Jason and Medeia Read online

  motto.

  Even those beautiful images of me he’s ordered ripped

  down

  from end to end of Argos, for fear some humble herder may dare to assert himself as Pelias himself did once, when his brother was rightful king. I won’t mince

  words:I want

  his skull, and I want it by Jason’s hand—not just

  because

  he’s proved himself as a warrior (though heaven knows

  he’s done so).

  Once, disguised as an ugly old woman with withered

  feet,

  I met him at the mouth of the Anauros River. The river

  was in spate—

  all the mountains and their towering spurs were buried

  in snow

  and hawk-swift cataracts roared down the sides. I called)

  out, pleading

  to be carried across. Jason was hurrying to Pelias’ feast, but despite the advice of those who were with him,

  despite the rush

  of the ice-cold stream, he laughed—bright laugh of a

  demigod—

  and shouted, ‘Climb on, old mother! If I’m not strong

  enough

  for two I’m not Aison’s son!’ Again and again I’ve

  tested

  his charity, and he’s always the same. Say what you

  like

  about Jason, he does not blanch, for himself or for

  others.”

  Words failed

  the queen of love. The sight of Hera pleading for favors from her, most mocked of all goddesses, filled her with

  awe. She said:

  “Queen of goddesses and wife of great Zeus, regard me as the meanest creature living if I fail you now in your need! All I can say or do, I will, and whatever small strength I

  have

  is yours.” Her sweet voice broke, and her lovely eyes

  brimmed tears.

  Athena looked thoughtful. She could not easily scorn

  Aphrodite,

  whatever her dullness. You might have imagined, in

  fact, that the goddess

  of mind felt a twinge of envy. She was silent, studying

  her hands.

  She knew nothing, daughter of Zeus, of love; but she

  knew by cool geometry

  that she was not all she might be—nor was Hera.

  Hera spoke, choosing her words with care. “We are

  not

  asking the power of your hands. We would like you to

  tell your boy

  to use his wizardry and make the daughter of Aietes fall, beyond all turning, in love with the son of Aison. Her

  aid

  can make this business easy. There lives no greater

  witch

  in Kolchis, even though she’s young.”

  Then poor Aphrodite paled

  and lowered her eyes, blushing. “Perhaps Hephaiastos,”

  she said, “

  could make some engine. Perhaps I could speak to—”

  Her voice trailed off.

  “The truth is, he’s far more likely to listen to either of

  you

  than to me. He sasses me, scorns me, mocks me. I’ve

  had half a mind

  to break his arrows and bow in his very sight. Would

  that be right, do you think?”

  She wrung her fingers, looked pitiful. “As you well

  know, his father and I

  do everything for him. And how does he pay us? He

  won’t go to bed,

  refuses to obey us, says horrible, horrible things, and

  in front of company!—

  but he’s a child, of course. How can he learn to be loving if we don’t show love and forgiveness?

  How can he learn

  to have generous feelings toward others if we aren’t

  first generous to him?

  Parenthood really is a horror!”

  Athena and Hera smiled

  and exchanged glances. Aphrodite pouted. “People

  without children,”

  she said, “know all the answers. Never mind. I’ll do

  what you ask,

  if possible.”

  Then Queen Hera rose and took Aphrodite’s

  milkwhite hand in hers. “You know best how to deal

  with him.

  But manage it quickly if you can. We both depend on

  you.”

  She turned, started out. Athena followed. Poor

  Aphrodite,

  sighing, went out as well. She’d never been meant to

  be a mother.

  But too late now. (Married to a dreary old gimpleg—

  she

  who’d slept, in her youth, with the god of war himself!

  —Never mind.

  —Nevertheless, it was a bitter thing to waste eternity with a durgen, genius or not.) She wiped her eye and

  sniffed.

  She glanced through the world and saw Jason, watchful

  on the Argo, a man

  as handsome as Ares in his youth. And she turned her

  eyes to the palace

  of Aietes, and saw where Medeia slept, and suddenly

  her heart

  was warmed. The goddesses were right: they made a

  lovely couple!

  Things not possible in heaven she meant to shape on

  earth.

  The Argonauts were sitting in conference on the

  benches of their ship.

  Row on row sat silent as Jason spoke. “My friends, my advice is this—if you disagree, speak up. I’ll go with three or four others, to Aietes’ palace and parley,

  find whether

  he means to treat us as friends or to try out his army

  against us.

  No point killing a king who, if asked, would gladly

  oblige us.”

  With one accord, the Argonauts approved.

  With the sons of Phrixos, and with Telamon, the father

  of Alas,

  and with Augeias, Aietes’ half-brother, the captain of

  the Argonauts

  set forth. Queen Hera sent a mist before them, so

  covered the town

  that no man saw them till they’d reached Aietes’ house.

