years of suffering, I've come home to my own country. You've found me out — a god put it in your mind. Be quiet. Let no one else in the house know. Because I tell you this, and it will happen: if a god brings these proud suitors down under my hand, I won't spare even you, my own nurse, when I'm killing the other slave women in my house."

"My child," said wise Eurycleia, "what a thing to let slip past your teeth! You know how firm I am, how nothing breaks me. I'll hold like solid stone, like iron. And listen, if a god brings the proud suitors down under your hand, I'll tell you which women in the house dishonor you, and which are blameless."

"Nurse," Odysseus answered, "why would you list them? You don't need to. I'll watch and learn each one of them myself. Keep it quiet, and leave the rest to the gods."

The old woman went out through the hall to fetch more water, since the first was all spilled. When she had washed him and rubbed him with rich oil, Odysseus drew his chair nearer the fire to warm himself, and hid the scar under his rags.

Then Penelope began to speak again. "Stranger, I want to ask you one more small thing. It's nearly time for the sweet hour of rest, for anyone sleep can take, even in grief. But a god has given me sorrow beyond measure. By day I find some comfort in crying and wailing while I watch over my work and the attendants in the house. But when night comes and sleep takes everyone, I lie in my bed, and sharp cares crowd around my aching heart and torment me as I cry.

"Like the daughter of Pandareus, the nightingale of the green woods, who sings her lovely song when spring is new, perched in the thick leaves of the trees, pouring out her trilling voice that turns and turns, mourning her child Itylus, the son of King Zethus, whom she killed once with bronze in her madness — that's how my heart is pulled two ways. Should I stay with my son and keep everything safe (my property, my slaves, this great high-roofed house) out of respect for my husband's bed and what people say? Or should I go now with the best of the Achaeans who courts me in the hall, the one who offers the richest bride-gifts? My son, while he was still a child and weak in judgment, wouldn't let me marry and leave my husband's house. But now he's grown, full-grown, and he begs me to leave, bitter at the way the Achaeans are eating up his inheritance.

"But listen — interpret this dream for me. I have twenty geese about the house that eat grain soaked from the water, and I love to watch them. A great eagle with a hooked beak came down from the mountain and broke all their necks and killed them. They lay scattered in heaps through the hall, and the eagle soared up into the bright sky. And I cried and wailed, there in my dream, and the lovely-haired Achaean women gathered around me as I grieved that the eagle had killed my geese. Then he came back and perched on a jutting roof-beam, and in a human voice he checked my crying and said: 'Take heart, daughter of far-famed Icarius. This is no dream but a true thing, and it will come to pass. The geese are the suitors, and I, who was the eagle, am your own husband, come home at last to deal out a shameful death to all of them.' Then sweet sleep let me go, and I looked out and saw the geese in the hall pecking at their grain by the trough, just as before."

"My lady," Odysseus answered, "there's no twisting this dream to mean anything else. Odysseus himself told you how it will be fulfilled. The suitors are doomed, every one — not one will escape death and his fate."

"Stranger," Penelope said, "dreams are baffling things, with no clear sense, and not everything in them comes true for people. There are two gates for the fleeting dreams: one made of horn, one of ivory. The dreams that come through the carved ivory deceive us, carrying words that never happen. But the ones that come out through the polished horn bring true things to pass, when a mortal sees them. I don't think my strange dream came from there, though it would be welcome to me and my son if it had.

"And one more thing — take it to heart. This coming dawn brings the hateful day, the day that will tear me from the house of Odysseus. Now I'll set up a contest — the axes. He used to stand them in a row in his hall, twelve of them, like the props that hold up a ship being built, and standing far off he'd shoot an arrow through them all. Now I'll set the suitors this same contest. Whoever most easily strings the bow in his hands and shoots an arrow through all twelve axes, him I'll follow, leaving this house, my husband's house, so beautiful, so full of all I need. I think I'll remember it even in my dreams."

"Honored wife of Odysseus," he answered, "don't put off this contest in your house. Odysseus of the many schemes will come back here before these men, handling that polished bow, can string it and shoot an arrow through the iron."

"Stranger," said Penelope, "if you'd sit beside me in the hall and keep me company, no sleep would touch my eyes. But a person can't stay awake forever. The gods have set a measure for everything, for us mortals on the grain-giving earth. I'll go up to my room and lie down on my bed — my bed of sorrow, always soaked with my tears, since Odysseus went off to that city I cannot bear to name. I'll lie there. You lie down here in this house: either spread something on the floor, or have them set out a bed."

With that she climbed to her bright upper room, not alone, but with her attendants. And there she cried for Odysseus, her dear husband, until bright-eyed Athena laid sweet sleep on her eyelids.