Judge: I can see the problem. Call the witness Penelope.

Penelope: I was asleep, Your Honour. I was often asleep. I can only tell you what they said afterwards.

Judge: What who said?

Penelope: The maids, Your Honour.

Judge: They said they been raped?

Penelope: Well, yes, Your Honour. In effect.

Judge: And did you believe them?

Penelope: Yes, Your Honour. That is, I tended to believe them.

Judge: I understand they were frequently impertinent.

Penelope: Yes, Your Honour, but—

Judge: But you did not punish them, and they continued to work as your maids?

Penelope: I knew them well, Your Honour. I was fond of them. I’d brought some of them up, you could say. They were like the daughters I never had. Starts to weep?) I felt so sorry for them! But most maids got raped, sooner or later; a deplorable but common feature of palace life. It wasn’t the fact of their being raped that told against them, in the mind of Odysseus. It’s that they were raped without permission.

Judge (Chuckles). Excuse me, Madam, but isn’t that what rape is? Without permission?

Attorney for the Defence: Without permission of their master, Your Honour.

Judge: Oh. I see. But their master wasn’t present. So, in effect, these maids were forced to sleep with the

Suitors because if they’d resisted they would have been raped anyway, and much more unpleasantly?

Attorney for the Defence: I don’t see what bearing that has on the case.

Judge: Neither did your client, evidently. (Chuckles.) However, your client’s times were not our times. Standards of behaviour were different then. It would be unfortunate if this regrettable but minor incident were allowed to stand as a blot on an otherwise exceedingly distinguished career.

Also I do not wish to be guilty of an anachronism.

Therefore I must dismiss the case.

The Maids: We demand justice! We demand retribution! We invoke the law of blood guilt! We call upon the Angry Ones!

A troop of twelve Erinyes appear. They have hair made of serpents, the heads of dogs, and the wings of bats. They sniff the air.

The Maids: Oh Angry Ones, Oh Furies, you are our last hope! We implore you to inflict punishment and exact vengeance on our behalf! Be our defenders, we who had none in life! Smell out Odysseus wherever he goes! From one place to another, from one life to another, whatever disguise he puts on, whatever shape he may take, hunt him down! Dog his footsteps, on earth or in Hades, wherever he may take refuge, in songs and in plays, in tomes and in theses, in marginal notes and in appendices! Appear to him in our forms, our ruined forms, the forms of our pitiable corpses! Let him never be at rest!

The Erinyes turn towards Odysseus. Their red eyes flash.

Attorney for the Defence: I call on grey-eyed Pallas Athene, immortal daughter of Zeus, to defend property rights and the right of a man to be the master in his own house, and to spirit my client away in a cloud!

Judge: What’s going on? Order! Order! This is a twenty-first-century court of justice! You there, get down from the ceiling! Stop that barking and hissing! Madam, cover up your chest and put down your spear! What’s this cloud doing in here?

Where are the police? Where’s the defendant?

Where has everyone gone?

XXVII.  Home Life in Hades

I was looking in on your world the other night, making use of the eyes of a channeller who’d gone into a trance. Her client wanted to contact her dead boyfriend about whether she should sell their condominium, but they got me instead.

When there’s an opening, I frequently jump in to fill it. I don’t get out as often as I’d like. Not that I mean to disparage my hosts, as it were; but still, it’s amazing how the living keep on pestering the dead. From age to age it hardly changes at all, though the methods vary. I can’t say I miss the Sibyls much them and their golden boughs, hauling along all sorts of upstarts to traipse around down here, wanting knowledge of the future and upsetting the Shades but at least the Sibyls had some manners. The magicians and conjurors who came later were worse, though they did take the whole thing seriously.

Today’s bunch, however, are almost too trivial to merit any attention whatsoever. They want to hear about stock-market prices and world politics and their own health problems and such stupidities; in addition to which they want to converse with a lot of dead nonentities we in this realm cannot be expected to know. Who is this ‘Marilyn’ everyone is so keen on? Who is this ‘Adolf? It’s a waste of energy to spend time with these people, and so exasperating.

But it’s only by peering through such limited keyholes that I’m able to keep track of Odysseus, during those times he’s not down here in his own familiar form.

I suppose you know the rules. If we wish to, we can get ourselves reborn, and have another try at life; but first we have to drink from the Waters of Forgetfulness, so our past lives will be wiped from our memories. Such is the theory; but, like all theories, it’s only a theory. The Waters of Forgetfulness don’t always work the way they’re supposed to. Lots of people remember everything. Some say there’s more than one kind of water that the Waters of Memory are also on tap. I wouldn’t know, myself.

Helen has had more than a few excursions. That’s what she calls them ‘my little excursions’. ‘I’ve been having such fun,’ she’ll begin. Then she’ll detail her latest conquests and fill me in on the changes in fashion. It was through her that I learned about patches, and sunshades, and bustles, and high-heeled shoes, and girdles, and bikinis, and aerobic exercises, and body piercings, and liposuction.

Then she’ll make a speech about how naughty she’s been and how much uproar she’s been causing and how many men she’s ruined. Empires have fallen because of her, she’s fond of saying. ‘I understand the interpretation of the whole Trojan War episode has changed,’ I tell her, to take some of the wind out of her sails. ‘Now they think you were just a myth. It was all about trade routes. That’s what the scholars are saying.

 ‘Oh, Penelope, you can’t still be jealous,’ she says. ‘Surely we can be friends now! Why don’t you come along with me to the upper world, next time I go? We could do a trip to Las Vegas. Girls’ night out! But I forgot that’s not your style. You’d rather play the faithful little wifey, what with the weaving and so on. Bad me, I could never do it, I’d die of boredom. But you were always such a homebody’

She’s right. I’ll never drink the Waters of Forgetfulness. I can’t see the point of it. No: I can see the point, but I don’t want to take the risk. My past life was fraught with many difficulties, but who’s to say the next one wouldn’t be worse? Even with my limited access I can see that the world is just as dangerous as it was in my day, except that the misery and suffering are on a much wider scale.

As for human nature, it’s as tawdry as ever.

None of this stops Odysseus. He’ll drop in down here for a while, he’ll act pleased to see me, he’ll tell me home life with me was the only thing he ever really wanted, no matter what ravishing beauties he’s been falling into bed with or what wild adventures he’s been having. We’ll take a peaceful stroll, snack on some asphodel, tell the old stories; I’ll hear his news of Telemachus—he’s a Member of Parliament now, I’m so proud!—and then, just when I’m starting to relax, when I’m feeling that I can forgive him for everything he put me through and accept him with all his faults, when I’m starting to believe that this time he really means it, off he goes again, making a beeline for the River Lethe to be born again.

He does mean it. He really does. He wants to be with me. He weeps when he says it. But then some force tears us apart.