Jason and Medeia Read online

  coming more

  to life, with each fresh gust. No one could explain. The

  huge boy

  grinned, managing the steering oar as Tiphys alone could do, or so we’d thought.

  “Then up from the magic beams

  of the Argo, singing at our feet, there came new tones,

  a majestic

  hymn, as if all the choiring trees of Athena’s grove, and all the gods, and all the fish of the sea had come

  together to sing

  their praise of the queen of goddesses.

  Hera never sleeps!

  She fills the world

  with beauty, goodness, danger. At a word

  from her the gods lure men to the highest

  pinnacles of feeling. By her command

  the wolf drags down the lamb, and the shepherd

  shoots the wolf,

  and the adder joyfully strikes at the shepherd’s heel

  She is never spent! She moves

  like light, from atom to atom, forever changing

  forever

  the same.

  Queen Hera

  consumes the land and sea with beauty

  and danger. Stirs

  the dragon in his lair (vermilion scaled),

  awakens the timorous butterfly,

  the many-hued heart of man.

  She never rests:

  Poseidon is her servant, the Earth-shaker,

  and Artemis, huntress;

  and Love and Death and Wisdom are all in her retinue.

  Sparrows, hawks, bulls, deer, trees, roses—

  Hera is in them!

  Songbirds whistle on the eaves: Praise Hera!

  Exalt her, hills and rivers!

  Praise Hera!

  Honor her, kingdoms!

  Praise Queen Hera!

  Honor her all that soars, or walks, or creeps.

  Thus sang the Argo, Athena’s instrument;

  and suddenly something was clear: It was not my will

  resolving

  the many wills, and not Orpheus’ will, but a thing more

  complex.

  We on the Argo were the head, limbs, trunk of a

  creature, a living thing

  larger than ourselves (it was Amykos’ idea), a thing

  puzzling out

  its nature, its swim through process. What powered its

  mammoth heart

  was not my will or any other man’s, but the fact that

  by chance

  it had stumbled into existence. Confused, diverse desires hurled the beast north to Aietes’ city: my scheme of

  the fleece,

  however important to all of us once, was a passing

  dream,

  less than a ghost of a word in the gloom of the beast’s

  weird mind

  (flicker of a bat, frail hint of order, some pious saw). ‘We’re after the fleece,’ the black leviathan could

  remind itself,

  lumbering north, old lightning in its eyes, its monster

  fins

  stretched wide, groping into darkness. But it wasn’t the

  fleece we sought.

  Nor anything else. The mind of the beast had no center

  —had only

  its searchingness, its existence. Old Hera was in us—

  and in

  the mysterious ships behind us, travelling in our wake,

  still following

  hungrily, booming, from another time and place. (Say it was a dream.) We were—and the black-scarped

  ships behind us were—

  the world according to Phineus: cavern of warring gods, the delicate crust of reason. Thanatos. Eros. And had no choice, then, but submission: submit and obey was

  the beast’s

  cruel law. —And if it was tyrannical law, unsubtle as

  a fist,

  it was freedom, too: we were children in the shelter of

  the kind, mad father’s

  yard. I had cracked my wits too long on why we were

  driving

  north, affronting all reason. It was merely the creature’s

  will.

  It was our business, our custom, our destiny. Too long

  I’d bathed

  in the torrents, streams, still pools of each novel emotion.

  No more

  such lunacy! Sensation, sleep! Imagination, give up your stolen chair, cold throne of the terat. I was, I saw at last, the demon’s agent, merely—enslaved as the cords in an orator’s throat, or as the Argonauts, turning in the wind of my words, were tools of my

  own—or all

  but Orpheus. I would overwhelm him as surely as once we struck down, not out of hate but by force of destiny, poor Kyzikos, King of the Doliones, or Amykos, famous boxer who proved inferior and therefore died, as later, Polydeukes died of his weakness, excessive humanity,

  tainted

  blood.

  ‘The ghost fleet gloomed behind us, assenting. And then

  it vanished. If there was some meaning in that, we

  evaded it;

  blinked twice, stared fiercely ahead.

  “We’d come to Kallikhorus;

  we passed the tomb of Sthenelos, son of Aktor, who

  fought

  with Herakles in his Amazon raid. His dusky ghost rose up and signalled to the ship in his warlike panoply, moonlight gleaming on the four plates and the scarlet

  crest

  of his helmet. We brailed the sail. The old seer

  Mopsos said

  we must stay, put the ghost to rest. I was not in a

  mood to debate,

  still half dazed by my insight into the beast we’d

  become

  a part of—Mopsos an impulse, an instinct, a pressure

  not to be

  resisted. I gave the order. We cast our hawsers ashore, paid honor to the tomb. Libations; sheep. Sang praise

  of the ghost

  invisible except for his armor. And then set forth once

  more

  on the sea. At dawn, came round the Cape of Karambis, and all that day and on through the night we rowed

  the Argo

  north along endless shores. So came to the Assyrian

  coast,

  and took on water, sheep, recruits—three friends of

  Herakles

  stranded by him long since, when he fought with the

  Amazons.

