My dearest husband,
I was warned once that you were trouble. My mother used to say it was stitched into your very name, that you would never be separated from it. I hushed her, and told her that you were too clever for trouble to entangle you. You’d outsmart it, I said. And if that didn’t work, you’d outrun it. I suppose I should have known that the trouble would find you at sea, where cleverness and speed offer little advantage.
A year since Troy fell, and still you are not home. A year. Can Troy be so much further now than it was when you sailed there ten years ago? Where have you been, Odysseus? The stories I hear are not encouraging. If I tell you what the bards have been singing about you, you’ll laugh. At least, I hope you will.
They say you set sail from Troy and after a couple of piratical diversions, you found yourself marooned on an island of one-eyed sheep-tending giants. Cyclopes, they call them, these men each with one eye and many sheep. Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? They say you found yourself trapped within the cave-dwelling of a vicious Cyclops; he had every intention of killing and eating you. I think he planned to kill you first, anyway.
As the bards sing it, the spirits of your men – who were trapped with you – swiftly turned to despair. But, as always, you came up with a plan. I wonder if they change the story when they sing in other men’s houses? Certainly, in the halls of Ithaca, you are always the quickest, the cleverest, the most inventive. They say you gave the Cyclops a full wineskin and bade him drink. If this is to be my last meal, you said, let me share my hospitality with you, just the same. You gave a skin full of undiluted wine to a giant who usually drinks sheep’s milk. No wonder he got so drunk so fast. What’s your name, traveller, he asked, his words slurring into one another. ‘I’d like to know who I’ll be eating.’
‘They call me No One,’ you replied, not wanting to let him have the glory of boasting about killing you. He was drunk, and perhaps also stupid, so it seemed to him to be a real name.
But anyone could have thought to give him strong drink. The brilliant brutality of your plan came after that. And the bards really enjoy this part, Odysseus: they sing this story over and over again. Because once the wine was flowing through the Cyclops like blood, your men wanted to kill him as he slept. They had not thought, as you had, that they would then be stuck in a cave with a dead giant. You needed the Cyclops awake and unhurt, so he could roll the boulder – which he used as a door – back from the opening of the cave. You and your men could not have done it, together or alone. They didn’t believe you so you proved it to them. Three warriors, heaving against a rock with all their might, and it did not move a finger’s width. No man could escape. Only then did they appreciate the complexity of the problem.
Did I say unhurt? Of course you did not want the Cyclops to be unhurt. But you needed him to be the right kind of hurt.
You saw he used a large stick to help him negotiate his way around the rocky terrain, as he was looking after his sheep. When he came into his cave at the end of each day, he rolled the boulder across the doorway so the sheep were penned inside, safe from wolves and other predators while he slept. But even a giant needed two hands to do that. So he would herd the sheep inside, then prop the stick next to the doorway, leaving his hands free to move the rock.
You took the stick and held it in the embers of the fire, turning it all the while. The men were moaning and complaining that their fate was so cruel, to survive ten years of war and then die on the way home, food for a giant. But you ignored them, turning the stick, which was as tall as you, while it blackened into a point. Even then, the men did not understand what you were planning, and you had to tell them twice to step back and hide among the giant’s woolly herd. I knew, even before the bard sang this for the first time, what you were about to do. Your ruthlessness is one of the first things I loved about you, Odysseus. It still is.
You drove the sharpened stick into his eye socket, and twisted as it popped and fizzed. The way the bards sing it, his scream was enough to waken the war dead. You stepped back to join your men, nestled among the sheep, holding them firmly by their soft necks, so they could not run away. The Cyclops pulled the stake from his wet, black socket and screamed again, louder than before. He made such an awful sound that the other giants came running. They were solitary people, I’m told, living in their separate caves with their separate flocks. But none of them had ever heard such a noise before, and they could not ignore it. What’s happening, they cried at the boulder’s outside face. Moving it aside would be – for them – an intrusion too great. They stood in silence, listening. I’m hurt, screamed the Cyclops.
You or I would have asked the same question, Odysseus. How are you hurt? Or I might ask, how can I help? But the Cyclopes have a different custom and they asked the question which mattered most to them: who is hurting you? The injured Cyclops knew the answer, and he bellowed it out from the depths of his ravaged throat. No One has hurt me, he cried. No One has put out my eye.
The other giants looked from one to another and shrugged. They are not, as a race, given to curiosity. The tone of the Cyclops’ voice seemed filled with pain, but all had heard the same thing. No one was hurting him.
Irritated at the disturbance, they slunk back to their caves and gave the troublemaker no more thought. But even though you had already achieved so much, and even though your false name had proved a far more successful stratagem than you had imagined it could, you were still thinking. That’s my man.
The bards pause here for refreshments. They like to build the tension, of course, by leaving you trapped in the cave, a prisoner. They know they will earn themselves an extra goblet of wine for that. Only then do they continue: you knew when morning had come, because there was a hole in the roof of the Cyclops’ cave, too small for a man to get through, and too high for a man to reach. But it let the sun in and the smoke out, and so you knew that it was dawn. So did the sheep, and they began to bleat in the thin grey light. The Cyclops knew he must allow the sheep out to graze, but he was determined that you should not escape him. So he rolled the boulder only halfway across, and sat beside it.
One of your men made a whimpering sound, lost amid the noise of the sheep. He still thought the giant would have the best of you, Odysseus. But you knew what to do. You lashed three of the sheep together, and showed your men how to hang on to the woolly bellies and hold tight. You aimed a kick at the sheep and they ran towards the door. As you began to attach the second man to another trio, the Cyclops dropped his giant hand and felt three fluffy backs and heads – no trace of a man – and sat back so they could leave. When it came to your turn – last to go as always – there was only one huge ram left. Luckily you are not a tall man. You clung to his underside and sneaked out past the Cyclops to your freedom.
You escaped unharmed, which is more than could be said for the monster which had detained you. But oh, Odysseus, trouble clung to you like fleece to those sheep. As you sailed away, you could not resist shouting back at the island, and telling the maimed giant that you, Odysseus, had bettered him. You could not help boasting of your victory. And if you had known that the blinded creature was the son of Poseidon, who would call down his father’s curse upon you, I’m not sure you would have done anything differently. You never have been able to resist gloating.
The bards sing that Poseidon did curse you, Odysseus, and swore it would take you ten years to reach Ithaca once again. He swore that your men would be punished along with you, and that you would return home without them. Without any of your crew. Will they abandon you, Odysseus, or will they die trying to reach home? The two prospects are equally gloomy for those of us who wait for you all on Ithaca. I would never wish you to be anything other than what you are, husband. But I wish I’d been able to cover your mouth before you told the Cyclops your name.
Your loving wife,
Penelope