The Adventures of Ulysses (3 page)

“Wait!” cried Ulysses.

“What for?”

“You won’t enjoy him that way. He is from Attica, where the olives grow. He was raised on olives and has a very delicate, oily flavor. But to appreciate it, you must taste the wine of the country.”

“Wine? What is wine?”

“It is a drink. Made from pressed grapes. Have you never drunk it?”

“We drink nothing but ox blood and buttermilk here.”

“Ah, you do not know what you have missed, gentle Polyphemus. Meat-eaters, in particular, love wine. Here, try it for yourself.”

Ulysses unslung from his belt a full flask of unwatered wine. He gave it to the giant, who put it to his lips and gulped. He coughed violently and stuck the sailor in a little niche high up in the cave wall, then leaned his great slab of a face toward Ulysses and said:

“What did you say this drink was?”

“Wine. A gift of the gods to man, to make women look better and food taste better. And now it is my gift to you.”

“It’s good, very good.” He put the flask to his lips and swallowed again. “You are very polite. What’s your name?”

“My name? Why I am—nobody.”

“Nobody … Well, Nobody, I like you. You’re a good fellow. And do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to save you till last. Yes, I’ll eat all your friends first, and give you extra time, that’s what I’m going to do.”

Ulysses looked up into the great eye and saw that it was redder than ever. It was all a swimming redness. He had given the monster, who had never drunk spirits before, undiluted wine. Surely it must make him sleepy. But was a gallon enough for that great gullet? Enough to put him to sleep—or would he want to eat again first? “Eat ’em all up, Nobody—save you till later. Sleep a little first. Shall I? Won’t try to ran away, will you? No—you can’t, can’t open the door—too heavy, ha, ha.… You take a nap, too, Nobody. I’ll wake you for breakfast. Breakfast …”

The great body crashed full-length on the cave floor, making the very walls of the mountain shake. Polyphemus lay on his back, snoring like a powersaw. The sailors were still on the floor, almost dead from fear.

“Up!” cried Ulysses. “Stand up like men! Do what must be done! Or you will be devoured like chickens.”

He got them to their feet and drew them about him as he explained his plan.

“Listen now, and listen well, for we have no time. I made him drunk, but we cannot tell how long it will last.”

Ulysses thrust his sword into the fire; they saw it glow white-hot.

“There are ten of us,” he said. “Two of us have been eaten, and one of our friends is still unconscious up there on his shelf of rock. You four get on one side of his head, and the rest on the other side. When I give the word, lay hold of the ear on your side, each of you. And hang on, no matter how he thrashes, for I am going to put out his eye. And if I am to be sure of my stroke, you must hold his head still. One stroke is all I will be allowed.”

Then Ulysses rolled a boulder next to the giant’s head and climbed on it, so that he was looking down into the eye. It was lidless and misted with sleep—big as a furnace door and glowing softly like a banked fire. Ulysses looked at his men. They had done what he said, broken into two parties, one group at each ear. He lifted his white-hot sword.

“Now!” he cried.

Driving down with both hands and all the strength of his back and shoulders and all his rage and all his fear, Ulysses stabbed the glowing spike into the giant’s eye.

His sword jerked out of his hand as the head flailed upward; men pelted to the ground as they lost their hold. A huge screeching, curdling bellow split the air.

“This way!” shouted Ulysses.

He motioned to his men, and they crawled on their bellies toward the far end of the cave where the herd of goats was tethered. They slipped into the herd and lay among the goats as the giant stomped about the cave, slapping the walls with great blows of his hands, picking up boulders and cracking them together in agony, splitting them to cinders, clutching his eye, a scorched hole now, from which the brown blood jelled. He moaned and gibbered and bellowed in frightful pain; his groping hand found the sailor in the wall, and he tore him to pieces between his fingers. Ulysses could not even hear the man scream because the giant was bellowing so.

Now Ulysses saw that the Cyclops’ wild stampeding was giving place to a plan. For now he was stamping on the floor in a regular pattern, trying to find and crush them beneath his feet. He stopped moaning and listened. The sudden silence dazed the men with fear. They held their breath and tried to muffle the sound of their beating hearts; all the giant heard was the breathing of the goats. Then Ulysses saw him go to the mouth of the cave and swing the great slab aside and stand there. He realized just in time that the goats would rush outside, which is what the giant wanted, for then he could search the whole cave.

Ulysses whispered: “Quickly, swing under the bellies of the rams. Hurry, hurry!”

