Jason and Medeia (48 page)

dawn. And still

no sign of Pelias. The princesses, strangely excited,

their ox-eyes

lighted by more than wine, I thought, assured us he was

well.

And so, at the hour when shepherds settle on pastures

become

invulnerable to predators, shielded by Helios, the guests turned homeward, and we of the palace

moved, heavy-limbed,

to bed. We slept all day, Medeia on my arm, trembling. When the cool-eyed moon rose white in the trees, I

awakened, thinking,

aware of some evil in the house. I went to the room of

the children.

They were sleeping soundly, the slave Agapetika

beside them. I turned back,

troubled and restless, molested by the whisper of a

fretful god.

The moment I returned to our room, the princesses'

screams began.

Medeia lay gazing at the moon, calm-eyed. I stared at

her.

They've learned that Pelias is dead,' she said. The same

instant

the door burst open, and a man with a naked sword

leaped in,

howling crazily, and hurtled at Medeia. I caught him

by the shoulder,

my wild heart pounding, and threw him off balance—

in the same motion

snatching my sword from its clasp by the headboard and

striking. He fell,

his head severed from his body. Now the room was

clamoring with guards,

babbling, shouting, the children and slaves in the

hallway shrieking,

the room a-sway in the stench of blood. I snatched up

the head

to learn who'd struck at us. For a long moment I stared

at the face,

scarlet and dripping, the eyes wide open. Then someone

said,

‘Akastos!' and I saw it was so. While the palace was

still in confusion,

we fled—snatched the children, our two oldest slaves,

and, covered by darkness,

sought out the seaport and friends; so made our escape.

   “So ended my rule of the isle of Argos. For all our glory once, for all my famous deeds, my legendary wealth, I became an exile begging asylum from town to town. I became a man dark-minded as Idas, whimpering in anger at the

gods,

glancing back past my shoulder in fear. For a time I lost all power of speech—I, Jason of the Golden Tongue. The child of Aietes was baffled by the troubles befallen

us.

Why had we fled? Was I not the true, the rightful king

of Argos, Pelias a usurper, as all men knew? Had I not done deeds no king of Argos had done before me?—

not only

capture of the fleece, but temples, waterlocks, rock-firm

law?

Like a mute, more crippled than stuttering Pelias, I

rolled my tongue

and strained at the cords of my throat, but sound

refused me. When I closed

my eyes, I saw Akastos. Though I travelled from temple

to temple,

no priest alive could assoil me.

   “And then one morning, groaning, the walls of my skull on fire with evils, I found I could

say

his name.
Akastos! Akastos, forgive me!
I felt no flood of peace, no sudden sweet purgation. But I learned a

truth:

I'd loved him, and I learned I was right in my rule of

Argos. Yet right

to escape, save Medeia from the citizens' rage. I'd made

Medeia

promises. For love of me she had left her home, the protection of kinsmen, and managed the murder of

a brother she loved,

and outraged all that's human by arranging the

patricide

of Pelias' foolish daughters—and then that cannibal

feast,

everlasting shame of Iolkos. I understood that her mind, whatever her beauty and intelligence, was no more like

ours—

the minds of the sons of Hellas—than the mind of a

wolf, a tiger.

I owed her protection and kindness, and I meant to pay

that debt.

But in promising marriage—if marriage means

anything more than the noise

of vows—I spoke in futility. If earth and sky

are marriage partners, or the land and sea, or the

interdependent

king and state—if Space and Time are marriage

partners—

then Medeia and I are not.

   “In the hills above Iolkos I watched Medeia at her midnight rites. I've told you

the effect.

I was wide awake as a preying animal—as charged

with power

as I'd felt as a boyish adventurer sailing with the

Argonauts.

Though I slept no more than a jackal on the hunt, I

awakened refreshed,

scornful of Pelias and his idiot daughters, at one with

Akastos

riding his war-cart as I rode the clattering state. I

could do

the same by the meat of women: shuck off obscurities, considerations, the labored balance of the pondering

mind.

A great discovery! Though I meant the state to be

reasonable,

I need not famish the animal in me, put away the past, the chaos of a hero's joys. And so, as a foolish shepherd brings in wolf pups, dubious at first, and runs them

with the sheep

for experiment, gradually learning their queer docility, and so progresses in his witless complacence to the

night when—stirred

by a minor cut, a droplet of blood that for wolves rolls

back

the centuries—he hears a bleating, and rushes to find his herd destroyed, the fruit of his labors in ruin—

so I

a foolish king, let passions in, the divinity of flesh. Gradually lessening my reason's check, I freed Medeia, agent of my own worst passions; I granted a she-dragon

rein.

Screams in the palace, the sick-sweet smell of blood.

I saw,

once and for all, my wife was her father's child,

demonic.

There could be no possibility now of harmony between

us;

no possibility of marriage. We must either destroy each

other—

struggling in opposite directions for absolutes, thought

against passion—

or part. And there, for a moment, I left it. By arduous

labor

I won back the power of speech, won back the control

of my house.

Not all my hours on the
Argo
required such pains. So

now,

prepared to deal with the world again, prepared to make

use,

as the gods may please, of difficult lessons, I bide my

time

in exile, caring for my sons and Medeia.

