Menelaus

Telemachus enters a hall untouched by hardship and war. Crystal and gold and cedar, the air thick with oil-lamps burning bright enough to read by. Menelaus sits at the center of it like a man wearing a crown of lead. He tells the story of the war as a survivor: Achilles cut down at the peak of his strength, Ajax broken by his own pride, Patroclus dying in another man’s armor. He tells how his fleet was scattered after Troy and driven all the way to Egypt. Ten years of war and the long years to return home. He tells how he pinned the Old Man of the Sea on a beach at Pharos and held him through every shape he took until the god went still and answered. One of those answers was about Odysseus. He lived. Trapped by the goddess Calypso. Weeping every day, facing the water, unable to leave. Telemachus weeps. He could not stop. Menelaus is the man who has come home with everything intact and finds it heavier than the war.