Jason and Medeia (62 page)

the anger of the world with a dance. A terrible

business.”

   The blind king listened as Lynkeus and Jason approached. When they

stood before him,

he reached out to feel first Lynkeus' features, then

Jason's. No man

was ever more ravaged—grayed and wrinkled, hunched.

Oidipus

dropped his hand to his side again and nodded. “I see it's broken you, this sorrow. And yet you hunt her.”

Jason

nodded, a movement almost not perceptible

even to a man with sight, but Oidipus went on, as if he too had caught it: The world is filled with curious

stirrings.

I feel all around me some change in the wind. I see

things,

here on this hyperborean island a thousand miles from home. I catch queer rumors. Remote as I am, in

this place,

from the traffic and trade of man, you're not the first to

touch here,

though the change struggling toward life in you is the

weirdest of them all.

That much I sense already. Yet what it is your life is groping toward I've not yet understood. It may come. It
will
come, I think. I feel myself almost closing on it, though of course I may not. I set great store by my

intellect once;

thought I was wiser than all other mortals.” He laughed

to himself.

“I answered the riddle of the Sphinx—sat pondering,

wringing my fingers,

and suddenly got it, leaped up shrieking, ‘It's a man!

A man!'

Poor idiot! I thought after that that my crafty eye could

pierce

all life's mysteries: Set myself up as a sage, became (gloating in my prizes—the throne of Thebes, and her

beautiful queen)—

became the most foolish of kings, unwitting parody of

one

who was truly wise in Thebes, the seer Teiresias, blinded for sights forbidden—the bosom and flanks of

Athena—

as I, too, would be blinded for knowledge not lawful.

I now

hold myself in less awe.” He smiled. “I have no virtue except, perhaps, humility. ‘Know thou art a man' the

god warns—

Apollo, strangler of snakes. And I know it. Smashed to

the ground,

to wisdom. With every hair I lose, a desire dies; with every eyelid flicker, I forget some fact.” Abruptly, remembering the cold and his guests' discomfort, the

old man said:

“Come in my cave, good sirs. There's a fire, and stones

for chairs.”

He led the way, tapping with his stick, and we followed

him.

He'd shielded the entrance to the cave with scraps of

wood (old crating,

the salvaged planking of ships) till it looked like the

shacks you see

by the city dump. But the glittering walls of the cave

were warm.

Idas and Lynkeus stirred the coals, found logs to add. Jason stood quiet as a boulder, white-bearded, staring.

intensely

at something deep in the fire. Then all but Oidipus sat

down.

I sat in the shadow of the others and reached out

timidly for heat.

Oidipus tipped down his head, both hands on his cane,

his forehead

furrowed like a field. “That was not the least of visits when Theseus came with his Amazon, after his cruel

betrayal

of the beautiful Ariadne, whom Theseus swore he'd

praise

forever. He felt no remorse at that. All the world

betrays.

The fibers binding the oak together or the towering

plane tree

sever, sooner or later; or a life-giving storm from Zeus turns to an enemy and tears up the tree by its roots. In

Nature

steadfast faith is an illusion of fools. So Theseus

claimed,

and scorned her, despite all she'd done for him. But

later, seeing

how deep that emptiness runs—how the center of the

universe

is Hades' realm, where the absence of meaning lies

bitter on the tongue

as a taste of alum—he changed his opinion. He fought

his way back

to the kingdom of the living and made his own heart a

law contrary

to the world's. And at last he subdued that passionate

Amazon

by laying plain the deadness at the core, the all-out

battle

of dark gods seething, each against all, like atoms.

Like you,

a metaphysician to the bone, he knew, that scorner of

vows,

the smell of mortality in promises. Without that

knowledge

nothing of importance can begin, though knowledge, if

it goes no further …

The rest is murky. So I saw myself—I, who answered the Sphinx's riddle and swore by unflagging intelligence to keep Thebes firm. I was shown soon enough the

absurdity

of hopes so overweening. The ground underneath me

shifted,

and all I perceived and reasoned about was a mirror

trick.

I learned that the way of the universe is dim,

unnamable,

shape without shape, image without substance, a dark

implication

from silence….

   “And yet it is also true that Herakles was right— with Herakles too I passed a day—who believed his

father

was loving and always near, assuaging torments. (In a

world

confused and contradictory, everything is right, and all potential is real possibility.) By the character of Zeus as he understood it, he judged all things. When he seized

the initiative,

judging for himself, as if Zeus were not there, he was

filled with darkness,

loneliness, sorrow, and fear. Many times he fell, by his

standard,

and many times climbed back, bellowing, striking all

around him

with his wild-man's club. He was wrong, of course, in

believing his father

was there, or that Zeus felt concern—one more blind,

feelingless power—

but the sorrow and joy in redemption were real enough.

So the Trojan

Aeneas thought, who abandoned the woman he loved

for duty

and sailed out of Carthage, take it as she might. His

voice grew wild,

telling me the story: ‘What pure serenity I felt,' he

said.

