Penelope and Ulysses Read online

  so the men in my army who are fond of young boys

  can share him.

  That way they are alive and you will be useful to me.

  Does this please you more?

  ULYSSES: I will come with you and I will serve you as I did before.

  Let my wife and son go, I beg you.

  AGAMEMNON: It is not enough that you just come with me.

  I want you to be involved in this war with a full heart.

  That is the only way you will be useful

  to me and my men.

  If you do not come of your own free will,

  I will keep your wife and son alive

  but they will be sexual servants to me and my men.

  Sometimes, my friend,

  there are worse things than death.

  ULYSSES: I will come on my own free will and with a full heart.

  AGAMEMNON: [looks out the window and yells to his men] Let the boy go.

  Go to your son, Penelope.

  Your husband has seen reason

  and has been healed from his madness.

  The gods have given me such powers.

  ULYSSES: I will come.

  I will come of my free will and a full heart.

  I pledge myself to this cause and this war.

  I will not speak the truth to our men.

  We will destroy Troy,

  their language and culture.

  We will make their world in our image

  and everyone will have our culture by force,

  our way of life.

  I am happy to open the doors to hell

  and Agamemnon. And I will follow

  and cut down the generations of my enemy,

  who have the distorted reason of hate,

  the desire to obliterate other men’s lives

  as if they are a plague of locusts.

  Or are we the plague?

  I will come with you

  and I will assist you in this quest.

  AGAMEMNON: Good thinking, Ulysses.

  Nothing like a crisis to bring you back to us.

  My dear Ulysses, not being in battle

  has left you with a twisted depth.

  I have come at the right time.

  This journey will lift your spirits

  and fill your coffers.

  I have come at the right time.

  Had I left you any longer in Ithaca

  you would have followed in the footsteps of Socrates.

  I mean, what was his use in life?

  Death has improved him, don’t you think?

  We can’t have philosophers,

  poets, or anarchists

  running reason and civilisation.

  I have seen many men die.

  I have slaughtered many men.

  I have no regrets.

  I have slaughtered my own daughter.

  And you must coil and coil

  the thread of life around and around

  the throat of the unsuspecting,

  and then you pull them down

  and strike hard into their heart.

  All the while they will feel

  surprise, fear, or even betrayal.

  You see, Ulysses, you could not sacrifice you son.

  Therefore, I am a stronger, nobler man.

  Men surrender quicker

  when you betray them

  with the threat of slaughtering their “pretty ones”31

  and sexually consuming their wives.

  It always works. And that is why, my Ulysses,

  you must never love—

  wives, children, men

  are there for you to use as tools,

  to gain power, fame, prestige, wealth.

  This is who we are and this is how we have what we have.

  We certainly have not worked for it.

  Have you?

  ULYSSES: We certainly have not worked for it,

  like the ox

  and like the peasants in the field.

  AGAMEMNON: This is how you become a collector of many men!

  You break them in spirit

  and you collect them

  in the hunt of the night.

  Coil around and around their throats

  the thread of distortion and deception

  and then strike!

  Deep,

  deep,

  deeper.

  Until nothing remains pulsing,

  flowing, beating, moving.

  We have hunting to do, Ulysses.

  Bring your nets.

  We have many wild creatures to catch

  in the sky, in the sea

  and on the soil of Troy.

  Come, Ulysses, you clever fox.

  Take me to the eggs of their next generations

  so that I can smash all of them.

  [ULYSSES and AGAMEMNON exit. YOUNG PENELOPE and PENELOPE start the chorus. The tapestry is war scenes and the colour is deep red.]

  YOUNG PENELOPE: Dear God, set me free from all the pain.

  “And when I keep to my bed, soaked in dew,

  And the thoughts go groping through the night,

  And the good dreams that used to guard my sleep.

  Not here.

  Terror, is at my neck.”32

  PENELOPE: “And swooping lower, all could see,

  plunging their claws into a hare, a mother

  bursting with unborn young—the babies spilling

  quick spurts of blood—cut off! the race just dashing into life!

  Blood will have blood.

  BOTH: Blood will have blood

  and suffer, suffer into truth.”33

  YOUNG PENELOPE: “They are kneeling by the bodies of the dead,

  embracing men and brothers,

  infants over the aged loins that gave them life, and sobbing,

  as the yoke constricts their last free breath,

  for every dear one lost.”34

  PENELOPE: And what of Agamemnon’s men?

