Jason and Medeia

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Jason and Medeia Page 32

by John Gardner


  gift—

  the mantle of scarlet that Argus wove, majestic but

  gloomy—

  it sent out a dull, infernal light—or the sky blue mantle King Thoas gave to Hypsipyle when she wept and

  spared him,

  sending him out on the sea. The son of Aison chose the blue, hurled it on the pile as if in anger; then, suddenly smiling, transformed, he came where I stood.

  The heralds

  approached. My mind went strangely calm, as calm as it

  was

  when I charmed the guardian snake. They left with the

  message. When I

  had come to the temple of Artemis—so the message

  ran—

  Apsyrtus must meet me, under cover of night. I would

  steal the fleece

  and return with the treasure to Aietes, to bargain for

  my life. Such was

  the lure. I know pretty well how Apsyrtus received it,

  sweet brother!

  His heart leaped up and he laughed aloud. ‘Ah, Medeia! Brilliant, magnificent Medeia of the many wiles!’ He

  could scarcely

  wait for nightfall, pacing restless on his ship and

  smiling,

  beaming at his sister’s guile.

  “The sun hung low in the heavens,

  reluctant to set, but at last, blood red with rage, it sank. As soon as darkness was complete he came to me,

  speeding in his ship,

  and landed on the sacred island in the dead of night.

  Unescorted,

  he rushed to the torchlit room where I waited and paced.

  He seized me

  with a cry of joy, proud of my Kolchian cunning. And

  for all

  my grief and revulsion, my murderer’s certainty of his

  imminent death—

  tricked for an instant by his smile of love—may the

  gods forgive me!—

  I returned the smile. With his bright sword lifted,

  Jason leaped

  from his hiding place. I turned my face away, shielding

  my eyes.

  Apsyrtus went down like a bull, but even as he sank

  to the flagstones

  he caught the blood in his hands, and as I shrank from

  him,

  reached out and painted my silvery veil and dress.

  I wept,

  soundless, rigid as a column. We bid the corpse in the

  earth.

  Orpheus was there, standing in the moonlight. There

  was no other way,’

  I said, rage flashing. He nodded. I said: ‘I loved my

  brother!’

  Perhaps even Jason understood, dark eyes more veiled

  than a snake’s.

  He took my hand, head bowed. We returned to the

  Argonauts.

  Apsyrtus’ fleet was heartsick, divided and confused,

  when they learned,

  by local seers, that the prince was gone forever. And

  so

  the Argo escaped.

  “Such was our crime, our helplessness.

  16

  “In Artemis’ temple we killed him. The blood-wet corpse

  we hid

  in the goddess’ sacred grove. Then Zeus the Father of

  the Gods

  was seized with wrath, and ordained that by counsel of

  Aiaian Circe

  we must cleanse ourselves from the stain of blood, and

  suffer sorrows

  bitter and past all number before we should come to

  the land

  of Hellas. We sailed unaware of that, though with heavy

  hearts,

  praying, the sons of Phrixos and I, for their mother’s

  escape

  when news of the murder came to Aietes’ dragon-dark

  mind.

  Our fears, we learned much later, were not ill-founded.

  He lay

  on the palace floor for days, shuddering in lunes of rage, calling on the gods to witness the foul and unnatural

  deed

  committed in Artemis’ temple. He’d neither lift his eyes nor raise his cheek from the flagstones, but wept and

  howled imprecations,

  hammering his fists till they bled. And at last it reached

  his thought

  that she who had seemed most innocent, bronze

  Khalkiope,

  was most at fault. Then soon chaogenous dreams of

  revenge

  were fuming in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity

  burned out,

  and he called her to him.

  “She knew when the message came what it meant.

  She touched her bedposts, the walls of her room, with

  the air of one

  distracted, and since they could grant her no time for

  parting words,

  she left with the guards themselves her sad farewell to

  our mother.

  She looked a last time at the figures of her sons, the

  work of a sculptor

  famous in the East, and tears ran down her cheeks in

  streams.

  Then, walking in the halls with her silent guards, her

  sandals a whisper

  on fire-bright tessellated floors, she prayed for the safety

  of her sons;

  and for all her trembling—most timid of all Aietes’

  children,

  her hair like honey as it rolls from the bowl—she kept

  her courage,

  and came where Aietes lay. He rose up a little on his

  arms

  and hissed at the guards. They backed away as

  commanded. And then,

  though he’d planned slow torture, unspeakable pain

  for the sly eldest daughter

  (so she seemed to him), he was suddenly wracked by

  such fiery rage

  that he hurled his axe, and Khalkiope, with a startled

  cry,

  was dead. A death to be proud of, the sweet gift of life

  to her sons!

  “We left behind the Liburnian isles, and Korkyra with its black and somber woods, and passed Melite,

  riding

  in a softly blowing breeze; passed steep Kerossus, where

  the daughter

  of Atlas dwelt, and we thought we saw in the mists the

  hills

  of thunder.

