Jason and Medeia Read online

  the king—

  his eyes were mortal now—appeared at the columned

  door.

  “Amekhenos,” the old man called. The fair-haired slave looked down, drew back his hand. Whatever smoldered

  in his mind

  was cooled, for the time. He turned, waiting, to the

  old man.

  Take more wine to the king’s guests, Amekhenos.” The young man bowed, withdrew. The old man watched

  him go,

  then turned to his business, supervision of the kitchen

  slaves

  at work on the evening meal. Wherever the old man

  walked,

  slave girls scrubbed or swept more busily, their

  whispering ceased,

  laments and curses—silenced not by fear, it seemed, but as if all the household were quickened by something

  in the old man’s face,

  as if his character carried some wordless meaning in it To a boy he said, “Go help Amekhenos with the wine.”

  Without

  a word, quiet as an owl in the hall, the boy ran off.

  Travellers were gathered in the dark-beamed central

  room of the palace,

  men from farther away than the realm of Avalon, men who brought gold from Mesopotamia, silks from

  Troy,

  jewels from India, iron from the foot of the Caucasus. They sat in their fine apparel, kings and the minions

  of kings,

  drinking from golden bowls and exchanging noble tales of storms, strange creatures, islands enveloped in

  eternal night;

  they told of beasts half bird, half horse, of talking trees, ships that could fly, and ladies whose arms turned men

  to fish.

  They told of the spirits and men and gods in the war

  now raging

  on the plains of Ilium. The kings and Corinthian nobles

  laughed,

  admired the tales and treasures, awaiting their host’s

  return.

  The time for exchange was near. The strangers itched

  for canvas,

  sea-salt spray in their beards, the song of the halcyon, sweeter to sea-kings’ ears than all but the shoals of

  home.

  Kreon would hardly have slighted such men in the old

  days,

  they said. They’d burned men’s towns for less.

  The lords of Corinth

  smiled. The king was old, and the wealthiest Akhaian

  alive.

  It gave him a certain latitude, as one of the strangers saw more clearly than the rest. He spoke to his

  neighbors—a fat man,

  womanish-voiced, sow-slack monster of abdomens and

  chins—

  a prominent lord out of Asia known as Koprophoros. His slanted eyes were large and strangely luminous, eyes like a Buddha’s, an Egyptian king’s. His turban was gold, and a blood-red ruby was set on

  his forehead.

  I heard from one who claimed to know, that if he

  stamped his foot

  the ground would open like a magic door and carry him

  at once

  to his palace of coal-black marble. He wore a scimitar so sharp, men said, that if he laid the edge on a tabletop of solid oak, the blade would part it by its own weight. I laughed in my hand when I heard these things, yet

  this was sure:

  he was vast—so fat he was frightening—and painted

  like a harlot,

  and his eyes were chilling, like a ghost’s.

  He said:

  “Be patient, friends, with a good man’s eccentricity. We all, poor humble traders, have got our pressing

  affairs—

  accounts to settle, business mounting while we sit here cross-legged, stuffing our bellies like Egypt’s pet baboons, or fat old queens with no use left but ceremony. And yet we remain.” He smiled. “I ask myself, “Why?’

  And with

  a sly wink I respond: ‘His majesty’s daughter, you’ve

  noticed,

  is of marrying age. He’s not so addled in his wits, I hope, as not to have seen it himself.’” The young man

  chuckled, squinted.

  “I’ll speak what I think. He’s displayed her to us twice

  at meals,

  leading her in on his arm with only a mump or two by way of introduction. Her robe was bridal white impleached with gold, and resting in her golden hair, a

  crown

  of gold, garnets, and fine-wrought milleflori work. Perhaps he deems it enough to merely—venditate’— not plink out his thought in words. These things are delicate, friends. They require some measure of

  dignity!”

  They laughed. The creature expressed what had come

  into all their minds

  at the first glimpse of Pyripta. What he hinted might

  be so:

  some man whose treasures outweighed other men’s,

  whose thought

  sparkled more keen, or whose gentility stood out white as the moon in a kingdom of feebly blinking stars, might land him a lovelier fish than he’d come here

  baited for—

  the throne of Corinth. Even to the poorest of the foreign

  kings,

  even to the humblest second son of a Corinthian lord, the wait seemed worth it. For what man knows what his

  fate may bring?

  But the winner would not be Koprophoros, I could pretty

  well see,

  whatever his cunning or wealth. Not a man in the hall

  could be sure

  if the monster was female or male—smooth-faced as a

  mushroom, an alto;

  by all indications (despite his pretense) transvestite, or

  gelded.

  And yet he had come to contend for the princess’ hand—

  came filled

  with sinister confidence. I shuddered, looked down at my

  shoes, waiting.

