Jason and Medeia (21 page)

Argus

hacked out a sacred image of the queen of gods, long

gray hair

flying as he wheeled his axe. He skilfully shaped it,

gray ears

cocked to the whisper of Athena. When he finished, we

set it up

on a rocky eminence sheltered by dark, tall oaks, and

made

an altar of stones nearby. Then, crowned with oakleaves

(night

had fallen now, the dark storm howling around us), we began the sacrificial rites. I poured libations out, shouting to the goddess to send those flogging winds

away.

Mopsos and Orpheus whispered. Then, at Orpheus'

command,

the Argonauts, in all their armor, circled the fire in a high-stepping dance, beating their shields with their

swordhilts, drowning

the noise of the Doliones, far below us, still mourning their king. More wildly than the storm mute Phlias

danced, their leader.

Louder and louder their armor rang in the night, and

the flam

of drums. I could hardly hear myself, yelling to Hera—

much less

hear the howling of the winds, the howl of the

mourners. Then—

strange business!—the trees began shedding their fruit,

and the earth at our feet

magically put on a cloak of grass. Beasts left their lairs, their burrows and thickets, and came to us wagging

their tails. Nor was

that all. There had never been water—there was neither

spring nor pool—

before that time on Bear Mountain. Now, though no one

touched

a spade, a stream came gushing from the earth, a stream

that flows

even now, called Jason's Well. And so, it seems, the

goddess

heard us. We finished our rites with a feast—all this

according

to ritual. By dawn, the wind had dropped. We could sail.

“Old Mopsos said—we were standing in the woods

alone, when the rest

had walked back down to the harbor—: ‘My son, you did

that well!

Never have I witnessed a more auspicious flush of signs! Such miracles! Surely the goddess Hera loves you, boy! Surely the crew of the
Argo
is in divinely favored hands!' I bowed. He studied me, picking at his lip. He

said,

eyes wicked, grinning in spite of himself: ‘You're

unimpressed.

Some trick, you imagine? You think the goddess of

will (all praise

to her name) may not have been here with us?' Then

I too smiled.

“We made a good deal of noise,” I said, and avoided his

eyes.

‘ If I were a mountain, a stormy sky, and were shaken

to the heart

by noise like that, I might do almost anything—goddess or no goddess.' The old seer chuckled, crazy-eyed. ‘Shrewd observation,' he whispered, bending close.

‘Bravo!

All very well for a big ignoramus like Herakles to shudder and shake at magic tricks. We know better,

you and I!

Mopsos, king of all augurers, marching to his death—

and for what?

And Jason, robbed of his Lemnian beauty, forced on a

senseless,

pointless mission—abandoning his mother to

ignominious

death, wasting his wonderful oratory (“Jason of the

Golden

Tongue,” as they say) outshouttng cacophonous winds

and drums:

pawn of the fates, murderer of friends that he meant

no harm to,

weary wanderer in a faithless world (alas!

lack-a-day!)—

no wonder if the racket that shakes Bear Mountain to

her deepest stones,

the clatter that whisks away winds—has no faintest

effect on him!

What has the son of Aison to do with the goddess of will? —Jason, who's gazed into the Pit!' He cackled,

delighted with himself.

‘Are we brutes? Are we Balls on Inclined Planes? Are

we mindless?—noseless

to the stink, everywhere, of Death? Let Philosophy set

it down

that love is illusion, from which it follows, the gods are

illusion,

which proves in turn that Mother Nature, who gives

such joy,

is an old whore earning her keep!' Then suddenly:

‘How do you feel?'

He stared, intense, his eyes so bright you'd have thought

some demon

had entered him.
‘How do you feel?'
I thought about it. I felt like a man renewed. It was completely senseless. How can the mind know all its mechanics and scoff

at aid,

cold-blooded, and yet be aided? Nevertheless, I was a man reborn. It was stupid. ‘Me
too!'
old Mopsos said, cackling, doing a dancestep, lunatic joy. ‘We've had us some
times!'
he said. We've done us some
deeds!!
Old

Hera's
in
us!!!'

He paused. ‘Whatever that may mean.' He winked,

then aimed

his staff at a tree. It was filled, suddenly, with fire.

He aimed

at a rock: it burst into feathers, screeched, flapped off.

‘So much

for the quacks on the isle of Elektra!' he said. Then,

sobering,

adjusting his robe and beads—the robe was none too

clean—

he bowed, taking my arm. And so we returned to the

ship,

all dignity, solemnly walking in step. And so sailed on. Idmon, younger of the seers, came over to my rowing

bench.

‘Pick a halcyon, any halcyon,' he said. He winked.

“Faith wasn't our business. Herakles' business, maybe. Sailing the cool treacherous seas of the barbarians …”

9

The wind dropped down to nothing. We rowed— ‘in

a spirit of friendly

rivalry,' mad Idas said, rolling his eyes, making fun of

God knew

what. Still, that's what we did, each trying to shame

all others.

The windless air had smoothed out the waves on every

side;

the sea was asleep. We rowed, driving the singing ship, swift as a skate, by our own power. It seemed to us— skimming the sea like a gull, a wingèd shark—not even Poseidon's team, the horses with the whirlwind feet,

could have overtaken us.

But later, when the sea was roughened by the winds that blow down rivers in the afternoon, we wearied and

relaxed,

and we left it to Herakles alone to haul us in, our

muscles

shaky with exhaustion, throats burned raw by panting.

