Jason and Medeia (42 page)

face—

and could nearly believe, in spite of myself, that the

world was born

anew, all curses cancelled.

“But at times in dreams I saw

the merry old god of rivers, who laughed in the North,

untouched

by the sorrows that unhinge man. And at other times I

dreamed

I stood in the sacred grove of Artemis and searched for

something.

It would soon be dawn, the rim of the mountains

already on fire.

I must hurry. I must struggle to remember. Whatever

it was I sought,

it was near, as near as my heartbeat. I heard a footstep.

Or was it?

A swish like the blade of a scythe … that I

remembered … And I

would scream, and Jason would hold me, his eyes

impenetrable.

“So the days passed, and on the seventh day we left the isle of the Phaiakians, the
Argo
loaded to the beams with Phaiakian treasure. King Alkinoös

gave

strong men to replace all those we'd lost from the

rowing benches

in our dark wanderings, and Arete sent six maidens with

me

to comfort and serve me as once I was served at home.

On the shore

King Alkinoös and his queen stretched up their hands

and prayed

to the gods for our easy passage and final forgiveness

for crimes

committed of harsh necessity; and the people kneeled, the whole population, weeping. And so we left the

place,

sailing for home. I rolled the sound on my tongue.

For home.

I started, cried out. For out of the corner of my eye,

I thought,

I'd caught a glimpse of the river-god combing his beard,

watching us,

terrible god from the beginning of things, who laughed

at guilt.

‘Jason!' I whispered.

“ ‘Easy, my love,' said Jason, smiling.

They were all smiling, their eyes like the gods' dark

mirror, the sea.”

17

I awakened and looked in alarm for Medeia. The voice

had ceased

and the winds that tumble and roar in space—so I

thought in my dream—

were swallowed to nothing. I clung to the bole of the

oak like a bat.

Then came a shimmering light, sea-green on every side, blurred cloudshapes, moving, like crowds of sea-beasts

hemming me in.

The silence changed; it swelled—more swift than a

falling tower—

to a boom, sharp voices of angry men. And now,

suddenly,

my eyes focussed, or the universe focussed, life crashed

in on me:

sweat-dank, bearded sailors milling like bees in a hive, howling against some outrage, I knew not what.

I'd grown

more solid, it seemed. When they bumped me, hurriedly

elbowing past,

I staggered. They tromped my feet, jostled me,

caved in my hat

with no apology, hardly a glance. Wold-I, nold-I, I moved with the crowd. Men all around and ahead of

me jumped,

clambered for a view, shook fists, shouted. I caught a

few snatches.

Someone was dead, murdered by the king, the crew

of some ship

arrested by Kreon's police. Some voice of authority

bellowed

from a raised platform somewhere ahead of us, but his

cries were drowned

by the roar of the mob. I struggled for breath, shouted for the goddess, but no help came. Some man at my

back growled bitterly,

“Corinth is cursed. We were fools to come.” Another

voice answered,

“Everywhere's cursed.” I craned my neck to see who'd

spoken,

but they all looked alike, their tanned hides toughened

by gale and salt

to the thickness of a twice-baked galley biscuit. At their

necks hung daggers

with thong-wrapped handles and serried blades. On

their wrists, brass sheaths

ornate with dragons and monsters of the deep. Then

someone seized

my shoulder—so fierce that my arm went numb and

I shouted—and without

a glance, he shoved me away and down. In horror I

felt myself

falling to the mud, my spectacles dangling,

precariously hooked

by one ear. I squealed like a rat incinerated, my mind all terror, my left hand clutching at my

spectacles, right hand

stretching to snatch some hold on the sweatwashed back

of the giant

in front of me. I fell, sank deep in the mud; the

maniacal

crowd came on, stepping on my legs, battering my ribs. On the back of my left hand, blurry as a cloud, fell

a scarlet drop

of blood. “Dear goddess!” I whimpered. I'd surely gone

mad. It was

no dream, surely, this jangling pain! A foot sank, blind, on the four fingers of my thin right hand and

buried them;

thick yellow water swirled where they'd been, then

reddened with blood.

My mind grew befuddled. My vision was awash. Then hands seized me, painfully jerked me upward, at

the same time

heaving back at the crowd. I gave myself up to the

stranger,

clinging still to my spectacles. My rescuer shouted, struck at the crowd with his one free arm like a

wounded gorilla.

We came to a wall, a doorway; he dragged me inside,

put me down

on a pile of skins, and scraped the bloodstained mud

from my face.

Gradually, my vision cleared. I remembered my

spectacles

and, finding a part of my vest still dry, I wiped them, as well as I could. One lens was cracked

like a sunburst,

a small piece missing. The other was whole. My rescuer,

seeing

what I struggled to do, though he had no faintest idea

what it meant,

brought me water in a jug, poured it on the lenses,

then offered

a cloth. When at last I could see again, we looked at

each other.

He was young; not intelligent, or so I suspected, his face

defeatured

in its lionish, square-jawed frame. His small gray eyes

were round

with amazement. I might have been an elf, a merman,

a unicorn's child.

Behind him, three women and a man, in the robes of

shop-people,

bent at the waist to stare at me. And still, outside, in the blinding brightness, the rioting sailors pressed

and shouted.

The young man turned, following my gaze. Then all

at once

some change came over the crowd. There were cries

of alarm, loud questions.

The crowd rolled back, retreating from the pressure in

front. The women

and the bearded man—his beard came nearly to his

knees—came bustling

to the door, peeked timidly out, their silhouettes

blocking the light.

