Jason and Medeia

Home > Literature > Jason and Medeia > Page 20
Jason and Medeia Page 20

by John Gardner


  will he turn

  on you? Say no more! I give you my vow, it’s your

  destiny.

  No harm will come! I swear by Apollo, by my own

  second sight,

  by my cataracts, by the home of the dead—may the

  powers of Hades

  blast me to atoms if I die! No ultion will fall on you, no vengeful alastor seek you out by decree of the gods.’

  “ ‘Very well,’ Zetes said. And now the brothers backed

  off from Phineus,

  ready to faint from his stink. At once, we prepared a

  meal

  for the poor old seer—the last the Harpies were to get.

  And Zetes

  and Kalais took up their watch, knees bent, a short way

  off

  from the prophet who squatted by the steps. Before he

  could reach for a morsel,

  down came the Harpies. They struck and were gone with

  no more warning

  than a lightning flash—the meal had vanished—and

  we heard their raucous

  chattering far out at sea. It seemed the whole world

  had turned

  to stench. But Zetes and Kalais too were gone, we saw— vanished like ghosts. They nearly caught them—

  touched them, in fact.

  But just as their fingers were closing on the creatures’

  throats, the sky

  went white, and a voice said: ‘Stop! The Harpies are

  the hounds of Zeus!

  Don’t harm them! They’ll trouble your friend no more,

  swift sons of Boreas!’

  And so the brothers turned back, and the curse was

  ended.

  “We cleansed

  the old man’s house with sulphur fire, and washed him

  in the creek,

  then picked out the finest of the sheep we’d gotten from

  Amykos

  and made them a sacrifice to Zeus. We set out a banquet

  in the hall

  and sat with Phineus to eat. He ate like a man in a

  dream,

  astounded, baffled by the sweetness of life.

  “When we’d eaten and drunk

  our fill, the old man, sitting among us by the fireplace,

  said:

  ‘Listen. I can tell you many things. Not all I know, but a good deal. I was a fool, once. I used to tell people the whole nature of the universe. Deeper and deeper I plunged into things long-hidden, until for some

  strange reason

  (which I understand) those Harpies came, called down

  from the sky

  (not “sent,” mind you: called—called down as surely

  as if

  I’d raised my hands and cried, “Harpies, snatch away

  my food!”). Since then I’ve

  learned my place, so to speak, or learned my weakness,

  which is

  the same: my strength. As the glutton eats till it kills

  him, the visionary

  sees. (My father, by the way, had a truly amazing eye for omens, though nothing like mine. But I’d rather not

  speak of that.)’

  He glanced past his shoulder, furtive, then smiled again

  and gazed

  at the flames with his chalk-white eyes. ‘I could tell you

  many things,’

  he said again, and smiled. His corrugate hands and

  cheeks

  glowed in the firelight, shining with joy of life like the

  eyes

  of a lover. We waited. He said, ‘I knew a man one time who suffered in a somewhat similar way. He murdered

  his father

  and married his mother, unwittingly. It was a classic

  case.

  I spoke to him many years afterward. I said, “Come,

  come, Oidipus!

  Surely you recognized the man you killed! Surely,

  in the hindmost

  corner of your mind you saw your image in his face

  and remembered

  his shadow between your mother’s breast and you.”

  The king

  considered me—or considered my voice (he was

  blind)—then answered,

  “Doubtless, Phineus. Clearly I was fooled, one way or

  another:

  if not by reality, then clearly by something in myself.

  There are shadows

  more than we dream, in the ancient cave of the

  mind—dark gods,

  conflicting absolutes, timeless and co-existent, who

  battle

  like atoms seething in a cauldron, each against all, to

  assert

  their raucous finales. Gods illogical as sharks. We roof their desperate work with the limestone and earth of

  reason, but the roof

  has cracks: as seepages, springs, dark meres push

  through earth’s crust,

  those old, mad gods burst through the mind’s thick

  floor, mysterious

  nightmares, twitches, accidents perverting our gentlest

  acts.

  I’ve made my peace with them.” I saw that events had

  made him

  wise. I said: “Perhaps the old man was not your father, merely another of reality’s tricks.” He smiled. “Perhaps. I’ve heard much stranger things. I’ve learned that the

  primary law

  of Time and Space is that nothing is merely what it is.

  The seed

  of the flower harbors the poison of the flower. I’ve

  watched old lions

  pause, befuddled by warring instincts, surrounded by

  huntsmen.

  I’ve watched my own soul—strange drives forcing me

  higher and higher

  to goals I can barely discern, and one of them is

  beauty of mind,

  true majesty; and one of them is death. I am, I’ve found a rhythm, merely: a summer and winter of creation

  and guilt.

  I’m the phoenix; the world. Thanatos and Eros in

  all-out war,

  the chariot drawn by sphinxes, one of them black,

  one white:

  one pulls toward joy, the other toward total eclipse of

  pain.

