The time has not yet come to kill Echion for the last time. When the time comes his death will be used to achieve a certain effect. Echion is an annoying small coin, but he will not be spent lightly. He is also a dangerous coin to keep. Sooner or later his infuriating questions will contaminate Diomedes and then the other men. Echion is the seed of the mutiny which Homer dreads.
But Echion is wearing down. His black eyebrows almost meet across his perpetually furrowed brow and his eyes look like windows onto a windswept sky, one instant the most brilliant blue and the next grey with heavy clouds. He looks like a man who has fought too many battles and wants nothing more than to lie down and die amongst his friends.
Homer looks along the beach, walking his mind past the twenty-eight other men who are also there. Some sleep under the tall strange trees. Others recline under large wooden structures that have been built for them by friendly natives. In the shade of these shadow factories they retell old legends and bawdy stories. Others, like Echion, lie with women who are puzzled and afraid of these hairy light-skinned strangers.
The laughter on the beach is loud and coarse. There is a grim determination in it, as if the men were committed to being happy at any cost. They are soldiers on leave. They wish to behave like soldiers on leave but at the same time they cast silent glances at the palm trees and their giant orange fruit and examine the seeds carefully while they caress their girl or tell their story or pretend to gaze out at the misty sea. The girls accept the caresses silently and offer their strange companions rich drinks from goblets shaped like pigs’ heads and the soldiers laugh and play at being happy.
For the thousand things they talk and joke about, they say nothing about their most recent experiences. They say nothing of the lands they have visited, driven on the seas of Homer’s fever, a great yellow storm which has washed them onto impossible shores where they have met threat and horror and deprivation.
They are suffering from the shock which is the necessary protection for those who are the victims of dreams. Their memories of their roles in Homer’s dreams seem simply to be recollections of nightmares too horrible to mention.
Thus they remember but dismiss the time that Odysseus was set alight and ran amongst them in panic, setting each of them alight in turn. Likewise Diomedes’ castration and decapitation. Likewise a thousand other horrible things.
Only Echion ponders on these matters. His brows knot continually as he tries to put down his memories.
Odysseus, of course, is excepted from all this. It is necessary that he collaborate. He alone is not protected and will clearly remember the pain and the hardships and soon he will come in search of Homer and accuse him once more of neglect and mismanagement.
Homer turns wearily in his bed, attempting to turn his back on the beach. If only he could remember where he was sending these men he could put everything to rights. But he’s lost. His memory has broken its anchor and is drifting loose and he’s stuck with this contingent of soldiers who lie on a foreign beach and drown the noises from their dreams with false laughter.
The seas shimmer.
A large white fluffy cloud in the sky threatens to solidify, to become granite. Homer, moaning, tastes the rock between his teeth.
Diomedes leans on his elbow. His flesh is smooth and unmarked. His wounds have been healed by Homer. Diomedes is a good soldier, tough and strong, delighting in discipline and comforting himself in the superiority of his leaders. Homer’s spite has not been visited on him. He is a strange contrast to the battle-scarred veteran who lies by his side.
“Are you awake?” he asks the veteran.
“Yes,” says Echion, “I’m awake.” He is staring at the granite cloud.
“Do you like your girl?” Diomedes’ voice is uneasy. He wishes to be continually assured that everything is excellent. He is young and Echion is old.
Echion smiles. He finds his friend’s concern for the quality of the girl amusing. “Yes, I like my girl. Do you like yours?”
Diomedes doesn’t look at his girl. It seems as if he wasn’t asking about the girl at all, that he wanted to know something more important. “Yes,” he says, “I like my girl.”
He picks up one of the purple seeds and examines it minutely. For a moment it seems that he is about to ask another question, the real question.
“Tell me,” Echion says gently, “tell me what’s on your mind.”
“Nothing,” says Diomedes, “I was just thinking how good it is that we both like our girls.”
2.
Later, while Diomedes was asleep, Echion dug sullenly in the sand and puzzled at his problem. His problem nagged at him continually. It was something so stupid it made him angry to think about it. But he couldn’t leave it alone.
Echion’s problem was that he had forgotten the purpose of their mission. It was stupid of him. It was so stupid he couldn’t even ask any of the others. He had once made the mistake of broaching this subject with Diomedes and Diomedes, his closest friend, had flared into a wild temper and called him a traitor and a weakling and many other things which, his eyes brimming with tears, he came later to apologize for. He had, he said, been having bad dreams. They had upset him. He was sorry. Echion had forgiven him instantly but they had not discussed the matter since.
As for the matters of the dreams, Echion had considered talking about that but he thought better of it. He had also been afflicted by these dreams. He had mentioned them to Odysseus, who had taken such a keen interest in them that he had become suspicious.
Echion now abandoned his sand-digging so that the girl could scratch his back more easily. He gazed out at the small flotilla of canoes from which brown bodies fell into the water. Probably, he thought, probably they are collecting food for a feast. The voices of the divers wandered across the water like memories from a hundred years ago and Echion was suddenly homesick and yearned for the voice of a wife he could hardly remember and the arms of a child whose name he had forgotten.
“Where did he go?” It was Diomedes again.
“Who?”
“Odysseus.”
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I was thinking about Odysseus. I wondered where he was.”
“I suppose,” said Echion, “that he’s talking to the blind man.”
Diomedes sighed. “Do you like your girl?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Echion, “I like my girl. Do you like yours?”
“Yes, yes I do. Do you want to swap?”
“I don’t care. Do you want to?”
The sky was full of clouds like a melted jigsaw puzzle, “I don’t know,” said Diomedes, “I was just thinking about Odysseus.”
3.
Reality returns to Homer’s fever only to take his sight and go away again. Light falls on his blind eyes like coloured rain on a tiled roof.
He is walking down a street in the country of his fever. Odysseus is pursuing him. The street is uneven and littered with small stones. He stumbles continually. He worries about his dignity. The street is full of unseen foreigners. Hands touch him. It is difficult to understand the intention of the numerous small pinches and sharp tugs he is assailed by.
He fears that Odysseus has passed the limit of his endurance and gone mad, that he carries the knife that will kill them all, Homer and the battle-weary population of his mind.