   “I claim, with conviction, I haven't outlived all usefulness to the gods. All those who scorn just reason and scoff at the courts of honest

men,

men whose ferocious will is revealed by calm like the

lion's—

those who scorn, the gods will deafen with their own

lamentations;

their proud pinnacles the gods will shatter and hurl in

the ocean

as I myself was torn down once for my foolishness and cast in the trackless seas. Or if not the gods, then

this:

the power struggling to be born, a creature larger than

man,

though made of men; not to be outfoxed, too old for us; terrible and final, by nature neither just nor unjust, but wholly demanding, so that no man made any part

of that beast

dare think of self, as I did. For if living says anything, it's this: We sail between nonsense and terrible

absurdity—

sail between stiff, coherent system which has nothing

to do

with the universe (the stiffness of numbers,

grammatical constructions)

and the universe, which has nothing to do with the

names we give

or seize our leverage by. Let man take his reasoning

place,

expecting nothing, since man is not the invisible player but the player's pawn. Seize the whole board, snatch

after godhood,

and all turns useless waste. Such is my story.”

   So Jason ended. The kings sat hushed, as silent as the goddesses.

19

Kreon sat pondering, propped on his elbows, eyebags

puffed,

protrusive as a toad's, the table around him as thick

with flowers

as a swaybacked bin in the marketplace. He

remembered himself,

at last, and rose. Still no one spoke. Athena, standing at Jason's back, was smiling, serene and wild at once, majestic as the Northern Lights. Beside her Hera stood with hooded eyes, awesome in the flush of victory— for I could not doubt that Athena and she had won.

The goddess

of love, by Kreon's virginal daughter, was wan and

troubled,

her generous heart confused. I was tempted to laugh,

for an instant,

at how easily they'd confounded her—those wiser

goddesses,

Mind and Will. But Aphrodite's glance at Jason
stopped me, filled me with sudden alarm.
The hunger in Aphrodite's eyes—
hunger for heaven alone knew what—
consumed their wisdom, made all the mechanics of

Time and Space

foolish, irrelevant. Beyond the invisible southern pole of the universe her feet were set. Her reach went up, like the carved pillars of Kreon's hall (vast serpent coils, eagles, chariots, fish-tailed centaurs), writhing to the

darkness

beyond the star-filled crown of Zeus. Kreon, half-giant, his head drawn back, one eye squeezed shut, addressed

the sea-kings,

lords of Corinth and sons of lords:

   “My noble friends, princes gathered from the ends of the earth, we've heard

a story

stranger than any brought down in the epic songs, and

one

more freighted with troublesome questions. As you see,

the hour is late,

and the day has been troubled by more than Jason's

tale. It therefore

seems to us fit that we part till tomorrow morning, to

reflect

in private. Let us all reassemble to pursue by the light

of day

what brings us together here.” He paused for answer,

and when no one

spoke, he bowed, assuming assent, and prepared to

leave.

He reached for Pyripta's hand and raised her to her feet;

then, pausing,

he glanced at Jason, saying, “Would you care to speak,

perhaps,

with Ipnolebes before you go?” He was asking more

than he spoke

in words, I saw, for Jason frowned, reluctant, then

nodded.

And so they left the central table, Kreon and his

daughter

and Aison's son. And now all the wide-beamed hall

arose,

sea-kings murmuring one to another, and slowly made

way

to the doors. I pushed through the crowd to keep my

eye on Jason.

The sea-kings looked at me, puzzled, perhaps amused.

They seemed

to think me, dressed so strangely, some new

entertainment. None

addressed me. On the dais, the goddess of love had

vanished. I searched

the room, my heart in a whir, to discover what form

she'd taken.

I saw no trace of her.

   Then we were standing in a shadowy chamber, plain as a cavern, where slaves moved silently to and fro with sullen, burning eyes. There Ipnolebes stood, alone, quietly issuing commands. Since the time I'd seen him

last

he was a man profoundly changed. His skin was ashen,

his eyes

remote, indifferent as a murdered man's. When Jason

approached him,

the black-robed slave gazed past him as though he were

a stranger. Old Kreon

rubbed his jaw, looked thoughtful, keeping his distance.

In his shadow

Kompsis stood, the violent red-headed man who'd

attacked

them all when the goddess Hera was in him. By the

calm of his eyes,

I thought she had entered him again, but I was wrong.

It was

another goddess—as deadly as Hera when the mood

was on her.

   The son of Aison bowed to the slave and touched his

shoulder

as he would the shoulder of an equal he wished to

console. For all

his cunning, for all the magic of that golden tongue,

he could find

no words. It was thus the slave who broke the silence.

He said,

“You knew him, I think—Amekhenos, Northern

barbarian

who thought himself a prince in spite of the plain

evidence

of welts and chains.”

   “I knew him, yes.”

   “You could have prevented, if it suited you …”

   But Aison's son shook his head. “No.” His voice was heavy, as weary as the voice of an old,

old man.

   Ipnolebes sighed and still did not swing his eyes to

Jason's.

“No. It was not, after all, as if you'd sworn him some

vow.

There are laws and laws, limitless seas of extenuation eating our acts. Otherwise no man alive would grow old maintaining, in his own opinion, at least, the shreds

and tatters

of his dignity.” He forced out a ghastly laugh. “Who

am I

to judge? And even if you had, so to speak, let slip some

vow,

many years ago—” He paused, wrinkling his brow,

having lost

the thread. There are vows and vows,” he mumbled.

“I merely say …

I merely say …”He broke off with a shudder and

turned

his face. “I find no fault in you,” he said. “Good night.”
Lips stretched taut in a violent grin, he stared at Jason.
They spoke no further, and finally Jason withdrew. Old

Kreon

followed him, Kompsis at his side. I hurried behind