Jason and Medeia

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Jason and Medeia Page 37

by John Gardner


  love

  of the stuttering, wrinkled old man that Argus devised

  the palace

  that made us the envy of Akhaia, or built the waterlocks that transformed barrenness to seas of wheat, or built,

  above,

  the shining temple to Hera that soared up tower on

  tower,

  mirrored by lakes, surrounded by majestic parks. It was

  not

  for love of Pelias that Orpheus brought in the mysteries of Elektra to Argos, and made our city of Iolkos chief of the sacred cities of the South. Nor was it for him

  that Phlias

  created the great dance of Heros Dionysos, which

  brought us glory

  and wealth and favor of the god of life and death. I

  shared

  all honors with Pelias, though I’d changed his kingdom

  of pigs and sheep

  to a mighty state; and I did not mind the absurdity

  of it.

  And yet he was thorn, a hedge of thorn, and I might

  have been glad to be rid of him.

  I could move the assembly by a few words to

  magnificent notions—

  things never tried in the world before. I could have

  them eating

  from my hand, and then old Pelias would rise, wrapped

  head to foot

  in mufflers and febrile opinions. His numerous chins

  a-tremble,

  blanched eyes rolling, the tip of his nose bright red, like

  a berry

  in a patch of snow, he’d stutter and stammer,

  slaughterer of time,

  and in the end, as often as not, undo my work with a

  peevish

  No. Nor was he pleased, God knows, to share the rule with me. He hadn’t forgotten the oracle that warned,

  long since,

  that he’d meet his death by my hand. He couldn’t decide,

  precisely,

  whether to hate and fear me outright—whatever my

  pains

  to put him at ease—or feign undying devotion,

  avuncular

  pride in my glorious works. At times he would snap like

  a mongrel,

  splenetic, critical of trifles—insult me in the presence

  of the lords.

  I was patient. He was old, would eventually die. His

  barbs were harmless,

  as offensive to all who heard them as they were to me.

  My cousin

  Akastos would roll his eyes up, grinding his teeth in fury at his father’s ridiculous spite. I would smile, put my

  hand on Akastos’

  arm, say, ‘Never mind, old friend.’ It drew us closer, his shame and rage at his bumbling father’s stupidity. He had, himself, more honor with the people than his

  father had,

  having sailed to the end of the world with us—a

  familiar now

  of Orpheus, Leodokos, and the mighty brothers Peleus and Telamon. He’d become, through us, a friend of the hoary centaur Kheiron, and come to

  know

  the child Akhilles, waxing like a tower and handsome as

  a god.

  What had Akastos to do with a snivelling, whining old

  man,

  Akastos who’d stood at the door of Hades, listened to

  the Sirens,

  braved the power of Aietes and the dangerous Kelts?

  The old man

  hinted that after his death Akastos should follow him as my fellow king. It was not in the deal; I refused.

  Akastos

  was furious—not at me. And now he seldom came to the palace, bitterly ashamed. He remained with

  Iphinoe, at home,

  or travelled with friends, supporting their courtships

  or wars.

  “At times Pelias would drop his peevishness, put on, instead, a pretense of cowering love. He’d sit with his head to

  one side,

  lambishly timid, and he’d ogle like a girl, admiring me. ‘Noble Jason,’ he’d call me, with lips obscenely wet, and he’d stroke my fingers like an elderly homosexual, his head drawn back, as if fearing an angry slap. His

  desire

  to please, in such moods, was boundless. He couldn’t

  find honors enough

  to heap on me. He gave me gifts—his ebony bed (my father’s, in fact), jewels, the sword of Atlantis—

  but with each

  gift given, his need—his terror of fate—was greater

  than before.

  In the end he gave me the golden fleece itself as proof that all he owned was mine, I need not murder him. He was mad, of course. I had no intention of murdering

  him.

  And still he cringed and crawled, all bootlicking love.

  That too

  I tolerated, biding my time.

  “Not all on Argos shared or understood my patience. On the main street, on the day of the festival of Oreithyia—our chariot

  blocked

  by the milling, costumed crowd—a humpbacked

  beggarwoman

  in fetid rags, a shawl hiding all but her hawkbill nose and piercing eyes—a coarse mad creature who sang

  old songs

  in a voice like the carrion crow’s and stretched out

  hands like sticks

  for alms—leaped up at sight of me, raging, ‘Alas for

  Argos,

  kingless these many years! Thank God I’m sick with

  age

  and need not watch much longer this shameful travesty! We had here a king to be proud of once, a man as

  noble beside these pretenders

  as Zeus beside two billygoats!

  That king and his queen had a son, you think? He

  produced what seemed one—

  an arrogant, cowardly merchantry-swapper with no

  more devotion

  than a viper. The father’s throne was stolen—boldly,

  blatantly—

  his blood cried out of the earth, cried out of the beams

  and stones

  of the palace for revenge. The son raised never a finger.

