Jason and Medeia

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Jason and Medeia Page 50

by John Gardner


  There, to my surprise, he let it drop.

  And then I too heard, breaking through the smoky dark, the

  queer sound Oidipus

  strained to catch: a rhythmic cry and the faint whisper of oars swinging. He leaned both hands on the crook of

  his cane.

  “More company,” he said, and braced himself. A moment

  later

  I saw the Argo’s silver fangs come gliding out of

  darkness,

  the long oars swinging like the legs of a huge, black

  sea-insect,

  crusted with ice. The sail was stiff. On the island

  around us

  the ice and dark snow reddened, as if the war had

  come nearer,

  riding in the black ship’s wake.

  Straight in toward shore she came, the oars now lifted like wings, and as soon as the

  keel-beam struck,

  down leaped a man in a great brown cape that he

  swirled with his arm

  as if hoping to frighten the night. His icy beard and

  mane

  were wild, his bright eyes rolling. When he saw me he

  halted and covered

  his eyes with both hands, then carefully peeked through

  his fingers at me.

  At last, convinced that the curious sight was no

  madman’s dream,

  he bowed to me, then turned and tip-toed over, through

  the snow,

  to Oidipus. He whispered, smile flashing, “My name is

  Idas,

  or so men call me, and I answer to it. Why increase,

  say I,

  the general confusion? Which is, you may say, an

  immoral opinion.”

  He glanced past his shoulder to the ship, then whispered

  in Oidipus’ ear:

  “I deftly reply, after careful study: I burned down the

  city

  of Corinth, sir, in the honest opinion it belonged to a

  man

  who’d sorely grieved me—but found too late that the

  fellow had left it

  to my dear old friend, in whom I was only, at worst,

  disappointed,

  which is not, you’ll agree, just cause for destroying an

  old friend’s town.

  But what’s done is done, as Time is forever inkling at us.

  And, being a reasonable man, within limits, I turned

  my faltering

  attention to doing him good. I must make you privy to

  a secret:

  He’d had it worse than I, this friend. He’d lost his lady.

  A nasty business. She murdered his sons and reduced

  him to tatters—

  it’s the usual story. In the merry words of our old friend

  Phineus,

  ‘Dark, unfeeling, unloving powers determine our

  human

  destiny.’ He was beaten hands-down, poor devil. She

  made

  considerable noise about oath-breaking, and believed

  herself,

  as well she might, since she spoke with enormous

  sincerity,

  which is to say, she was wild with rage. She called down

  a curse,

  that Jason should die in sorrow and failure, on his own

  Argo—

  a curse that may well be fulfilled. On our sailyard,

  ravens perch,

  creatures beloved of the master of life and death,

  Dionysos.

  Having struck, she fled to Aigeus’ kingdom in

  Erekhtheus,

  which now we seek. Our luck has not been the best, as

  you see.

  Winds play sinister games with us; familiar landmarks change in front of our eyes, outrageously cunning—no

  doubt

  ensorcelled by Jason’s lady. From this it infallibly

  follows,

  if you’ve traced all the twists of my argument, that

  we’ve landed here

  to gain some clue to our bearings.” He smiled, eyes slyly

  narrowed,

  pulling at his fingers and making the knuckles pop.

  King Oidipus

  with his old head bent as if looking at the ground, said

  nothing for a time.

  At last he said, “Let me speak with this man.” Mad Idas

  bowed.

  “Of course! I had hoped to suggest it myself!” He

  signalled to the ship,

  and a moment later Lynkeus jumped down, and after

  him Jason.

  They came toward us. “You must understand,” mad Idas

  said,

  “that my friend cannot speak. He was once the most

  eloquent of orators,

  but a secret he suspected for a long time, and

  continually resisted,

  eventually got the best of him and took up residence in his mouth. Look past his teeth and you’ll see it there,

  blinking like an owl,

  huddled in darkness. He’s grown more mute than Phlias,

  who could answer

  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

  th
an 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

 

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