Whispers of War

Since a foreign ship sailed into the harbor; war. Since that dusk, a humid Ithacan afternoon; whispers of it, heard from the courtyard of King Odysseus’ palace. Whisper, whisper; war. Whisper, whisper; wake up. Buckets of water, fetched from Odysseus’ courtyard; dropping in surprise, spilling. Puddles, red and gold- reflections of the Spartan ship. Reflections of splendor, spoils of war, prizes of victory. Breezes like trumpeters; announcing. Warning. Cooks calling; inside, no time to stare. 

Not a moment to spare; back to the kitchen. Lavish feasts to prepare. Recast in our special-occasion roles; Odysseus, host; Penelope, hostess; slaves, well-kept and gracious servants, maids; virginal godesses. Boats tied to the dock. Sailors with folded sails. Shouts in the palace, unceasing, tireless; prepare! Tables, scrubbed and set. Cattle, butchered. Bread, kneaded. Golden pitchers and basins, assembled and placed just right.

The opening of the doors. Our time to prepare, running out. Enter the men, in a large group. Pillagers, like. Said to travel around trading slaves. Shadowy in the absence of the lingering sun; simply foreign figures filing in. Many loud footsteps in the hall- greeted by the host, Odysseus. Noble laughter, the visitors’ captain caught in a hearty embrace. The hostess; enticing with words on the feasting in store for their visit. Slaves, waiting to take these newcomers to bathe. Guests, directed upstairs. Each of them Spartans who know the drill. Clomp, clomp, clomp- up the steps. A little later; clip, clap, back down again. A little lighter, this time. Maybe the dirt shed in the baths- more weight gone than I would have thought.

Down around the tables of the great hall; revelry and weariness clashing. Men with newly cleaned nails clutched around golden goblets. Shouts in the palace; more wine! More meat! At the table, nobility and guests. Around the walls, servants; privileged to attend to this feast. Privileged to hear the most refined of whispers. Or, in this hallowed hall, simply the truth. Noblest of rumours, floating. Over these chatting heads, up through the ceiling and out of the chimneys. Curling round the walls, planting themselves in the startled ears of servants. But now, Odysseus speaking with his wife. Trading stories with the ship’s captain. Complements; the build and quality of the Spartan ship. The host, oblivious to its portents. To the whispers it brought.

Then, a new subject: the goings-on of Menelaus, the king of Sparta. These words; a sudden inspiration and joy to the captain. No shame; raised eyebrows, a smirk. Like saying, so much to tell! In endless turmoil, that Menelaus. His wife, Helen, running away with a Trojan prince and all.The sea-captain, jovially talking of his king’s sudden rage. Hilarious wifelessness! And the Trojans refuse to return her. 

But the hostesses eyes. Revealing her reproach. Rolling back into her head, then refocusing. Then glancing at Odysseus. Sailors around him, swigging wine, filling the hall with shouts of laughter. Odysseus, forgetting to play the part of host. Staring straight down at his plate, unmoving. Long lashes and panic. Pallid cheeks, pursed lips. No sound. The captain, laughing, oblivious. So many stories of Helen’s indiscretions! Offering them; good gossip, irresistable. Penelope, staring at Odysseus with widened eyes, swiftly turning to their guest. Resisting news of her famed cousin. The queen, stopping the guest's story mid-sentence. Clasped in the Queen’s hand, suddenly, the Captain’s hand. The queen’s bubbly laughter and a wave, beckoning for an attendant. More wine!

Three main choices: For this version of my narrative piece, written in fragmented sentences, I extended the abstract mood set by the fragments through changing the narrative structure so that this entire piece resonated as impressionistic and surreal. To do this, I followed the syntactically jagged, narrative fragments, such as “puddles, red and gold- reflections of the Spartan ship,” most of which resulted from my attempts to translate my original piece into sentence fragments, with sentences like “reflections of splendor, spoils of war, prizes of victory,” echoing the abstractness but directly conveying forboding. I also removed many sentence subjects when creating fragments, so that the narrator talked very little about themself, because I wanted to keep the reader focused on the events unfolding, even in the most impressionistic parts; for example, “we scrubbed down the tables in the palace’s hall, butchered cattle, kneaded bread” became “tables, scrubbed and set. Cattle, butchered. Bread, kneaded,” to ensure that, while I still set a stylistic mood, the narration remained at the center of the piece. Last, I utilized the fragment style by including imperative-esque exclamations, which conveyed either inappropriate emotion, irony, or ridicule to create a feeling of tension within the scene; for example, when the slave trader tells Penelope and Odysseus how Helen ran away, I emphasized the wrongness of his levity about a potentially catastrophic situation through the ironic “hilarious wifelessness!”