Jason and Medeia (11 page)

If the two kings were engaged in some treachery,

the goddesses too

were fooled by it.

The chief of the Argonauts watched the Northerner as though he had scarcely noticed Koprophoros' trick.

He said

when the laughter in the hall died down, “Tell me,

Paidoboron,

why have you come? I knew you long ago, and I know your gloomy land. Koprophoros has his joke, but perhaps his nimble wits have betrayed him, this once. What

wealth can a man

bring down from a land like yours? And what can

Corinth offer

that you'd take even as a gift? I know you better,

I think,

than Koprophoros does. There's no duplicity in you,

no greed

for anything Kreon can give. Yet there you stand.”

Paidoboron

bowed. “That's true. Even so, I may have suitable gifts for a king.” He said no more, but smiled.

Jason laughed,

then checked himself, musing. “You've seen something

in the stars, I think,”

he said at last. Paidoboron gave him no answer. “I think the stars sent you—or so you imagine—sent you for

something

you've no great interest in, yourself.” He tapped his

chin,

thinking it through. Suddenly I saw in his eyes that his

thought

had darkened. He said: “If Zodiac-watchers were always

right,

we'd all be wise to abandon this hall at once.” He

smiled.

Kreon looked flustered. “What do you mean?” When

Jason was silent,

he turned to Ipnolebes. “What does he mean?” The

slave said nothing.

The old king pursed his lips, then puffed his cheeks

out, troubled.

“Fiddlesticks!” he said. Then, brightening: “Wine! Give

everyone here

more wine!” The slaves hurried in the aisles, obeying.

But Jason

pondered on, and the sea-kings watched him as Kreon

did,

Time suspended by Jason's frown. The game was ended, I thought, incredulous. He'd understood that the fates

themselves

opposed him, through Paidoboron.

Then one of the shadowy

forms beside him vanished—Hera, goddess of will, and the same instant a man with a great red beard

stood up,

and a chill went through my veins. His eyes were like

smoke. The man

with the red beard snapped, “One thing here's sure.

We're all engaged,

whatever our reasons, in a test. It's ungenteel, no doubt, to mention it. But I never was long on gentility. These kings don't loll here, day after day, some showing

off

their wares by the walls, some flashing their wits at

the dinnertable,

for nothing. I say we get on with it.” He glared from

table

to table, red-faced, his short, thick body charged with

wrath.

Kreon looked startled and glanced in alarm at Ipnolebes. “Jason,” the red-bearded man said fiercely, pointing a

finger

that shook with indignation, “if you mean to play,

then play.

If not, pack off! Make room for men that are serious!” Jason smiled, but his eyes were as bright as nails.

“I assure you,

I had no Idea there were stakes involved, and I've no

intention

of playing for them, whatever they are. I am, as you

know,

a beggar here. I leave the game to you, my dissilient friend, whatever it is.”

The man with the red beard scoffed,

tense lips trembling like the wires of a harp, his eyes

like a dog's.

“We're to understand that Jason, known far and wide

for his cunning,

has no idea of what every other lout here, drunk or sober, has seen by plain signs: Pyripta's for sale, and we're bidding.” He pointed as he spoke, his face

bright red with rage,

whether at Pyripta for her calfy innocence, or at Kreon

for his guile,

or at devious Jason, no one could tell. Like a mad dog, a misanthrope out of the woods, he turned on all of

them, pointing

at the girl, scorning the elegant forms of their civility. Pyripta gasped and hid her face, and the blood

rushed up

till even her forehead burned red. Like one fierce man,

the crowd,

half-rising, roared their anger. He glared at them,

trembling all over,

his head lowered, pulled inward like a bull's. “Get him

out of here!”

Kreon shouted. “He's drunk!” But when men moved

toward him

he batted them off like a bear. Men jerked out daggers

and began

to circle him. He drew his own and, hunched tight, guarding with one arm, rolled his small eyes, watching

them all.

Then Jason rose and called out twice in a loud voice, “Wait!” The crowd, the circle of men with their daggers

drawn,

looked up at him. “No need for this,” he said. “A man in a rage is often enough a man who thinks he's right though the whole world's against him. I know this

wildman Kompsis.

Dog-eyed, fierce as he is, he tells you the truth as he

sees it—

sparing no feelings. He may be a rough, impatient man, a truculent fool, but he means less evil than you

think. He's been

a friend to me. Let him be.” The men encircling

Kompsis

hesitated, then put their weapons away. Red Kompsis glowered at Jason, angry but humbled. Then he too

sheathed

his knife. Men talked, at the tables, leaning toward

each other,

and the sound soon filled the hall.

Jason sat down. As if

to himself, he said, “How quickly and easily it always

comes, this

violence! It's a strange thing. Poor mad mankind!” “God knows!” said Kreon, his voice shaky. The

princess, her face

still hidden behind her hands, was weeping. It was

not cunning—

not Jason's famous capacity for transforming all evils to advantages—that showed on his face. The son of Aison, whatever else, was a man sensitive to pain. It was that, past

anything else,

that set him apart, made a stranger of Jason wherever

he went.

He suffered too fiercely the troubles of people around

him. It made him

cool, intellectual. Nietzsche would have understood. If

he was

proud, usurped the prerogatives of gods … Never

mind.

I was moved, watching from the shadows. He was a

man much wronged

by history, by classics professors. Jason leaned forward, speaking to Kreon now, but speaking so Pyripta would

hear:

“It's a hard thing, I know myself, for a man to give up his natural pride. The outrage strikes and stings, and

before

you know it, you've turned, struck back. It makes me

envy women.

