John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

through Zeus’s veins. ‘O holy child,’ the boy continued, ‘I knew your father, and your father’s father, Old

Tortoise Man,

and your great-grandfather, called Beam of Light, and

his father, called Thought,

and the father beyond — him too I know.

“ ‘O King of the Gods,

I have known the dissolution of the universe. I have

seen all perish

again and again! O, who will count the universes passed away, or the creations risen afresh, again and again, from the silent abyss? Who will number

the passing ages

of the world, as they follow endlessly? And who will

search

the wide infinities of space to number the universes side by side — each one ruled by its Zeus and its ladder of higher powers? Who will count the Zeuses in all

of them,

side by side, who reign at once in the innumerable

worlds,

or all those Zeuses who reigned before them, or even

those

who succeed each other in a single line, ascending

to kingship,

one by one, and, one by one, declining?

“ ‘O King,

the life and reign of a single Zeus is seventy-one aeons, and when twenty-eight Zeuses have all expired, one

day and night

have passed in the demiurgic Mind. And the span of the

Mind in such days

and nights is one hundred and eight years. Mind

follows Mind,

rising and sinking in endless procession. And the

universes,

side by side, each with its demiurgic Mind and its Zeus, who’ll number those? Like delicate boats they float

on the fathomless

waters that form the Unnamable. Out of every pore of that body a universe bubbles and breaks.’

“A procession of ants

had made its appearance in the hall while the boy was

saying this.

In a military column four yards wide the tribe paraded slowly across the gleaming tiles. The mysterious boy paused and stared, then suddenly laughed with an

astonishing peal,

but immediately fell into thoughtful silence.

“ ‘Why do you laugh?’

stammered Zeus. “Who are you, mysterious being in

the deceiving guise

of a boy?’ The proud god’s throat and lips were dry,

and his voice

kept breaking. ‘Who are you, shrouded in deluding mists?’

“ ‘I laughed,’

said the boy, ‘at the ants. Do not ask more. I laughed

at an ancient

secret. It is one that destroys.’ Zeus regarded him,

unable to move.

At last, with a new and clearly visible humility, the great god said, ‘I would willingly suffer annihilation for the secret, mysterious visitor.’ The boy smiled and nodded. ‘If so, you have nothing to fear. It is

merely this:

The gods on high, the trees and stones, are apparitions in a fantasy. Without that dream in the Unnamable

Mind

there is neither life nor death, neither good nor evil.

The wise

are attached neither to good nor to evil. The wise

are attached

to nothing.’

“The boy ended his appalling lesson and, quietly,

he gazed at his host. The king of the gods, for all his

splendor,

had been reduced in his own regard to insignificance.

“Meanwhile another amazing apparition had entered

the hall.

He appeared to be some hermit. He wore no clothes.

His hair

was gray and matted except in one place at the back

of his head,

where he had no hair at all, having lain on that one

part

for a thousand years. His eyes glittered, cold as stone.

“Zeus, recovering from his first shock, offered the

old man

wine and honey, but the hermit refused to eat. Zeus

then asked,

falteringly, concerning the old man’s health. The

hermit

smiled. ‘I’m well for a dying man,’ he said, and nodded. Zeus, disconcerted by the man’s stern eyes, could say

no more.

Immediately the boy took over the questioning, asking

precisely

what Zeus would have asked if he could. ‘Who are you,

Holy Man?

What brings you here, and why have you lain in one

place so long

that the hair has worn from your head? Be kind

enough, Holy Man,

to answer these questions. I am anxious to understand.’

“Presently

the old saint spoke. ‘Who am I? I am an old, old man. What brings me here? I have come to see Zeus, for

with each hair

I lose from my head, a new Zeus dies, and when the

last hair falls

I too shall die. Those I have lost, I have lost by lying motionless, waiting for peace. I am much too short

of days

to have use for a wife and son, or a house. Each

eyelid-flicker

of the Unnamable marks the decease of a demiurgic

Mind. Therefore

I’ve devoted myself to forgetfulness. For every joy, even the joy of gods, is as fragile as a dream — a

distraction

from the Absolute, where all individual will is

abandoned

and all is nothing and nothing is everything, and all

paradox

melts. My friend, I was an ant in a thousand thousand

lives,

and in a thousand thousand lives a Zeus, and in others

a king,

a slave, a rat, a beautiful woman. I have wept and torn my hair and longed for death at the graves of a

billion billion

daughters and sons; a billion billion of those I loved have died in wars, plagues, earthquakes, floods. And

with every stroke

of catastrophe, my chest has screamed in pain. All

these

are feeble metaphors — as I am metaphor, a passing

dream,

and you, and all our talk. But this is true: Life seeks to pierce the veil of the dream. I seek forgetfulness,

silence.’

“Abruptly, the holy man ceased and immediately

vanished, and the boy,

in the same flicker of an eyelid, vanished as well.

And Zeus

was in his bed, with Hera in his arms. And he saw,

despite his dream,

that she was beautiful. Then Zeus, King of the Gods,

wept.

At dawn when he opened his eyes and remembered,

Zeus smiled.

He commanded the craftsman to create a magnificent

arbor for Hera,

and after that he demanded nothing more of him.” So the harper of the gods sang, and so he closed. With his last word, the hall of the gods went dark.

I was alone.

“Strange visions, goddess!” I whispered, “stranger and

stranger!” She was gone.

Then, like a sea-blurred echo of Apollo’s harp, I heard the music of Kreon’s minstrel. Soon I saw Kreon’s hall, the sea-kings gathered in their glittering array, and

Kreon himself

at the high table, his daughter beside him, blushing,

shy—

like a spirit, I thought: more child than woman. Beside

her, Jason

stood with his strong arms folded, muscular shoulders

bare,

his cloak a luminous crimson, bound at the waist with

a belt

gold-studded, blacker than onyx. Behind him, to his

left, stood the shadow

of Hera; at his feet sat Aphrodite, and behind his

right shoulder,

lovely as rooftops at dawn, the matchless, gray-eyed

Athena.

“Ipnolebes,” Kreon whispered, “command that the

meal be brought.”

The old king chuckled, patted his hands together,

winked.

Ipnolebes bowed and, moving off quickly, quietly,

was gone.

The hall waited — dim, it seemed to me: discolored as if by age or smoke. The sea-kings’ treasures, piled high

against

walls that seemed, when I first saw them, to be

gleaming sheets

of chalcedony and mottled jade, with beams of ebony, were dark, ambiguous hues, uncertain forms in the

flicker

of torches. There were figures of goldlike substance—

curious ikons

with staring eyes. There were baskets, carpets, bowls,