  “Then Hera remembered the counsels and anger of

  Zeus.

  She stirred up stormwinds before us, and black waves

  caught us and hurled us

  back to the isle of Elektra with its jagged rocks where

  once

  King Kadmos struck down the serpent and found his

  wife. And suddenly

  the beam of Dodonian oak that Athena had set in the

  center,

  as keel to the hollow ship, cried out and told us of the

  wrath

  of Zeus. The beam proclaimed that we’d never escape

  the paths

  of the endless sea, nor know any roofing but thunderous

  winds

  till Circe purged us of guilt for the murder of Apsyrtus.

  And if

  in cleansing us by ritual, the heart of Circe remained aloof, forgiving by law but not by love, then even in Hellas our lives should be cursed. The

  beam cried out:

  ‘Pray for your souls now, Argonauts! Pray for some

  track

  to the kingdom of Helios’ daughter!’ Thus wailed the

  Argo in the night.

  The Argonauts hurled up prayers to the gods as the

  ship leaped on

  through dark welms streaming like a wound. O, dark as

  my soul was the place!

  Sick those seas as my body in riotous rebellion—

  fevers,

  chills, mysteriou
s flashes of pain. His ghost was in me, a steady nightmare, a madness. I vomited, fouling my

  beauty

  in Jason’s sight. Not even Orpheus’ lyre could check that sickness throbbing in my head, or the fire in my

  bowels. They looked

  away, one and all, as from Hell itself. I hissed

  imprecations,

  and they listened with white teeth clenched.

  “And as for the sea, it was

  the water of Helios’ wrath. No bird, for all its rush, for all the lightness of its arching wings, could cross

  that deep,

  but mid-course, down it would plunge, fluttering,

  consumed in flames;

  and all around it, the daughters of Helios, locked in

  poplars,

  wailed their piteous complaint, and their weeping eyes

  dripped amber.

  “There sailed the joyless Argonauts, weary of heart,

  overwhelmed

  by stench where the body of Phaiton still burned. At

  night, by the will

  of the gods, we entered an unknown stream whose rock

  shores sang

  with the rumble of mingling waters. So on and on we

  rushed,

  lost in the endless domain of the murderous Kelts. Now

  storms,

  now raging men dismayed us, thinning our company. My sickness stayed. My hand on the gunnel was

  marble-white;

  my face grew gaunt, rimose. We touched at the

  kingdom of stone,

  the kingdom of iron men, the kingdom of the ants. As

  dreams

  insinuate their unearthly cast on the light of the sick man’s room, making windows alien eyes, transforming

  chairs

  to animals biding their time, so now to the heartsick

  Argo

  the world took on a change. The night was unnaturally

  dark,

  crowded with baffling machines we could not quite see.

  And then

  at dawn we looked out, in our strange dream, on

  motionless banks

  where no beast stirred and even the leaves on the trees

  were still.

  No songbird sang, and the clouds above us were as void

  of life

  as stones. We struggled to awaken, but the ship was

  sealed in a charm.

  We waited. Then came to a fork in the stream, a great

  hushed island,

  and the Argonauts, half-starved, rowed in, cast anchor,

  and made

  the long ship fast. As far as the eye could see on the

  windless

  rockstrewn beach, there was nothing alive. The tufts of

  grass

  on the meadow above were still, as if lost in thought.

  “On a hill,

  rising at the center of the island, there stood a grove so

  dense

  no thread of light came through, and between the boles

  of the trees

  lay avenues. We went there, Lynkeus leading the way with his powerful eyes. I walked behind him, my hand

  in Jason’s,

  and my spirit was filled with uneasiness. I was sure the

  air—

  chill, unstirring—was crowded with thirsty ghosts. We

  found

  no game; it seemed that even the crawling insects slept.

  “Without warning from Lynkeus, we reached a glade

  and, rising

  in the center of the glade, a vast stone building in the

  shape of a dome.

  The gray foundation rocks were carved with curious

  oghams:

  spirals like eddies in a river, like blustering winds—

  the oldest

  runes ever made by man. At the low, dark door of the

  building

  a chair of stone stood waiting. We studied it, none of us

  speaking.

  And suddenly, even as we watched, there appeared a

  figure in the chair,

  seated comfortably, casually, combing his beard. He was

  old,

  his hair as white as hoarfrost. But as for his race, he

  was nothing

  we knew—a snubnosed creature with puffy eyes. His

  face,

  like his belly, was round, and he wore an enormous

  moustache. He said: ‘

  Ah ha! So it’s Jason again!’ The lord of the Argonauts

  stared,

  then glanced at me, as if thinking the curious image

  were somehow

  my creation. The old man laughed, impish, a laugh that rang like bells on the great rock mound and the

  surrounding hills.

  He laughed till he wept and clutched his sides.

