"So you chose to burn Troy? I'm looking at the man who destroyed Troy?"

"No, I did what most people do when faced with a difficult choice. I did nothing. I stood there with the torch, wondering. As my mind circled like a dog chasing its tail, the wind chased a spark into the Horse and that was that. I was knocked off my feet by the blast. I ran    and I ran with an interest in running I'd never had before.

"I got to the boat and rowed out into the darkness. I didn't think I'd find Menelaus, but I figured it would be safest to be out at sea, that I might be picked up by someone who wouldn't kill me straight away. When I hit Menelaus's ship, I don't know who was more surprised, him or me. I could see the weighting-and-throwing-overboard order being given consideration. ‘Why aren't you dead?' he observed, doubtless thinking it would be inauspicious to kill a man with such luck."

"Your fortune does seem to be good." 

"Men with good fortune usually have ten fingers and a plate of fried pigeon, Trojan style. Miles out, we could see the flames feasting on the city. We could see whatever might remain, Troy was broken. Helen and Menelaus stood together like the old couple they were and watched a city burn, tired. It is a pity pleasure can't, like a stream, flow endlessly out of one person. There would be fewer burning cities.

"Bearing in mind I'd won his war for him, Menelaus could have said thank you in a brief, insincere, offensive monarch-like way, when no one was listening.

"I only have one real regret. I have my disappointments and I wonder how my life might have been if I hadn't embarked for Troy or if Menelaus, the Fat-Gatherer hadn't been so stupid or if I had taken one of the trade routes out of Troy to see what was there; but that's the unknown, you don't know whether there's a friendly bosom or a rusty dagger lurking. I wish I'd been braver or cleverer, but my only regret is that I didn't tell Menelaus, more pig than man, to his face what I thought."

"But then you wouldn't be here. What I don't understand if what you say is true, why didn't Menelaus make you, as the wordman, give him unlimited praise? Why does he take such little glory in the stories?"

"The fat hadn't softened Menelaus's mind. He wanted the story to grow, to hide the truth, so he told me to make him a spectator. He knew if the story was his slaughtering everyone, no one would swallow it, but this way he could be a small part, but a part of a glorious story. He knew he couldn't be greedy here; he had to give away the spoils imaginatively. Agamemnon and Odysseus and the many others who weren't there wouldn't refuse the glory of city-sacking, and no one could be too jealous of a hero like Achilles, who didn't exist and who was dead to boot. It's one thing to lose, another to see your hated rival win. 

"They say a great god once came in disguise to a goatherd who gave him hospitality. In return, the god offered the goatherd any wish. Ah, said the goatherd, there is a man in the village who has a black goat. This goat is the envy of all, its milk flows day and night and is beyond compare. It makes the best cheese in the region. He is becoming rich from this one goat. What do you think the goatherd asked for?"