  And the mother,

  poor Alkimede, my mistress once, was driven from her

  home

  to lodgings fit for a swineherd. There she lived with

  her boy,

  as long as he’d stay. It was none too long. For all her

  pleas,

  for all the great sobs welling from her heart, he must

  leave her helpless,

  friendless in a world where once she’d stood as high as any in Akhaia. ? shameless! Shame on shame he heaped on her: not on his own but in foul collusion with the very usurper who seized that throne, he must

  sail to the shores

  of barbarians, and must bear off with him on his mad

  expedition

  the finest of Akhaia’s lords! Few enough would return,

  he knew.

  O that he too had been drowned in the river with

  innocent Hylas,

  or fallen like Idmon to a maddened boar, or withered

  in Libya!

  She might have had then some comfort in death,

  though little before,

  wrapped in a winding-sheet wound by strangers,

  tumbled to her tomb

  like a penniless old farm woman. And Jason returned, joyful with his barbarous bride, and shamelessly joined

  the usurper,

  smiling on half of his father’s blood-soaked throne. See

  how

  he preaches justice and reason, preaches fidelity, trades on his great past deeds to avoid all present risks. “Do not rave,” he raves; “no shame can trouble our city. Prophesy wealth and wine! The past is obliterated! Tell us no more about crimes in the tents of our

  ancestors!

  Justice and reason, like tamed lions, have settled in

  Io
lkos.”

  Where is his justice and reason? Where is his loudly

  bugled

  fidelity? The throne was stolen; stolen it remains. What of fidelity to fathers and mothers? What of

  fidelity

  to the dead in their winecupped graves?’

  “So the old shrew raged, shaking. Medeia, standing beside me, glared with eyes like ice. Softly, she said, ‘Who is this creature

  you allow to berate you in the streets?’ I touched her

  hand to calm her.

  “A woman who loved my mother,’ I said. Medeia was

  silent.

  It was not till another day she asked, ‘Is this accusation just, that Pelias stole your father’s throne?’ I thought, Everything is true in its time and place. But answered

  only:

  ‘I was young; my father was unsure of me. There were

  vague rumors …

  It was all a long, long time ago.’ But after that when I spoke in the assembly or debated plans with my

  fellow king,

  and Pelias had qualms, found reasons for doubt,

  objected, found cause

  for delay, she would watch him with tigress eyes.

  “Pelias, as his mind dimmed with the passing years, grew

  increasingly a burden.

  It’s a difficult thing to explain. He interfered with me

  less.

  He grew deaf as a post and nearly blind, his mind so

  enfeebled

  that in the end he relinquished all but a shadow of his

  former power.

  The trouble was, he seemed to imagine that both of us had abandoned the nuisance of government.

  Old-womanish, dim,

  he’d call me to his bedroom and beg from me stories of

  the Argonauts,

  or he’d tell me, as if we were shepherds with all

  afternoon to pass,

  tedious tales of his childhood. It proved no use to send his daughters instead, willing as they were—

  good-hearted, sheltered

  princesses with the brains of nits. It had to be me— myself or Akastos, and Akastos rarely came. I would

  stoop,

  absurd in my royal robes, by the old man’s bed, and

  listen,

  or pretend to listen, brooding in secret on Argos’ affairs. The drapes would be drawn, a whim of his daughters,

  as though he were

  some apple they hoped to preserve through the winter

  in a cool dark bin.

  He would stutter like a fond old grandmother, on and

  on. At times

  he’d recall with a start the prophecy, and he’d hastily

  offer

  his cringing act, lading on flattery, protesting his

  life-long

  love. His fingers, clinging to mine, gripped me like a

  monkey’s.

  His daughters would listen, drooping like flowers from

  slender stalks,

  and whenever they spoke it was tearfully, with a kind of

  idiot

  gratitude for the affection I showed their belovèd father. At last he’d sleep; I’d be free to leave the place.

  “I’d go to the wing of the palace I kept with Medeia and the

  children; I’d pass

  in silence among our slaves, and my heart was sullen

  with suspicion.

  Surely, I thought, they must mock me. Jason in his

  kingly robes,

  shouldered like a bull, gray eyes rolling as he sits, polite

  as a cranky old shepherd’s serving boy, by the bed of

  Pelias,

  hanging on stammered-out words. O shameless coward

  indeed!

  I would stand alone at the balustrade of marble, glare

  out

  at the sea, Orion hanging low, contemptuous.

  I was not a coward, I knew well enough,

  and it ought not to matter what others supposed.

  I governed well—no man denied it. If I wasted time on a fusty, repulsive old man, I had excellent reasons

  for it.

  I was no Herakles pummelling the seasons with passionate, mindless fists. Oh, I could admire the

  crone

  who cackled in the streets, full of rage and scorn, her loves and hates as forthright as boulders in the

  grass. No doubt

  she would, in my place, have struck down Pelias at the

  first suspicion,

  as would Herakles; or failing that, she’d have schemed

  and plotted—

  would never have seemed to accept, as I did, his right

  to the throne,

  or half of it. She’d have schemed and slaughtered,

  maintained the honor

  of Iolkos’ noble dead, whatever the cost to the living— bloodshed of factions, houses in furor, families divided, chaos for ages to come. I had no doubt that the course I’d chosen was best, my seemingly shameful

  compromise.

