Achilles had left the island of Ithaka at the age of sixteen, carrying his father’s amber worry beads in his pocket. His uncle, a Sydney fishmonger, offered to sponsor the boy as long as he lied about his age to immigration officials. Achilles’ father explained that the offer amounted to peonage, that the first few months in Sydney might be harsh. He was a fisherman and each month went further and further out into the Ionian Sea: on the boat he spoke broken Italian in an attempt to fool the fish into thinking he was bad at his trade. ‘The sea is a secret underneath,’ his father said. ‘Much better to work in a fish shop than to ever be a fisherman.’ Achilles’ mother, who agreed, told her son that he must stay unmarried, pay off the debt to his uncle, succeed in Sydney, and come home to remove his parents from the peasantry.

When Achilles did return to Ithaka, twelve years later, on a second-class passage, he was class IV bald like his father. His worsted suit had been purchased with money made cutting cane on sugar plantations in southern Queensland, where Achilles worked after quitting the fishmongers in Sydney, tired of being exploited by casually cruel blood relatives. Most important, he brought back a large opal ring he thought might impress someone—somebody who wouldn’t realise or mind how desolate he was inside. Achilles wanted two things: a wife, and money to build a cafe. He hadn’t bothered to bring back presents for his family. In a paper shop in Circular Quay he’d looked at postcards and considered these as gifts, but thought better of it. Did anyone in Ithaka send him cards? Did anyone anywhere? By now his parents had long ceased to harbour expectations of Achilles as a provider in their old age. Whole years had passed in which he did not write to them, and they thought he was out of reach, his life itinerant. At times they feared he was no longer alive.

If the village of Vathi had changed much, Achilles could not tell. He did not care. His parents’ home was a square building of whitewashed walls with a pitched roof and a yellow front door that faced Mount Neriton. He sat down and told his mother and father what he’d been meaning to say for a long time: they sent him away too young. He wanted them to look guilty and squirm; he would have thanked God for the sight of his parents sobbing. They did not weep.