Jason and Medeia Read online

  moment. What force

  it learned from yesterday’s lions is now mere handsel

  in the den

  of the dragon Present Space. And therefore I raise

  opposition

  to Jason’s will, to temper it. His anguine mind, despite those rueful looks, will find some way.”

  The queen

  seemed dubious. It was not absolutely clear to me that she perfectly followed the train of thought. But hardly knowing what else to be, she was

  reconciled.

  Gray-eyed Athena, encouraged, and ever incurably

  impish,

  turned to the love goddess. “You, sweet sister,” she said

  with a look

  so gentle I might have wept to see it, “don’t take it to

  heart

  that the queen of goddesses turns on you in her fury

  when I,

  and I alone, am at fault. If my motives indeed were

  those

  she first suspected, then well might I call to my dear

  Aphrodite—

  sitting graveolent in her royal hebetation, surrounded by

  all

  her holouries—for help. Such is not the case, however. Let there be peace between us, I pray, as always.”

  So speaking

  she raised Aphrodite’s hands and tenderly kissed them.

  The love goddess

  sobbed.

  Then everything moved again—the branches in the

  windows,

  the people, the animals, wine in the pitcher. Then Kreon

  rose.

  The roar died down respectfully.

  “These are terrible charges,”

  the old man said, and his furious eyes flashed fire

  through the hall,

  condemned the whole pack. “I’ve lived many years and

  seen many things,

  but I doubt that even in war I have seen such hostility. When Oidipus sought in maniacal rage that man who’d

  brought down

  plagues on Thebes—when Antigone left me in fiery

  indignation

  to defy my perhaps inhuman but surely most reasonable

  law—

  not then nor then did I see such wrath as has narrowed

  the eyes

  of Paidoboron and Koprophoros. It’s not easy for me to believe such outrage can trace its genesis to reason!

  However,

  the charge, whatever its source, requires an answer.”

  He turned

  to Jason, bowed to him and waited. The warlike son of

  Aison

  sat head-bent, still frowning. At last he glanced up, then

  rose,

  and Kreon sat down, gray-faced. The smile half breaking

  at the corners

  of Jason’s mouth was Athena’s smile; the dagger flash

  in his eyes was the work

  of Hera. Love was not in him, though his voice was

  gentle.

  “My friends,

  I stand accused of atrocities,” he said, “and the chief is

  this:

  I have severed my head from my heart, a point made

  somehow clear

  by dark, bifarious allegory. I have lost my soul to a world where languor cries unto languor, where

  cicadas sing

  ‘Perhaps it is just as well.’ In the real world—the world

  which I

  have lyred to its premature grave—there is love between

  women and men,

  faith between men and the gods. If you here believe all

  that,

  believe that in every condition the good cries fondly to

  the good,

  and the heart, by its own pure fire, can physician the

  anemic mind,

  I would not dissuade you. Faith has a powerful

  advantage over truth,

  while faith endures. But as for myself, I must track

  mere truth

  to whatever lair it haunts, whether high on some noble

  old mountain,

  or down by the dump, where half-starved rats scratch

  by as they can,

  and men not blessed with your happy opinions must feed

  on refuse

  and find their small satisfactions.

  “My art is false, you say.

  I answer: whatever art I may show is the world itself. The universe teems with potential Forms, though only

  a few

  are illustrated (a cow, a barn, a startling sunset); to trace the history of where we are is to arrive where

  we are.

  There are no final points in the journey of life up out of silence: there are only moments of process, and in some

  few moments,

  insight. Search all you wish for the key I’ve buried, you

  say,

  in the coils of my plot, Koprophoros. The tale, you’ll

  find,

  is darker than that—and more worthy of attention. It

  exists.

  It has its history, its dreadful or joyful direction. The

  ghostly allegory

  you charge me with is precisely what my tale denies. The truth of the world, if I’ve understood it,

  is this:

  Things die. Alternatives kill. I leave it to priests to speak of eternal things.

  “And as for you, Paidoboron,

  if I claim that the world has betrayals in it, don’t howl

  too soon.

  Every atom betrays; every stick and stone and galaxy. Notice two lodestones: notice how they war. But turn

  one around

  and behold how they lock like lovers embraced in their

  tomb. So this:

  some things click in. Some sanctuaries, at least for a

  time,

  are inviolable. What fuses the metals in the ice-bright

  ring

  of earth and sky, burns mind into heart, weds man to

  woman

  and king to state? What power is in them? That,

  whatever

  it is, is the golden secret, precisely the secret I stalk and all of us here must stalk. I’ve told you failure on

  failure,

  holding back nothing. But I still have a tale or two to

  tell—

  meaningless enough in the absence of all I’ve told

  already—

  that you may not mock so quickly.”

