[A man]

by David Michael Conner

What is a man but a pig who walks on two feet? The thought occurred to me when the witch transformed a sailor into a pig before my eyes, and another to a dog. What should be my amazement at the transformation? Is it really that great a change?

We land on shore after shore, men attending a man far from his home, his kingdom. The farther we go the deeper the sea becomes, and more abominations of the gods appear to us. We seem doomed.

They say the gods smile down on Odysseus from Olympus. If they smile on him, they seem to smile above us too, amused, making fools of us, bemused as we accompany him on his escapades. We were once his friends, but now we seem little more than playthings for the gods, and he a plaything for the goddesses. One by one, man after man is lost to the sea, or to a potion or a curse, and Odysseus is spared. I have been spared, true, but I know it is only a matter of time, for as we port Odysseus arrives with splendor and attraction, while I am left to fasten our ship to the shore and wait for his return. The god of the sea has tested us or tried to kill us, and most have been lost. Odysseus promises we are safe, but I have heard his talks: only he is protected. And yet I don’t question the gods—I only question why I don’t question them. It may be I doubt their power over me if I don’t submit to them. But I raise this question in silence in rhythm with the waves, never openly, for what would be the meaning, or the end? Surely, only to cause contention among our friends, and Odysseus, who is now a hero and no longer a man.

Am I to be lost at sea with the others? I am. I feel lost already, in myself, and feel it should be futile to set out for home. If a god ordered me not to eat the fruit of a tree and I ate it, what would be the result? What if the order came from Odysseus, my former friend, now a thing of legend living as a hero generating his own myth? I think I’d eat it for the sake of satiating my hunger, and also to test the god’s power. I would call the fruit knowledge; if I ate it, I’d find answers that may not be the answers I want, but possibly what I need.

I ate the fruit, called lotus, and nothing happened except explosions of delicious taste in my mouth—rushes of bittersweet saliva. I waited for the lord Zeus to strike me down, but it didn’t happen. I ate another lotus and it tasted less sweet, more bitter, but still good, and I realized, along with my companions who ate with me, that if we left we’d be mad. To sail away in such conditions would be the first spark to kindle our funeral pyres, regardless of Odysseus’s false protestations. Perhaps a few would survive; probably not. To sail home would be to die, and to stay would be to miss our pasts in Ithaka but to remain alive and possibly make us new lives. Should we, called the lotus eaters, die here? I know better than to ask.