verbava все записи автора Margaret Atwood – The Penelopiad

Since being dead--since achieving this state of bonelessness, liplessness, breastlessness--I've learned some things I would rather not know, as one does when listening at windows or opening other people's letters. You think you'd like to read minds? Think again.

***

I kept my mouth shut; or, if I opened it, I sang his praises. I didn't contradict, I didn't ask awkward questions, I didn't dig deep. I wanted happy endings in those days, and happy endings are best achieved by keeping the right doors locked and going to sleep during the rampages.

***

Where shall I begin? There are only two choices: at the beginning or not at the beginning. The real beginning would be the beginning of the world, after which one thing has led to another; but since there are differences of opinion about that, I'll begin with my own birth.

***

I was a kind girl--kinder than Helen, or so I thought. I knew I would have to have something to offer instead of beauty. I was clever, everyone said so in fact they said it so much that I found it discouraging--but cleverness is a quality a man likes to have in his wife as long as she is some distance away from him. Up close, he'll take kindness any day of the week, if there's nothing more alluring to be had.

***

The gods wanted meat as much as we did, but all they ever got from us was the bones and fat, thanks to a bit of rudimentary sleight of hand by Prometheus: only an idiot would have been deceived by a bag of bad cow parts disguised as good ones, and Zeus was deceived; which goes to show that the gods were not always as intelligent as they wanted us to believe.

***

Nothing helps gluttony along so well as eating food you don't have to pay for yourself, as I learned from later experience.

***

So by the time the morning came, Odysseus and I were indeed friends, as Odysseus had promised we would be. Or let me put it another way: I myself had developed friendly feelings towards him more than that, loving and passionate ones and he behaved as if he reciprocated them. Which is not quite the same thing.

***

The other three flattered him by saying an oracle had decreed that Troy could not fall without his help. That eased his preparations for departure, naturally. Which of us can resist the temptation of being thought indispensable?

***

Antinous sighed. 'The gods wanted to destroy us,' he said.
'That's everyone's excuse for behaving badly,' I said.

***

Crediting some god for one's inspirations was always a good way to avoid accusations of pride should the scheme succeed, as well as the blame if it did not.

***

I went back to sleep, and at last managed a comforting dream. This one I did relate; perhaps you have heard of it. My sister Iphthime who was so much older than I was that I hardly knew her, and who had married and moved far away came into my room and stood by my bed, and told me she had been sent by Athene herself, because the gods didn't want me to suffer. Her message was that Telemachus would return safely.
But when I questioned her about Odysseus was he alive or dead? she refused to answer, and slipped away.
So much for the gods not wanting me to suffer.
They all tease. I might as well have been a stray dog, pelted with stones or with its tail set alight for their amusement. Not the fat and bones of animals, but our suffering, is what they love to savour.

***

Who is to say that prayers have any effect? On the other hand, who is to say they don't? I picture the gods, diddling around on Olympus, wallowing in the nectar and ambrosia and the aroma of burning bones and fat, mischievous as a pack of ten-year-olds with a sick cat to play with and a lot of time on their hands. 'Which prayer shall we answer today?' they ask one another. 'Let's cast dice! Hope for this one, despair for that one, and while we're at it, let's destroy the life of that woman over there by having sex with her in the form of a crayfish!' I think they pull a lot of their pranks because they're bored.

***

Also, if a man takes pride in his disguising skills, it would be a foolish wife who would claim to recognise him: it's always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.

***

'Desire does not die with the body,' said Helen. 'Only the ability to satisfy it.'

***

'Why can't you leave him alone?' I yell at the maids. I have to yell because they won't let me go near them. 'Surely it's enough! He did penance, said the prayers, he got himself purified!'
'It's not enough for us,' they call.

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