Jason and Medeia Read online

  of Pyripta

  that Jason’s story was winning them. Indeed, not a soul thought otherwise. It seemed no contest now. He’d seized their hearts and minds by his crafty wit and clung

  like a bat

  to his advantage. His thoughts were dangerous, and they

  knew it. His scheme,

  now clear, was impossible to block. When men sit

  talking by the fire,

  exchanging opinions of interest, discussing betrothals, curious adventures, and one, by the moving

  of his sleeve,

  reveals a scorpion, all mere trading of civilized insights stops: Death takes priority. So Jason, spinning his web of words, closed off all other business. They

  must hear it through, approve

  or not. Yet fat Koprophoros wouldn’t give up his hopes entirely. As Jason waited, the ghastly creature rose, his eyelids drowsily lowered on his dark and brilliant

  eyes,

  and spoke.

  “My lords, this Jason is rightly renowned for his cunning!

  See what he’s done to us! Penned us up like chickens in

  a coop

  by his artistry! First he seduces our girlish emotions with a tale of love—the poor sweet queen of Lemnos!—

  and wins

  Our grudging respect by disingenuous admissions of

  his cruel

  betrayal in that grungy affair. But that was mere

  feinting, test

  of the equipment! For behold, having shown us beyond

  all shadow of a doubt—

  so he made it seem—that solemn Paidoboron and I

  were wrong,

  two addlepates, you’d swear—myself no better than a

  tyrant,

  and my friend from the North a coward (like one of

  the gods’ pale shuddering

  nuns’ was, I think, his phrase), he uses our chief ideas to create an elaborate hoax, a dismal drama of anguish in which he—always heroic beyond even Orpheus!— encounters monsters more fierce than any centaur—

  monsters

  of consciousness. Have I misunderstood? Is not his tale of poor young Kyzikos and the Doliones an allegory attacking all human skills—the skills of sailors, armies, even augurers?—Skills like mine, like Paidoboron’s? It’s a frightening thought, you’ll confess, that the

  essence of humanness—

  man’s conviction that craft, the professional’s art, may

  save him—

  is drunken delusion! We hunch forward in our chairs,

  ambsaced,

  waiting for Jason, who conjured the bogy, to exorcise it. But ha! That’s not his strategy. Pile on more anguish, that’s the ticket! The tales of Herakles and Hylas, and

  poor Polydeukes.

  Human commitment, love of one man for another—

  that too

  goes up, by his trickery, in smoke. Ah, how we

  suffered for Jason,

  watching him through those losses! Who’d fail to award

  poor Jason

  whatever prize is available, guerdon for his sorrows!

  And while

  we wait, we children, for proof that true love exists,

  as we hoped,

  he stifles our life-thirsty souls in old Phineus’

  winding-sheet!

  ‘O woeful man,’ he teaches us, ‘all life is a search for death.’ —Is that the fleece for which we blindly sail chill seas? And yet we believe it, since Jason tells us so, Jason of the Golden Tongue! And even the skeleton’s

  sickle

  is meaningless! So Jason’s physicians preach: ‘decay of the extremities,’ ‘the element of Chance at the heart

  of all

  our projects.’ ‘Und Alles Sein ist flammend Leid,’ we cry. ‘O, save us, Jason,’ we howl in dismay, ‘feed us with

  raisin cakes,

  restore us with apples, for we are sick with loss!’”

  Koprophoros

  gaped, eyes wide. “Are we wrong to think there’s a life

  before death?”

  He shuddered. “We wring our hands, cast up our eyes to

  heaven

  whimpering for help. But heaven will not look down.

  No, only

  Jason can save our souls, sweet Golden Lyre. And in our need, what does he send us? Another great bugaboo! We’re victims: we’re groping cells in the body of a

  monster seeking

  its own dark, meaningless end! What man can believe

  such things?

  No man, of course! And soon, when the time is right,

  be sure

  he’ll rescue us—when he’s twisted and turned us by all

  his tricks,

  baffled our desire, exhausted our will—he’ll discover the

  secret

  of joy exactly where he hid it himself, in some curlicue of his death-cold python of a plot. Nor will we object,

  if we,

  as Jason supposes, are children.

  “But I think of Orpheus …”

  The Asian paused, looked thoughtful, his hand on his

  chin. Then: “

  Jason’s revealed it himself: there are artists and artists.

  One kind

  pulls strings, manipulates the minds of his hearers,

  indifferent to truth,

  delighting solely in his power: a man who exploits

  without shame,

  snatches men’s words, thoughts, gestures and turns

  them to his purpose—attacks

  like a thief, a fratricide, and makes himself rich, feels

  no remorse:

  lampoons good men out of envy, to avenge some trivial

  slight,

  or merely from whim, as a proof of his godlike

  omnipotence.

  His mind skims over the surface of dread like

  a waterbug,

  floats on logic like a seagull asleep on a dark unrippled sea. But the sea is alive, we suddenly remember!