‘ “Let nobody fool you,” I said to the sailors around me

in the ship,

“though the mind yaw this way and that, anchorless,

the heart can be sure

what's right and wrong, what the gods require. I've

proved it myself,

when I turned sternly on selfish desire for that loveliest

of queens

who lulled my noble and difficult purpose to sleep,

seduced

my lion-ambition with presents and comforts, till I'd

half-forgotten

my people's destiny, my arms grown flabby, the back

that once

easily carried my father from burning Troy grown frail and flimsy as a girl's, my mind once keen grown soft

with love

and wine and poetry. ‘Who can say what's best?' I

sighed,

sunk in the softness of Dido's scented bed. But a voice outside my life and larger than life came urging me

onward,

peremptorily ordering ‘Up! To Italy!' And now that my

legs

stand balanced on the deck of the ship again, I know

the truth,

know it by the salt's sharp bite in the spray, by the

soul-reviving

pressure of the wind. There is no personal pleasure—

none!—

that touches the joy of duty! The man who claims the

gods

are remote, indifferent—the man who feels no presence

of the gods

in all he does—is a man half dead. They exist; they

reveal

their character and will in every leaf and flower. Woe to the fool who closes his heart to them! His heart will

be dark,

his deeds puny and ridiculous!” So I spoke on the ship, ploughing north toward Italy,' he said. ‘But that was

before.'

He laughed, furious, when he spoke with me now of his

former opinions.

‘Stark madness,' he said, and gnashed his teeth, pacing

back and forth.

‘I could hardly know that as soon as I left her she'd

killed herself,

though we saw, three nights out of Carthage, the glow

of her funeral pyre.

Not all the magnificent kingdoms on earth are worth

the death

of a single beautiful woman—nay, the death of even a sick old man. When I met her shade I came to my

senses,

but understood too late. And with nothing remaining

but duty,

I followed duty—followed what once I'd known by

feeling,

I thought, as the gods' command. Came no such feelings

now.

Turnus dead, my better, but a man in my destiny's way; Lavinia my wife, a useful ally—her bed no Dido's. Loveless, friendless. A compromiser for the good of the

state,

selfless servant of the gods as a burning stick is servant to the chilly, indifferent shepherd. Such is the sorrow

of things.'

So he spoke, full of anger, longing for death. Nor was

it much better

for Ticius, or Lombard, or Brutus, or the others

dispersed but of Troy,

obedient to what they imagined the high gods' will.

But each,

sick with betrayals, too cynic for love such as Orpheus

had,

made his peace, built up weary battlements—for all his

scorn

of pride, made his stand of proud banners. And rightly

enough. No worse

than Akhilles' way—if Odysseus told me, in that much,

the truth.

He
would not bend for the pompous bray of civilities,

that one!

Would let all Akhaia go down for one woman, his prize

of war

whom dog-eyed Agamemnon stole, supported by

lordlings,

Akhaians gathered from far and near for a high moral

purpose,

they pretended—lying in their teeth. They did not fool

the son

of Peleus, raging in his tent and cursing their whole

corrupt

establishment. He set his pure and absolute passion beyond the value of all their chatter of community effort till Patroklos died, and Akhilles' passion made him hate

all Illium

and battle for Akhaia in spite of himself. He wagered

his soul

on love and hate, and let duty be damned. But Priam, bending in sorrow for his headless, mutilated son,

made Akhilles

shudder at last with sanity, crying aloud to the gods. He too, the gentle and courageous Hektor, was a lover—

loved

both justice and the people of his city and house.

Constrained to fight

for an evil cause or abandon loved ones, he wiped

the lines

from his forehead, gave up on metaphysics, played

for an hour

with his son, then put on his armor. So goes the universe, disaster on this side, shame on that … Yet not

even these

are trustworthy.

   “For ten long years Odysseus debated, tossed like a chip by the lunatic gods—not the least

of them

the gods in his sly, unsteadfast brain. Defend him as

you will,

Odysseus couldn't be certain himself that he truly

intended

to make his way back to Penelope. He bounced from wall to wall down the long dark corridor of chance to that

moment of panic

when Alkinoös' daughter found him by the sea and fell

in love with him. Then swiftly that quick brain lied:

told tales

of battle with the Cyclops, the terror of Sirens,

debasement on the isle

of Circe—fashioned adventures, each stranger than

the last, to prove

that all this time he'd had no end but one, return

to Ithika

and his dear lost wife. And so, assisted by the

wily Athena,

he explained away his drifting and eluded the sweet,

light clutches

of Nausikaa—but committed himself to the older, half-forgotten prison, and there Alkinoös sent him, laden with gifts on that oarless barque. But though he

reached the hall

itself and learned who was loyal to him, he could

find no way

to win back his power from the suitors there, fierce

men who'd kill him

gladly if he dared to reveal himself. So hour on hour, disguised as a beggar in his own wide hall, he

gnashed his teeth,

watching them eat through the wealth of his pastures

and smile obscenely

at his pale-cheeked, ever more beautiful wife; and

his hands were tied.

She seemed not to know him (though his dear old dog

had died of joy

at sight of him). Yet she it was who suggested the test of the bow, and placed in Odysseus' hands the

one weapon

with which he might make his play. And play he did!

Such slaughter

was never seen, not even on the Trojan plains. When

it ended,

and the house was cleansed of the stench of blood

by sulphur fumes,

his disloyal servants hanged and those proved loyal

rewarded,

Odysseus, deserving or not, had his kingdom and

wise good wife

and best of sons. Whatever a man could dare to ask if the world were just and orderly, and the gods kind, all that and more, he was given.

   “So it is that the lives of men confute each other, and nothing is stable, nothing—nay,

not even misery—sure.

For that reason I abandoned rule,

and abandoned all giving of advice. If I liked, I could

point your ship

in the direction of Aigeus' land, the kingdom of Theseus'