There was gold on the island, as I have said, and a boat that the men could handle. I sent them out for stores, and wondered if I would ever see them more; why should men stand by me, whom the gods had all forsaken? But they came back, stocked up for winter. For four long years, my life has been in their hands. There was one, I am told, who said among his friends, “Let us take the gold, and ask him where the rest is; it is easy to make a sick man talk. Then we can kill him, and sell the news to Idomeneus, in Crete.” I learned this from them, when they got tired at last of hearing me ask where the man had got to. Later they showed me his grave.
When I had thought what best to do, I sent the chanty-man, who was a good harper and quick-thinking, back to Athens with a letter from me, sealed with my seal. It said I had had omens, and an oracle, to go down into a secret shrine below the earth, and be purified by Mother Dia, whom I had offended. I would come back full of luck, and destroy my enemies; meantime my council must govern and uphold my laws, and have a good account to render me after. I told the man to go a long way round, changing ships often, and coming to Athens from the north. He was not to know the shrine where I was being purified, because I had parted from him on the way; if they pressed him, he had last seen me in Epiros. There are many caves in the mountains there, which are said to go down into the land of Hades. So he went off; he did his work well, and I made it good to him. None of those eleven men need ever want, nor their sons’ sons.
It was no matter, I thought, whether the Athenians swallowed my tale whole. If they thought I had gone off for my own reasons, and would come back in my own time, it was enough.
The girls nursed me kindly. They had good hearts, as I had known when I gave them this quiet harbor to grow old in, not thinking I would need it too. They fetched the ancient wise-woman of the island, who came every day to rub my deadened side with oil and wine, saying the flesh would mortify without it. She knew old tales of the Shore Folk, going back to the time of the Titans, and the beginnings of men on earth; and like a child I would never let her go without a story. I had not been used to sit still, except while I thought what to do next. Sometimes it seemed the days would never end; and when night came, I would lie watching the stars, to count the hours till morning.
I thought of my life, the good and evil days; of the gods, and fate; how much of a man’s life and of his soul they make for him, how much he makes for himself. What if Pirithoos had not come for me, when I was setting out for Crete? What man would I have become? What Cretan son had gone unborn, in the years that made Hippolytos? Or what if Phaedra had cried “Rape!” another day, when the earthquake-sickness was not on me? Yet I had made already the man who heard that cry. Fate and will, will and fate, like earth and sky bringing forth the grain together; and which the bread tastes of, no man knows.
One morning when I had been there a month, or perhaps a season, I lay awake as the day was breaking. The cocks had crowed, and I could see the dark sea-margin against a glimmering sky. My thoughts were far off, at the bull-dance, or some old war; when the floor shook beneath my bed, and my cup fell from the stand beside me. Voices of folk just wakened filled the house, calling on Earth-Shaker Poseidon. The cocks crowed again; I remembered how noisy they had been before, crying all together. To them the god had sent his warning; but none to me.
So I knew who had struck me, and why. The Immortals are just; one cannot mock them. He had cast off his son, as I had cast off mine.
One of the women came to see I had taken no harm, and picked up the fallen cup, and went away. When all was quiet again, I pulled myself up a little on my good arm, and looked at the table across the room. The knife was there, which they cut my food with. If I roll from the bed, I thought, and along the floor, surely my arm will reach it. The earth grows weary of my weight, and has carried it long enough.
To edge myself over, I lifted my left arm with the other, to shift its weight. And as I looked at the hand, I saw the fingers moving, grasp for grasp. Only a little way; but at my will they strengthened, and curved again. I touched them; the sense was dull, but it was there. The life was coming back to them.
The sun was rising. I thought of Athens, and all that I had built there. And even though the god’s sign had left me, yet all that I was said “Mine!” So I lived, and waited.
The seasons passed. Slowly, month by month, the life crept back into the dead limbs like sap into a withered tree. After the movement and the feeling, it was as long again till some strength returned. I stood against two men’s shoulders; then with one man; then holding by the chair; but it was another year before I could walk alone. And then I dragged one foot, as I do a little still.
On a day in spring, I called the women to trim my hair and beard, and asked for a mirror. I looked ten years older; my hair was almost white; the left-hand corner of my mouth and eye still had a downward turn, and that side of my face looked always sour. But it seemed men would still know me. When I was ready, I picked up my staff and walked by myself into the sunshine. My men saw me, and cheered.
That evening I sent for my steersman Idaios, and said to him, “Soon we sail home.” He answered, “Sir, I think it is time.”
I asked him what he meant; he said he had heard there was trouble in Athens, or some disorder; but the men he had it from were ignorant islanders, and knew no more.
When my men came and went, they had wisely kept as near the truth as they could; saying they were seamen of mine I had left upon the island to keep a base for my ships. People do not meddle with a pirate hold. With this tale, they would ask for news of me, and learn what was being said.
Idaios had made out he was telling me everything; but now he owned he had been hearing rumors about Athens for a year. “My lord, I know you. One way or another, from doing too little or too much, you’d have come by your death. Well, I must answer for it. I did what seemed the best.”
It was a good while since others had decided what was best for me. But I owed him too much to be angry. By his lights he was right; and I am still glad that we parted friends.
And yet, when I got to Athens, I wished many times I had died upon the island, suddenly, at the hand of the god; they say the second time ends a man without pain. While I was there, sitting in the little window, watching a locust nibble at a leaf, or a lizard catching flies, I thought myself unhappy; yet in my mind I still possessed the fruits of all my life work, standing for men to see in the time to come. I was rich, if I had known.
What is this man, Menestheus? Hippolytos once asked me that; he saw further into him man I, but still not far. His own mind was too single, seeing in other men not his own image, but a god’s child crying to be set free. He could never have followed to its heart that twisting labyrinth, nor seen with that squinting eye, nor read desires that did not know even themselves—he who had lent all his will to the gods of light. No; even he, if he had been king, would not have seen what he had to deal with. But maybe some god who loved him might have fought for him. None did for me.
A conqueror, a rival, I could have understood. He would have seized what I had made, and boasted of it. His bards would make songs about the great realm he had taken from King Theseus, for himself and his sons’ sons. Such a man would never have left me living. But he would have left what I built to stand.