I AM ODYSSEUS,” I said, my hand hanging empty in the air before me, “Son of Laertes. King of Ithaca.”
The giant turned his gaze to my hand as though he had just noticed it. “Yes, you are.”
I lowered my arm. “Right . . . well . . . like I said . . . I’m looking for a guide.”
“A guide to what?”
“Acheron,” I said, “the river. There’s a certain spot where a ferry takes souls to the Underworld.”
“This way,” said the giant. Then he turned his back on us and set off with long, slow strides.
I looked at Diomedes, who stared after the giant with a frown. “Might as well follow,” he said.
I wasn’t especially pleased with the way that scenario had played out. In fact, I think I felt a little jealous of Diomedes. I was supposed to be the master strategist. I was the Man of Winged Words, who sweet-talked Achilles out of his bride, won glory in the assembly, and awed the Trojans in their own banquet hall by the sheer force of my personality. When it comes to winning an argument, I like to think I have an edge over the common man; and frankly, Diomedes was never known for his wit. Yet his awkwardness had triumphed where my rhetoric had clearly failed.
I quickened my pace and fell in step alongside the giant, who, for all I could tell, did not even notice I was there. “Hail and long life to you!” I said, flashing a smile that would melt the heart of a Lycaean princess—or a Trojan warlord, for that matter.
The giant did not acknowledge my presence.
“This land is foreign to me,” I said, abandoning the formal language of my fathers. “I am unfamiliar with your customs. Perhaps I introduced myself poorly. You’ll forgive my uncultured ways. In Achaea, we always introduce ourselves to strangers, you see. We go through our family histories together to see if some bond of friendship exists between our fathers. Quick way to an easy meal, if you know what I mean.”
Still there was no reaction.
“I’ve seen it happen in the most unlikely places, even between mortal foes! My friend here—his name is Diomedes—once discovered that his grandfather was the guest-friend of an enemy he met on the battlefield. They ended up swapping armor. The catch was, this other guy’s gear was pretty beat-up, but Diomedes’ armor was inlaid with gold. Gold! Can you believe it? Diomedes swapped his own gold armor for bronze.”
The giant strode on, looking neither left nor right. I cast a glance back at Diomedes.
“Very well, then,” I said, opting for a more aggressive approach. “You don’t like small talk. I can see that. But at least tell us your name.”
“I am nobody,” said the giant.
“Oh, come now,” I replied. “Show a little courtesy at least.”
“And what place might courtesy have in the vestibule of Hades?”
It wasn’t much, but it was a start. He was talking. “Eu legeis, my friend! Excellent point! I keep forgetting that I’m dead, you see. You would have thought I’d grasped the implications by now. But courtesy notwithstanding, don’t you think your name might have some practical value for us?”
“No,” he answered, and picked up his pace.
I couldn’t let this slide. I had finally made a little headway and needed to make the most of it. “As you say, O giant of the silent stride, this is no place of courtesies, so what if we need further help? What if we are ambushed by brigands? How do we get your attention? I can see you’d be a good man to have in a fight.”
“I would indeed,” he answered, “if I fought. But I do not fight. And I have never fought. And I never will fight. In the greatest of all battles, I stood idle. That is why I am here. I would not fight for the Authority Himself. Why would I fight for you?” And the giant lapsed back into his stony silence.
“Very well, then, tell me this at least: Why did you listen to my friend when he asked for help? What did he say that was so convincing? Answer me that, and I’ll shut my mouth.”
“If you will be silent, I will answer your question.”
“Very well, then. Silent shall I be. Silent as the summer sun. Silent as a mouse hole. Silent as a stone in a crypt. Just tell me what he said that was so convincing.”
“Nothing.”
“Honestly, you’ll have to do better than that,” I answered, feeling cheated.
“Nothing he said changed my mind. Nothing he could say ever would. His foot convinced me.”
“His foot?”
But that was all I could pry out of the giant, so I fell back in step with Diomedes. “You hear that?”
“Heard it.” He pursed his lips as though he were holding back a smile.
“Your foot, though. He said your foot convinced him to help us.”
“What did you expect?” answered Diomedes, now smiling into the distant darkness. “You didn’t think it was my eloquence, did you?”
“No, of course not. But then, I don’t see what’s so exceptional about your feet, either.”
Diomedes smiled broadly. “I have very nice feet.”
“If you ask me, they’re rather ordinary. A little veiny, even. Or was it one foot in particular? Which foot did you use? Is it the way you walk?”
Then I saw it. “Diomedes, stop.”