  The mind

  shorn free of its own green deeps of love and hate, desire and will—the mind detached from the dark of tentacles mournfully groping toward light—is a mind that will

  ruin us:

  thought begins in the blood—and comprehends the

  blood.

  The true artist, who speaks with justice,

  who rules words in the fear of God,

  is like “morning light at sunrise filling a cloudless sky,

  making the grass of the earth sparkle after rain.

  But false artists are like desert thorns

  whose fruit no man gathers with his hand;

  no man touches them

  unless it’s with iron or the shaft of a spear,

  and then they are burnt in the fire.

  “My friends,

  Orpheus was that true artist! He boldly sang the world as it is, sang men as they are—a master of simplicity, a man made nobler than all other men by his

  humanness.

  There’s beauty in the world,’ he said, and courageously

  told of it.

  ‘And there’s evil,’ Orpheus said, and wisely he pointed

  out cures.

  We praise this Jason’s intellectual fable: it fulfills our

  worst

  suspicions. But the fable’s a lie.” He said this softly,

  calmly,

  and all of us sitting in the hall were startled by the

  change in the man,

  once so arrogant, so full of his own importance, so

  quick

  himself to use sleight-of-wits. The hall was hushed,

  reproached.

  “We may have misjudged this creature,” I thought, and

  at once remembered

  the phrase was Koprophoros’ own.

  Jason said nothing, but sat

  with pursed lips, brow furrowed, and he seemed by his

  silence to admit

  the truth in Koprophoro
s’ charge.

  Then Paidoboron rose and said:

  “As a man, not as an artist, I would condemn the son of Aison. His betrayals of men are as infamous as

  Herakles’ own.

  His tale seeks neither to excuse nor explain them, but

  only to make us

  party to his numerous treasons. We all know well

  enough

  the theme of his tale of Lemnos: as once, for no clear

  reason

  (unless it was simple exhaustion, mother of

  indifference),

  he abandoned the yellow-haired daughter of Thoas—so

  now, for no

  just reason, he’d abandon Medeia for Lady Mede.”

  The wide

  hall gasped at the frontal attack. The tall,

  black-bearded king

  stared with fierce eyes at Jason. The lord of the

  Argonauts

  paled, but he neither lowered his gaze nor flinched.

  King Kreon

  glanced at Pyripta in alarm. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing, pressing one hand to her

  heart. The Northerner

  said, grim-voiced: “Treason by treason he undermines morality. He tells of the treason of the Doliones, how they offer, one moment, a feast, fine wine, and

  the next moment turn,

  forgetting the sacred laws of hospitality, more barbarous even than the spider people, who were,

  at least,

  within their earthborn natures consistent. Are the

  Doliones

  condemned in Jason’s tale? Not at all! They get

  threnodies!

  For even the gods betray, according to Jason, as do their seers. So Hylas—whom Jason excuses by virtue

  of his youth

  and the soft, warm weather that shameful night—

  betrays his trust

  as squire, goes up to the furthest of the pools. So the

  Argonauts

  all turn, as one, against Herakles. So Phineus betrays, defying the gods; so Mopsos turns in scorn on dying men; and so all the crewmen, spurred by

  the mad

  philosophy of Idas, betray the core of humanness,

  become

  a mindless, fascistic machine. Thus cunningly Jason

  persuades

  that treason is life’s great norm. He pulls the secret wires of our angular heads, makes us empathize with his

  own foul sin,

  and bilks us all of the heart’s sure right to condemn

  such sin.

  Corrupter! Exploiter! No more such fumets! The world

  is alive

  with laws, and all who defy them will at last be

  destroyed by them.

  Think back on the days of old, think over the years,

  down the ages.

  Are the gods blind? indifferent to evil and stupidity? They’ve spoken in all man’s generations, and they speak

  even now:

  ‘You are fat, gross, bloated, a deceitful and underhanded

  brood,

  a nation wealthy and empty-headed. Your hills will

  tremble

  and your carcases will be torn apart in the midst of

  streets.

  A great fire has blazed from my anger.

  It will burn to the depths of Hades’ realm.

  It will devour the earth and all its produce;

  it will set fire to the foundations of mountains’ ”

  The dark king paused, his words still ringing, and

  his eyes had no spark

  of humanness in them, it seemed to me. Jason said

  nothing.

  Then, once more, Paidoboron spoke, more quietly now, his hoarse, dry voice like an oracle’s voice through

  cavern smoke:

  “You’ve raised up again and again that towering son

  of Zeus,

  fierce Herakles, as the chief of betrayers, suggesting

  that nought

  you’ve done, or might do, could hold a candle to his

  perfidy.

  Shame, seducer! The ideal of loyalty raged in that man! Loyalty to Zeus, to Hylas, to his friends. He struck

  down Hylas’

  father from passionate hatred of his evil State—never

  mind

  how cheap his murderous stratagem. He threatened

  to lay

  all Mysia waste out of passionate sorrow at loss of his

  friend.

