Jason and Medeia (50 page)

wear white;

knew she would serve, covenant of Corinth, accept the

bridegroom

chosen for her, for the city's sake. Perhaps she loved

him.

It had nothing to do with love, had to do with loss.

Her loss

of the limitless; descent to the leaden cage of enslaving humanity. Joy or sorrow, no matter. Loss.

   The dark-eyed slave at her bedside watched in

compassion and grief

and touched Pyripta's hand. “The omens are evil,” she

said.

“Resist this thing they demand of you. The city is

troubled,

the night unfriendly, veiled like a vengeful widow. Men

talk

of fire in the palace, wine made blood.” The princess

wept,

unanswering. I understood her, watching from the

curtains.

I remembered the tears of Medeia, lamenting her

childhood's loss.

By the window another, a princess carried in chains out

of Egypt—

eyes of an Egyptian, the forehead and nose and the full

lips

of the desert people—whispered softly, angrily to the

night;

“Increase like the locust,

increase like the grasshopper;

multiply your traders

to exceed the number of heaven's stars;

your guards are like grasshoppers,

your scribes and wizards are like a cloud of insects.

They settle on the walls

when the day is cold.

The sun appears,

and the locusts spread their wings, fly away.

They vanish, no one knows where.”

At the door one whispered—a woman of Ethiopia,

who smiled and nodded, gazing at the princess with

friendly eyes:

“Woe to the city soaked in blood,

full of lies,

stuffed with booty,

whose plunderings know no end!

The crack of the whip!

The rumble of wheels!

Galloping horse,

jolting chariot,

charging cavalry,

flash of swords,

gleam of spears . .
.

a mass of wounded,

hosts of dead,

countless corpses;

they stumble over the dead.

So
much for the whore's debauchery,

that wonderful beauty, that cunning witch

who enslaves nations by her debauchery,

enslaves the houses of heaven by her spells!”

Another said—whispering in anger by the wall, cold

flame:

“Are you mightier than Thebes

who had her throne by the richest of rivers,

the sea for her outer wall, and the waters for

ramparts?

Her strength was Ethiopia and Egypt.

She had no boundaries.

And yet she was forced into exile, sorrowful

captivity;

her little ones, too, were dashed to pieces

at every crossroad;

lots were drawn for her noblemen,

all her great men were loaded with chains.

You too will be encircled at last, and overwhelmed.

You too will search

for a cave in the wilderness

refuge from the wrath of your enemies.”

On the dark of the stairs an old woman hissed, her

wizened face

a-glitter with tears like jewels trapped:

“Listen to this, you cows of Corinth,

living on the mountain of your treasure heap,

oppressing the needy, crushing the poor,

saying to your servants, ‘Bring us something to

drink!'

I swear you this by the dust of my breasts: The days are coming

when you will be dragged out by nostril-hooks,

and the very last of you goaded with prongs.

Out you will go, each by the nearest breach in the

wall,

to be driven to drink of the ocean.

This I pledge to you.”

So in Pyripta's room and beyond they whispered,

seething,

kindled to rage by the death of the boy Amekhenos, or troubled by some force darker. For beside Pyripta's

bed

there materialized from golden haze the goddess

Aphrodite.

Sadly, gently, she touched Pyripta's hair. Then the room was gone, though the goddess remained, head bowed.

We stood alone

in a pine-grove silver with moonlight. I heard a sound—

a footstep

soft as a deer's—and, turning in alarm, I saw a figure striding from the woods—a youth, I thought, with the

bow of a huntsman

and a tight, short gown that flickered like the water in

a brook. As the stranger

neared, I saw my error: it was no man, but a goddess, graceful and stern as an arrow when it drops in

soundless flight

to its mark. Aphrodite spoke: ‘Too long we've warred,

Goddess,

moon-pale huntress. I come to your sacred grove to

make

amends for that, bringing this creature along as a

witness,

a poet from the world's last age—no age of heroes, as

you know,

and as this poor object proves. Don't expect you'll heat

him speak.

He's timid as a mouse in the presence of gods and

goddesses;

foolish, easily befuddled, a poet who counts out beats on his fingers and hasn't got fingers enough. But he

understands Greek,

with occasional glances at a book he carries—in secret,

he thinks!

(but the deathless gods, of course, miss nothing). He'll

have to do.”

The love goddess smiled almost fondly, I thought. But

as for Artemis,

she knew me well, stared through me. The goddess of

love said then:

“I come to you for a boon I believe you may gladly

grant

when you've heard my request. Not long ago a murderer buried his victim in secret, in this same

grove

sacred to the moon. As soon as the body was hidden,

he fled

with the woman he claimed to love, Medeia, the

daughter of Aietes.

I protected them—their right, as lovers. But now the

heart

of the son of Aison has hardened against his wife. He

means

to cast her aside for the virgin Pyripta, daughter of

Kreon

of Corinth. So at last our interests meet, it seems to me.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, chaste goddess. I can see no

other way

than to throw myself on your mercy, despite old

differences.

Set her against him firmly, and I give my solemn

pledge,

I'll turn my back on the daughter of Kreon forever, no

more

stir love in her bosom than I would in the rocks of Gaza.

Just that,

and nothing more I beg of you. Charge Pyripta's mind with scorn of Jason, and even in Zeus's hall I'll praise your name and give you thanks.” So the goddess spoke.