They've got no option of learning ‘the art of punching

people,'

and as for making fools out of people by abstract talk— Time and Space, the ultimate causes of things, and so

forth—

their quick minds run in the wrong direction, inclined

by nature

to thoughts of their children, comforting the weak,

by gentleness soothing

their huffing, puffing males. The fiercest of women

reveal

their best in arts like those.”

The table talk died down.

A few of those nearest had caught his allusions to

Koprophoros' speech.

Jason went on, half-smiling, conversational (but Hera was in him, and Athena; his eyes were sly).

He said,

forming his words with care, yet hiding his trouble with

his tongue:

“When Pelias scorned me, refused me all honors

because, as he put it,

I was “wild,” not fit to be anything more than a river

tramp,

I wanted to strangle the fool. I'd have gotten off cheap,

no doubt.

The people are always more fond of their wild young

river tramps

than of grand old tyrants who stutter.” He laughed,

looked down at his hands.

Like lightning the goddess Hera returned to the

red-bearded man.

“You were scared, Jason. Admit it! Or did it seem

uncivil?”

Jason laughed again, to himself. Athena poked him. “No, not scared,” he said, and let it pass.

Old Kreon

cleared his throat and squeezed one eye shut, tapping

his fingers.

“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I'd be pleased to hear

about it.

We all would, I'm sure.”

A few of the sea-kings clapped, then more.

Pyripta glanced at him, blushing, unaware of the gentle

touch

of dark Aphrodite's fingertips on her wrist—for the

goddess,

fickle, perpetually changing, could never resist a chance to prove herself. (Yet even now, no doubt, her concern was mainly for Medeia.) Still Jason frowned and

thought.

In the end

they prevailed upon him—and though he insisted he

felt like a fool

to be launching a tale so cumbersome (it was late,

besides:

by the stars it was almost midnight now) he began it.

The slaves

passed wine, and those who had nothing to do collected

in doorways

or stood by the treasured walls, listening. More than

a few

in Kreon's hall had heard those fabulous tales of the

Argo,

strange adventures from the days of the princes'

exodus,

some in one version, some in another, no two agreeing; and more than a few had heard about Jason's

storytelling,

celebrated to the rim of the world.

Reluctant as he was

to speak, his eyes took on a glint. He knew pretty well— Hera watching, invisible, over his shoulder, crafty— that whether or not he was playing for the throne, the

sighing princess,

he meant to make fools, for his sport, of fat

Koprophoros

and the Northerner, shrewd as they seemed. As he

spoke, he smiled. Near the roof

an owl was perched, stone-silent, with glittering eyes.

A lizard,

light as a stick, peeked from the wall, then darted back. Nearby, the slave Amekhenos, with the boy beside him, leaned on the door to listen, head bowed. He too, I

thought,

had things he could tell, one day, when the time was

right for it.

The house lower on the hill was dark save one dim

lamp

that bloomed dully in its shade like a dragon's lidded

eye.

The female slave Agapetika kneeled at the rough-carved

shrine

of Apollo the Healer, in the corner of her room. Not

like Helios—

rising and setting in anger, rampaging in the

Underworld,

sire of dragons, zacotic old war-monger—not like Helios was the god of poesy, lord of the sun.

In her larger room,

high-windowed, dim, Medeia lay troubled by gloomy

dreams.

The cloth lay in the moonlight singing softly, faint as the song of mosquitoes' wings, the sleeping children's

breath.

Argus wove me, weary old Argus, weary old Argus who

wished them well.

6

“It was Pelias shipped us out. I might have murdered

him

and seized my father's kingdom back, and might have

been thanked for it.

Nobody cared for his rule. But he was my uncle, and

I had

my cousins to think of, also my father's memory,

he who'd

given my throne to Pelias, or so old Pelias claimed, backed by his toadies, I being only a child, unfit, a ruffian to be watched, required to prove my

kingliness.

I seethed, not deaf to the whispers in Iolkos. More than

age,

men hinted on every side, had hustled my father to

his grave.

It was possible. They wrestled, those two half-brothers,

from birth,

contending in anger for the place of greater dignity, whether the line of Poseidon or of Lord Dionysos should

rule.

If Pelias seemed a timid man, consider the weasel: he does not suck in air and roar like the honest,

irascible tiger, or stamp

his hoof in annoyance, like the straightforward horse; nevertheless, he has his way—soft-furred as the coney, more calculating, more subtle and swift than a jungle

snake,

richer in mystery, conceiving his young through his

ear, like a poet.

My father, old women claim, gave my uncle Pelias

his limp—

a man more direct than I, my father; rough, red-robed, beard a-tremble in the fury of long-forgotten winds … “Shifted to a smoky old house with my mother, I kept

my quiet;

watched him when he came to call with his curkling

retinue,

watched the cowering, sequacious mob as the old

cloud-monger

stammered the state of the kingdom, stuttered his

counsellors' thoughts,

balbutiating the world to balls of spit. I watched with the eye of a cockatrice, but when he smiled,

smiled back,

pretended to scoff at the rumors. I would not tangle

with him,

at least not yet. Like those who crowded the streets,

I beamed,

shouted evoes at his rhetoric. Things might be worse. He hadn't seen fit to imprison us yet ‘for our own

protection'—

a gambit common enough. Yet I was in prison, all right. To an eagle the widest of volaries is not yet sky. Men came to me in the night with suggestions. I refused

to hear them.

Sibyls brought me the riddlings of gods, how they

signalled in the dust,

mumbled through thunder. I'd give no ear to their