  And so the strangers continued to eat, drank Kreon’s

  wine,

  and talked, observing in the backs of their minds the

  muffled boom

  of thunder, the whisper of rain. Below the city wall, the thistle-whiskered guardians watching the sea-kings’

  ships

  cursed the delay, huddled in tents of sail, and cursed their fellow seamen, hours late in arriving to stand their stint—slack whoresmen swilling down wine like

  the hopeful captains

  packed into Kreon’s hall. The sea-kings knew their

  grumbling—

  talked of that nuisance from time to time, among

  themselves,

  with grim smiles. They sent men down, from time to

  time,

  to quiet the sailors’ mutterings; but they kept their seats. The stakes were high, though what game Kreon meant

  to play

  was not yet clear.

  The Northern slave, Amekhenos, moved

  with the boy from table to table, pouring Cretan wine to the riveted rims of the bowls, his eyes averted, masked in submissiveness. The boy, head bent, returned the

  bowls

  to the trestle-tables, where the strangers seized them

  with jewelled hands

  and drank, never glancing at the slaves—no more aware

  of them

  than they would have been of ghosts or the whispering

  gods.

  The sun

  fell fire-wheeled to the rim of the sea. King Kreon’s

  herds,

  dwindling day by day for the sea-kings’ feasts, lay still in the shade of elms. The storm had passed; in its

  green wake

  songbirds warbled the sweetness of former times, the age when gods and goddesses walked the world on feet so

  light

  they snapped no flower stem. The air was ripe with the

  scent

  of olives, apples heavy
on the bough, and autumn honey. Already the broadleafed oaks of every coppice and hurst had turned, pyretic, sealing their poisons away for the

  time

  of cold; soon the leaves would fall like abandoned

  wealth. Below,

  the coriander on the cantles of walls and bandied posts of hayricks flamed its retreat. The very air was medlar, sweet with the juice of decay. The palace of Kreon,

  rising

  tier on tier, as gleaming white as a giant’s skull, hove dreamlike into the clouds, the sea-blue eagles’

  roads,

  like a god musing on the world. As far as the eye could

  see—

  mountains, valleys, slanting shore, bright parapets— the world belonged to Kreon.

  The smells of cooking came,

  meat-scented smoke, to the portico where Kreon stood, his hand on his faithful servant’s arm, his bald head

  tipped,

  listening to sounds from the house. The meal was served.

  The guests

  talked with their neighbors, voices merging as the sea’s

  welmings

  close to a gray unintelligible roar on barren shoals, the clink of their spoons like the click of far-off rocks

  shifting.

  “Old friend,” the king said thoughtfully, looking at

  the river with eyes

  sharpened to the piercing edge of an evening songbird’s

  note,

  “all will be well, I think.” He patted the slave’s hard arm. “We’ll be all right. The fortunes of our troubled house

  are at last

  on the upswing. Trust me! We’ve nothing more to do

  now but wait,

  observe with an icy, calculating eye as tension mounts—churns up like an oracle’s voice. We’ll see,

  my friend,

  what abditories of weakness, secret guile they keep, what signs of virtue hidden to the casual glance.

  Remember:

  No prejudgments! Cold and objective as gods we’ll

  watch,

  so far as possible. The man we finally choose we’ll choose not from our own admiration, but of simple necessity. Not the best there, necessarily—the mightiest fist, the smoothest tongue. Our line’s unlucky. The man we

  need

  is the man who’ll make it survive. Pray god we recognize

  him!”

  He smiled, though his brow was troubled. It seemed

  more strain than he needed,

  this last effort of his reign, choice of a successor. He

  stood

  the weight of it only by will. He opened his hands like a

  merchant

  robbed of all hope save one gray galleon, far out at sea, listing a little, but ploughing precariously home. “What

  more

  can a man do?” he said, and forced a chuckle. “Some may well be surprised when we’ve come to the end of

  these wedding games.

  We two know better than to lay our bets on wealth alone, honor like poor Jokasta’s, or obstinate holiness, genius like that of King Oidipus—the godly brain he squanders now on gulls and winds and crawling

  things.

  Yet some man here in this house …” The king fell

  silent, brooding.

  “And yet there’s one man more I wish were here,” he

  said.

  He pulled at his nose and squeezed one eye tight shut.

  “A man

  with contacts worth a fortune, a man who’s talked or

  fought

  his way past sirens, centaurs, ghosts, past angry seas … a slippery devil, honest, not overly scrupulous, flexible, supple, cautious without being cowardly, a proven leader of men … ‘the man who brought

  help,’ as they call him,

  for such is the meaning of his name.” The slave at his

  elbow nodded,

  smiling. His eyes were caves. King Kreon wrinkled

  his forehead

  and picked at his silvery beard like a man aware, dimly, of danger crouching at his back.

  Just then, from an upper room,

  a girlish voice came down—Pyripta, daughter of the

  king,

  singing, not guessing that anyone heard. Wan, giant

  Kreon

  raised one finger to his lips, tipped up his head. His

  servant

  leered, nodding, wringing his fingers as if the voice were sunlight falling on his ears. She sang an ancient

  song,

  the song Persephone sang before her ravishment.

  Artemis, Artemis, hear my prayer, grant my spirit the path of the eagle; in high rocks where only the stars sing, there let me keep my residence.

