Ithaca Read Free

she gave in. She said she had to weave her father-in-law’s shroud, but as soon as it was completed, she’d make a decision. The day she began, Iwatched her work. Even I could see that it was really Odysseus’s shroud my mother was making. I watched the boar turning at bay as it was cornered by a young Odysseus; I watched the stones of the harbor take shape, a crowd of people on the shore, and the billowing sail of the ship that took him away. Penelope worked swiftly, her thin, strong fingers nimbly twisting wool and snapping threads. By nightfall the shroud seemed almost finished. But when I ran into her room the next morning, I found only a few lines of thread at the foot of the loom.
    â€œWhat happened to the boar?” I asked. “What happened to the ship?”
    My mother was already growing thinner, already developing that remote gaze that would eventually shut the rest of the world out. I remember her laughing and rubbing the hair back from my forehead. “You must have dreamed them,” she said.
    I soon worked out what she was doing. Each day she wove the story of her husband’s life. Each night she pulled the threads from the loom and burned them.
    It didn’t take the young men long to work it out either. They weren’t fools. They forced her to finish the shroud. We buried Laertes, my grandfather. But Penelope still refused to choose between them. She wouldn’t admit Odysseus was dead.
    And she never wove pictures again. She works at her loom hour after hour, its noise creaking along the corridors of the big house. But the cloth she makes is filled with meaningless shape, glaring color, empty black space.
    Antinous yawns and spreads his fingers in front of his face, inspecting them. “In the kitchen,” he says, “I was planning the feast for tonight. We will eat a slowly roast lamb—a young lamb—wrapped in bay leaves and cooked in a pit. Melanthius is digging the pit now. With it we will drink a jar of the ex qui site . . .” He pauses and frowns, like he’s checking whether the word is appropriate. “The ex qui site,” he repeats,nodding, “wine from the second row at the back of the cellar. I have told Melanthius not to bring it up until after noon and then to leave it outside the kitchen door so that it is raised to the exact temperature”—he closes his eyes dreamily—“of a peach warmed by the sun.”
    Antinous is a killer. I’ve seen him kill. The man-of-luxury talk is an act, as phony as everything else about him—or else one pole of a character so split it leaves Antinous barely sane. I watch his face go slack now. His mood is turning. Suddenly he stands up and goes over to my mother. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he leans over and pretends to lick her cheek.
    â€œI could eat your mother,” he says.
    The loom creaks and stops. I can see Penelope tense, eyes scared, then closed. Antinous’s fingers, white and fat as worms, creep up her neck. He touches one earring and flicks it with his nail to set it swinging.
    â€œDon’t touch her,” I say.
    â€œWhy not?” His voice is cold.
    â€œI don’t want you to.”
    â€œI don’t want you to,” he imitates. “She’s going to have to choose.” Slowly, almost tenderly, he cups his fingers around my mother’s cheek. He’s looking at me, not down at her. “We’re going to have to choose.” His voice is a singsong. “Which is the best man? Who do we want for a husband?” He leans forward suddenly and breathes deeply the perfume from her hair. “Who do we want in our bed?”
    â€œStop it.” My eyes are full of tears. I can’t help it, though I know that crying is the most contemptible thing a man—a fighter—can do. “Please . . .”
    Did my father ever plead? Of course not. I can see the contempt in Antinous’s face—a worthless boy unable