Penelope Diaries: I Was a Corporate Classicist: HUGHES (con't.)

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“The student” is my former student from Grinnell College, Alexia Brue ‘95. She and I have been reading the Odyssey and trying to feel mythical for five days already, starting in Istanbul and Troy. Brue is writing an article for Lexus Magazine about reading Homer’s poem “on location”, and reflecting on it with her former classics professor – a sort of Tuesdays with Morrie, with a Mediterranean vibe.

Brue is doing her own reporter thing on the trip, but I have a few motives of my own. Thoughts of poor Penelope who stayed home for 20 years while Odysseus endured travel, adventure, feasts, and countless spa treatments, made me want to take the trip for her sake. Since Brue had just published a book, Cathedrals of the Flesh: My Search for the Perfect Bath, I thought she’d be the perfect companion, for Penelope’s sake. So we took off across the sea armed with copies of Homer and a CD I had made, to induce mythicality if necessary. We both read a considerable chunk before the trip began, nevertheless most of the travel time was spent reading silently or aloud. Reading “on-location” improved the Odyssey for us both. Some of the physical places proved to be overwhelming in their evocativeness.

It is night as we approach Circeo and we are listening to Carlos Santana sing ‘Gotta Black Magic Woman”:
“Our next landfall was on Aiaia, island
of Circe, dire beauty and divine,
sister of baleful Aietes, like him
fathered by Helios . . . I could see
a smoke wisp from the woodland hall of Circe.
So I took counsel with myself: should I
go inland scouting out that reddish smoke?”
(Od. 10. 148ff)

Circeo is actually a cape facing the Pontine Islands, 100 km from Rome and Naples. Our 4-star Punta Rossa Hotel and Beauty Farm, transformed the character of the trip for me, and has probably made me re-think how I read the Odyssey, at least with respect to Circe. It is dark when we arrive, and we cannot see the spectacular beauty of the place, high on a cliff overlooking the sea. After dropping off our stuff in rooms with balconies overlooking the sea, we make for the restaurant, which we have all to ourselves. From our rooms, at the top of the resort, to the restaurant, which is down at the bottom, but still high on the cliff, we walk down a cavernous corridor, cut into the rock, lit by torches. I can easily believe this is Circe’s palace.
“Presently in the hall her maids were busy,
the nymphs who waited upon Circe. . .
One came with richly colored rugs to throw
on seat and chairback, over linen covers;
a second pulled the tables out, all silver,
and loaded them with baskets all of gold;
a third mixed wine as tawny-mild as honey
in a bright bowl, and set out golden cups.
The fourth came bearing water, and lit a blaze
under a cauldron. By and by it bubbled,
and when the dazzling brazen vessel seethed
she filled a bathtub to my waist, and bathed me,
pouring a soothing blend on head and shoulders,
warming the soreness of my joints away.
When she had done, she smoothed me with sweet oil.
The larder mistress brought her tray of loaves
with many savory slices, and she gave
the best, to tempt me.” (Od. 10. 391ff)

We enjoy ourselves entirely as much as Odysseus had. We have our terribly handsome, terribly attentive waiter, Marco, to ourselves, and he is all those nymphs rolled into one. The larder mistress (Marco, actually) brings a tray of bread, the sommelier suggests a wine (Marco again), and we place our order (with Marco). Given the history of the place, I go with the pork chops. While we sip the local wine and pick at the Caprese salad as we wait for our food, we read the spa menu for tomorrow, wondering if Marco is the masseur. Both of us decide on the thalassotherapy. Brue explains that the indoor-outdoor pool is filled directly with seawater, which is then warmed and jetted so that it penetrates and regenerates the skin. When we’re finished eating we take our Odysseys over to the fireplace where we sit and take turns reading to each other until we’ve finished book 10.

Leaving Circeo, we head down to Scylla where Brue has a great time playing reporter, and asking all the locals their opinions about their eponymous heroine. In Scylla we meet the rest of our team -- our Maltese photographer Kurt Arrigo, and his wife/assistant Claire, who joined in our quest for five of the days. Claire takes over the driving since she is fluent in Italian and experienced in driving on the Autostrada.

In Scylla too, we are awed by the mythicality of the place. Again, there is a feeling of being two different places at once. Scilla is the modern town with churches and restaurants and shops. But existing right alongside Scilla is Scylla the mythical rock. You could easily have a wonderful time in the former without giving the latter a second thought. All it really takes to enter the latter, however, is to think about it, and maybe look on in wonder.
“Clowns to the left, jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you.”
The enchanted CD plays, as we leave Scylla heading straight for Charybdis.

