Margaret Atwood - The Penelopiad: The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus

Now that Im dead I know everything. This is what I wished would happen, but like so many of my wishes it failed to come true. I know only a few factoids that I didnt know before. Death is much too high a price to pay for the satisfaction of curiosity, needless to say.

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

Down here everyone arrives with a sack, like the sacks used to keep the winds in, but each of these sacks is full of words words youve spoken, words youve heard, words that have been said about you. Some sacks are very small, others large; my own is of a reasonable size, though a lot of the words in it concern my eminent husband. What a fool he made of me, some say. It was a specialty of his: making fools. He got away with everything, which was another of his specialties: getting away.

He was always so plausible. Many people have believed that his version of events was the true one, give or take a few murders, a few beautiful seductresses, a few one-eyed monsters. Even I believed him, from time to time. I knew he was tricky and a liar, I just didnt think he would play his tricks and try out his lies on me. Hadnt I been faithful? Hadnt I waited, and waited, and waited, despite the temptation almost the compulsion to do otherwise? And what did I amount to, once the official version gained ground? An edifying legend. A stick used to beat other women with. Why couldnt they be as considerate, as trustworthy, as all-suffering as I had been? That was the line they took, the singers, the yarn-spinners. Dont follow my example, I want to scream in your ears yes, yours! But when I try to scream, I sound like an owl.

Of course I had inklings, about his slipperiness, his wiliness, his foxiness, his how can I put this? his unscrupulousness, but I turned a blind eye. I kept my mouth shut; or, if I opened it, I sang his praises. I didnt contradict, I didnt ask awkward questions, I didnt 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.

But after the main events were over and things had become less legendary, I realised how many people were laughing at me behind my back how they were jeering, making jokes about me, jokes both clean and dirty; how they were turning me into a story, or into several stories, though not the kind of stories Id prefer to hear about myself. What can a woman do when scandalous gossip travels the world? If she defends herself she sounds guilty. So I waited some more.

Now that all the others have run out of air, its my turn to do a little story-making. I owe it to myself. Ive had to work myself up to it: its a low art, tale-telling. Old women go in for it, strolling beggars, blind singers, maidservants, children folks with time on their hands. Once, people would have laughed if Id tried to play the minstrel theres nothing more preposterous than an aristocrat fumbling around with the arts but who cares about public opinion now? The opinion of the people down here: the opinion of shadows, of echoes. So Ill spin a thread of my own.

The difficulty is that I have no mouth through which I can speak. I cant make myself understood, not in your world, the world of bodies, of tongues and fingers; and most of the time I have no listeners, not on your side of the river. Those of you who may catch the odd whisper, the odd squeak, so easily mistake my words for breezes rustling the dry reeds, for bats at twilight, for bad dreams.

But Ive always been of a determined nature. Patient, they used to call me. I like to see a thing through to the end.