Jason and Medeia (17 page)

and took

his cape from the slave. Except for his eyes, he seemed

relaxed.

His eyes had blue-black glints like sparks.

But he swung the cape to his shoulders gently, graceful

as a dancer.

“Jason,” she whispered, “for the love of God, don't

make me beg!”

He turned to the door. She paled. “Don't go,” she said.

“Don't go!”

She went past him, blocking the door, and her eyes were

wild. “Jason!”

He moved her aside like a child and walked from the

house. “Jason!”

she screamed, clinging to the jamb. He didn't look back.

He walked

to the gate and through it. I hurried after him, amazed,

stumbling,

trying to watch Medeia over my shoulder, where she

stood

on the steps.

“Jason, you're insane!” I hissed. I snatched at his arm. My hand passed through his wrist. Ghosts, I

remembered. Shadows.

I kept close to him, whispering. If Medeia had seen me,

so could he,

if he'd use the right part of his mind. “I know the whole

story!” I hissed,

“the fiercest, most horrible tragedy ever recorded! God's

truth!”

I might as well have complained to the passing wind.

We came

to the palace steps. There was a crowd gathering. He

started up,

three steps at a bound, his cape flaring out behind. At

the door

I caught a glimpse of the blond young slave Amekhenos. Gone before Jason saw him.

Then, from behind us in the street,

came a thin, blood-curdling wail.
“Jason!”
We stopped

in our tracks.

The crowd shrank back. She stood with blood running

down her cheeks,

the skin torn by her own nails. “Jason, I warn you,” she called, and sank to her knees, stretched out hex

arms to him.

“By the sign of this blood, I warn you—Medeia,

daughter of Aietes,

as mighty a king as has ever ruled on earth—come

away!”

He stared, shrinking. I was sick, so weak that my

knees could barely

hold me. Her hair was beautiful—red-gold, shimmering

with light,

too lovely for earth—but her face was torn and swollen,

bleeding…

We looked away, all of us but Jason. At last he went

down to her

and, gently, he took her hands. After a moment, he said, firmly, but as if he were speaking to a child, “No,

Medeia.”

She searched his face, trembling, clinging to his hands.

“Go home,”

he said. “I know you too well, Medeia. Not that your rage and grief are lies. You feel what you feel. Nevertheless, this once you can't have your way. If you could show

what I do

in any way unjust or unlawful—if you could raise the shadow of a logical objection, I'd change my course

for you.

You cannot. Long as we've lived together, you were

never my wife,

only the lady I've loved. There's a difference, in noble

houses

with large responsibilities. For love of you I fled my homeland, abandoned my throne, sharing

the exile

your crimes earned. I was innocent myself—all Argos

knew it;

no one more shocked than I when I learned of that

monstrous feast.

Ask anyone here.” He turned to the crowd, then to her

again.

“Now, and partly for your sake, I mean to rebuild my

power,

gain back part of what I've lost. Go home and wait for

me.”

She drew back her hands from his and, touching her

lips, said nothing.

Jason too was silent now. He merely looked at her, then went back up the steps and into the hall. At the

doorway

Kreon nodded, wordless. Jason bowed. They went to their places. The slaves brought dinner in, and soon

the hall

was filled to the chine of the wide-ribbed roof with the

whisper of eating,

the snarling of dogs over scraps, the hum of the

sea-kings' talk.

Jason sat very still. Pyripta watched him. There were no gods in sight, today. The servants watched like

lepers,

moving without a sound between the trestle-tables. I whispered, “Change your mind, Jason! It's not too

late!”

When the time came, he told the story of Lemnos.

Said:

“We couldn't know, as we rowed through dusk to that

rocky coast,

the terrible things that had happened on Lemnos the

year before—

the wrath of the goddess of love. (We might have

guessed from the way

the surf crashed in on those shaded rocks, and the way

it pulled back

with a groan and a long, dry gasp.)

“There were now no men on the island;

murdered, every last one of them, by their wives—

and all

their sons killed too, so that none might rise to avenge

the crime.

For a long time the women of Lemnos had scorned

Aphrodite

and thought her wiles and tricks beneath their dignity. (So Medeia would tell me, long after, whose raven spies, children of Hekate, keep all the past of the world in

mind.)

They were not less wise than their men, the women of

Lemnos said—

quicker, if anything, with their minds as with their

hands. They would

not creep, stoop, cajole, flatter, run up and down like slaves—sew half the night while their burly

masters slept,

legs aspraddle, snoring, farting from wine, in big soft beds. If women were weaker, was that some fault

of their own?

They were human, as human as men, and they meant

to be judged as human.

They declared war, held angry council. From this day

forth

they'd crackle and cavil at each least hint of tyranny, traduce each day all pillars, pylons, fenceposts, stocks of trees, all shapes ophidian, all tripod forms; inveigh against all dangling things, hurl malisons on winds not shrill, all shapes not bulbous, torous,

paggled

as the belly of a six-months' bride. They would bend their

masters' knees!

How reasonable it sounds! How just! So it seemed to

them,

talking, thinking together when their men were away

on raids.

They put on mannish clothes, cut their hair like men,

took even

the rough, harsh speech they supposed sure proof of

equality.

What could their husbands say? They could curse them,

use male force

to whip their women to heel, but how could they answer

them?

They accepted, in the end. They were, of course, the

flaw in the plan.