  With all that, too, I’ve made my peace. I’ve fallen out

  of Time.

  I stumble, a blind man guided by a stick. After all

  this—sick,

  meaningless, old—I’ve lost my reason at last: gone

  sane.”

  I said nothing, humbled by the wisdom Oidipus had

  won—and not by

  gift: by violence and grief. I could have expanded

  what he knew.

  I did for others. But I bowed, retired in silence. I have

  said

  to kings that their hope is ridiculous—the hope that

  someday

  kingdoms, heroes, philosophers, laws, may end forever the natural state—the jungle of the gods in all-out

  war—

  the secret whispers of the buried man, the violence

  of seas,

  benthal stirrings of the blind, pythonic corpse of

  Atlantis,

  the earth in upheaval, thundershouts, whirlwinds, foxes

  snapping

  at the rooster’s heels, or the silent victories of termites,

  spiders,

  ants. I have said to other men that the natural state is final. The forces that crack the efficient crust of mind crack nations: no hunger, no evil wish to seduce or kill is lost in the sky god’s brain. This darkling plain we flee toward love is the darkling plain toward which we flee.

  But why

  say all these things to him? I left him groping,

  stumbling

  stone to stone, as we all move stone to stone, each step catching the balance from the last, or failing to catch

  it, tu
mbling us

  humbly home to the dust. Don’t ask of a man like

  Oidipus

  programs, plans for improvement, praise of nobility.

  (What are,

  to him, great deeds of heroism? A matter of glands, nerves, old patterns of reaction: —a slight deficiency of iodine in the thyroid [I speak things long-forgotten], a sadistic aunt, a bump on the back of the head, and

  the hero’s

  a coward.) Every tragedy is fragmentary, a cut of Time in the cosmic whole, the veil without

  which

  nothing. A man’s inability to flee his father’s guilt, his city’s, his god’s. A man’s coming to grips with his

  own

  unalterable road to death. Don’t look to the gods for help in that. For the purpose you ask of them, they were

  never there.

  Earthquakes, fires, fathers, floods make no distinctions: the good survive and suffer, discover their truths and

  die,

  like the wicked. Indeed, if anyone has the advantage,

  it seems

  the violent, crafty, unprincipled, who seize earth’s goods while the pious stretch out their arms in prayer, and

  leave empty-handed.

  I could tell you, Argonauts … Dark, unfeeling,

  unloving powers

  determine our human destiny. The splendid rewards, the ghastly punishments your priests are forever

  preaching of,

  have no real home but the shores of their violent brains.

  Learn all

  your poisons! There’s man’s peace!’ The old seer smiled

  and sighed,

  gentle as a kindly grandmother. The firelight flickered soft on his forehead and cheeks as he leaned toward

  it, stretching

  his hands to it. We studied him, polite.

  “At last I said:

  Phineus, these are strange words of yours. You tell us

  tales

  of doom, inescapable senselessness, yet all the while you smile, stretching your hands to the comfort of the

  fire.’

  “ ‘That’s true;

  no doubt it’s a trifle absurd.’ But he nodded, smiling on. ‘I was sick to the heart, fighting reality tooth and nail, staggering, striking—and, behold!, you’ve made me well.

  My mind

  made monsters up, and all the self-understanding in

  the world

  could no more turn them back than weir down history.’ He paused; then, abruptly, ‘I must muse no more on

  that.’ He turned

  his head, listening to the darkness in the room behind.

  We began

  to smell something. His face went pale. And then, once

  more,

  he smiled, remembered our presence, remembered the

  fire. He said:

  ‘Life is sweet, Argonauts! Behold us, each of us

  drinking down

  his own unique sweet poison! May each see the bottom

  of the cup!

  As for myself, I can say this much with good assurance:

  I will not

  last much longer, now that the Harpies have left me.

  The balance

  is gone. Death’s not far hence, the death I carry within

  me.

  One grants one’s limits at last—one’s special strength.

  One sinks

  and drowns there, tranquil, no more at war with the

  universe,

  and therefore dying, like poison sumac become too

  much

  itself, unstriving, released at last into anorexy. —No, no! No alarm, dear friends! No distress! It was

  a great service!

  There is no greater joy, no greater peace, my friends, than dying one’s own inherent death, no other. The

  truth!’

  He paused, looked back at the darkness again with his

  blind eyes.

  He smiled. His smile came forward like a spear. ‘I will

  tell you more:

  You ask me: How can you smile, reach out to the

  warmth, knowing all

  you know? Let me tell you another thing about Oidipus. He knows where he is—where humanity is: in the tragic

  moment,

  locked in the skull of the sky: the eternal, intemporal

  moment

  which lasts to the last pale flash of the world. There

  tragic man,

  alone, doomed to be misunderstood by slumbering

  minds,

  exposed to the idiot anger of hidden and absent forces, nevertheless stands balanced. In his very loneliness, his meaningless pain, he finds the few last values his

  soul

  can still maintain, drive home, construct his grandeur by: the absolute and rigorous nature of its own awareness, its ethical demands, its futile quest for justice, absolute truth—dead-set refusal to accept some compromise, choose some sugared illusion!’ His face was radiant. He wrung his hands; his voice was unsteady. He was

  deeply moved.

