Odysseus grinned—he was looking forward to the big revelation scene, the part where I would say, ‘It was you all along! What a terrific disguise!’ and throw my arms around his neck. Then he went off to take a much-needed bath. When he came back in clean clothes, smelling a good deal better than when he’d gone, I couldn’t resist teasing him one last time. I ordered Eurycleia to move the bed outside the bedroom of Odysseus, and to make it up for the stranger.

You’ll recall that one post of this bed was carved from a tree still rooted in the ground. Nobody knew about it except Odysseus, myself, and my maid Actoris, from Sparta, who by that time was long dead. Assuming that someone had cut through his cherished bedpost, Odysseus lost his temper at once. Only then did I relent, and go through the business of recognizing him. I shed a satisfactory number of tears, and embraced him, and claimed that he’d passed the bedpost test, and that I was now convinced.

And so we climbed into the very same bed where we’d spent a great many happy hours when we were first married, before Helen took it into her head to run off with Paris, lighting the fires of war and bringing desolation to my house. I was glad it was dark by then, as in the shadows we both appeared less wizened than we were.

‘We’re not spring chickens any more,’ I said.

‘That which, we are, we are,’ said Odysseus.

After a little time had passed and we were feeling pleased with each other, we took up our old habits of story-telling. Odysseus told me of all his travels and difficulties the nobler versions, with the monsters and the goddesses, rather than the more sordid ones with the innkeepers and whores.

He recounted the many lies he’d invented, the false names he’d given himself telling the Cyclops his name was No One was the cleverest of such tricks, though he’d spoiled it by boasting—and the fraudulent life histories he’d concocted for himself, the better to conceal his identity and his intentions. In my turn, I related the tale of the Suitors, and my trick with the shroud of Laertes, and my deceitful encouragings of the Suitors, and the skilful ways in which I’d misdirected them and led them on and played them off against one another.

Then he told me how much he’d missed me, and how he’d been filled with longing for me even when enfolded in the white arms of goddesses; and I told him how very many tears I’d shed while waiting twenty years for his return, and how tediously faithful

I’d been, and how I would never have even so much as thought of betraying his gigantic bed with its wondrous bedpost by sleeping in it with any other man.

The two of us were by our own admission proficient and shameless liars of long standing. It’s a wonder either one of us believed a word the other said.

But we did.

Or so we told each other.

No sooner had Odysseus returned than he left again. He said that, much as he hated to tear himself away from me, he’d have to go adventuring again. He’d been told by the spirit of the seer Teiresias that he would have to purify himself by carrying an oar so far inland that the people there would mistake it for a winnowing fan. Only in that way could he rinse the blood of the Suitors from himself, avoid their vengeful ghosts and their vengeful relatives, and pacify the anger of the sea-god Poseidon, who was still furious with him for blinding his son the Cyclops.

It was a likely story. But then, all of his stories were likely.

XXVI.  The Chorus Line: The Trial of Odysseus, as Videotaped by the Maids

Attorney for the Defence: Your Honour, permit me to speak to the innocence of my client,

Odysseus, a legendary hero of high repute, who stands before you accused of multiple murders.

Was he or was he not justified in slaughtering, by means of arrows and spears we do not dispute the slaughters themselves, or the weapons in question upwards of a hundred and twenty well-born young men, give or take a dozen, who, I must emphasise, had been eating up his food without his permission, annoying his wife, and plotting to murder his son and usurp his throne? It has been alleged by my respected colleague that Odysseus was not so justified, since murdering these young men was a gross overreaction to the fact of their having played the gourmand a little too freely in his palace.

Also, it is alleged that Odysseus and his heirs or assigns had been offered material compensation for the missing comestibles, and ought to have accepted this compensation peacefully. But this compensation was offered by the very same young men who, despite many requests, had done nothing previously to curb their remarkable appetites, or to defend

Odysseus, or to protect his family. They had shown no loyalty to him in his absence; on the contrary. So how dependable was their word?

Could a reasonable man expect that they would ever pay a single ox of what they had promised?

And let us consider the odds. A hundred and twenty, give or take a dozen, to one, or stretching a point to four, because Odysseus did have accomplices, as my colleague has termed them; that is, he had one barely grown relative and two servants untrained in warfare what was to prevent these young men from pretending to enter into a settlement with Odysseus, then leaping upon him one dark night when his guard was down and doing him to death? It is our contention that, by seizing the only opportunity Fate was likely to afford him, our generally esteemed client

Odysseus was merely acting in self-defence. We therefore ask that you dismiss this case.

Judge: I am inclined to agree.

Attorney for the Defence: Thank you, Your Honour.

Judge: What’s that commotion in the back? Order! Ladies, stop making a spectacle of yourselves! Adjust your clothing! Take those ropes off your necks! Sit down!

The Maids: You’ve forgotten about us! What about our case? You can’t let him off! He hanged us in cold blood! Twelve of us! Twelve young girls! For nothing!

Judge Go Attorney for the Defence. This is a new charge.

Strictly speaking, it ought to be dealt with in a separate trial; but as the two matters appear to be intimately connected, I am prepared to hear arguments now. What do you have to say for your client?

Attorney for the Defence: He was acting within his rights, Your Honour. These were his slaves.

Judge: Nonetheless he must have had some reason. Even slaves ought not to be killed at whim. What had these girls done that they deserved hanging?

Attorney for the Defence: They’d had sex without permission.

Judge: Hmm. I see. With whom did they have the sex?

Attorney for the Defence: With my client’s enemies, Your Honour. The very ones who had designs on his wife, not to mention his life.

(Chuckles at his witticism)

Judge: I take it these were the youngest maids.

Attorney for the Defence: Well, naturally. They were the best-looking and the most beddable, certainly. For the most part.

The Maids laugh bitterly.

Judge (leafing through book: The Odyssey: It’s written here, in this book a book we must needs consult, as it is the main authority on the subject—although it has pronounced unethical tendencies and contains far too much sex and violence, in my opinion it says right here let me see—in Book 22, that the maids were raped. The Suitors raped them. Nobody stopped them from doing so. Also, the maids are described as having been hauled around by the Suitors for their foul and disgusting purposes. Your client knew all that—he is quoted as having said these things himself. Therefore, the maids were overpowered, and they were also completely unprotected.

Is that correct?

Attorney for the Defence; I wasn’t there, Your Honour. All of this took place some three or four thousand years before my time.