  They bore no grudge, as was right. We took them

  aboard in haste—

  the wind brooked no delay. So, that same afternoon, rounded the headland that cantled above us like a

  stone sheltron

  guarding the Amazons’ harbor. The old men told us a

  curious

  story of the place. They said that once there Herakles captured the daughter of Ares, Hippolyta’s younger sister Melanippa. He took her by ambush, intending to rape

  her,

  but Hippolyta gave him her own resplendent cestus by

  way

  of ransom, and when he saw her naked, that beautiful

  virgin—

  in later days she was Theseus’ queen—the great oaf

  wept,

  all his virtue in his senses. The queen wouldn’t lie with

  him;

  the man couldn’t think what to do. He might have won,

  then and there,

  his war, but he backed away from her—fled in confusion

  to the woods—

  abandoning the beautiful sisters, his half-wit head full

  of grandiose

  booms, such as Innocence, Honor, Dignity, Virtue.

  —Not so

  when Theseus came. He’d seen a great deal—had walked

  through Hades

  for his friend, when Peirithoös was taken. He knew the

  meaninglessness of things.

  Brought the Amazon forces to check and might, if he

  wished,

  have slaug
htered them all. He held back. Observed the

  naked virgin

  on her knees before him, in chains, surrounded by

  Akhaian guards,

  men in great plumes, their war gear gleaming in the

  tent, and said:

  ‘I’ll speak with her majesty alone.’ They laughed. Who

  wouldn’t have laughed? —

  but Theseus’ eyes were cool. The guards withdrew. He

  said:

  ‘Queen, don’t answer in haste. I’ve won this dreary war, as you see by the plainest of signs. I could injure

  you more, if I wished.

  Chained hand and foot, you can hardly resist me. I

  could teach you more

  than you dream of humiliation. Yet all I’ve done—or

  might

  do yet—is nothing to the humiliation of life itself, this waste where men are abandoned to the whims of

  gods. I’ve seen

  what games they play with the dead.’ And he told of

  Briareos

  with his hundred whirling arms, a beast of prey more

  terrible,

  more ludicrous, to divine minds, than the hurricane that makes men scurry like squealing rats to shelter,

  trembling,

  whimpering obscenely, clinging to one another’s bodies

  until,

  unspeakably, their fear collapses to lust, and under the screaming winds they couple like dogs in a crate. He

  told

  of the Hydra, from whom the unwoundable dead fly

  shrieking, bug-eyed,

  chased by the thunderous rumble of the laughing gods.

  Told then

  of Tityus, whose obscene weight mocks finitude, turns heroes’ powerful thighs to ridiculous sticks, and

  told

  of pitch-black Prince Dionysos and his soundless dance.

  ‘All this,’

  said Theseus, ‘I have seen. I can abandon you to death and all its foolishness, and follow, in time, as all men must; or we can forestall that mockery for now. Choose what you will. Either way, I grant

  you, we’re

  not much. We’ve sent our thousands, you and I, to

  the cave

  to wait for us. It hardly matters how long they wring their shadowy hands and watch. Choose what you will.’

  The Amazon

  laughed. ‘Nothing of my virgin beauty? Nothing, O king, of my fierce pride, my loyalty? Nothing of how, in the

  hall,

  passing the golden bowl, my great robes trailing, I

  might

  adorn your royal magnificence?—Nothing of my breasts,

  my thighs?’

  Theseus sighed. ‘I’d serve you better than you think.

  I have seen

  dead women—shadowy thighs, sweet breasts—going out

  and away

  like a sea.’

  “Then, more than by all his talk of Briareos

  and the rest, the queen was moved. She said: ‘You do

  not fear

  I’ll kill you, then, in your bed?’ Old Theseus touched

  her chin,

  tipped up her face. ‘I fear that, yes.’ And so he left her, and so the war was resolved; she became his queen.

  The two

  became one creature, a higher organism with meanings

  of its own,

  groping upward to a troubled kind of sanctity. (All that was later. We knew, at the time the old men told the

  tale

  of Herakles, nothing of Theseus’ later gains.) I saw, whatever the others saw, one more clear proof of the

  beauty

  of cool, tyrannical indifference, and the comic stupidity of Herakles’ simpering charity, girlish fright. The future lies, I thought, not with Herakles, howling in the night

  for love

  of a boy—much less with such boys themselves, sweet

  scented, lost.

  The future lies with the sons of the Argo’s officers, rowing in furious haste past peace, past every peace, searching out war’s shrill storm of conflicting wills.

