Penelope’s Story
Excerpt from the novel We Met in Ithaca, or Was It Eden?
After the suitors were dead and their relatives pacified, Odysseus and Penelope resumed their conversation in the immovable bed he had crafted from a living tree. It was a symbol of their union. She pressed him for more details about the prophecy of Tiresias. How much time would they have together before he would have to leave again on a quest ordained by the gods?
Athena had rejuvenated him for his reunion with Penelope, making him as young and strong as he had been twenty years before. But he knew that was temporary. He would soon be as old as before, or the gods, with their love of irony, would make him even older. He believed he’d have to leave again but doubted that he would return this time, or if he did, he doubted that he’d be in any condition for the two of them to enjoy their golden years together. He would be a frail shell of a man. He might not even know who she was, or who he was. He wanted to spare Penelope the anguish of realizing what lay ahead.
So he lied to her, as he had often lied to her and she to him. Such was their unique bond, their like-mindedness. He told her that it was foretold that he would return safely from this second journey, and then their happily-ever-after would begin.
A week later, an unmanned ship pulled into the Ithacan harbor. Crowds gathered on the shore and stared in fear and amazement. A priest of Poseidon sacrificed two bulls but received no sign that would explain this mystery ship. No one dared board it. It stayed near the dock, without ropes or an anchor to hold it in place. Finally, Odysseus dared to jump from the dock to the deck, alone. On shore, there was no breeze. But the sails filled with a strong wind, and the ship pulled away, heading out to sea.
Penelope, Laertes, Telemachus, and all the assembled townsfolk screamed, begging Odysseus to jump off and swim to shore. Instead, he grasped the mast and shut his eyes, remembering the time when his crew had tied him to such a mast so he could withstand the lure of the Sirens’ song. He knew this was his fate, and he accepted it.
Years later, he washed ashore in Sicily, a frail old man, barely breathing. Fishermen found him, put him in a cart and took him to the king. Before he died, he revealed, “I am Odysseus from Ithaca.” Then he pleaded that no one send word of his death to Penelope. He wanted her to believe that he was alive and that any day, any moment, he might return.
Nevertheless, the king sent a ship to Ithaca, with Odysseus’ ashes, and with a detailed sketch of the scar on his leg, as proof of his identity.
Penelope was shocked. She had suspected that Odysseus knew when he left that he could never return. His lie that they would once again be united was his gift to her, the gift of ignorance, of uncertainty. So long as she didn’t know for sure, to her he was still alive, he was immortal, and she could imagine their future together. But now these ashes and this undeniable evidence of his death erased all hope.
When Athena learned of this disclosure, she granted Penelope the gift of forgetting, and for the rest of her days, she recognized no one and did not even know who she was. Then Athena bestowed the gift of ignorance on all mankind. From that time on, when people died, their bodies vanished. There were no funeral pyres, no grave mounds, no certain knowledge of death.
And so it was for three score and ten generations, until the gods themselves all died, including Athena.