  He was silent. Had he tricked them again,

  danced them out of their wits like a prophet of

  gyromancy?

  Athena smiled and winked at Jason. Dark Aphrodite glanced at Hera for assurance that all was well.

  Then Kreon

  rose again, gazed round. When no one dared to speak, he turned to his slave Ipnolebes, who nodded in silence. Kreon rubbed his hands together, furious, and at last pronounced the matter closed. He dismissed the whole

  assembly

  till the hour of the evening meal, when Jason would

  resume his tale,

  and, taking the princess’ elbow in his hand, bowing to

  left

  and right, unsmiling, he descended from the dais. As

  the two passed

  the threshold, the others all rose and followed, and so

  the hall

  was emptied except for the slaves—near the door the

  Northerner

  and the boy. The goddess vanished. The vision went

  dark. I heard

  the nightmare crowd on the move again, in the shadow

  of the beast,

  smothered in the skirts of the prostitute. Then sound,

  too, ceased,

  and I hung in darkness, nowhere, clinging to the oak’s

  rough bark.

  A blore of wind, like the breeze at the entrance to a cave,

  tore

  at the ragged tails of my overcoat, sheathed my


  spectacles in ice.

  14

  I stood, by the goddess’ will, in Medeia’s room. Pale

  light

  fell over her, fell swirling, burning on the golden fleece beside her, and then moved on, moved past the two old

  slaves

  to the door where the children watched. I could not

  look at them

  for pain and shame. Dreams they might be, as old and

  pale

  as ghosts in the cairns of Newgrange, but dream or

  solid flesh,

  they were children, inexplicably doomed. How could

  I close my wits

  on truths so weird? (Who can believe in the spectre

  who walks

  leukemia wards, who stands severe above laughing girls whose hearts pump dust? Who can believe those

  pictures in the news

  of a million children, senselessly cursed, dying in

  silence,

  caught up in Dionysos’ wars, or the refugee camps of Artemis? ) All time inside them … And then I did

  look,

  searching their eyes for the secret, and found there

  nothing. Softly,

  my guide, invisible around me, spoke. “Poor dim-eyed

  -stranger,

  you’ve understood the question, at least. Look! Look

  hard!

  Study their eyes, windows of the world you seek and

  they

  have not yet dreamed the price of: the timeless instant.

  They have

  no plans, only flimmering dreams of plans, intentions

  dark

  as the lachrymal flutter of corpse-candles. Their time

  is reverie.

  But already will is uncoiling there. They flex their

  fingers,

  restless at the long dull watch. The garden is filled with

  birds,

  bright sunlight. They remember a cart with a broken

  wheel, a cave

  of vines by the garden wall. They have now begun to be of two minds. Now love and hate grow thinkable, sacrifice and murder, mercy and judgment. And now,

  look close:

  with a glance at each other—sly grins, infectious, so

  that we smile too,

  remembering, projecting (for we, we too, were children

  once,

  slyly becoming ourselves, unaware of the risk)—they

  step,

  soundless as deer, to the doorway and through it to

  their liberty.

  Or so they guess, unaware that the house will vanish,

  and the garden—

  and the palsied slaves they’ve slipped they will find

  transmogrified

  to skulls, bits of ashen cloth, dark bone. And they’ll

  wring their hands,

  restless again, and search in children’s eyes for peace, in vain. Yet there is peace. Strange peace: from the

  blood of innocents.

  You’ll see. The gods have ordained it.” I stared, alarmed

  at that,

  and snatched off my glasses to hunt with my naked

  eyes for the shade—

  she-witch, goddess, I knew not what—but no trace

  of her.

  I turned up the collar of my coat, for the room had

  grown chilly. And then

  she spoke one brief word more: “Listen.”

  On the bed, eyes staring,

  Medeia spoke, ensorcelled—death-pale lips unmoving. I glanced, alarmed, at her eyes and my glance was held;

  I seemed

  to fall toward them, and they weren’t eyes now but

  pits, an abyss,

  unfathomable, plunging into space. I cried out, clutched

  my spectacles.

  The wind soughed dark with words and the pitch-dark

  wings of ravens

  crying in Medeia’s voice:

  “I little dreamed, that night,

  sleeping in my father’s high-beamed hall, that I’d

  sacrifice

  all this, my parents’ love, the beautiful home of my

  childhood,

  even my dear brother’s life, for a man who lay, that

  moment,

  hidden in the reeds of the marsh. Had I not been happy

  there—

  dancing with the princes of Aia on my father’s floors of

  brass

  or walking the emerald hills above where wine-dark

  oxen

  labored from dawn to dusk, above where pruning-men

  crept,

  weary, along dark slopes of their poleclipt vineyard

  plots?