And Artemis

listened and gave no answer, coolly scheming. I did not care for the glitter of ice in the goddess of purity's eye, and I glanced, uneasy, at the goddess of love. She

appeared to see nothing

amiss. Then Artemis spoke. “I'll go and see.” That was

all.

She turned on her heel, with a nod inviting me to

follow, and strode

like a man to the place where her chariot waited, all

gleaming silver.

As soon as I'd set one foot in it, we arrived at the house of Jason. The chariot vanished. I was down on my

hands and knees

in the street. I got up, dusting my trousers, and hurried

to the door.

No one saw me or stopped me. I found, in Medeia's

chamber,

Artemis—enormous in the moonlit bedroom, her bowed

head

and shoulders brushing the ceiling beams—stooped at

the side

of Medeia's bed like an eagle to its prey. “Wake up!”

she whispered.

“Wake up, victim of the mischief god! Seek out thy

light,

sweet Jason, life-long heartache! You are betrayed!”

Medeia's

eyes opened. The goddess vanished. The moonlight

dimmed,

faded till nothing was left but the glow of the golden

fleece.

The slave Agapetika wakened and reached for Medeia's

hand.

Medeia sat up, startled by the memory of a dream. She

met

my eyes; her hand reached vaguely out to cover herself with the fleece. I remembered my solidity and backed

away.

“Devil!” she whispered. In panic I answered, “No,

Medeia.

A friend!” She shook her head. “I have no friends but

devils.”

And only now understanding that all she'd dreamt was

true—

as if her own words had power more terrible than

Jason's deeds—

she suddenly burst into tears of rage and helplessness. She tried to rise, but her knees wouldn't hold her, and

she fell to the flagstones.

I said: “I come from the future to warn you—”

   My throat went dry. The room was suddenly filled, crowded like a jungle

with creatures,

ravens and owls and slow-coiled snakes, all manner of

beings

hated by men. In terror of Medeia's eyes, I fled.

20

On the palace wall, in his blood-red cape, the son of

Aison,

arms folded, gazed down over the city of Corinth. He knew pretty well—Hera watching at his shoulder,

sly—

that he'd won, for better or worse—that nothing

Paidoboron

or Koprophoros could say would undo the work he'd

done

or open the gates of Kreon's heart or the heart of the

princess

to any new contender. He smiled. On the palace roof behind him, a raven watched, head cocked, with

unblinking eyes.

For reasons he scarcely knew himself, Jason had

avoided

his home today. It was now twilight; the light, sharp

breeze

rising from stubbled fields, dark streams, fat granaries, brought up the scent of approaching winter. There

would come a time

when Medeia would rise and insist upon having her

say. Not yet.

Though light was failing, the house, lower on the hill,

was dark

save one dim lamp, dully blooming—so yellow in the

gloom

of the oaks surrounding that it brought to his mind

again the fleece

old Argus wove, and the obscure warning of the seer.

   The vision blurred; I hung unreal. Then, crushed to flesh once

more,

my swollen hand brought alive again to its drumbeat

of pain,

I stood—dishevelled as I was, my poor steel spectacles

cracked

and crooked—in the low-beamed room of the slave

Agapetika,

hearing her moans to the figure of Apollo on the wall.

Her canes

of gnarled olive-wood waited on the tiles, her stiff, fat

knees

painfully bent on the hassock before the shrine.

   She wailed, whether in prayer or lament, I could hardly tell: “O

Lord,

would that an old slave's wish could wind back time

for Medeia

and she never beguile those dim, too-trusting daughters

of Pelias,

who slaughtered their father; or would that Corinth

had never received them,

allowing a measure of joy and peace, pleasure in the

children,

Medeia still loved and in everything eager to please her

lord,

her will and his will one, as even Jason knew, for all his anger, bitterness of heart. The loss of love makes all surviving it blacker than smoke at sunrise.

What once

was sweet is now corrupt and cankered: our Jason plans heartless betrayal of his wife and sons for marriage

with a princess.

And now in impotent rage and anguish, Medeia invokes their oaths, their joined right hands, and summons

the dangerous gods

to witness the way he's rewarded her life-long

faithfulness.

Worse yet, she curses old Kreon himself, and Kreon's

daughter,

howling her wild imprecations for all to hear. In

her rage

she refuses to eat, sacrificing her body to grief as she sacrificed her home, her kinsmen, her happiness for Jason's love. She wastes in tears; she cries and cries in such black despair that her sobs come welling too

fast for Medeia

to sound them. She lies stretched wailing on the stones

and refuses to lift

her eyes or to raise her face from the floor. To all we say she's deaf as a boulder, an ocean wave. She refuses

to speak—

she can only curse her betrayal of her father, murder

of her brother,

death of her sister Khalkiope, through Aietes' rage— for all of which she blames herself alone, as if no one before her had ever betrayed on earth. She takes no joy anymore in her sons: her eyes seem filled

with hate

when she looks at them. It shocks me with fear to see it.

Her mood

is dangerous. She'll never submit to this monstrous

wrong.

I know her. It makes me sick with fear. Let any man

rouse

Medeia's hate and hard indeed he'll find it to escape unmarked by her.”

   Agapetika opened her eyes in alarm, straining—grotesquely fat, feeble—to turn her head for a view of the door at her back. In the hallway,

the old male slave

and the children approached, the two boys squealing

and laughing, the old man