They developed a strange, unruly passion for the

captured girls

they'd brought from their raids in Thrace—soft

concubines who'd not yet

seen their reasonable rights. Sly and hard-headed, cool, no more likely than other women to blur their desires (mix up sex and religion, say, as men can do), they kissed—all girlish tenderness—the chests and arms and fists they knew by instinct they had to tame. They

praised

their lords' absurd ideas; they listened, dazzle-eyed— secretly making lists—to grandly romantic trash: bad poetry, stupid theology—altiloquent designs in the empty air. They got their reward, as

women

do for creeping, stooping, cajoling, flattering. They soon

were

hauled off to bed. They handled it well, of course, those

captives:

slaves eager to do anything—oh, anything!— for the beautiful, glorious lord. When he was satisfied and sleeping, they'd move their girlish hands on his

buttocks and legs,

and play, all girlish tenderness, with his private parts. So the men threw off their wives for the girls of Thrace.

Ah,
then

they knew, those women of Lemnos, what it was to be a woman! They became as irrational as men, but

fiercer than men—

unchecked by the foolish poetry, the stupid ideals, of the more romantic part of the two-part beast. They

killed

their husbands, their husbands' mistresses, and all their

sons;

learned the truth of insane ideas: men's soft throats

flowering

blood—quick flash of white, the bone, then streaming

horror;

and whatever they thought at first—however they

cringed, all shock

when first they watched the death convulsion no

leopard or wolf

would tolerate, if he understood, but only man— they learned wild joy in the unspeakable: became not

human.

Only one old man escaped, King Thoas, father of Hypsipyle. She spared him—set him adrift across the sea, inside a chest. Young fishermen dragged him

ashore

weeks later, numb and emaciated, at the isle of Oinoe.

“They managed well, those Lemnian women, ploughing, tending to their cattle, occasionally putting

on

a suit of bronze. Nevertheless, they lived in terror of the Thracians; again and again they'd cast a glance

across

the gray intervening sea to be sure they weren't coming.

“So when

they saw the
Argo
ploughing in toward shore (for all they knew, the coulter of a ploughing Thracian fleet)

they swiftly

put on the bronze of war and poured down, frantic

and stumbling,

from the wooden gates of Myrine, shouting, ‘Thracians!

Thracians!'

It was a panicky rabble, speechless, impotent with fear,

that streamed

to the beach.

“I sent Aithalides and Euphemos

to meet them, treat for terms. Old Thoas' daughter

agreed,

in curious alarm—daylight was spent—to grant us

anchor

Just offshore for the night. My heralds bowed, withdrew.

“While the two reported, Lynkeus of the amazing eyes, mad Idas' brother, looked with his predator's stare at

the shore,

his sharp ears cocked, sidewhiskers quiet as a jungle

cat's,

his dark hands steady on the
Argo's
rail. His back

was round

with closed-in thought and his eerily beastlike

watchfulness.

He said, when they finished, “Jason, those people on

the shore are women.

And those by the city wall, the same. And those by

the trees.”

I looked at him. We all did. “It's a whole damn island of women,” he said. Mad Idas, standing at his

shoulder, grinned.

“As soon as the sky was dark enough, I sent

our heralds

back, and Lynkeus with them—the runner Euphemos for quick report, Aithalides, the son of Hermes, for his wide mind and his all-embracing memory, gift of his father, a memory that never failed. They went to a room where Lynkeus said he could see an assembly

gathered.

He was right. It seemed the whole city was there.

“Hypsipyle spoke,

who'd called the assembly together. She said, in the

ravens' version

(briefer by nearly an hour than that of Aithalides): ‘My friends, we must conciliate these foreigners by our lavishness. Let us supply them at once with food, good wine, young women, all they may dream of

wanting with them

on the ship, and thus we'll make sure they don't press

close to us

or know us too well—as they might if need should

drive them to it.

Let these strangers mingle with us, and the dark news of what happened here will fly through the world. It

was a great crime,

and one not likely to endear us much to these men—

or to others—

if they learn of it. You've heard what I say. If

anyone here

believes she has a better plan, let her stand and offer it.'

“Hypsipyle finished and took her seat once more in

her father's

throne. Then her shrivelled nurse, sharp-eyed Polyxo,

rose,

an ancient woman tottering on withered feet and leaning on a staff, but nonetheless determined to be heard.

She made

her way to the center of the meeting place, raised

her head

with a painful effort, and began:

“ ‘Hypsipyle's right. We must

accommodate these strangers. It is better to give

by choice

than be robbed. —But that will be no guarantee of future happiness. What if the Thracians attack us?

What if

some other enemy appears? Such things occur! ‘She

shook her finger,

bent like a hook.' And they happen unannounced.

Look how these came

today. One moment an empty sea, and the next—

look out!

But even if heaven should spare us that great calamity, there are many troubles far worse than war that you'll

have to meet

as time goes on. When the older among us have all

died off,

how are you childless younger women to face the

miseries

of age? Will the oxen yoke themselves? Will they trudge

to the fields

and drag the ploughshare off through the stubborn

fallow? Think!

Will the farm dogs watch the seasons turning, sniffing

the wind,

and know when it's harvest time?

“ ‘As for myself, though death

still shudders at sight of me, I think the coining year will see me into my grave, dutifully buried before the bad time comes. But I do advise you younger ones to think. Dry wind like a claw scraping at the rocky hills by the burying ground, a long slow file of toothless hags, brittle as beetles, moaning, inching a casket along in the dry, needling wind…. But salvation lies at