  I’d talked, from childhood up, with spirits, with

  all-seeing ravens,

  sometimes with swine where they fed by the rocks

  under oak trees, eating

  acorns, treasure of swine, and drank black water,

  making

  their flesh grow rich and sweet and their brains grow

  mystical.

  No princess was ever more free, more proud and sure

  in the halls

  of her father, more eager to please with her mother.

  But the will of the gods

  ran otherwise.”

  The voice grew lighter all at once, the voice

  of a schoolteacher reading to children, some trifling,

  unlikely tale

  that amuses, fills in a recess, yet troubles the grown-up

  voice

  toward sorrow. She told, as if gently mocking the

  tragedy,

  of gods and goddesses at ease in their windy palaces where the hourglass-sand takes a thousand years to

  form the hill

  an ant could create, here on earth, in half an hour. She

  told

  of jealousies, foolish displays of celestial skill and

  spite;

  and in all she said, I discovered as I listened, one thing

  stood plain:

  she knew them well, those antique gods and mortals,

  though she mocked

  their foolishness. I peered all around me to locate the

  speaker,

  but on all sides lay darkness, the infinite womb of

  space.

  She told, first, how Athena and Hera looked down

  and, seeing

  the Argonauts hidden in ambush, withdrew from Zeus

  and the rest

  of the immortal gods. When the two had come to a

  rose-filled arbor,

  Hera said, “Daughter of Zeus, advise me. Have you

  found some trick

  to enable the men of the Argo to carry the fleece away? Or have you possibly constructed some flattering

  speech that might

  persuade Aietes to give it as a gift? God knows, the

  man’s

  intractable, but nothing should be overlooked.” Athena sighed. She hated to be caught without schemes. “

  I’ve racked my brains, to be truthful,” she said, “and

  I’ve come up with nothing.”

  For a while the goddesses stared at the grass, each

  lost in her own

  perplexities. Then Hera’s eyes went sly. She said:

  “Listen!

  We’ll go to Aphrodite and ask her to persuade that

  revolting boy

  to loose an arrow at Aietes’ daughter, Medeia of the

  many

  spells. With the help of Medeia our Jason can’t fail!”

  Athena

  smiled. “Excellent,” she said and glanced at Hera, then

  away.

  Hera caught it—no simpleton, ruler of the whole

  world’s will.

  “All right.” she said, “explain that simper,

  Lightning-head.”

  Athena’s gray eyes widened. “I smiled?” Hera looked

  stern. Athena

  sigh
ed, then smiled again. ‘There is … a certain logic to events, as you know, Your Majesty. Your war with

  Pelias

  has taken, I think, a new turn. If Medeia should fall in

  love

  with Jason and win him the fleece, and if she returned

  with him

  and reigned with him—and Pelias …” Queen Hera’s

  eyebrows raised,

  all shock. “I give you my solemn word I intended no such thing!” Then, abruptly, she too smiled. Then both

  of them laughed

  and, taking one another’s arms, they hurried to the love

  goddess.

  She was alone in her palace. Crippled Hephaiastos

  had gone to work early,

  as he often did, to create odd gadgets for gods and

  men

  in his shop. She was sitting in an inlaid chair, a

  heart-shaped box

  on the arm, and between little nibbles she was combing

  her lush, dark hair

  with a golden comb. When she saw the goddesses

  standing at the door,

  peeking shyly through the draperies—in their dimpled

  fingers

  fans half-flared, like the pinions of a friendly but

  timorous bird—

  she stopped and called them in. She crossed to meet

  them quickly

  and settled the two, almost officiously, in easy chairs, before she went to her own seat. “How wonderful!”

  she said,

  and her childlike eyes were bright. “It’s been ages!”

  The queen of goddesses

  smiled politely, cool and aloof in spite of herself. She

  glanced at Athena,

  and Athena, innocent as morning, inquired about

  Aphrodite’s

  health, and Hephaiastos’ health, and that of “the boy.”

  She could not

  bring herself to come out with the urchin’s name. When

  the queen

  of love had responded at length—sometimes with tears,

  sometimes

  with a smile that lighted the room like a burst of pink

  May sun,

  the goddess of will broke in, a trifle abruptly, almost sternly, saying: “My dear, our visit is only partly social. We two are facing a disaster. At this very

  moment

  warlike Jason and his friends the Argonauts are riding

  at anchor

  on the river Phasis. They’ve come to fetch the fleece

  from Aietes.

  We’re concerned about them; as a matter of fact I’m

  prepared to fight

  with all my power for that good, brave man, and I

  mean to save him,

  even if he sails into Hades’ Cave. You know my justified fury at Pelias, that insolent upstart who slights me

  whenever

  he offers libations. ‘Peace whatever the expense’ is his