  And then

  the mist lifted. They paused at the entrance, astonished

  to see

  the half-mile gates, the rows of soaring columns

  surrounding

  the palace walls, and high over all, the marble cornice resting on triglyphs of bronze. They crossed the

  threshold then,

  unchallenged, and came to the sculptured trees and,

  below them, four springs,

  Hephaiastos’ work. One flowed with milk, another

  with wine,

  the third with fragrant oil; but the fourth was the

  finest of all,

  a fountain that, when the Pleiades set, ran boiling hot, and afterward bubbled from the hollow rock ice-cold.

  All that,

  they would learn in time, was nothing to the

  flame-breathing bulls of bronze

  that the craftsman of the gods had created as a gift

  for Aietes. There was also

  an inner court with ingeniously fashioned folding doors of enormous size, each of them leading to a splendid

  room

  and to galleries left and right. At angles to the court,

  on all sides

  stood higher buildings. In the highest, Aietes lived

  with his queen.

  In another Apsyrtus lived, Aietes’ son, and in yet another, his daughters, Khalkiope and Medeia. That

  Moment

  Medeia was roaming from room to room in search of

  her sister.

  The goddess Hera had fettered Medeia to the house

  that day;

  as a rule she spent most of her day in the temple of

  Hek
ate, of whom

  she was priestess.

  The voice of the narrator softened. I had to close

  my eyes and concentrate to hear.

  “And I was that child Medeia,

  a thousand thousand lives ago. And yet one moment stands like a newly made mural ablaze in the sun.

  I glanced

  at the courtyard and saw, as the mist rose, seven men,

  and their leader

  wore black, and his cape was a panther skin. His hand

  was on his sword,

  and his look was as keen as a god’s. Without knowing

  I’d do it, I raised

  my hand to my lips, cried out. In an instant the

  courtyard was astir—

  Khalkiope joyfully greeting her sons, her children by

  Phrixos,

  my father approaching on the steps, all smiles, huge

  arms extended,

  and a moment later his servants were working with the

  carcase of a bull,

  more servants chopping up firewood, and others

  preparing hot water

  for baths. I stared from the balcony, half in a daze.

  Stupidly,

  unable to move a muscle, I watched sly Eros creep in (none of them saw him but me). In the porch, beneath

  the lintel

  he hastily strung his bow, slipped an arrow from the

  quiver to the string, and,

  still unobserved by the others, ran across the gleaming

  threshold,

  his blind eyes sparkles, and crouched at Jason’s feet.

  He drew

  the bow as far as his fat arms reached, and fired.

  I could

  do nothing. A searing pain leaped through me. My

  heart stood still.

  With a laugh like a jackal’s, the little brute flashed out

  of sight and was gone

  from the hall. The invisible shaft in my breast was

  flame. Ah, poor

  ridiculous Medeia! Time and again she darts a glance at Jason, and she cannot make out if the feeling is

  mainly pain

  or sweetness!

  “How can I say what happened then? In a blur,

  a baffling radiance, I moved through the feast. His eyes

  dazzled,

  his scent—new oil of his welcoming bath—filled me

  with anguish

  as blood and the smoke of incense-reckels confound the

  dead.

  “When they’d eaten and drunk their fill, my father

  Aietes asked questions

  of the sons of Khalkiope and Phrixos. I paid no

  attention, but watched

  that beautiful, godlike stranger. He never glanced once

  at me,

  but myself, I could see nothing else. For even if I closed

  my eyes,

  he was there, like the retinal after-image of a

  candleflame.

  Childish love-madness, perhaps. Yet I do not think so,

  even now.

  We’re all imperfect, created with some part missing;

  and I saw

  from the first instant my crippled soul’s completion in

  that dark-robed

  prince. He stood as if perfectly fearless in front of

  Aietes,

  a king whom he could not help but know, by reputation, as one of the world’s great wizards, king of an

  enchanted land,

  and no mere mortal, for the sun each night when it took

  to its bed

  did so in Aietes’ hall. I knew at a glance that the man from the South was no skillful magician. His eyes were

  the eyes of one

  who lives by shrewd calculation, forethought,

  willingness to change

  his plans. If my father were suddenly to raise up a

  manticore

  at his feet, the stranger would study it a moment,

  consider the angles,

  converse with it, probably persuade it. There could be

  no guessing what

  that strange prince thought or felt, behind those

  mirroring eyes;

  and all my impulsive, volcanic soul—the ages of Tartar, Indian and Kelt that shaped us all, as Helios’ children, and made us passionate, mystical, seismic in love and

  wrath—

  went thudding as if to a god to that man for salvation.

  My face

  would sting one moment as if burned; the next, a

  freeze rang through me.

  Make no mistake! The spirit knows its physician,

  howeverso halt, lame, muddled

  the mind in its stiff bed reason! I watched his smile—self-assured, by no means trusting—and I

  felt, as never

  before, not even as a child, like a wobbly-kneed fool.

