He is assailed by strange smells, rotten fish mixed with acrid smoke. Someone is burning something foul and the strangeness of the smells and the impudent touches of these unknown hands cause him to panic.
He turns, first left, then right, and then sits, quite suddenly, in the middle of this foreign street.
The hands are trying to drag him up. He is angry and afraid and also irritated that these ignorant people should dare to touch him, Homer. The voices in his ears are uncultured and angry. They shriek curses at him. He cannot understand the language but knows what they are saying. They know of his mistreatment of Odysseus and the men. They have a list. His crimes are all numbered. They plan to kill him.
He curls up on the ground, as helpless as a child, and waits for the first rock to strike him.
And then he hears the sound of Odysseus’s voice speaking in the language of the country of his fever. That Odysseus should have learned this language without his knowledge seems a vicious betrayal. Odysseus is shouting. Slowly Homer realizes that he is ordering the people to leave him alone.
Odysseus is going to rescue him.
“I am blind,” says Homer suddenly. “I am blind. I can’t see.” He pretends that Odysseus is not there. The prospect of being rescued by Odysseus is humiliating. Homer pretends to rescue himself. “Get away from me,” he says, “I’m blind.”
“They can’t understand you.”
Homer composes himself and attempts to look as if he is totally in charge of the situation, sitting in the middle of this filthy street in his good clothes.
“Who’s that?”
“You know who it is.”
“Oh, Odysseus, is it? Sit down, Odysseus, I’ve been expecting you.”
“You’re stopping a funeral procession,” says Odysseus. “Come over to the side and let them get through.”
Homer doesn’t like the sound of his voice. It’s made from steel, like a dagger.
When they’re sitting by the side of the street, Odysseus says, “You’ve been running away.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. I’ve been waiting for you for hours. Have you brought everything?”
He hears a rustle of cloth as Odysseus squats beside him. “Are you still ill?”
Homer can feel the face peering closely at his. He puts a hand out and pushes the face away. For an instant he is in a room in Greece and the smell of hot broth is under his nose.
“I’m better now,” he says. “Fever is not a very pleasant thing for a man.”
“It’s possibly worse,” says Odysseus, “for the creatures of his imagination.”
“It’s been a hard time for all of us,” the poet says, “for me, for you, for the men. Is Echion still causing trouble?”
“He was never causing trouble,” Odysseus speaks patiently. “I’ve explained it to you before. I don’t know why you want to misunderstand me.”
“I can’t have men who spread rumours.”
“He remembered his dreams, that’s all. He wanted to talk about his dreams.”
Homer thumps his staff on the street. “I won’t have men talking about their dreams. I can’t afford the risk. You can’t either. Once they know, they don’t want to do what they’re told,” he sighs. “Sometimes I’m sorry I told you.”
“I’m sorry you told me,” says Odysseus, “always.”
“I’ve been watching this Echion,” Homer insists. “He’s a good soldier?”
“Yes, yes he is.”
“I have a plan for him. Did you bring the writing materials?”
“I said so, yes. Are you still lost?”
“Homer is never lost,” says Homer. “We have made a few minor explorations and now it’s time to get back to the main story. I’ve been thinking, Odysseus, that if Echion wants to know the meaning of his dreams, we might as well tell him.”
And then the blind man begins to speak in a curiously soft voice which rises and falls in a steady rhythmical pattern. Odysseus writes down his words, sitting at the blind poet’s feet like a servant in front of his master.
4.
“Your girl has a wart on her hand,” said Diomedes.
“Has she?” said Echion. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“She’s got a wart on her left hand, just near her little finger. Why don’t you look?”
Echion looked instead at Diomedes and smiled, in spite of himself, at the earnestness of his friend’s face. He wondered what was really bothering him. “Do you have funny dreams?” he asked.
Diomedes looked embarrassed. “I wasn’t criticizing her,” he said. “Do you think she has a lover? She’s very beautiful.” The girl smiled at Diomedes and he began to play with her long black hair.
“Do you have funny dreams?” said Echion. “I have funny dreams.”
“I have beautiful dreams,” Diomedes smiled at the girl, “about love.”
“You don’t have strange dreams about battles?”
“No.”
Echion caught his friend’s gaze and held it hard. “Is that the truth?”
“Yes,” Diomedes averted his eyes, “of course it’s the truth.”
“I had a dream,” Echion began very slowly, as if remembering with great difficulty, “that we had all been captured and we were assembled in a great courtyard. The walls of the courtyard were like giant staircases and our captors were women. For some reason they chose me. They selected me and took me to the centre of the courtyard and pulled my arm, this arm, off. All the time I was there I was watching you. You were weeping. And …” Echion stopped, his voice breaking. “Did you have that dream, Diomedes?”
“I don’t know.” Diomedes had turned on his stomach and hidden his face in his folded arms.
“I know you did.” Echion now spoke very calmly. “I know you had that dream, Diomedes. I know we all had that dream. And all the other dreams. I don’t think they were dreams. I think these terrible things have really happened and Odysseus has used magic to make us forget.”
Diomedes looked at his friend’s serious face and suddenly burst out laughing. “Who put your arm back?” he said.
“I don’t know,” said Echion, “I don’t know. Do you want to swap?”
“All right.”
Echion suddenly felt very tired. “You don’t mind about the wart?”
“There isn’t a wart,” said Diomedes. “I only said it to make you look at her. You haven’t looked at her since we came here. I think she’s offended.”
Diomedes leant across and took the girl’s hand and Echion looked at her for the first time. Yes, she was a beautiful girl. So was Diomedes’ girl. They were both beautiful. They seemed to Echion to be almost identical with their long blue-black hair and high foreheads and small noses. Only the colour of their simple garments which they tucked so shyly around their breasts separated them from each other in his mind.
His girl had been blue.
He held out his hand towards the red girl and she came, reluctantly, he thought, to his side. She touched his ear, the ear with the piece missing from it. She touched the cut edge with her finger. It tickled. She said something questioningly in her own language and Echion answered in his: “It’s all right,” he said, “it was long ago, a long time ago.”
Diomedes stood up with the blue girl and walked slowly towards the mountains.
Left alone with this young girl, Echion felt very old and very lonely. “Are you happy,” he asked her hoarsely, “do you have a lover?”
The girl raised her thick black eyebrows.
“Lover,” he said, “do … you … have a … lover?”
The girl stood and pulled him up slowly, a great bulky parcel of bad dreams with a piece missing from his ear. “Are you happy?” he said as he followed her reluctantly towards the mountains.