  “I asked: “Who are you?

  Why do you mock us with silent sunlit isles and

  laughter,

  when Zeus has condemned us to travel as miserable

  exiles forever,

  suffering griefs past number for a crime so dark I dare not speak of it?’ He laughed again, unimpressed by

  grief,

  unmoved by our hunger. “Mere pangs of mortality,’ he

  said.

  ‘If you knew my troubles—’ He paused, reflecting, then

  laughed again.

  ‘However, they slip my mind.’ I repeated the question:

  ‘Who are you?’

  He tapped the tips of his fingers together, squinting,

  though his lips

  still smiled. ‘Don’t rush me. It’ll come to me.’ He

  searched his wits.

  ‘I’m something to do with rivers, I remember.’ He pulled

  at his beard,

  pursed his lips, looked panic-stricken. ‘Is it very

  important?’

  Suddenly his face brightened and he snapped his

  fingers. At once—

  apparently not by his wish—an enormous sow appeared, sprawled in the grass beside him, her eyes alarmed.

  He snapped

  his fingers again, looking sheepish, and at once the huge

  beast vanished.

  Again the name he’d been hunting had slipped his

  mind. Then:

  ‘Spirit of sorts,’ he said. ‘Not one of your dark ones, no

  god

  of the bog people, or the finger-wringing Germans, or—’ His bright eyes widened. ‘Ah yes! I’d forgotten!

  —We have dealings, we powers,

  from time to time. I received a request from the goddess

  of will.

  Abnormal. But isn’t everything? —Forgive me if I seem too light in the presence of woe. We’re not very good at

  woe,

  we Grand Antiques. Treasure your guilt if you like, dear

  friends.

  Guilt has a marvelous energy about it—havoc of

  kingdoms,

  slaughter of infants, et cetera. Discipline! That’s what

  it gives you!

  (Discipline, of course, is a virtue not all of us value.)

  However,

  Time is wide enough for all. Indeed, in a thousand years (I’ve been there, understand. A thousand thousand

  times I’ve heard

  the joke, and that lunatic punchline) … But what was

  I saying? Ah!

  Sail on in peace!—or in whatever mood suits your

  temperament.

  The passage is opened, this once, after all these

  millennia.

  Make way for the flagship Argo, ye golden generations!

  Make way

  for purification by fire, salvation by slaughter!’ His

  eyes—

  pale blue, mocking, were a-glitter; but at once he

  remembered himself.

  ‘Forgive me, lady. Forgive an old bogyman’s foolishness,

  lords

 
of Akhaia.’ His smile was genuine now. The universe has time for all experiments. Sail in peace!’ He

  vanished.

  And the same instant the sky went dark and we found

  ourselves

  on the Argo, on a churning sea. Black waves came

  combing in,

  and mountains to left and right were yawing apart for

  us,

  and the opening sucked the sea in, and like a chip on

  a torrent

  the Argo went spinning, careening, the walls half buried

  in foam,

  to the south. I clung to the capstan. I would have been

  washed away,

  but the boy Ankaios abandoned the useless steering oar and caught my arm and held me till Jason could

  reach me, crawling

  pin by pin along the rail. He held me by the waist,

  his arm

  like rock. So we stood as we fell, dropped down from

  a dizzying height,

  a violent booming around us, as if the earth had split, and we looked up behind us in terror and saw the

  mountains close,

  and the same instant we struck and were hurled to the

  belly of the ship.

  The Argo shrieked as if all her beams had burst, and

  water

  boiled in over us. Then, at Ankaios’ shout, we knew we were safe, the ship was afloat, all her brattice-work

  firm despite

  contusions, a thin, dark ooze. And thus we came, by

  the whim

  of the river spirit of the North, to the kingdom of Circe,

  daughter

  of the sun, my father’s sister.

  “We did not speak of the dream—

  the cynical god who could scoff at all human shame

  and pain.

  Did only I dream it? There are those who claim we

  create, ourselves,

  in the dark of our minds, the gods who guide us. Was

  I in fact

  remorseless as the snake who smiles as he swallows the

  bellowing frog?

  Did my dreams create, then, even the dizzying fall of the

  Argo,

  that dark-as-murder sky? I dared not speak of the

  dream,

  but the image of the god remained, like the nagging

  awareness of a wound,—

  that and the sunlight in which he sat, with his attention

  fixed

  on his beard. If I closed my eyes, relaxed, I could drift

  to him again,

  abandon all sorrow and guilt forever, as if such things were childhood fantasy, and only this—his twinkling

  eyes,

  his laugh, his comb, his silent, sunlit glade—were real. I could step, if I wished, from my sanity to peace. I

  resisted,

  perhaps for fear of Jason.

  “We came to Circe’s isle.

  “At Jason’s command, the Argonauts cast the hawsers

  and moored

  the ship. We soon found Circe bathing where spindrift

 

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