  When the song ended, tears had gathered in the old

  king’s eyes.

  He said, “Ah, yes”—rubbing his cheeks with the back

  of his hand.

  “Such beauty, the innocent voice of a child! Such

  radiance!

  —Forgive me. Sentimental old fool.” He tried to laugh,

  embarrassed.

  The god feigned mournful sympathy, touching an ash-gray cheek with fingers gnarled like

  roots.

  Kreon patted his servant’s arm, still rubbing his

  streaming

  eyes and struggling for control. He smiled, a soft

  grimace.

  “Such beauty! You’d think it would last forever, a

  thing like that!

  She thinks it will, poor innocent! So do they all, children blind to the ravaging forces so commonplace to us. They live in a world of summer sunlight, showers, squirrels at play on the lawn. They know of nothing

  worse,

  and innocently they think the gods must cherish them exactly as they do themselves. And so they should!

  you’d say.

  But they don’t. No no.” He rolled up his eyes.

  “We’re dust, Ipnolebes. Withering leaves. It’s not a thing to break too soon to the young, but facts are facts.

  Depend

  on nothing, ask for nothing; do your best with the time you’ve got, whatever small gifts you’ve got, and leave

  the world

  a better place than you found it. Pass to the next

  generation

  a city fit for learning, loving, dying in.

  It’s the world that lasts—a glorious green mosaic built of tiles that one by one must be replaced. It’s that— the world, their holy art—that the gods love. Not us. We who are old, beyond the innocent pride of youth, must bend to that, and gradually bend our offspring

  to it.”

  He sighed, head tipped. “She asks for freedom, lordless, childless, playing out life like a fawn in the

  groves.

  A dream, I’m sorry to say. This humble world below demands the return of the seed. Such is our duty to it. The oldest oak on the hillside, even the towering plane

  tree,

  shatters, sooner or later, hammered by thunderbolts or torn-up roots and all by a wind from Zeus. On the

  shore,

  we see how the very rocks are honed away, in time. Accept the inevitable, then. Accept your place in the

  march

  of seasons, blood’s successions. —In the end she’ll find,

  I hope,

  that marriage too, for all its pangs, has benefits.”

  He smiled, turned sadly to his slave. “It’s true, you

  know. The song

  that moved us, there—bubbled up feelings we’d half

  forgotten—

  I wouldn’t trade it for a hundred years of childhood play. The gods are kinder than we think!” The servant nodded,

  solemn.

  Kreon turned away, still sniffling, clearing his throat.

  “Carry a message for me, good Ipnolebes. Seek out Jason—somewhere off by himself, if that proves feasible—and ask him, with all your skill and

  tact

&
nbsp; —with no unwarranted flattery, you understand (he’s nobody’s fool, that Jason)—ask, with my

  compliments,

  that he dine in the palace tomorrow night. Mention our

  friends,

  some few of whom he may know from the famous days

  when he sailed

  the Argo. Tell him—” He paused, reflecting, his

  eyebrows raised.

  “No, that’s enough. —But this, yes!” His crafty grin came back, a grin like a peddler’s, harmless guile. ‘Tell

  him,

  as if between you and himself—tell him I seem a trifle ‘miffed’ at his staying away, after all I’ve done for him. Expand on that as you like—his house, et cetera.” The king laughed, delighted by his wit, and added, “Remind him of his promise to tell more

  tales sometime.

  Mention, between the two of you, that poor old Kreon’s hopelessly, sottishly caught when it comes to adventure

  stories—

  usual lot of a fellow who’s never been away, worn out his whole long life on record keeping, or sitting in

  judgment,

  struggling to unsnarl tortuous tangles of law with

  further

  law.” He chortled, seeing it all in his mind, and beamed, clapping his plump dry hands and laughing in wheezes.

  It was

  delicious to him that he, great Kreon, could be seen by

  men

  as a fat old quop, poor drudge, queer childish lunatic. The river shone like a brass mirror. The sky was bright “Go,” said Kreon, and patted his slave’s humped back.

  “Be persuasive!

  Tomorrow night!”

  He turned, still laughing, lifting his foot

  to move inside, when out of the corner of his eye the

  king

  saw—sudden, terrible—a silent shadow, some creature

  in the grass,

  glide down the lawn and vanish. He clutched at his

  chest in alarm

  and reached for Ipnolebes. The stones were bare.

  “Dear gods,

  dear precious holy gods!” he whispered. He frowned,

  blinked,

  touched his chin with his fingertips. The evening was

  clear,

  as green as a jewel, in the darkening sky above, no life. “I must sacrifice,” he whispered, “—pray and sacrifice.” He rubbed his hands. “All honor to the blessed gods,”

  he said.

  His red-webbed eyes rolled up. The sky was hollow,

  empty,

  deep as the whole world’s grave.

  King Kreon frowned, went in,

  and stood for a long time lost in thought, blinking,

  watching

  the frail shadows of trembling leaves. His fingertips