John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

said,

eyes wicked, grinning in spite of himself: ‘You’re

unimpressed.

Some trick, you imagine? You think the goddess of

will (all praise

to her name) may not have been here with us?’ Then

I too smiled.

“We made a good deal of noise,” I said, and avoided his

eyes.

‘ If I were a mountain, a stormy sky, and were shaken

to the heart

by noise like that, I might do almost anything — goddess or no goddess.’ The old seer chuckled, crazy-eyed. ‘Shrewd observation,’ he whispered, bending close.

‘Bravo!

All very well for a big ignoramus like Herakles to shudder and shake at magic tricks. We know better,

you and I!

Mopsos, king of all augurers, marching to his death—

and for what?

And Jason, robbed of his Lemnian beauty, forced on a

senseless,

pointless mission — abandoning his mother to

ignominious

death, wasting his wonderful oratory (“Jason of the

Golden

Tongue,” as they say) outshouttng cacophonous winds

and drums:

pawn of the fates, murderer of friends that he meant

no harm to,

weary wanderer in a faithless world (alas!

lack-a-day!)—

no wonder if the racket that shakes Bear Mountain to

her deepest stones,

the clatter that whisks away winds — has no faintest

effect on him!

What has the son of Aison to do with the goddess of will? — Jason, who’s gazed into the Pit!’ He cackled,

delighted with himself.

‘Are we brutes? Are we Balls on Inclined Planes? Are

we mindless? — noseless

to the stink, everywhere, of Death? Let Philosophy set

it down

that love is illusion, from which it follows, the gods are

illusion,

which proves in turn that Mother Nature, who gives

such joy,

is an old whore earning her keep!’ Then suddenly:

‘How do you feel?’

He stared, intense, his eyes so bright you’d have thought

some demon

had entered him. ‘How do you feel?’ I thought about it. I felt like a man renewed. It was completely senseless. How can the mind know all its mechanics and scoff

at aid,

cold-blooded, and yet be aided? Nevertheless, I was a man reborn. It was stupid. ‘Me too!’ old Mopsos said, cackling, doing a dancestep, lunatic joy. ‘We’ve had us some times!’ he said. We’ve done us some deeds!! Old

Hera’s in us!!!’

He paused. ‘Whatever that may mean.’ He winked,

then aimed

his staff at a tree. It was filled, suddenly, with fire.

He aimed

at a rock: it burst into feathers, screeched, flapped off.

‘So much

for the quacks on the isle of Elektra!’ he said. Then,

sobering,

adjusting his robe and beads — the robe was none too

clean—

he bowed, taking my arm. And so we returned to the

ship,

all dignity, solemnly walking in step. And so sailed on. Idmon, younger of the seers, came over to my rowing

bench.

‘Pick a halcyon, any halcyon,’ he said. He winked.

“Faith wasn’t our business. Herakles’ business, maybe. Sailing the cool treacherous seas of the barbarians …”

The wind dropped down to nothing. We rowed— ‘in

a spirit of friendly

rivalry,’ mad Idas said, rolling his eyes, making fun of

God knew

what. Still, that’s what we did, each trying to shame

all others.

The windless air had smoothed out the waves on every

side;

the sea was asleep. We rowed, driving the singing ship, swift as a skate, by our own power. It seemed to us— skimming the sea like a gull, a wingèd shark — not even Poseidon’s team, the horses with the whirlwind feet,

could have overtaken us.

But later, when the sea was roughened by the winds that blow down rivers in the afternoon, we wearied and

relaxed,

and we left it to Herakles alone to haul us in, our

muscles

shaky with exhaustion, throats burned raw by panting.

Each stroke

he pulled sent a shudder through the ship. His sweat

ran rivers down

his face and dripped from his nose and chin to his

wide chest

and belly, tightened like a fist. Young Hylas beamed at

him, watching,

and old Polyphemon, son of Eilatos, grinned, shaking his hoary head, and swore that not even in his prime,

when he fought

with the Lapithai, striking centaurs down with his bare

fists,

had he or any other man pulled oars with the power of Herakles. ‘It looks as if by himself hell bring us to the Mysian coast! the old man said. Herakles

grinned,

or tried to, his face contorted with the effort of his

rowing. But then,

as we passed within sight of the Rhydakos and the great

barrow

of Aigaion, not far from Phrygia, Herakles — ploughing enormous furrows in the choppy sea — snapped his long

oar

and tumbled sideways, clear off the bench. He looked

up, outraged,

the handle of the oar in his two hands, the paddle end

sweeping

sternward, away out of sight. We laughed. He was

angrier yet,

sitting up, speechless and glaring. We took up the

rowing as best

we could, weary as we were. Even now he could hardly

speak,

a man not used to idleness.

“We made our landfall.

It was dusk; the time of day when the ploughman,

thinking of his supper,

reaches his home at last and, pausing at the door, looks

down

at his hands, begrimed and barked, and curses the tyrant

belly

that drives men to such work. We’d struck the

Kianian coast,

close to Mount Arganthon and the famous estuary of Kios. Luckily, tired as we were, the people greeted us kindly, supplying our needs with sheep and wine. I sent a few of the Argonauts to fetch dry wood, others to

gather up

leaves from the fields and bring them to the camp for

bedding; still others

I set to twirling firesticks; the rest of us filled the winebowls, getting them ready for the usual sacrifice to Apollo, god of landings.

“But Herakles, son of Zeus,

left us to work on the feast by ourselves and set out,

alone—

attended by unseen ravens, the night’s historians— for the woods, anxious before all else to make himself

an oar

to replace the one he’d broken. He wandered around till

at last

he discovered a pine not burdened much with branches,

and not

full grown — a pine like a slender young poplar in height

and girth.

When he saw it would do, he laid his bow and quiver

down,

took off his loinskin, and began by loosening the pine’s

hold

with blows of his bronze-studded club. Then he trusted

to his own power.

Legs wide apart, one mighty shoulder pressed against

the tree,

he seized the trunk low down with his hands and,

pulling so hard

his temples bulged, face dark with blood, he tore up

the pine

by the roots. It came up clods and all, like a ship’s mast

torn

from its stays, the wedges and pins coming with it,

when sudden fashes

break without warning as Orion sets in anger. When

he’d rested,

he picked it up, along with his bow and arrows,

loinskin

and club, and started back, balancing the tree on his

shoulder.

“Meanwhile Hylas had gone off by himself with a

bronze ewer,

looking for a hallowed spring where he might get

drinking water

for the evening meal. Herakles himself had trained

the boy

in the business of a squire. He’d had the boy since the

day he struck down

Hylas’ father, Theiodamas, king of the Dryopians. Not one of Herakles’ nobler moments. They were a