“ ‘Nestor’s-son,’ said I, ‘you’re your father’s son.’ But Telemachus scolded him, asking how he hoped to have his questions answered if he interrupted the tale by asking them. Helen flashed him a look worth epics and said, ‘When I got him alone in my apartment and washed and oiled and dressed him, I promised not to tell anyone he was Odysseus until he went back to his camp. So he told me all the Greek military secrets. Toward morning he killed several Trojans while they slept, and then I showed him the safest way out of town. There was a fuss among the new widows, but who cared? I was bored with Troy by that time and wished I’d never left home. I had a nice palace, a daughter, and Menelaus: what more could a woman ask?’
“After a moment Telemachus cried: ‘Noble heart in a nobler breast! To think that all the while our side cursed you, you were secretly helping us!’
“When I opened my eyes I saw Peisistratus rubbing his, image of Gerenian Nestor. ‘It still isn’t clear to me,’ he said, ‘why the wife of Prince Paris — begging your pardon, sir; I mean as it were, of course — would wash, oil, and dress a vagrant beggar in her apartment in the middle of the night. I don’t grasp either why you couldn’t have slipped back to Lord Menelaus along with Odysseus, if that’s what you wanted.’
“He had other questions too, shrewd lad, but Helen’s eyes turned dark, and before I could swallow my wine Telemachus had him answered: ‘What good could she have done the Argives then? She’d as well have stayed here in Sparta!’ As for himself, he told Helen, next to hearing that his father was alive no news could’ve more delighted him than that the whole purpose of her elopement with Paris, as he was now convinced, was to spy for the Greeks from the heart of Troy, without which espionage we’d surely have been defeated. Helen counted her stitches and said, ‘You give me too much credit.’ ‘No, by Zeus!’ Telemachus declared. ‘To leave your home and family and live for ten years with another man, purely for the sake of your home and family …’
“ ‘Nine with Paris,’ Helen murmured, ‘one with Deiphobus. Deiphobus was the better man, no doubt about it, but not half as handsome.’
“ ‘So much the nobler!’ cried Telemachus.
“ ‘Nobler than you think,’ I said, and poured myself and Peisistratus another drink. ‘My wife’s too modest to tell the noblest things of all. In the first place, when I fetched her out of Troy at last and set sail for home, she was so ashamed of what she’d had to do to win the war for us that it took me seven years more to convince her she was worthy of me …’
“ ‘I kiss the hem of your robe!’ Telemachus exclaimed to her and did.
“ ‘In the second place,’ I said, ‘she did all these things for our sake without ever going to Troy in the first place.’
“ ‘Really,’ Helen protested.
“ ‘Excuse me, sir …’ said presently Peisistratus.
“ ‘Wine’s at your elbow,’ I declared. ‘Drink deep, boys; I’ll tell you the tale.’
“ ‘That’s not what Prince Telemachus wants,’ Helen said.
“ ‘I know what Prince Telemachus wants.’
“ ‘He wants word of his father,’ said she. ‘If you must tell a story at this late hour, tell the one about Proteus on the beach at Pharos, what he said of Odysseus.’
“ ‘Do,’ Peisistratus said.
“ ‘Hold on,’ I said,” I say: “ ‘It’s all one tale.’
“ ‘Then tell it all,’ said Helen. ‘But excuse yours truly.’
“ ‘Don’t go!’ cried Telemachus.
“ ‘A lady has her modesty,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll fill your cups, gentlemen, bid you good night, and retire. To the second—’
“ ‘Who put out the light?’ asked Peisistratus.
“ ‘Wait!’ cried Telemachus.
