While his words died away in that incredible sunshine he instinctively began leading them down the slope at the foot of which lay his rock-hewn palace.
But Nisos had a further announcement to make. “It was while we were leading Ajax as carefully as we could towards the palace that we met Zeuks, O King, and it was to tell you how Zeuks had taken it on himself to be the guide and interpreter to my Lord Ajax that I ran to meet you. My friend Euanthos here objected very strongly to my leaving our Lord Ajax under the care of Zeuks. It seemed to him that Zeuks was not well-dressed enough, well-mannered enough, distinguished enough, or nearly aristocratic enough, to be able to explain our life in Ithaca to a hero of the ancient tradition and one who possesses the lofty habits of the past and those godlike ways of living and thinking that are now lost to the world.”
Odysseus had inadvertently taken Pontopereia by the arm as he began to descend the hill, and this protective gesture of his had naturally brought Okyrhöe to his other side, that is to his right, where he prodded the ground with his club of Herakles. It was therefore, across the club’s self-styled “life-crack” that the craftiest woman in Hellas murmured her seductive words to the craftiest man in Hellas, and what she said was as nectar to the moth and as gall to the fly.
“All the Achaian world will be waiting with eagerness, my Lord King,” she murmured, “to hear the result of this encounter between you and the Lady Nausikaa. We forget sometimes how quickly news travels in these modern days. It’s the quality of the sails the ships carry, I expect: O, and of course it’s also because there are so many more merchant-sailors nowadays! Merchants are the great news-carriers and scandal-bearers. No doubt they always have been. But we mustn’t forget all these modern improvements in the masts and sails and benches and keels of ships, and even in the sleeping-places below the benches.
“It is wonderful to think of all the improvements we have lived to see of which our fathers never dreamed! Yes, I have followed pretty closely the history of Phaiakia from merchant-sailors’ narratives of what has been going on there, for in the history of any country what you pick up from travelling merchants is always nearer the truth than the speeches of official rulers and their ambassadors.”
“It was at this point that the fly became convinced that if Okyrhöe went on for one single sentence more in this manner Odysseus would revolt against her influence. But the clever woman now made it manifest that she could practise a quite different strategy, and as soon as she began in this clear, definite, and concrete manner, to aim at convincing him, she had the king at her mercy.
“What I have been leading up to,” she now remarked in a most emphatic manner, “is this. I have been, as I tell you, O King, following rather carefully the events in Phaiakia; and I have noticed that when Alkinoos died his throne was occupied first by one, and then by another, of the favourite sons of the widowed queen. But both these sons died before their mother — at least that is what my merchant-sailors have told me; though I fully admit they may have had, in each case, their own peculiar business-reasons for lying — and so when finally the mother herself died the only surviving child of Alkinoos was Nausikaa.
“She married twice and both her husbands died childless, a situation that set going various shameful rumours among the people, rumours that Nausikaa poisoned them both with the hope of sailing for Ithaca when they were dead and being wedded to thyself! Of course you will know, O great King, much better than a mere stranger and traveller like myself, how to treat such ignoble tales: but you must at least remember in excuse for such tales that you have, as few heroes ever have, become a legend during your life-time, and since many of us in our youth have read — and have written too, I’ll be bound! — passionate love-lyrics about you and this daughter of Alkinoos, it is inevitable that when we hear of you two meeting again all manner of disturbingly romantic thoughts rush into our human-too-human heads!
“From a perfectly practical and sensible point of view the coming to Ithaca of this experienced and beautiful woman was indeed most cleverly planned. She too without any doubt has been collecting news from merchant-ships about Ithaca, just as I have about Phaiakia; and having found out that Penelope has been long dead and that you have never taken a second wife she naturally thinks of marrying you and of having those children by you which she clearly could not have by any other husband. It is a tragic and a touching hope; but I can imagine it proving a good deal of a nuisance and embarrassment to you.”
Neither the fly nor the moth as they listened to these words could see the effect upon the king of this treacherous warning, though they couldn’t help noticing how the beard of Odysseus kept giving curious little forward jerks. But then the king’s beard had for some time clearly been trying to isolate itself from the rest of his appearance. Apparently its desire was to become a sort of advanced Body-guard, which, if it were not propitiated, or, as the school-boy mates of Nisos would say, “sucked up to”, its owner would have to treat as an independent personality, or simply to cut it off.
As a matter of fact the old man’s imperviousness at this moment had no connection with these ambitions of his beard. It was in accord with his whole character that, while he accepted every material detail of what Okyrhöe suggested, he disregarded, or postponed for later consideration, the lady’s psychic interpretation of the same.
What did cross his mind at that moment was a definite regret that owing to his penuriousness, or to his poverty, or to a mixture of them both, he had for years contented himself with getting on without any more effective cook in his excavated cave of a kitchen than the family’s ancient Nurse Eurycleia, who though she knew well enough what to prepare for his own meals, and even better how to restrict the appetites of Arsinöe and Leipephile, would lack both the physical strength and the culinary experience to cook for a visitor like the Princess Nausikaa.
“Nisos!”
“I am here, my lord the King!”
“Run down this hill as fast as you ran up just now. Make it as clear as you can to Eurycleia what kind of guests we shall have tonight. Explain to her that Ajax will be as old as I am and probably as fussy about his food. I take it, lad, that if you start now you’ll get home before either of them have time to arrive, especially if our friend Zeuks, who’s such a babbler, is the one you’ve left with Ajax. You will have time to get there first, sonny, won’t you?”
Nisos didn’t look at the sky above the slope on which they had paused nor at the tops of the trees at the foot of the hill. He looked at his own sandals and he looked at his own hands. And then he said: “Yes, I think I can, my King. I’ll have a good try at it anyway.” And with one quick glance at Pontopereia he set off at top speed.
But while Nisos was running at top speed down the wooded slope between the “agora” and the palace, dodging sharp-edged rocks and thick clumps of impenetrable island-bushes, and squeezing his way between close-growing fir-trees whose lower branches were spiky and dead from lack of sun, and as he ran was being sexually and emotionally almost pulled in half; for his feelings were tugged at in one direction by what might be called the golden cord of Eione’s supple limbs and lovely gestures and in another direction by the silver cord of Pontopereia’s expressive face, the middle-aged Zeuks was guiding the senile Ajax through the deserted but still haunted region that was called “Arima”.