The Rome Tale
By: Anthony Azekwoh
Tags: Rome, Story, Short Fiction, Fiction, Short Story

{Based on the Rome Entry by @Zidakalu and @EbunAdedeji on Twitter}

As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon — don’t be afraid of them: Ithaka by C. P. Cavafy

The first time my father struck me, I was a child, just learning to walk. The first time he touched me, I was much older.

He was lying in front of me. His eyes were closed, his skin was paper, his breath was dust. Servants came in and brought wine, medicine from the aged woman two homes over. We had prayed to Apollo, sacrificed our cows, but my father must have known he was going to die. The gods must have known, and so the servants. I knew, and that was why I stayed; so I could see it with my own eyes.

I was the only child my father had legitimately, my mother had run away several years ago, and there was the issue of inheritance. He was a rich man, who didn’t know the name of Sestilius through the town? And who hadn’t stared at his daughter, Aurelia as I walked across the market, my eyes hard, my fists clenched?

I held his hand as held mine and there was something he was saying. Something he was aching to breathe out.

“Ithaka,” he muttered, straining against god and man to speak, “find…it. Ithaka. Your inheritance.”

The funeral rites were performed and I was on my way crossing the boundaries of Ostia, my home, entering the wilderness. The air was heavy as I began my journey, thick with melancholy. A man had been crucified days ago, a Jew. Some said he was the son of god; some said he was a charlatan. But all agreed that something was amiss the day that he died. Something not completely natural.

As I walked through the outskirts of the town, the crosses of criminals were still erected and some of the men, I assume, were still alive and they were casting dark shadows on the path I walked. Their eyes pleaded me as I walked. I did not look back.

My journey was long, and it was hard. Ithaka sounded Greek, maybe it was a man, I thought, and so, I sailed to Greece. The winds were treacherous and the waters were cruel. We begged Neptune to give us safe travel and we sacrificed three men to him. He did not calm down until the fourth was thrown over the port.

I arrived at Athens and looked for the man called Ithaka. I asked passersby and children. But none had heard the name. I asked an old woman with one eye and she smiled and pointed to a merchant who sold jewels. “Go to him,” she said. “Ithaka is there.”

I walked to the merchant, and I asked him, “You,” I said, “are you Ithaka?”

He said he had never heard the name before. But he had a nice smile, I thought. He carried himself in a way I found tender.

In a year and two, we were wed.

As we lay in bed one night, he said to me, “What if Ithaka is a place and not a man? What if your father wanted you to find it? ”

And so, we began our travels.

We sailed to every colony conquered by Caesar and those that were not. We saw men and women of all colours and creeds. We encountered phoenician traders and european braggards. But we did not find Ithaka. It was something the old seemed to know of and smile, pointing us in unknown directions and that made the young mutter and scratch their heads, saying they had never heard such before.

There were days that we had no place to sleep or eat. Days when we had encountered monsters of all sorts, men and otherwise, but we found happiness in the journey, peace in each other.

By the time I had reached Ostia, with thanks to the goddess Juno, I had a child in my womb. And once she was born, I named her Valeria.

One day, she asked me if I ever did find Ithaka. I looked at her as her father walked in with his profits from the market, as he grabbed her and she squealed, as I looked at him and our eyes locked, each aflame with lives that had been lived well, and then, I told her the truth.

I had found Ithaka.

I had found it for a while.