He froze and drew his sword. “What is it?”
“Your feet,” I answered.
He scowled and sheathed the sword. “I thought we discussed this.”
“No. No. Look.”
He looked at his feet and shook his head.
“Look closely,” I said.
He leaned over and squinted.
“Take a step back.”
He stepped back and caught his breath. “Footprints!”
“That’s right.”
“We’re not shades.”
“Not anymore.”
“We’re alive!”
I nodded, “Or at any rate, not quite dead.”
In retrospect, I can see there was more truth in that last phrase than I could have known. To be sure, we weren’t quite dead, but then neither were we entirely alive, and I know now that it had something to do with the nature of evil. You see, three thousand years in Hell have made this much clear to me: evil is nothing. It’s a vacuum. It’s a space where something should have been but isn’t. Cowardice is the absence of courage. Malice is the absence of love. Falsehood is the absence of truth. And so on. My point is this: the more attached you are to evil, the less you actually are. So I was only half-right when I said we weren’t quite dead. The truth is, we weren’t quite alive because we had filled our lives with emptiness.
Take me and my lies, for example.
Ever since that night in my father’s hall, I had lived on the fruit of lies. Savored them. Treasured, polished, and cultivated them. They had been more useful to me than my weapons and more comfort to me than my friends. Sure, truth had a certain power of its own, but a good lie gave the truth a particular shape and direction, stored it away in a hidden seam to be used later like a knife in a cloak. No, lies were more to me than the means to an end. I was an artisan of lies. I was famous for them.
Surely you’ve heard of my adventure with the Cyclops. Now there was a piece of masterful lying. The situation could not have been direr. I had already lost several of my men, we were trapped in a cave with a giant one-eyed cannibal, and I was armed with nothing but a jug of wine. Yet I knew from the moment that poor brute opened his mouth that I was going to get the better of him. Why? Because his lies were bad. “Where’s your ship?” he asked, not even removing his finger from his nose to speak. “I’m just curious. I want to be sure to welcome you good and proper.”
Anyone could see that his true intent was to murder us and steal our ship, and I knew straightaway that if he thought that was a good lie, he’d believe just about anything I told him. So when he asked for my name, I said, “Nobody is my name, and I come from the land of Nowhereopolis.” We were as good as free from that moment on. Once we had him drunk, we gouged out his eye, and when his friends came to help him, the only thing he could think to say was, “Nobody is hurting me!”
It almost makes me chuckle to remember it. But only almost, because now that I’ve lived with my lies for so long, I’ve begun to look back at that lumbering brute and wonder what life must have been like for him after we left. All his miserable days, he’d lived more or less alone, milking his goats and churning cheese. He’d never really hurt anyone until we showed up, and who could blame him for being sore when he caught us in his home stealing livestock?
Nobody. Another powerful lie. A lie to save men’s lives, but a lie nonetheless. An emptiness. The absence of something true. And I was beginning to wonder if all those lies had been worth the price of Hell.
I had plenty of time to wonder about all sorts of things as we trudged across that vacuous wilderness of soot and stone. I wondered about my wife and I wondered about my son and I wondered about all those times I had betrayed them both. But in spite of everything, my thoughts kept returning to Diomedes, whose shield knocked rhythmically against his back as he marched ahead of me. Ours had always been an uneasy friendship. He never quite trusted me, and I never quite took him as seriously as he deserved. Yet we were truly friends, I think. We both had risked our lives for each other on countless occasions. And we were always teaming up for one wild adventure or another.
What was it, I wondered, that kept bringing us together? Diomedes was the living embodiment of everything I lacked, the model of a Greek warrior: honest, pious, respectful, and reserved . . . as dependable in a fight as a good strong spear. In a land populated entirely by short, swarthy men, he was six spans tall and honey blond. No one could figure that out. Neither of his parents had light hair. He had been blond from childhood, or we might have accused him of dyeing it. A rumor got around that Helios had seduced his mother. I think even he believed it.
And as if he were short on blessings, the gods also made him skilled at everything that counted. He could box, run, ride, and throw better than any man save Achilles himself. His swordsmanship was unparalleled, and although he wasn’t much good with a bow (a coward’s weapon by Achaean standards), he could pick birds off a wall with his spear. He was the kind of child who was always chosen first in games, the kind of adolescent who was always leading a gang of rowdy boys, the kind of man who was always given the first seat at a banquet, the kind of soldier who always stood in the front line. So long as he kept his mouth shut, he was golden. And who cared for talk anyway? Achaeans are men of action.