  Absolute passion, absolute glory, was for gods, not men. I could claim the status of a demigod, but the future

  was not

  with them.

  “Yet glaring out toward sea, resolved on a course no man of sense could conceivably mock,

  I was filled with a dangerous weariness.

  More real than the seven-story fall

  that gaped below me, more sharp to my sense than the

  quartz-domed tomb

  of Alkimede on its high hill north of the temple of Hera, or the figure of Medeia at my back, as heavy as bronze

  with anger—

  visions of flight would snatch my mind—the Argo’s

  prow

  bobbing like the head of a galloping horse, half

  smothered in foam,

  dark shapes looming out of fire-green water, then

  vanishing—

  the wandering rocks.

  “I was protected once by an old Kelt, sired by a bear on a moon-priestess, or so he claimed.

  We talked, in his shadowy hall, of freedom. His boy

  sat hunched

  by the hearthstone, listening, watching with eyes like a

  cat’s. From the beams

  of the old king’s walls hung the heads of his vanquished

  enemies,

  and above the fire, nailed firmly to the slats, hung the

  leathern arm

  of a giant. He said: ‘I see no freedom in peace and

  justice.

  I see no meaning in freedom that leaves some part of

  my soul

  in chains. I grant, it’s a noble ideal, this thing you

  purpose—

  a state well governed, where no man tromps on another

  man’s heel,

  the oppressed are aided, the orphan and the widow win

  justice in the courts,

  and each man holds to his place fox the benefit of all.

  But I’d lose

  my wind in a state so noble. I’d develop maladies— mysterious, elusive, beyond any doctor’s skill. Like a bat in a cage, I’d wither, for no clear reason, and die.’ The

  boy

  at the hearthstone smiled, sharp-eyed, heart teeming

  with thought. The king

  with mild blue eyes—cheeks painted, startling on that

  dignified face—

  shook his head slowly, amused. ‘You speak to me of

  gentle apes

  in Africa and claim their kinship. Let Argus advise us, who’d studied the world’s mechanics for most of a

  century.

  Is that indeed our line?—In this colder land we say mankind is a child of the cat, old source of our

  crankiness,

  our peculiar solitude—for though we may sometimes

  hunt in packs,

  and share the kill, if necessary, we have never hunted like brotherly wolves or bears.’ He smiled.

  ‘By an
other legend, the gods made man from the skull

  of a rat,

  that grim and deeply philosophical scavenger who picks,

  light-footed,

  perilously cunning, through houses of the dead, spreads

  corpses’ sickness

  to all he meets, yet survives himself and laughs at

  carnage

  and takes bright trinkets from the slaughtered.

  “ ‘Be that as it may—‘ The king glanced over at his boy.’—If my

  blood’s essence

  is not the gentleness and wisdom of Zeus but, whatever

  the reason,

  has murder in it, as well as devotion and trust like

  a boy’s,

  then freedom is not for me what it is for Zeus. The

  freedom

  of the eyes is to see and the ear to hear; the freedom

  of the soul

  is to love and defend one’s friends, assert one’s power,

  behead

  one’s enemies, poison their streams.’ He smiled. ‘My

  words appall you.

  But come! It was not I who proclaimed the supreme

  value

  of liberty. I might well admire the state you dream of, where nature’s law is replaced by peace and justice—

  though I would not

  visit the place. But do not mistake these noble goods for freedom.’ He reached his hand to my knee and

  smiled again.

  Your course will no doubt prosper, Jason. Your

  philosophy has

  a ring to it, a nobility of glitter that can hardly fail to appeal to the collector rat. Ten thousand years from

  now

  men will look back to the Akhaians with pious

  admiration, and to us,

  the treacherous Kelts, as bestial and superstitious,

  to whom

  good riddance. And they may have a point, I grant. And

  yet you’ll not

  outlast us, lover of mind. From age to age, while your spires shake in the battery of the sun, we, living

  underground,

  will gnaw the animal heart, doing business as usual.’ I turned to the boy, a child with the gentleness of

  Hylas. I’d heard

  him sing, and his voice was sweeter than dawn in a

  wheat-filled valley.

  The severed heads of enemies hanging on the hall’s dark

  beams

  shed tears at his song, and the greatest of harpers,

  Orpheus himself,

  was silenced by the music’s spell. “You, too, believe all

  this?’

  I asked and smiled. For the Kelts were friends; I was

  not such a fool

  as to hope to convert their mysterious hearts and brains

  by Akhaian

  reasoning. The boy said shyly, How can I doubt what I’ve heard from the cradle up? This much at least

  seems true

  for both of you: You’d gladly fight to the death for

 

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