“I had to escape through the wine cellar the other day when the peasants started to revolt. I think the Council pushed them to do it.”
“But you’re the king! Can’t you do whatever you want? Your family have lived here for generations! Since the beginning of time!”
“Maybe,” Telemachus sighed, “but those days are gone with my father. I have to do something, honey. We can’t justify keeping it.”
And so the son of Odysseus set about looking for a property agent to sell the palace of Ithaca.
“Aktina Lefkas, at your service.”
Lefkas inspected the palace, from the bottom up; starting with the cellars, through which Telemachus had made his lucky escape, now through the farms and barns where Laertes had wandered in his senility; now the dining rooms in which the suitors had squandered Ithaca’s wealth, and suffered their slaughter; now he peered into old Penelope’s chambers, where she had once sat weaving her bridal tapestry, and unweaving it by night.
Finally, Lefkas opened the door to the bedroom of Odysseus, strode about, and nodded. He left the palace, and made for Telemachus and Circe, waiting outside.
“I’m afraid the bedroom significantly lowers the property value. That tree… it makes renovations very hard.”
“What would you advise?” Circe asked.
“No matter what you do, this is a renovation job. Nobody wants a tree stump for a bed these days. Not since they brought those feather mattresses from Athens. I think you’d get more money if you renovated it yourselves. It’s not too expensive to call someone to kill the tree stump. All they have to do is drill into it and pour poison into the hole, to kill the roots, and then it can be removed.”
“But then you-”
“Yes. Then you have to actually remove it, which is different. It’s the foundation of the bedroom, isn’t it? I think it’s a structural bed. You’d probably have to knock down a few walls…shift a fair number of rooms around…”
Lefkas twirled his moustache. “Okay. It’s a big job. But then what sale isn’t? There’s another option. Forget renovation. You could rebuild. This palace is a massive block of land. It’s a great location, overlooking the coast. Access to everything on Ithaca, very central. You can subdivide the lot, build a few small properties, sell separately, all for high value. Or, you could even rent it out to a shopping centre. You could do high-rises here…holiday hotels. It’s close to the beach.”
Circe was nodding. “He’s right. We can think way beyond sale, hon.”
Telemachus frowned. To tear down the castle of his father’s fathers, to replace it only with another kind of palace…
Kronos was to be his enemy as Poseidon had been the trickster’s. Time would win, in the end, but the King of Ithaca could remain…
He decreed:
“I have still the steady loyalty of Ithaca at my command. I say – demolish the palace. Build a high-rise over the coast, and shops inland.”
verso folio 