In his sojourn in the land of the dead Odysseus saw Penelope among the listless shades. With his broadsword he cleared a path through the muttering ghosts but she receded, seeming not to see him. He called out her name and chased after her, leaving his men behind. He caught up with her in a dark glade full of asphodel where she sat at a loom weaving a long shroud. He made to speak to her but, remembering the ways of the dead, used his sword to dig a small pit over which he opened a vein.
She was drawn to the blood and drank, something like light coming into her eyes. ``It is no kindness to bring the dead back to themselves. We are wretched but do not know it until you remind us. Why have you come to trouble me, stranger?" she said, looking up from where she knelt in the dust with red streaks on her white face.
``I am a traveler from Troy who has come a long way with Odysseus, your husband," he said. ``What cruel fate befell you that the deep-thinking hero must now return to a cold and empty hall?"
``You lie," she said apathetically, ``Odysseus is no more. When he had been gone ten years and a little more I went to Delphi to learn what had become of him. I gave the priest a silver bowl embossed with sphinxes that had been part of my dowry. He led me down into a cave dark as a womb where it smelled of wet stone and hot metal. I asked the shuddering oracle, whom I heard but could not see, whether Odysseus would come back to me. `No man will return to you, but not for a long while,' she said, and all my hope fell to the floor.12.1
``Back in Ithaca, many men sought my hand. I told them I would marry when I had finished my husband's funeral shroud, and I kept weaving it and weaving it. They grew impatient--they pled and reasoned but were working themselves up to violence.
``I wanted to secure my son's patrimony. So I sent Telemachus off to visit Sparta and when he was gone gave a feast to which I made a point of inviting every man who had courted me. I let it be known that by the end of the feast I would be with the man who would be my husband. The wine was poisoned--painful and slow, but sure. I drank first. And so I made a liar of myself, for though I have searched every vale of the shadowlands I have not found even a rumor of him."
``Would you know your husband? Do you not recognize me, at all?" said Odysseus gently, playing the torchlight on his face.
``Yes, I recognize you. You are the living, come with all your heat and blood to trouble my shadows and dust. Traveler, begone from here."
``But I must come back once more when my days are done and then, finally, you will be waiting for me," he said and reached out to touch her cheek but she slipped away like a fish in a stream.