  “We struck

  and plundered, then fled that Amazon land, moved on

  to the shores

  of the Khalybes, that dreary race that plants no corn, no fruit, never tames an ox. They dig in search of iron, darken the skies with soot. They see no sun or moon, and know no rest. From a mile offshore you can hear

  their coughing,

  dry as a valley of goats. We took on water and left in haste. We’d seen too much, of late, of death. Yet they were men like ourselves, we knew by the eyes in their

  smudged faces,

  blacker than Ethiopians’. Surely they had not meant to evolve into this! —But we had no heart to pity or ponder that. Ghost ships passed us. Vast, dark dreams, troubles in the smoky night. Sometimes the strangers

  hailed us,

  called out questions in a foreign tongue. We bent to

  the oars,

  pushed on. And so we eluded them.

  “We passed the land

  of the Tibareni, where men go to bed for their wives in

  their time

  of labor. He lies there groaning, with his quop of a head

  wrapped up,

  and his good wife lovingly feeds him, prepares a bath.

  We passed

  the land of the Mossynoeki, where the people make love in the streets, like swine in the trough; oh, they were a

  pretty race,

  as gentle as calves. When Orpheus sang to them of

  shame, remorse,

  of beasts and men, they smiled, blue-eyed, and

  applauded his song.

  We were baffled; finally amused. We kissed them,

  women and men,

  and left. Let the gods improve them. And so to the

  island of Ares,

  where the war god’s birds attacked us. We soon

  outwitted them.

  “That night old Argus sat on the ground, by the

  firelight,

  studying the wing of a bird, one of those we’d killed.

  His eyes

  were slits. ‘Still learning?’ I said. The old man smiled

  and nodded.

  ‘Secrets of Time and Space,’ he said. The gods are

  patient.’

  I waited. He said no more. His delicate fingers spread the pinions, brighter than silver and gold in that

  flickering light.

  The bird’s head flopped on its golden neck, beak open,

  bright

  eyes wide. They had seen the god himself. Now nothing.

  I said:

  ‘It’s old, this creature?’ Argus nodded. ‘Old as the

  world is.

  Older than the whole long history of man from Jason

  down

  to the last pale creature crawling in poisonous slime

  to his loveless

  lair, the cave of his carnage.’ I stared at him, alarmed.

  ‘Explain.’

  Old Argus smiled, looked weary, and made a pass

  with his hand.

  ‘There are no explanations, only structures,’ he said. ‘A structured clutter of adventures, encounters with

  monsters, kings …’

  He gazed toward sea, toward darkness. The mind of

  man—’ he said,

  then paused. The thought had escaped him. In the

  lapping water, the Argo

  sighed. You are caught in irrelevant forms. So I’d heard,

  in my dream.

  Caught, the black ship whispered. I would make the best

  of it.

  Tiphys was dead, our pilot, and Idmon, younger of the

  seers.

  We were left to the steering of a boy, the visions of a

  half-cracked witch.

  We were better off, could be. We knew where we stood.

  “There came

  a storm, sudden, from nowhere. We cower
ed in the

  trees. Mad Idas

  whispered, ‘Go to it! Show your violence, Zeus! We’re

  learning!

  “Submit and obey,” says the wind, “for I am a wind

  from Zeus,

  Great Father who beats my head and batters my ass as I whip yours. Submit and obey! Look upward with

  cringing devotion

  to me just as I do to Zeus, for I am better. Do I not shake your beard? Crack treelimbs over your head?

  Sing praise

  of Boreas!” ’ Idas’ moustache foamed like the sea, and

  his eyes

  Jerked more wildly than the branches whipping in the

  gale. His brother,

  staring out into darkness, made no attempt to hush him. ‘We’re learning, still learning,’ mad Idas howled. He

  got up on his knees,

  and the gale shot wildly through his robes, sent him out

  like a flag. ‘As you

  whip us, great Boreas, we the lords of the Argo will whip Aietes’ men—cornhole the king and his counsellors, fuck great ladies! So much for kindness, the hope of the cow!

  So much

  for equality, soft, nonsensical, sweetness of the

  whimsical tit!

  We’re learning!’ At a sudden gust, he fell headlong.

  Lynkeus reached out

  and touched him, without expression. The fierce wind

  whistled in our ears.

  Orpheus was silent, daunted. If Idas was wrong, it was

  not for

  Orpheus to say: he was an instrument, merely: a harp

  to the fingers

  of the gods. (And I was by no means sure he was

  wrong.)

  “Then came

  dawn’s eyes, and we looked out to sea and we saw, to the

  east and west,

  black wreckage. And we saw a beam in the harbor,

  rising and falling,

  and men. As they came toward land, we stripped and

  went out to them

  to help. We drew them to the sandy shore. Four men,

  half drowned,

  clinging to the splintered beam with fingers stiffened

  into claws.

  We laid them down by the fire and fed them. Soon as

  they could speak,

  we asked their race. The sons of Phrixos, they said.

  (We were not

  surprised. We’d heard from Phineus how we’d meet

  with them,

  and all their troubles before.) They came from Kolchis,

  kingdom

  of Aietes, where exiled Phrixos lived. You know the

  story:

  “The king of the Orkhomenians had two wives. By the first, he had two sons, Phrixos and Helle. When

  the first wife

  died, and he married the second, that cruel and jealous