  Ashes and urns come back.

  BOTH: “Blood will have blood.

  A man’s lifeblood

  is dark and mortal

  once it wets the earth.

  What song can sing it back?”35

  YOUNG PENELOPE: War is a creature

  that has the legs of many men,

  the heads of a few,

  and the arms of millions

  that will tear man, woman, and child into pieces.

  PENELOPE: War is a living creature

  that feeds on human blood.

  It grows in its blind rage, seeking for more human blood.

  It is organised by a select few:

  the keepers of culture,

  the keepers of intellectual power and knowledge,

  the keepers of the secrets of the beast.

  BOTH: It is kept alive by many.

  PENELOPE: They feed it human flesh and human blood:

  the flesh and blood of both

  the kindred and the stranger.

  The creature of war has no voice

  because its mouth is full with human flesh;

  therefore, its makers and keepers

  will speak in a peaceful voice

  “designed to make lies sound truthful

  and murder respectable.”36

  YOUNG PENELOPE: This creature called war

  grows from all its devouring,

  from all the loss and grief of others.

  It muta
tes the truth within the rotting corpses

  into a mass rage and grief without relief—

  a blind rage and deep grief

  that words can never give relief.

  PENELOPE: Some doors are not meant to be opened,

  and all who pass those doors

  “abandon all hope.”37

  BOTH: Once we have lost

  the anchor and the thread to our life

  it is the animals that pity man.

  [Note: The Chorus has been interwoven with sections from the Chorus from Aeschylus’s The Oresteia and Euripides’s thoughts on war, The Trojan Women.

  This section is not intended to glorify war or to shock the reader; it is there to engender thought and compassion for those caught up in wars or who have come from wars. If enough of us realise the price of war on both sides, we might, as evolved people, consider not making war on our neighbours and realise that we all need to live on this planet, and we all need to share its resources in peace and humanity. I have put this section in to expose some of the horrors of war and to cause reflection, connection, compassion, and a more evolved way of addressing our problems, as a humane world community.]

  Act IV

  Under House Arrest

  Colours of the Sea

  [The PENELOPE that we meet in this dialogue and scene is more controlled and planning. She is standing by the shoreline, looking into the sea, reflecting on her thoughts.]

  PENELOPE: The nets of the wolf and the jackal

  have been thrown over Ithaca.

  The hunters, the opportunists, the thieves

  and the murderers live just outside my door.

  I am under house arrest.

  Right across from my courtyard

  they have come, presenting themselves

  as cultivated men,

  as educated men,

  as civilised men.

  While all the while I can see their plans and nets,

  their claws and smiling white teeth,

  the teeth of the jackal and wolf

  before they tear into the soft flesh of their prey.

  They wait for the bait to fall

  into their foaming mouth.

  Are these men, wild dogs, or wolves?

  I watch them from my courtyard.

  They all have become a family that works together

  in secrecy and crime

  for the prize: the fall of Ithaca,

  the bedding and betrayal of me,

  the murder of my son.

  [AGATHY: About thirty-five. He is handsome and lusts for PENELOPE and her lands. He is a brute. AGATHY has a solid build, the body of a warrior, with dark long hair and dark eyes. He has no scarring on his body, as he has not gone to war, having led a privileged and protected existence. His hands are thick and heavy, like his intellect, and all culture and the fine arts are wasted on him. He is vain, proud, and arrogant and cannot detect when he is being mocked. He truly believes that Zeus gave him birth.

  PETROCULOS: About fifty-five. Intellectual, patient, experienced in political and personal life, he wants to achieve domination, not only of Ithaca but the whole region. He accomplishes things through persuasion and gets others to do the physical violence when required. PETROCULOS is a tall, lean, elderly man with the look of education. He too has not gone to war but has given advice on many. His hair and beard are grey; he gives the impression of being your kind grandfather and “sister,” and therefore others trust him easily.

  PETROCULOS and AGATHY are speaking together discussing an alliance to work together so that they can outwit the other suitors and PENELOPE. If AGATHY shows aggression towards PENELOPE, she will ask assistance from PETROCULOS, sealing the deal between them: they both will share in the region’s wealth.]

  PETROCULOS: Look my boy,

  you will have to overcome

  your sexual impulses towards Penelope,

  because if the other suitors find out

  that we have hurt her in any way

  or that we are working together

  in terrorizing and befriending her,

  they will kill both of us.