They gave sharp yells, all four of them at once, and

rushed to us, reaching,

chattering gibberish—some argot Greek or Semitic

tongue

I couldn't identify—and pushed us farther from the

door into darkness.

I caught a glimpse—as I plunged with them in past

bolts of cloth,

calfskins, wickerwork, leather—of Kreon's police force,

armed

with naked swords and whips, great helmets like mitres

that shone

brass-red. Each time a whip flashed out, some man fell

screaming

to the yellow mud, his torn arms clenching his head.

Then darkness;

we'd come to a deeper stall, the air full of spices—aloes, cloves and saffron and cinnamon … They whispered in the language foreign to me. We waited for a long

time.

My eyes adjusted to the dimness a little, and I saw the

old man

was as thin and ashen as an old wood spoon. His

marmoset face

was covered like a cheap plaster wall with bumps and

nodes like droppings

of mason's grout; his tiny eyes were like silver coins. He pulled at his beard with his fingers, watching in

secret alarm

(as I watched him) for signs that I might prove

dangerous.

His wife was brown and swollen, sullen, the others buxom and dimpled, country odalisques with dull, seductive eyes. All four of them watched

me in fear,

exactly as they'd watched the crowd, the Corinthian

police. I grinned.

The four grinned back, and the man who'd saved me;

a glow of teeth

in the cavern-dark of wares. The merchant brought

wine. We drank.

   When the streets were quiet, we crept back out, down

wynds and alleys

to a silent square—fother by the walls, abandoned

winejugs,

wases of straw and faggots, wrecked carts … It was

dusk. Here and there

men lay still, as if asleep, sprawled out in the mud,

on cobblestones,

drawn up onto the stoops of shops that stared at the

empty

twilit square like lepers waiting for blessing. We went— the man who had saved my life and I—to a man who sat some twenty feet from the door of the shop that

protected us.

He sat with his face in his drawn-up knees, as if

weeping, or sick.

I touched his shoulder. He fell over slowly, indifferently,

dead.

My friend looked at me and nodded. He held out his

hand, palm up.

I understood, put my palm on his. He nodded again, unsmiling; and so we parted.

I had no desire now

to climb that hill to Kreon's palace. My body ached from the soles of my feet to the crown of my head.

My clothes were ragged,

damp and bespattered, mud-stained. My right-hand

fingers were numb

and misshapen; broken, I believed. However, I climbed

as far

as the first of the palace pools, where I meant to wash

the blood off,

caked on my hands and face. I studied my reflection,

amazed:

hat battered like a tramp's, the pockets of my suitcoat

ripped,

my nose grotesquely swollen, the spectacles tilted, bent. I straightened my glasses as well as I could, then tucked

them in my pocket.

In the stone gray sky above, bats circled. The city was

still.

Then someone spoke to me. “See it to the end.” I wiped

the water

from my eyes and looked. He stared gravely at nothing

—the ancient

seer of Apollo whom I'd seen, long since, with Jason.

I hooked

my spectacles over my ears and looked more closely:

a man

so calm he seemed to encompass Time like a vase.

He said:

“See it to the end. The gods require it.” He turned

away,

and I saw only now the boy with him, his guide. I

struggled

to speak, but couldn't. I glanced up the hill at the

palace, aglow

like the galaxy with torches. When I turned to the seer

again

he was moving slowly downhill, leaning hard on the

boy. I found

my voice and called, “Teiresias!” He turned, waiting. I realized in alarm we had nothing to say.

Enveloped

in a mist that hid me from the watch, I climbed to the

palace. The crowd

was thinner by half than when last I'd listened to

Jason speak.

It filled me with dread. I knew well enough what the

reason was.

The best had abandoned the contest, and not because

Jason appeared

to be winning. The brutal quelling of the riot, tyrannic

use

of the law's whole force on their own long-suffering,

disgruntled crews—

and perhaps something more, the murder I'd heard of,

the crew arrested—

had turned them to scorn of Corinth and Corinth's

prize. Without

a word, I suspected, they'd turned their steps to the

harbor and sailed

for home. I was partly wrong, I learned later. There

were shouts in the palace,

young kings outraged, old kings quietly astounded at

Kreon's

ways. But my guess was right in this: the best who'd

come

had abandoned Corinth, prepared to become, on further

provocation,

her enemies.

   I moved, among those who remained, to a stairway, a raised place where I could see. Except for the kings

who'd departed

all was the same, I thought—the princess Pyripta in

her chair

of gold, with her hand on her eyes (her light-filled hair

fell softly,

swirling, enclosing her shoulders as if as protection);

Kreon

stern in his place, lips pursed, eyes squeezed half shut;

the goddesses

listening, watching like kestrels, except Aphrodite,

who sat

half-dreaming, studying Jason and Pyripta. I noticed

at last

that Kreon's slave Ipnolebes was missing, as was the blond Northerner, Amekhenos. But I had no time

to brood much on it. Jason was speaking. His voice

was gentle,

troubled, I thought. How much had he seen, in his

lordly isolation,

of the day's events? I saw him with the eyes of the

young Medeia,

stunned in her father's courtyard. He would have been

thinner then,

as big in the chest, less thick in the waist, his gestures

tentative,

boyish despite all those daring deeds already. His eyes seemed hardly the eyes of a power-grabber. What was

he, then?

Yet perhaps I knew. His guarded glance at the princess,

for instance.

Age-old hunger of vanity, hunger to be loved just one more time, and just one more, one more—give the