"Believe me, Leucò" "I didn't understand right away." "Sometimes I get the formula wrong, sometimes there's amnesia." "And yet I'd touched him." "The truth is I'd been waiting so long for him I wasn't thinking about it anymore." "The moment I understood everything" "he'd jumped up and grabbed his sword" "I almost smiled, I felt so happy and at the same time disappointed." "I even thought I might at least escape fate." ""After all he's Odysseus," I thought," ""someone who wants to go home."" "I thought of putting him in a boat right away." "Dear Leucò." "He was waving that sword-silly and brave like only a human can be" "and I had to smile and look him in the eye as I do with them, and then to look surprised and draw back." "I felt like a girl," "like when we were children and were told what we'd do when grown up" "and we laughed." "It all happened like a dance." "He took me by the wrists, raised his voice, I blushed" "but I was pale, Leucò" "I clasped his knees and began my lines:" ""Who are you?" "What land gave birth to you...?"" "Poor fellow, I thought, he doesn't know what he's in for." "He was tall, curly haired, handsome," "Leucò." "What a stupendous pig he'd have made, or a wolf." "But all this you told him, in the year he spent with you?" "O child, you don't talk" "about the things of destiny with a human." "They think they've said everything when they call it the iron chain, the final decree." "They call us the fatal ladies, you know." "They don't know how to smile." "Yes." "Some can laugh in face of destiny, can laugh afterward, but at the time they have to be serious or they die." "They don't know how" "to joke about divine things, and listen to themselves reciting lines like us." "Their life is so short, they can't bear to do things already done or known about." "Even he, Odysseus the courageous, if I said one word about this, he'd stop listening to me and would think of Penelope." "What a bore." "Yes but you see, I understand him." "With Penelope he didn't have to smile, with her everyything, even the daily meal, was serious and unrehearsed" "they might have been preparing themselves for death." "You don't know how much death attracts them." "Yes, to die is a destiny per them, a repetition, something known," "but they fool themselves into thinking it changes something." "Why then didn't he want to become a pig?" "Ah, Leucò, he didn't want even to become a god," "and you know how much Calypso begged him to, that idiot." "Odysseus was like that, neither pig nor god, just a man," "extremely intelligent, and brave in face of destiny." "Tell me, dear, did you enjoy yourself a lot with him?" "One thing, Leucò." "None of us gods has ever wanted to become mortal none has ever desired it." "Yet this might be the novelty" "that would break the chain." "Would you like to?" "What talk, Leucò..." "Odysseus didn't understand why I smiled." "He didn't understand often even that I was smiling." "Once I thought I'd explained to him why a beast is closer to us immortals than an intelligent and brave man." "The beast that eats, that mounts and doesn't have memory." "He answered me that at home awaited him a dog, a poor dog that maybe was dead," "and he told me its name." "Imagine, Leucò, that dog had a name." "Also to us they give a name, those humans." "Many names gave me Odysseus while in my bed." "Each time there was a name." "At first it was like the noise of a beast of a pig or wolf," "but he himself bit by bit realised they were syllables of a single word." "He called me by names of all the gods, of our sisters, names of the mother, of the things of life." "It was like a struggle with me, with fate." "He wanted to name me, to hold me to make me mortal." "He wanted to break something." "Intelligence and courage he put into it" " he had that - but he never knew how to smile." "He never knew what the smile of the gods is - of us who know destiny." "No human understands us or the beasts." "I've seen them, your humans." "Turned into wolves or pigs, they howl still like completely human." "It's torture." "In their intelligence they're quite crude." "You've played a lot with them?" "I enjoy myself with them, Leucò." "I enjoy them as I can." "It wasn't given to me to have a god in my bed," "and of men only Odysseus." "All the others I touch become beasts and go crazy, and chase after me like beasts." "I take them, Leucò - their frenzy is no better or worse than a god's love." "I mustn't even smile!" "I feel them get on top of me and then run off to their lairs." "I don't lower my eyes." "And Odysseus..." "I don't ask myself who they are..." "Want to know who Odysseus was?" "Tell me, Circe." "One evening he described his arrival at" "Aeaea, his companions' fear, the sentries posted by the ships." "He told me all night they listened to the roaring and snarling," "lying in their cloaks on the sea shore." "And then when day came, they saw beyond the wood rise a spiral of smoke," "and they shouted for joy, recognising their country and houses." "These things he told me smiling" "the way humans smile- seated beside me in front of the fire." "He said he wanted to forget who he was and where he was" "and that evening he called me Penelope." "O Circe was it so silly?" "Leucòina, I too was silly and told him to cry." "Imagine!" "No, but he didn't cry." "He knew Circe loves beasts, who don't cry." "He cried later he cried the day I told him of the long voyage that remained" "and the descent into Avernus and the blackness of Ocean." "The sort of crying that cleans the eyes and gives strength, I Circe understand it too." "But that evening he spoke to me" "laughing strangely- about his childhood and destiny, and asked about me." "He spoke playfully, you understand." "I don't understand." "Laughing." "With his mouth and voice." "But his eyes full of memories." "And then he told me to sing." "And singing I went to the loom and my raucous voice became the voice of his home and childhood." "I sweetened my voice, I was his" "Penelope." "He put his head in his hands." "Who had the last laugh?" "No one, Leucò." "I too that evening was mortal." "I had a name Ð" "Penelope." "That was the only time that without smiling I stared my fate in the face and lowered my eyes." "And this man loved a dog?" "A dog, a woman, his son, and a ship to sail the sea." "And the countless succession of days didn't look like destiny to him, and he ran toward death knowing what it was, and enriched the earth with words and deeds." "O Circe, I don't have your eyes but now" "I too want to smile." "You were naive." "If you'd told him the wolf and pig mounted you like a beast, he'd have done it" "and turned into a beast too." "I did tell him." "He barely grimaced." "After a moment he said, "So long as they're not my companions."" "So he was jealous." "Not jealous." "He was loyal to them." "He understood everything." "Except the smile of us gods." "That day he wept on my bed, he didn't weep from fear, but because the last voyage was imposed on him by fate," "it was something he already knew." ""So why do it?" he asked me, buckling his sword and walking toward the sea." "I brought him the black lamb and, while his companions were weeping, he noticed a flight of swallows over the roof" "and said: "They're going away too." "But they don't know what they're doing." "You, lady, do know."" "Nothing else he said to you?" "Nothing else." "Circe, why didn't you kill him?" "Ah, I'm really stupid." "Sometimes I forget what we gods know." "And then I'm happy as if I were a girl." "As if all these things happened to the grown-ups, the Olympians," "and happened like this, inexorably but absurdly, unforeseen." "What I never foresee is in fact that I have foreseen, that I know each time what I'll do and say" " and so what I do and say always becomes new, surprsing, like a game," "like that chess game Odysseus taught me, all rules and regulations but so beautiful and unpredictable," "with its pieces of ivory." "He was always telling me that that game is life." "He said it's a way of conquering time." "Too many things you remember about him." "You didn't turn him into a pig or a wolf, you turned him into memory." "The mortal man, Leucò, has nothing immortal but this." "The memory that he carries and the memory he leaves behind." "This is what names and words are." "Confronted with memory even they smile," "resigned." "Circe, you too are saying words." "I know my destiny, Leucò." "Never fear."