  AGATHY: I understand.

  We can’t seem to have an advantage

  or spoil the balance of terror that is in place.

  PETROCULOS: Penelope is to never suspect or know

  of our conspiracy against her.

  She must believe that she chose one of us

  of her own free will.

  All are here to make sure

  that Penelope chooses one of them

  and everyone here believes it will be he.

  To disturb this “balance”

  would cause chaos and murder among us,

  and the strongest,

  or the one who is not murdered in his sleep

  will be left standing, and probably not for long.

  Another factor that you have forgotten

  is that your future wife, Penelope,

  is also trained and disciplined

  with the sword and rhetoric.

  Therefore such a situation of disturbance

  would give her the advantage.

  AGATHY: You are saying that Penelope and her son,

  The Doubtful as he is known,

  would seize this opportunity

  to organise and fight or manage to flee,

  that some from the other islands

  may come to assist her.

  PETROCULOS: She is admired and wanted

  by the men who have been here for ten years.

  If they did not admire and lust for her

  then at any time they could have

  stormed and taken over her little Ithaca.

  I tell you this woman has charm, wit, and seduction,

  and let’s not forget she is as cunning and as clever as her Ulysses.

  AGATHY: Yes! Yes! We must keep it in the law

  or at least make it look as if we have not broken the law—

  or not get caught when we are breaking it.

  PETROCULOS: We must keep it planned, organised,

  civilised and conduct ourselves as men with honour.

  AGATHY: How do we conduct ourselves by night?

  PETROCULOS: The night has not eyes,

  and you can conduct yourself as you please,

  as long as you do not get caught.

  As civilised and cultured men,

  we must convince all others, including Penelope,

  that it is she who will make the decision.

  AGATHY: Woman, making her own decision,

  with her own free will!

  I tell you, it is not healthy for her sexually.

  My father told me to allow a woman

  such freedom would affect her bodily fluids

  and that she would become dry and frigid.

  PETROCULOS: We must make all others believe

  that we are following

  the law of the land and our ancestors.

  It is called politics, rhetoric.

  Our civilisation is based on such lies and trickery.

  You never reveal the real agenda

  until you have the transaction of expansion and possession

  sealed, netted, and bled.

  AGATHY: I don’t bother myself

  with such complicated political explanations.

  My main drive is here [puts his hand on his genital area]

  and I don’t need a sexual lecture

  or political training from you, old man;

  I know how to conduct myself with a woman.

  I know what they want.

>   When they say no they mean yes.

  It’s their way of being difficult,

  to make a man wild with passion.

  PETROCULOS: Who gave you this pearl of wisdom?

  AGATHY: My father and my grandfather,

  and I have watched the sheep and goats.

  Women are similar. You have to overpower them

  to make them feel wanted.

  Women call this foreplay.

  I see a woman, I tell her she is beautiful

  like no other

  and she believes me and is happy.

  She says no,

  I say yes,

  she says no,

  I say yes.

  But eventually,

  after a few minutes of such physical struggle,

  she will please me sexually.

  God, it has been a long time

  since I have been with a young woman.

  All the women on this accursed island

  are as old as my grandfather,

  and some of them look just like him.

  PETROCULOS: Poor boy. Are you telling me

  that Penelope’s handmaidens and servants

  are not to your liking—or lusting?

  Or are you telling me your charm

  does not work with any of them?

  AGATHY: You don’t have sexual needs like I do.

  You are old and dried up.

  I have been here for ten long years.

  I came here when I was twenty-five,

  on this accursed rock they call Ithaca,

  and that woman in there

  has refused me her bed.

  I don’t think she is normal.

  I am at the peak of my youth and sexuality,

  and she refuses me as her husband.

  PETROCULOS: Has anyone on this wretched island,

  sunbaking in her courtyard,

  been in her chambers?

  AGATHY: I have tried to bribe one of her maids

  to just let me see Penelope’s bedroom,

  and all I got was

  “There is something living in the mistress’s bedroom.

  It is something that Ulysses left for her, and it is living.”

  PETROCULOS: What do you think that is?

  AGATHY: A wild animal that she keeps chained

  to the bed or in the room?

  How could she go without sex for so long?

  I tell you she is not normal.

  Any other woman would have been

  running into my arms

  begging me to have sex with her.

  And it would have been I,

  taking my time, setting the conditions

  and convincing her that marrying me