Luckily, they were giant goats and thus able to carry the men who had swung themselves under their bellies and were clinging to the wiry wool. Ulysses himself chose the largest ram. They moved toward the mouth of the cave and crowded through. The Cyclops’ hands came down and brushed across the goats’ backs feeling for the men, but the animals were huddled too closely together for him to reach between and search under their bellies. So he let them pass through.

Now the Cyclops rushed to the corner where the goats had been tethered and stamped, searched, and roared through the whole cave again, bellowing with fury when he did not find them. The herd grazed on the slope of the hill beneath the cave. There was a full moon; it was almost bright as day.

“Stay where you are,” Ulysses whispered.

He heard a crashing, peered out, and saw great shadowy figures converging on the cave. He knew that the other Cyclopes of the island must have heard the noise and had come to see. He heard the giant bellow.

The others called to him: “Who has done it? Who has blinded you?”

“Nobody. Nobody did it. Nobody blinded me.”

“Ah, you have done it yourself. What a tragic accident.”

And they went back to their own caves.

“Now!” said Ulysses. “Follow me!”

He swung himself out from under the belly of the ram and raced down the hill. The others raced after him. They were halfway across the valley when they heard great footsteps rushing after them, and Polyphemus bellowing nearer and nearer.

“He’s coming!” cried Ulysses. “Run for your lives!”

They ran as they had never run before, but the giant could cover fifty yards at a stride. It was only because he could not see and kept bumping into trees and rocks that they were able to reach the skiff and push out on the silver water before Polyphemus burst out of the grove of trees and rushed onto the beach. They bent to the oars, and the boat scudded toward the fleet.

Polyphemus heard the dip of the oars and the groaning of the oarlocks and, aiming at the sound, hurled huge boulders after them. They fell all around the ship but did not hit. The skiff reached Ulysses’ ship, and the sailors climbed aboard.

“Haul anchor, and away!” cried Ulysses. And then called to the Cyclops: “Poor fool! Poor blinded, drunken, gluttonous fool—if anyone else asks you, it is not Nobody, but Ulysses who has done this to you.”

But he was to regret this final taunt. The gods honor courage but punish pride.

Polyphemus, wild with rage, waded out chest-deep and hurled a last boulder, which hit mid-deck, almost sunk the ship, and killed most of the crew—among them seven of the nine men who had just escaped.

And Polyphemus prayed to Poseidon: “God of the Sea, I beg you, punish Ulysses for this. Visit him with storm and shipwreck and sorceries. Let him wander many years before he reaches home, and when he gets there let him find himself forgotten, unwanted, a stranger.”

Poseidon heard this prayer and made it all happen just that way.

N
OW THE BLACK SHIPS
beat their way northward from the land of the Cyclopes. And Ulysses, ignorant of the mighty curse that the blind giant had fastened upon him, was beginning to hope that they might have fair sailing the rest of the way home. So impatient was he that he took the helm himself and kept it night and day although his sailors pleaded with him to take some rest. But he was wild with eagerness to get home to his wife Penelope, to his young son Telemachus, and to the dear land of Ithaca that he had not seen for more than ten years now.

At the end of the third night, just as the first light was staining the sky, he saw something very strange—a wall of bronze, tall and wide, floating on the sea and blocking their way. At first he thought it was a trick of the light, and he rubbed his eyes and looked again. But there it was, a towering, bright wall of beaten bronze.

“Well,” he thought to himself, “it cannot stretch across the sea. There must be a way to get around it.”

He began to sail along the wall as though it were the shore of an island, trying to find his way around. Finally, he came to a huge gate, and even as he gazed upon it in amazement, the gate swung open and the wind changed abruptly. The shrouds snapped, the sails bulged, the masts groaned, and all three ships of the fleet were blown through the gate, which immediately clanged shut behind them. Once within the wall, the wind fell off and Ulysses found his ship drifting toward a beautiful, hilly island. Suddenly there was a great howling of wind. The sun was blown out like a candle. Darkness fell upon the waters. Ulysses felt the deck leap beneath him as the ship was lifted halfway out of the water by the ferocious gust and hurled through the blackness. He tried to shout, but the breath was torn from his mouth, and he lost consciousness.

