Read Online Ithaca by Patrick Dillon - Free Book Online Page B

have fit through the gate.
    Apart from that, the storyteller at Pylos tells it well. Most of the changes are wasted anyway, because Nestor sleeps through it, waking only just in time to join the applause at the end. After that he rises unsteadily to his feet and says good night, ordering me not to get up too early in the morning.
    I do wake up early, though. I wake with the feeling I’ve let something slip through my fingers. There’s a conversation we’ve barely even started. About my father: about who he is, and where he might be now.
    In the great hall a table is laid with baskets of bread and dishes of yogurt and honey. Polycaste is already there, shredding a roll.
    â€œApparently I’ve got to show you around.”
    â€œShow me what?”
    â€œThe house. The farm. Anything you want to see. Come on, you can eat while we go. That way we won’t have to talk.”
    I try to anyway. “I enjoyed the story last night.”
    â€œDid you? It makes a change. Normally we have Jason and the Argonauts. My father was one of the Argonauts. This is the storeroom. Wine. Oil.”
    â€œDid your father really meet Hercules?”
    â€œYes. Amazing. Kitchen.”
    â€œYou think people like that only exist in stories, and then you meet one of them.” It sounds pretty weak, even to me.
    â€œMaybe one day you’ll be a story yourself. Probably a really boring one. This is the office where my father does hisaccounts, meaning sleeps. This is the courtyard, which you’ve seen. Upstairs is like any other big house. Let’s go outside.”
    As we walk out into the sun-baked earth of the vegetable garden, I say, “Don’t you like your father?”
    Polycaste stops and turns on me, eyes blazing. “Of course I do! I love him! What’s that got to do with it? I suppose you wouldn’t understand if you don’t have a father yourself.” She pauses, anger ebbing away as fast as it came, and looks at me as if she hasn’t really noticed me before. “What’s your mother like?”
    â€œShe’s not well.”
    â€œIll?”
    â€œShe’s very quiet.”
    â€œEveryone says how beautiful she is. Was. I suppose no one’s seen her for years, except you. This is the orchard.”
    I say, “Why are so many of the men injured?”
    It’s something I noticed last night and again as we passed through the house. One of the men stacking tables in the hall had a scar under his eye. Others were missing hands. One man, who pushed open a door for us, had lost both legs and pushed himself around on a little trolley, his hands wrapped in bloodied linen rags.
    Polycaste gives me a pitying look. “Why do you think? The war. They came back like this. Everyone was scarred by the war. What’s wrong with you? Isn’t Ithaca full of veterans too?”
    I say, “No one came back to Ithaca. They all disappeared.”
    â€œOh.” Polycaste looks away. “I hadn’t thought.” After a moment she goes on, “There are loads of them ’round here, veterans. All the villages are full of them, the farms. Lots of men took to the hills. Eight years fighting in Troy, they couldn’t get used to ordinary life again. Seeing women, living with children. Some became bandits. Some just scratch a living out of the forest. You’ll see them if we go to Sparta together.”
    â€œSparta?”
    â€œThat’s my father’s plan. Hasn’t he told you yet? He will. There was a story last winter, of a war veteran living in a little village up there, a shepherd. They were snowed in for a month. When the snow melted they found he’d killed his whole family. Wife, three children, just killed them. I suppose it’s still in their heads, killing people.”
    Suddenly I realize how remote Ithaca is. I always thought it was the center of the world. It isn’t. It’s a backwater dozing in the far west, cut off