Brue is more than a little concerned about the order of our stops. We should have seen the cave of the Cyclops Polyphemus before Circeo and Scilla. Not to mention all the places we’re omitting entirely. It’s just wrong, she sometimes moans. I remind her that a) she’s the one who made the itinerary, b) her genre is creative non-fiction, emphasis on creative, so she can say she did it in any order she wants, and c) it didn’t actually happen in any order at all, anyhow.

As we drive across Sicily looking for a cave, a further problem, for Brue, is the fact that there are two caves in the area thought to be Cyclops’ cave. “Hughes, which one is the real one?” she keeps asking, before we even get there. I scream, “WHAT ARE YOU ASKING ME, BRUE? WHICH IS THE REAL CAVE THAT THE REAL ONE-EYED GIANT WHO WAS THE SON OF THE GOD POSEIDON REALLY LIVED IN? IS THAT WHAT YOU ARE ASKING ME? BECAUSE IF YOU ARE, well, I’m not sure.” “Oh, right,” she says. “I keep forgetting.”

Our two choices are a cave in Favignana, a pretty little tuna-fishing island off the west coast of Sicily, and one in Pizzalungo, on the west coast of Sicily itself. Ultimately we all prefer Pizzalungo, and when Kurt tries to photograph us in that cave reading together, I assert professional integrity and refuse. “A classicist,” I say, “would never read the Odyssey in a cave. Even with a favorite student. She would, however, read on a Mediterranean beach. So talk to me on Calypso’s island.” I’m the professional, so they defer the shoot.

Calypso’s island is generally thought to be Gozo, one of the islands of Malta. Malta is a special treat especially since it is the home of our new and already dear friends, Kurt and Claire. Kurt arranged for us to stay at Ta Cenc Spa Hotel, eager to hear Brue’s professional opinion on one of their favorites. For Penelope, I get a full body black mud treatment and Brue goes with the body salt brushing. In this way we stay true to the poem, for not only did Calypso bathe Odysseus, it was a tempest that brought Odysseus to the island, and one that took him away. His experience of Gozo was all about the mud and the body salt.

The next day we read aloud to each other on the beach and pretend we aren’t aware we are being photographed. Though we are honestly never unaware of Kurt, still we both get a genuine thrill as we read.
“Even a god who found this place
would gaze, and feel his heart beat with delight:
so Hermes did. . .
But he saw nothing of the great Odysseus
who sat apart, as a thousand times before,
and racked is own heart groaning, with eyes wet
scanning the bare horizon of the sea. . .
and now her ladyship, went to find Odysseus
in his stone seat to seaward.” (Od. 5. 79ff)

As we walk away Brue whispers, “Hughes! Did you see that stone seat carved into the rock at the water’s edge? That’s where he sat!” I had noticed that seat, and was thinking the same thing. For our last dinner on Malta, everybody is abuzz. We’re happy because Brue’s just checked her e-mail and discovered that Europe Lexus has heard about our story and wants to use it in their glossy magazine too. The Maltese are happy because they’ve just received initial rumors that Gladiator 2 may film in Malta, the same site where Gladiator and Troy were filmed. It is hard to leave this paradise, and maybe now we understand Odysseus’ delay.

After a few days on Corfu, the supposed home of the Phaeacians, and the penultimate stop of Odysseus, we are ready for the big payoff. Nostos, is setting in, both for Ithaka, and for our own homes. The enchanted CD is playing the Beatles, who surely had Odysseus (and us) in mind when they recorded “Golden Slumbers”.
“Once there was a way, to get back homeward
Once there was a way, to get back home.
Sleep pretty darling do not cry,
And I will sing a lullaby.”

We make it to Ithaka. Mission accomplished. Here, I’m finally able to put my finger on how this has been a nostos for us, too. I have had the unexpected pleasure of returning (home) to who I was ten years ago, and in some ways I inhabited that world again, but better. Such a return is a rare privilege. Brue remembers, or so it seems, every word I ever said, and she has taken them as words to live by, and hasn’t turned out the worse for it.

I have a little surprise for Brue, but I’m not sure how she’ll like it. For our sunset over the water I brought a little Greek for her to read with me-- the reunion scene between Penelope and Odysseus. I act disappointed in what she’d forgotten over the years, but in reality I am amazed at what she still knew and remembered. When we’re done, we hate to leave the balcony, even for dinner, even though we’re starving, and it’s dark and we can no longer see the bay. I say I believe our work here is done. I am officially off the clock, and on my way home. So I put the Beatles on the enchanted CD one more time, and am pleasantly surprised when she can sing along with almost all the words with me.
“Two of us riding nowhere
Spending someone's
Hard earned pay
Two of us Sunday driving
Not arriving
On our way back home
We're on our way home
We're going home. . .
You and I have memories
Longer than the road that stretches out ahead. . .”

We’ll see what our agent can get us next year – maybe Derek Walcott’s Omeros, on location in the Caribbean.