“ ‘Got you!’ cried I, clutching hold of his cloak-hem. After an exchange of pleasantries we settled down and drank deep in the dark while I told the tale of Menelaus and his wife at sea:
3
“ ‘Seven years,’ ” I say et cetera, “ ‘the woman kept her legs crossed and the north wind blew without let-up, holding us from home. In the eighth, on the beach at Pharos, with Eidothea’s help I tackled her dad the Old Man of the Sea and followed his tough instructions: heavy-hearted it back to Egypt, made my hecatombs, vowed my vows. At once then, wow, the wind changed, no time at all till we re-raised Pharos! Not a Proteus in sight, no Eidothea, just the boat I’d moored my wife in, per orders. Already she was making sail; her crew were putting in their oars; my first thought was, they’re running off with Helen; we overhauled them; why was everybody grinning? But it was only joy, not to lose another minute; there was Helen herself by the mast-step, holding out her arms to me! Zeus knows how I poop-to-pooped it, maybe I was dreaming on the beach at Pharos, maybe am still; there I was anyhow, clambering aboard: “Way, boys!” I hollered. “Put your arse in it!” Spang! went the mainsail, breeze-bellied for Sparta; those were Helen’s arms around me; it was wedding night! We hustled to the sternsheets, never mind who saw what; when she undid every oar went up; still we tore along the highways of the fish. “Got you!” I cried, couldn’t see for the beauty of her, feel her yet, what is she anyhow? I decked her; only think, those gold limbs hadn’t wound me in twenty years …’
“ ‘Twenty?’ ‘Counting two before the war. Call it nineteen.’
“ ‘ “Wait,” she bade me. “First tell me what Proteus said, and how you followed his advice.”
“ ‘Our oars went down; we strained the sail with sighs; my tears thinned the wine-dark sea. But there was nothing for it, I did as bid:
4
“ ‘ “Nothing for it but to do as Eidothea’d bid me,” ’ ” I say to myself I told Telemachus I sighed to Helen.
“ ‘ “Eidothea?”
“ ‘ “Old Man of the Sea’s young daughter, so she said,” said I. “With three of my crew I dug in on the beach at sunrise; she wrapped us in seal-calfskins. ‘Hold tight to these,’ she told us. ‘Who can hug a stinking sea-beast?’ I inquired. She said, ‘Father. Try ambrosia; he won’t get here till noon.’ She put it under our noses and dived off as usual; we were high in no time; ‘These seals,’ my men agreed: ‘the longer you’re out here the whiter they get.’ They snuggled in and lost themselves in dreams; I would’ve too, but grateful as I was, when she passed the ambrosia I smelled a trick. Hang around Odysseus long enough, you trust nobody. I’d take a sniff and put the stuff away till the seal stink got to me, then sniff again. Even so I nearly lost my grip. Was I back in the horse? Was I dreaming of Helen on my bachelor throne?”
“ ‘ “Hold on,” said deckèd Helen; I came to myself, saw I was blubbering; “I came to myself, saw I was beached at Pharos. Come shadeless noon, unless I dreamed it, the sea-cow harem flipped from the deep to snooze on the foreshore, give me a woman anytime. Old Proteus came after, no accounting for tastes, counted them over, counting us in, old age is hard on the eyes too; then he outstretched in the cavemouth, one snore and I jumped him.
“ ‘ “ ‘Got you!’ I cried” I cried’ I cried” I cry. “ ‘ “My companions, when I hollered, grabbed hold too: one snatched his beard, one his hands, one his long white hair; I tackled his legs and held fast. First he changed into a lion, ate the beard-man, what a mess; then snake, bit the hair-chap, who’d nothing to hold onto.” ’
“ ‘Neither did the hand-man,’ observed Peisistratus, sleepless critic, to whom I explained for Telemachus’s sake as well that while the erstwhile hand-man, latterly paw-man, had admittedly been vulnerably under both lion and snake, and the hair- then mane-man relatively safely on top, the former had escaped the former by reason of the quondam beard-man’s fortunate, for the quondam paw-man, interposition; the latter fallen prey to the latter by reason of the latter’s unfortunate, for the quondam mane-man, proclivity to strike whatever was before him — which would have been to say, before, the hand-paw-man, but was to say, now, which is to say, then, the beard-mane-man, thanks so to speak to the serpent’s windings upon itself.