Ithaca Read Free Page A

to protect his own mother. A man would die rather than swallow an insult like this. All I can think is If only my father were here.
    There’s a step in the doorway behind me. Antinous looks toward the door with an expression of annoyance. Eurymachus, another of our visitors, is standing there.
    He looks from Antinous, to me, to Penelope, sitting there in dread with her eyes closed. He can see what’s going on. Eurymachus is no fool. He may be one of the visitors who have taken over our house, but he’s the best of them, in a way. Sometimes I think he’s ashamed of what’s going on.
    Antinous lets go of my mother’s hair and takes a step back.
    â€œWhat are you doing in here? This is Penelope’s room.” Eurymachus’s voice is guarded. I can sense the tension: two dogs circling before a fight.
    Antinous moistens his lips. “I was leaving.”
    â€œLeave, then.”
    â€œWhy are you here?”
    â€œI came from the gate. A visitor has arrived.” Eurymachus looks at me. His expression seems a little puzzled. “He says he’s an old friend of your father’s.”

I find the visitor squatting in the shade of the prickly pears outside the gate, next to a flea-bitten mule with a wooden saddle. The guards are eyeing him nervously. He’s an old man, an African with a face so dark it seems to suck light into it, and a shock of wiry white hair. He’s wearing a stained leather coat tied at the waist with rope, and a scarf fringed with sharks’ teeth. But it isn’t his clothes that surprise me, or his color—we’re used to travelers on Ithaca. It’s his eyes.
    They’re white. Not cloudy white like a blind person’s. White like ivory or horn. So pale the irises fade into the whites, leaving his pupils as piercing black points.
    â€œMy house is your house,” I say formally. The standard greeting to a guest, the law of the islands and the whole of Greece. No one turns a stranger away. Visitors are honored as long as they choose to stay. That’s why my father’s house is full of strangers.
    The visitor stands and bows. Around his neck is a goat’s foot hanging on a silver chain.
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œMy name is Mentes.” The visitor’s voice is deep, his accent foreign. “I am a friend of Odysseus. He traveled with me in Africa.”
    â€œDo you know where he is? Do you have any news?” I can’t keep the eagerness out of my voice, but Mentes shakes his head.
    â€œI came here for news. I heard Odysseus was missing. I heard there was a war. Are you his son? You don’t look like him.”
    It isn’t the first time I’ve heard that. “Delicate, like his mother”—that’s what people usually say. “Not made for fighting.” “Small.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œThen it’s you I came to see.”
    I lead him down a back corridor to the great hall, hoping he won’t see the chaos of the courtyard. He’s beached his ship on the west side of the island, he tells me—that’s why we got no message from the port. He has to sail for Corinth in an hour. The great hall is empty except for a maid sweeping the floor from last night’s feast. Two logs smolder on the hearth, their smoke rising to the square opening in the roof, which brings in just enough light to see the brilliant images painted on the walls, of bulls tossing their horns and dolphins diving through waves. I call for bread and wine and watch the stranger settle on a chair, his gaze flickering curiously around the pictures.
    Then he turns his disconcerting white eyes on me. “I hear there’s been a war.”
    I can hardly believe my ears. Is there a man on earth who doesn’t know about the war? Who hasn’t been talking about it for sixteen years? I’ve never met one before.
    â€œYes, there’s been a war. A great war. That’s where my father