Each stroke

he pulled sent a shudder through the ship. His sweat

ran rivers down

his face and dripped from his nose and chin to his

wide chest

and belly, tightened like a fist. Young Hylas beamed at

him, watching,

and old Polyphemon, son of Eilatos, grinned, shaking his hoary head, and swore that not even in his prime,

when he fought

with the Lapithai, striking centaurs down with his bare

fists,

had he or any other man pulled oars with the power of Herakles. ‘It looks as if by himself hell bring us to the Mysian coast! the old man said. Herakles

grinned,

or tried to, his face contorted with the effort of his

rowing. But then,

as we passed within sight of the Rhydakos and the great

barrow

of Aigaion, not far from Phrygia, Herakles—ploughing enormous furrows in the choppy sea—snapped his long

oar

and tumbled sideways, clear off the bench. He looked

up, outraged,

the handle of the oar in his two hands, the paddle end

sweeping

sternward, away out of sight. We laughed. He was

angrier yet,

sitting up, speechless and glaring. We took up the

rowing as best

we could, weary as we were. Even now he could hardly

speak,

a man not used to idleness.

“We made our landfall.

It was dusk; the time of day when the ploughman,

thinking of his supper,

reaches his home at last and, pausing at the door, looks

down

at his hands, begrimed and barked, and curses the tyrant

belly

that drives men to such work. We'd struck the

Kianian coast,

close to Mount Arganthon and the famous estuary of Kios. Luckily, tired as we were, the people greeted us kindly, supplying our needs with sheep and wine. I sent a few of the Argonauts to fetch dry wood, others to

gather up

leaves from the fields and bring them to the camp for

bedding; still others

I set to twirling firesticks; the rest of us filled the winebowls, getting them ready for the usual sacrifice to Apollo, god of landings.

“But Herakles, son of Zeus,

left us to work on the feast by ourselves and set out,

alone—

attended by unseen ravens, the night's historians— for the woods, anxious before all else to make himself

an oar

to replace the one he'd broken. He wandered around till

at last

he discovered a pine not burdened much with branches,

and not

full grown—a pine like a slender young poplar in height

and girth.

When he saw it would do, he laid his bow and quiver

down,

took off his loinskin, and began by loosening the pine's

hold

with blows of his bronze-studded club. Then he trusted

to his own power.

Legs wide apart, one mighty shoulder pressed against

the tree,

he seized the trunk low down with his hands and,

pulling so hard

his temples bulged, face dark with blood, he tore up

the pine

by the roots. It came up clods and all, like a ship's mast

torn

from its stays, the wedges and pins coming with it,

when sudden fashes

break without warning as Orion sets in anger. When

he'd rested,

he picked it up, along with his bow and arrows,

loinskin

and club, and started back, balancing the tree on his

shoulder.

“Meanwhile Hylas had gone off by himself with a

bronze ewer,

looking for a hallowed spring where he might get

drinking water

for the evening meal. Herakles himself had trained

the boy

in the business of a squire. He'd had the boy since the

day he struck down

Hylas' father, Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. Not one of Herakles' nobler moments. They were a

lawless tribe,

the Dryopians, fornicating with one another's wives, maddening themselves by the use of strange distillations

and roots,

scornful of the gods. Unable to find any honest quarrel, Herakles went to the king one day when he was

ploughing, and began

an argument concerning an ox. One moment the king

was laughing,

scornful and clever, enjoying the contest; the next he

lay dead

in the fallow, his skull caved in. He felt no guilt

about it,

Herakles. He took the child from the basket beside the field and brought it up, made the boy his servant—

trained him

as a shepherd trains up a loyal, unquestioning dog.

“Soon Hylas

discovered a spring, tracing the swift stream upward in

the dark

past moonlit waterfalls, majestic trees—it was not the

nearest

of the springs he might take water from; but he was

young, after all.

and the night was beautiful, filled with the sound of

cascades; immense

ramose old trees, motionless, brooding on themselves.

He could stand

on the shelf or rock overlooking the dark, still pool and

feel

he was the only boy on earth. To his left the torrent fell

away,

swifter than you'd guess, swirling and rippling,

murmuring something

that was almost words, and he must have felt that

if he made his mind

quite still—more still than the dark—he might, any

moment, know

what it said. In the forest beside him, bats were

a-flutter; owls

swept silently down the wide avenues of trees; a stately hart stood quiet as a sapling, watching. A fox crept,

sniffing,

in the brush.

   “There was in that spring a naiad. As Hylas drew near she was just emerging from the water to sing her

nightly praise

to Artemis. And there, with the full moon shining on

him

from a cloudless sky, she saw him in all his radiant

beauty

and gentleness. Her heart was flooded with desire; she

had to

struggle to gather up her shattered wits. Now the

moonling leaned

to the water to dip his ewer in, and as soon as the

current

was rattling loudly in the ringing bronze, she threw

her left arm

firmly around his neck and eagerly kissed his lips; her right hand snatched his elbow, and down the poor

boy plunged,

sinking with a cry into the current.

“Old Polyphemon, son

of Eilatos, was not far off. He'd left our feast to search

out

Herakles and help him home with his burden. When

he heard

the cry he rushed in the direction of the spring like a

hungry wolf

who hears the bleating of the distant flock and, in his

suffering, races

down to them only to find that the shepherds have

beaten him again,

the sheep are safe, enfolded. He stood on the bank

and roared—

the reboation rang down the gorge from cliff to cliff to the broadening holm below, where the river was

wide and deep—

and he searched the night with his dim eyes; he

prowled the dark woods,

groaning in distress, roaring again from time to time; but there came no answer from the boy. He drew his