He did, however, have one very serious, very visible shortcoming: he was my friend. For all his decency, loyalty, and trustworthiness, he was a key player in some of my most nefarious schemes. And as often as people warned him that our friendship would bring him to an ugly end, he remained my friend until the day I died.
I used to wonder why he stood by me all those years. For that matter, I used to wonder why I stood by him. Perhaps his presence lent my scheming some legitimacy. Or perhaps I just enjoyed seeing someone so perfect do something wicked every now and then. It was a comfort to know that he wasn’t as wonderful as everyone thought. And what did he get out of it all? I really couldn’t tell you. The adventure, perhaps. Or the change of pace. I may be a scheming, two-faced, lying fraud, but I know how to have a good time.
And here’s something else: I always win.
At a key moment in the Trojan War—it must have been in the ninth year, because Achilles was in his funk and the Trojans had come outside their walls to harass us—I decided it was time to stop avoiding the battle and to make an appearance at the front. A good general has to wander up near the battle line every now and then, or the men start to get resentful. So I waited for a lull in the fighting and then pushed my way forward. I made a show of rattling my shield and stabbed some poor sap who looked like he was already dead. Wouldn’t you know, the moment I stepped into the no-man’s-land, the Trojans made a concerted push forward, and I found myself surrounded.
I was beginning to think the best strategy might be to cut and run when out steps this enormous hulk of a man, a real side of beef, wrapped head to toe in bronze and carrying the most enormous, wicked-looking spear I’d ever seen. His thighs were like great, hairy hams, and his nose pushed across his face until it was practically under his right eye. This was a man who had seen a fight or two, and I knew from the moment I set eyes on him that I was in serious trouble. When he stepped forward, the whole Trojan line pulled back a little, waiting to see what I’d do.
Truthfully, I don’t have any qualms about running from a fight, so long as no one is there to see it. A live dog is better than a dead lion, as they say. But my men were watching me, and all day I’d been yelling orders and shouting about death and glory and whatnot. So I just stood there and watched this nasty fellow come barreling in my direction, knowing that if I didn’t think up something up quick, my day was going to end short and glorious. So I waited for him to come within throwing distance, and then I tossed my spear to the ground. It had the desired effect: the poor sap was baffled. All he’d ever known was the throw-throw-stab-stab protocol. So he stopped running and lowered his spear. “Hey you!” he shouted. “What did you do that for?”
Maybe he thought that I was trying to surrender or that I recognized his shield and wanted to talk ransom. But I yelled back at him, “I don’t need it.”
“Then you’re a fool,” he said. “I’ll skewer you right now.”
“You don’t know me, do you?” I said.
He coughed and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. “Of course I know you. You are Odysseus, the Ithacan, that cowardly schemer. Well, your scheming ends today when I rip your life out with my spear.”
They were bold words, but his tone didn’t match. “So who are you, then?” I answered, feeling reassured.
“Sokos, Son of Hippasos. Brother of the man you just killed.”
I looked down at the corpse at my feet and saw a likeness. This was, of course, bad news if I was looking to get out of a fight, so I decided to go with bravado over flattery. “Never heard of you,” I said. I had heard of him in fact, but it wouldn’t do to let him know that. “Even so, I’ll grant you this honor: now that I have your name, I’ll be sure to let your parents know that you died worthily at the hands of a worthy foe. Needless to say, it will be a lie. I plan to leave your corpse lying here for the dogs to eat. Moreover, you will die slowly, screaming for mercy through a gurgle of blood while I slit you navel to nose, which is why—to answer your question—I threw down my spear.” Of course, that was not the reason. Tossing the spear aside was an act of desperation, prompted by the realization that it wasn’t going to do me any good anyway. “This is my last fight before supper, you see, and I’d like to make it last. All the same, I’ll tell your parents you died well, because frankly, I pity you.”
That did it. The big lummox had never been talked to that way in his life. It was too much for him. He dropped his shield to run; and just as he turned around, I picked up my spear and skewered him in the back. Not a brave or clever feat, I’ll admit, but I lived to lie about it. And him? I’ll put it this way: when I got back to my tent and hung his armor on the wall, I had a blacksmith hammer the hole in his breastplate inside out so it looked like I’d stabbed him in the chest. It wouldn’t do his or my reputation any good for folks to remember how he had really died.
Yes, I made a name for myself among the Achaeans, and if it wasn’t entirely untainted, it was at least feared. And Diomedes? He decorated his tent with more armor than I ever did, and all with holes pointing the right direction. But somehow he considered me his equal.