Ulysses had no way of knowing this, but the mischievous Poseidon had guided his ships to the island fortress of Aeolus, Keeper of the Winds. Ages before, when the world was very new, the gods had become fearful of the terrible strength of the winds and had decided to tame them. So Zeus and Poseidon, working together, had floated an island upon the sea and girdled it about with a mighty bronze wall. Then they set a mountain upon the island and hollowed out that mountain until it was a huge stone dungeon. Into this hollow mountain they stuffed the struggling winds and appointed Aeolus as their jailer. And there the winds were held captive. Whenever the gods wanted to stir up a storm and needed a particular wind, they sent a message to Aeolus, who would draw his sword and stab the side of the mountain, making a hole big enough for the wind to fly through. If the north wind were wanted, he stabbed the north side of the mountain, its east slope for the east wind, and so on. When the storm was done, he would whistle the wind home, and the huge brawling gale, broken by its imprisonment, would crawl back whimpering to its hole.

Aeolus was an enormously fat demigod with a long wind-tangled beard and a red and wind-beaten face. He loved to eat and drink, and fight, play games, and hear stories. Twelve children he had, six boys and six girls. He sent them out one by one, riding the back of the wind around the world, managing the weather for each month.

And it was in the great castle of Aeolus that Ulysses and his men found themselves when they awoke from their enchanted sleep. Invisible hands held torches for them, guided them to the baths, anointed them with oil, and gave them fresh clothing. Then the floating torches led them to the dining hall, where they were greeted by Aeolus and his twelve handsome children. A mighty banquet was laid before them, and they ate like starved men.

Then Aeolus said: “Strangers, you are my guests—uninvited—but guests all the same. By the look of you, you have had adventures and should have fine stories to tell. Yes, I love a tale full of fighting and blood and tricks, and if you have such to tell, then I shall entertain you royally. But if you are such men as sit dumb, glowering, unwilling to please, using your mouths only to stuff food into—then—well, then you are apt to find things less pleasant. You, Captain!” he roared, pointing at Ulysses. “You, sir—I take you for the leader of this somewhat motley crew. Do you have a story to tell?”

“For those who know how to listen, I have a tale to tell,” said Ulysses.

“Your name?”

“Ulysses—of Ithaca.”

“Mmm—yes,” said Aeolus. I seem to recognize that name—believe I heard it on Olympus while my uncles and aunts up there were quarreling about some little skirmish they had interested themselves in. Near Troy I think it was … Yes-s-s … Were you there?”

I was there,” said Ulysses. “I was there for ten years, dear host, and indeed took part in some of that petty skirmishing that will be spoken of by men who love courage when this bronze wall and this island, and you and yours, have vanished under the sea and have been forgotten for a thousand years. I am Ulysses. My companions before Troy were Achilles, Menelaus, Agamemnon, mighty heroes all, and, in modesty, I was not least among them.”

“Yes-s-s …” said Aeolus. “You are bold enough. Too bold for your own good, perhaps. But you have caught my attention, Captain. I am listening. Tell on.…”

Then Ulysses told of the Trojan War; of the abduction of Helen, and the chase, and the great battles; the attacks, the retreats, the separate duels. He spoke of Achilles fighting Hector and killing him with a spear thrust, of Paris ambushing Achilles; and, finally, how he himself had made a great hollow wooden horse and had the Greek armies pretend to leave, only to sneak back and hide in the belly of the horse. He told how the Trojans had dragged the horse within their gates, and how the Greek warriors had crept out at night and taken the city and slaughtered their enemies.

Aeolus shouted with laughter. His face blazed and his belly shook. “Ah, that’s a trick after my own heart!” he cried. “You’re a sharp one, you are … I knew you had a foxy look about you. Wooden horse—ho ho! Tell more! Tell more!”

Then Ulysses told of his wanderings after the fall of Troy, of his adventure in Lotusland, and what had happened in the Cyclops’ cave. And when Aeolus heard how he had outwitted Polyphemus and blinded his single eye, he struck the table with a mighty blow of his fist and snouted, “Marvelous! A master stroke! By the gods, you are the bravest, craftiest warrior that has ever drunk my wine.” He was especially pleased because he had always hated Polyphemus. He had no way of knowing, of course, that the blinded Cyclops had prayed to his father and had laid a curse on Ulysses, and that he, Aeolus, was being made the instrument of that curse. He did not know this, for the gods move in mysterious ways. And so he roared with laughter and shouted, “You have pleased me, Ulysses. You have told me a brave tale, a tale full of blood and tricks. And now I shall grant you any favor within my power. Speak out, Ulysses. Ask what you will.”