  “And then

  my father was speaking, and shifting my rapt gaze

  from the stranger

  I saw in amazement that my father was shuddering

  with rage, his huge

  fists clenched, his red beard shaking, his eyes like a

  bull’s. ‘Scoundrels!’

  he bellowed at Phrixos’ sons, my nephews. ‘Be gone

  from my sight!

  Be gone from my country, vipers in the nest! It was

  no mere fleece

  that lured you—you and these troglodytes—here to

  my kingdom. You think

  I’m a gudgeon who’ll snap at a fishhook left unbaked?

  You want

  my throne, my sceptre, my boundless dominions! Fools!

  Scarecrows!

  D’you think you can frighten a king like Aietes with

  sonorous poopings

  of willow-whistles?—cause me to bang my knees

  together

  with the oracular celostomies of a midget concealed in an echo chamber? Boom me no more of the

  Argonauts’ power,

  naming off grandiose names, panegyring their murder

  of centaurs,

  spidermen, Amazons, what-not! I am no horse, no bug, no girl! If you had not eaten at my table, I’d tear your

  tongues out

  and chop your hands off, both of them, and send you

  exploring

  on stumped legs, as a lesson to you!’

  “The man called Telamon

  came a step forward, his thick neck swelling, prepared

  to hurl

  absurd defiance at my father. I knew what would

  happen if he did.

  My father would crush him like a fly, for all his

  strength. But before

  the word was out, the stranger in black touched his

  shoulder and smiled—

  incredibly (what kind of being could smile in the

  presence of my father’s

  wrath?)—and broke in, quick yet casual: “My lord,”

  he said,

  ‘our show of arms has perhaps misled you. We were

  fools, I confess,

  to carry them in past your gate.’

  ‘The voice took my breath away.

  It was no mere voice. An instrument. What can I say? (As my Jason says.) It was a gift, a thing seen once in,

  perhaps,

  a century. Not so deep as to seem merely freakish, yet

  deep;

  and not so vibrant, so rich in its timbre, as to seem

  mock-singing,

  yet vibrant and rich…. I remember when Orpheus

  sang, the sound

  was purer than a silver flute, but when Orpheus spoke,

  it was

  as if some pot of julep should venture an opinion.

  The sound

  of the famous golden tongue was the music of a calm

  spring night

  with no hurry in it, no phrenetics, no waste—the sound

  of a city

  wealthy and at peace
—a sound so dulcet and

  reasonable

  it could not possibly be wrong. Had I not been in love

  with him

  before, I’d have fallen now. Wasn’t even my father

  checked,

  zacotic Aietes? The ear grows used to that voice, in

  time.

  I have learned to hear past to the guile, the well-meant

  trickery; but even

  now when he leaves me on business, and we two are

  apart for a week,

  his voice, when I hear it at the gate, brings a sudden

  pang, as if

  of spring, an awareness of Time, all beauty in its

  teeth. He said: ‘

  We have not come to your palace, believe me, with any

  such designs

  as our bad manners impart. Who’d brave such

  dangerous seas

  merely to steal a man’s goods? But we’re willing to

  prove our friendship.

  Grant me permission to help in your war with the

  Sauromantiae—

  a war that has dragged on for years, if the rumors we’ve

  gathered are true—

  and in recompense, if we prove as loyal as we say

  we are,

  grant us the fleece we ask for—my only hope, back

  in Argos.’

  Father was silent, plunged into sullen brooding.

  I knew

  his look well enough, that deep-furrowed brow, the eyes

  blue-white

  as cracked jewels. He was torn between lunging at the

  stranger, turning off

  that seductive charm by a blow of his fist, or a white

  bolt sucked

  from heaven; or, again, putting the stranger to the test.

  At last,

  his dragon-eyes wrinkled, and he smiled, revealed his

  jagged teeth.

  “ ‘Sir, if you’re children of the gods, as you claim,

  and have grounds for approaching

  our royal presence as equals, then we’ll happily give

  you the fleece—

  that is, if you still have use for the thing when we’ve

  put you to the proof.

  We are not like your stuttering turkey Pelias. We’re a

  man of great

  generosity to people of rank.’ He smiled again. My veins ran ice.

  “ ‘We propose to test your courage and ability

  by setting a task which, though formidable, is not

  beyond

  the strength of our own two hands. Grazing on the

  plain of Ares

  we have a huge old pair of bronze-hoofed, fire-breathing bulls. We yoke them and drive them over the fallow of

  the plain,

  quickly ploughing a four-acre field to the hedgerow at

  either

  end. Then we sow the furrows—but not with corn:

  with the fangs

  of a monstrous serpent, and they soon grow up in the

  form of armed men,

  whom we cut down and kill with our spear as they