  And in the same mad rage he murdered the sons of

  Boreas,

  who had loved him weakly, intellectually, and

  prevented your ship

  from turning back when you’d stranded him.

  Wide-minded Zeus

  did not bequeath his wisdom to his son: from

  Alkmene he got

  his brains. But the sky-god’s absolutes burned in

  Herakles

  like quenchless underground fire. They do not burn in

  you.

  Impotent, wily, colubrine, you’d buy and sell all man’s history, if it lay in your power. Ghost ships

  indeed!

  Civilization beware if Jason is the model for it! When feelings perish—the wound we share with the

  cow and the lion—

  then rightly the world will return to the rule of spiders.”

  So

  he spoke, and would say no more. And Aison’s son said

  nothing.

  I would not have given three straws, that moment,

  for Jason’s hopes.

  And then, all at once, came an eerie change. The

  red-leaved branches

  framed in the windows, blowing in the autumn wind,

  snapped into

  motionlessness. Every man, fly, cricket, the wine that fell streaming from the lip of the pitcher

  in the slave boy’s hand,

  hung frozen. It seemed the scene had become a divine

  projection

  on a golden screen. Then, in that stillness, Hera leaped

  up,

  eyes blazing, and, turning to Athena, flew into a rage.

  “Sly wretch!”

  she bellowed. I flattened to the floor. Her voice made

  the rafters shake,

  though it failed to awaken the sea-kings, frozen to

  marble. Athena

  fell a step backward, quaking. I had somehow dropped

  my glasses,

  so that all I could see of the goddesses was a luminous

  blur.

  I felt by the wall, furtive as a mouse, and at last I found

  them,

  hooked them over my ears in haste and peeked out

  again.

  The queen of goddesses wailed: “What a perfect fool

  I was

  to trust you even for an instant! You just can’t resist,

  can you!

  I think you’re my true ally, and I listen to Jason’s

  cunning,

  and I think, That Athena! The goddess of mind is surely

  Zeus’s

  masterpiece!’ And what are you thinking? You’re

  dreaming up answers!

  You don’t care! You don’t care about anything! He

  stops to take a breath

  and your quick wit darts to old Fatslats there, and you

  inspire him with words

  and you ruin all Jason’s accomplished! —And you,

  you halfwit—”

  She whirled to confront Aphrodite. “You caused the

  whole thing! You change

  your so-called mind and forget about Medeia and make

  our Pyripta

  all googley-poo over Aison’s son, and Athena can’t

  help it,

  she has to oppose you. It’s a habit, after all these

  centuries.”

  Aphrodite blushed scarlet and backed away as her sister

  had done.

  ‘Your
Majesty, do be reasonable,” Athena said. Her voice was soft—it was faint as a zephyr, in fact,

  from fear.

  But the wife of Zeus did not prefer to be reasonable. Her dark eyes shone like a stormcloud blooming and

  rippling with light. “

  Betrayal,” she groaned, and clenched her fists. “That’s

  good. That’s really

  good! You make Paidoboron talk of betrayal, how fine true loyalty is, and you, you don’t bat an eyelash at how your trick’s a betrayal of me! Does nothing in the world

  count?

  How can you do it, forever and ever manufacturing

  structures,

  when the whole vast ocean of Time and Space is

  thundering aloud

  on the rocks, and the generations of men are all on the run, rootless and hysterical?”

  “Your Majesty, please,

  I beg you,” Athena said. The queen of goddesses

  paused,

  still angry, I thought, but not unaware of gray-eyed

  Athena’s

  fear and helplessness. Aphrodite kept quiet, her dark eyes large. Hera waited—stern, but not tyrannical,

  at last;

  and at last Athena spoke, head bowed, her lovely arms stretched out, imploring. “You’re wrong, this once, to

  reproach me, Goddess.

  I do know the holiness of things. I know as well as you the hungry raven’s squawk in winter, the hunger of

  nations,

  the stench of gotch-gut wealth, how it feeds on children’s

  flesh.

  I’ve pondered kings and ministers with their jackals’

  eyes,

  presidents sweetly smiling with the hearts of wolves.

  I’ve seen

  the talented well-meaning, men not chained to greed, able to sacrifice all they possess for one just cause, fearless men, and shameless, earnestly waiting, lean, ready to pounce when the cause is right—waiting,

  waiting—

  while children die in ambiguous causes, and wicked men make wars—waiting—waiting for the war to reach

  their streets,

  waiting for some unquestionable wrong—waiting on

  graveward …

  Precisely because of all that I’ve done what I’ve done,

  raised men

  to test this lord of the Argonauts. I have never failed

  him

  yet, and I will not now; but I mean to annoy him to

  conflict,

  badger till he racks his brains for a proof he believes,

  himself,

  of his worthiness. I mean to change him, improve him,

  for love

  of Corinth, Queen of Cities. You speak of Space and

  Time.

  No smallest grot, O Queen, can shape its identity outside that double power: a thing is its history, the curve of its past collisions, as it locks on the