  What could I say? It was not for me to pose the

  question.

  We were guests. He might be of use to us. I was glad,

  however,

  when Idas asked it. Sweat drops glistened on his ebony

  forehead

  like firelit jewels.

  “ ‘Why?—Why soul? Why values? Why greatness?

  Why not “Not love: just fuck”?’

  “Old Phineus turned his face,

  with a startled look, toward Idas. ‘I will tell you more,’

  he said.

  “ ‘We should sleep,” I broke in. ‘It’s a long trip, and

  dawn near at hand.’

  “The stink in the room was suddenly thick as a

  dragon’s stench.

  “All that day, far into the next night, Phineus talked. I rose, we all did, tiptoed out. By the following morning the stink was more than we could bear. There was

  some dark meaning in it.

  No matter. Aietes’ city was still a long way north, and that was where we were aimed. We’d gotten used

  to it,

  rowing, at one with the cosmos, as if we’d emerged

  from something.

  So old comedies end, the universe and man at one. Incorporation, purgation, harmony restored. Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. We had no complaints,

  rowing

  hard against an eastern wind. Some famous old tale …

  Never mind.

  Exhaustion was the name of the game.

  ‘Then came the stranger. I dreamed

  (it was no mere dream) a terror beyond all the

  wildest fears

  of man. I dreamed Death came to me and smiled, and

  said:

  Fool, you are caught in an old, irrelevant tale. I will

  speak

  strange words to you, a language you won’t understand.

  When you do,

  too late! Such is my wile. I will tell you of horror beyond belief; you won’t believe, and so it will come. That is my trick. I will tell you: Fool, you are caught in

  irrelevant forms:

  existence as comedy, tragedy, epic. The heart divided, the Old Physician who cures the world by his ambles pie; the magician cook (Hamburger Mary), “Eternal

  Verities,”

  the world as the word of the Ausländer. Those are the

  web I’ll

  kill you by. And neither will you believe my power, or if you believe, imagine it. When I speak of death, you will think of your own; poor limited beast. What

  man can’t face

  his paltry private death? The words are, first: Trust not to seers who conceive no higher force than Zeus. And

  next:

  Beware the interstices. There lies thy wreck. Remember!’ I sat up, trembling in the dark, still ship; I cried out,

  ‘Wait!

  Who are you?’ And then all at once
the shore was sick

  with light:

  there were cities like rotten carcases black with

  children dead;

  there were women, befouled, deformed by mysterious

  burns; and the burnt ground

  glowed, a deadly green. ‘My name is Never,’ he said. ‘My name is: It Cannot Be. My name is Soon.’ I saw his eyes and cried out. Then I was alone. It was

  dark.

  I racked my wits for the meaning. Old Mopsos had

  theories. Said:

  ‘You’ve listened too much to old Phineus, Jason, with

  all his talk

  of dark, opposing forces—Love and Death. You’ve

  conceived

  the final war, the ultimate goal of humanity.’ Then it isn’t true?’ I asked. He sighed. ‘Who knows?

  Who cares?

  Don’t think about it. It’s millennia off. The dream’s mere

  chaff.’

  I wasn’t convinced. I could change the outcome. Why

  send, otherwise,

  the terrible vision to me? He smiled when I asked him

  that.

  ‘Write it down that truth is whatever proves necessary. Write down the dream as a dream. You created your

  goblin, Jason,

  fashioned him out of your own free-floating guilt and

  the babble

  of Phineus. Go back to sleep, take a friend’s advice.

  —Go to sleep

  and don’t give your fears more rope.’ He turned away.

  I gazed

  through darkness, listening. All still well; no cause for

  alarm;

  nothing afoot but the wind, as usual—endlessly walking, darkening into the void … Then, far away, a flash, a sun, and the shock of it sent out astounding, sky-high

  waves,

  and as the first approached our ship I broke into a

  sweat; but then

  the great wave struck, moved past, and nothing had

  happened. Illusion!

  I got up, looked in at the darkness of water, and calmed

  myself.

  All well. Nothing afoot. —And yet I was sure, again, the vision was no mere dream. I stood at the start of

  something,

  in some way I hadn’t yet learned; and I might yet

  change its course.

  In my mind I saw myself clambering over the side,

  slipping down,

  soundlessly sinking in the water. I dreamed I’d done it.

  Peace…

  “Make a note. The dark of the buried gods has suicide

  in it,

  black form seeking to crack the efficient crust. I would

  not

  crack. I lay down again and, this time, nothing.

  Darkness.

  And so sailed on, putting the Bithynian coast behind

  us.

  Self-destruction was the name of the game. I wasn’t

  playing.

 

‹ Prev