Letter To Nausicaa

Bright Lady,

            I have not forgotten, my lady, that I promised to write to you, nor have I forgotten what you said to me before your father's ship set sail to take me back to Ithaka.  The events of the past few weeks, which put me back on my throne are so fresh in my mind that I cannot put them into a coherent story yet.  Give me some time and I will tell you the story in a future letter.  For I hope that there will be future letters:  if you write back to me, I will write you until you tire of my letters or of me.  Whatever else we may or may not be to each other, I hope we will always be friends, and I would like to share my thoughts and memories with you.  What makes me the man I am are my thoughts and memories;  perhaps when you know them better you will like me less.

            I am an old hand at telling tales; usually with a purpose--to gain sympathy, to make myself look better, or even just to amuse myself and others.  But for once I would like to tell the true story of my life, not excusing or embroidering or trying to make more or less of things than they were.  I told the story of my adventures to your father's court and although based on truth, as the best of tales always are, it was not really the truth.  Perhaps I  am too much of a story teller to tell a straight tale, but I would like to try.

            Another time I may tell you of my early life:  how I got that scar on my thigh, how I was one of the courtiers of Helen before she chose Menelaus.  Perhaps I will even tell you about the war at Troy, for though war is a grim, dull business, there are some stories about friends and enemies at Troy that might give you some glimpses into my soul.

            For I take it, perhaps foolishly, that you are interested in what sort of man I am, and you would like to know me better, as I would like to know you.  You spoke the word "love" when we parted, but I don't think that you can really love what you don't know.  I could perhaps write this story so as to make you like me less, but that would again be a story with a purpose, not the truth as I see it--for no healthy man really dislikes himself.  If I tell you the truth insofar as I can, and you dislike me then, so be it.  But if I tell you the truth insofar as I am capable of it, and you still like or even love me, then that will be true friendship at least.

            For now, anyway, I would like to tell you the true story of what happened to me from the time I left Troy until you found me on the coast of your father's kingdom.  I made a good tale of it to your father's court, but there is something about the memory of your honest, young eyes which makes me want to give you the true tale.

            The first thing to realize is that we did not leave Troy like conquering heroes--we fled from it as a place of ill omen.  The aftermath of what happens when a city falls after a long siege is always terrible.  There are men on the victorious side who have been away from home too long and when they have at their mercy the men who have, by their resistance kept them there, they take out their frustrations on them.  The men on the losing side have nothing more to lose, and if they can spoil the victory for some of their enemies by killing them in their moment of victory, they will go to any lengths to do so.  And every such killing feeds the blood lust of the victors.

            Then there is the more usual lust of the victors for women.  In a long siege like that at Troy, there are cam