The Second Son of Odysseus
An Excerpt from We First Met in Ithaca or Was it Eden?
Before Achilles’ wrath, Odysseus faked a contagious disease requiring quarantine and left for home with a skeleton crew. In part he missed Penelope, and in part he was afraid that she had been unfaithful to him.
Was their likemindedness a delusion? He had only been with her for a year when he was reluctantly recruited for war. And he had been gone for nine years.
The winds were fair as they rarely were. He reached Ithaca in a little over a week. The gods must be with him.
Disguised in beggar’s rags, he was received with honor as a guest, by the tradition that held that any stranger might actually be a god. Sharing dinner with Penelope, he explained, “I once was a wealthy man, married and happy, without a care. Then like your husband I was recruited for the war at Troy. Word was that the Greek army would be huge. We would overwhelm the Trojans. We would be gone no more than a few months and would return with glory and rich spoils.
But the war dragged on year after year, with no end in sight. Even if I survived and wasn’t maimed, even if we won and the loot were great, I would have wasted the best years of my life.
With a handful of others from Cephalonia and Same, I slipped away in a stolen ship and sailed for home.”
“Would that Odysseus would do likewise. Your wife must have been overjoyed.”
“She was dead.”
“Terrible!”
“Worse than terrible. She had died in childbirth, with another man’s child.”
“And the child?”
“He, too, was dead. I don’t know who the father was. I didn’t stay to find out. I left at once in grief and anger and shame. I’ve been begging and doing random work on fishing boats and on the islands near here, trying to forget, unable to forgive. Then I remembered that Odysseus, my comrade at arms, often spoke of you, and I came here to let you know that I was with him just a few months ago, and he was well. After nine years of war, often fighting in the thick of battle, he had hardly a scar.”
“Little consolation that is. As you say, the war drags on. I may never see him again. And even if he lives and isn’t maimed and does return, after all that killing, he will be a different man. We will have little in common.”
She smiled as she said that, and there was a playful glint in her eye.
After dinner, she invited him to sit with her by the hearth in the megarom and asked him to tell tales of the war, first asking all he knew about Odysseus, but them prodding him to talk about himself. He told one story after another, some remembered rand ecounted with new names, and some totally invented.
She smiled often and sometimes, when a story stirred her fear or admiration, she touched his hand or his leg. She seemed to savor his mixed reactions to her reactions, trying to remain calm and in character, but aroused, tempted to abandon his disguise, right there on the dirt floor of the megarom, even in the presence of slaves.
At the first light of dawn, she took his hand and led him to their marriage bed that he had built with his own hands from a living tree, immovable, as a sign of their love.
Their lovemaking was both a joy and a tragedy to him because he knew that she thought he was a stranger and yet she was giving herself to him readily and passionately.
When she fell asleep, exhausted, he slipped away and returned to Troy, once again with a fair wind.
When the war ended, he was in no hurry to return to Ithaca. She had betrayed him. He had one adventure after another. He lingered with Circe and then even longer with Calypso.
When he finally got back to Ithaca once again disguised as a beggar, the first person he encountered was a bold young boy, who everyone treated with respect, who acted as if the island were his.
At first Odysseus thought this must be Telemachus. But no, it had been twenty years since he had left for Troy. Telemachus would be far older.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Deuteros, second son of Odysseus,” the boy replied proudly.
“But I heard that Odysseus had only one son, and that he has been gone far longer than you are old.”
“How little you know.” The boy laughed. “My father can outwit any man and even gods. The limitations of ordinary men don’t apply to him.”
When he met his loyal swineherd Eumaeus, Odysseus kept his disguise and asked about Deuteros.
“He’s a fine boy isn’t he. He looks just like Odysseus at that age, and like Telemachus as well. He’s a joy to his mother and to all of us.”
Once again, Penelope greeted him as an honored stranger, not recognizing him as Odysseus. Once again, he regaled her with stories of her long-absent husband. He claimed to have, in his journeys, met many men who had fought by his side or had met him in his travels after the war.
Once again, she savored his words, and her eyes danced flirtatiously with his. Once again, at dawn she welcomed him to their marriage bed.
But this time when Penelope, standing before him, shed her garments with a shrug, he backed away, as if she were another temptress like Circe or Calypso.
“I am Odysseus,” he declared.
“Yes, of course.”
“I don’t mean that as role play. This is no game. Here, see this brooch which you gave me when I left for Troy.”
“Yes, indeed. I’m glad you were able to keep it all those years.”
“You are so calm, so matter of fact. Do you believe me?”
“Of course, I do.” She laughed.
“This is not a laughing matter. Is this how you greet every stranger who comes to Ithaca?”
“How could you think that?”
“Deuteros.”
“What?”
“The boy who claims to be your son, and my son as well. I’ve been gone for twenty years, and he is no more than ten. Some stranger had you then, and now you are ready to give yourself to another stranger, not knowing that I am who I am. How often do you do this?”
She laughed again. Then she knelt before him and kissed him on the thigh, on the scar from the boar hunt. “Of course, I knew it was you, both then and now. Why else would I touch and stroke your thigh as we sat by the hearth. I lovingly indulged your fantasy, your role play. If you want me to love you as a stranger or as yourself, that’s all the same to me. I will always love you.”
Rewind —
After Odysseus had been gone for nine years, Penelope went to Troy and one night joined him in bed, pretending to be Athena in the shape of Penelope. It was dark. He could hear her and feel her. She had appeared to him many times before, but always in daylight, and never before had she touched him, much less aroused him. They grappled and entwined and satisfied one another repeatedly. She whispered to him, “This is a dream.” But it felt more real than real life. He thought it strange that Athena, who was known as the Virgin, would make love with him, and knew his body so well, bringing him to the height of pleasure. He had never had such sex, even with Penelope. He could never tell Penelope.
