John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

rising

tier on tier, as gleaming white as a giant’s skull, hove dreamlike into the clouds, the sea-blue eagles’

roads,

like a god musing on the world. As far as the eye could

see—

mountains, valleys, slanting shore, bright parapets— the world belonged to Kreon.

The smells of cooking came,

meat-scented smoke, to the portico where Kreon stood, his hand on his faithful servant’s arm, his bald head

tipped,

listening to sounds from the house. The meal was served.

The guests

talked with their neighbors, voices merging as the sea’s

welmings

close to a gray unintelligible roar on barren shoals, the clink of their spoons like the click of far-off rocks

shifting.

“Old friend,” the king said thoughtfully, looking at

the river with eyes

sharpened to the piercing edge of an evening songbird’s

note,

“all will be well, I think.” He patted the slave’s hard arm. “We’ll be all right. The fortunes of our troubled house

are at last

on the upswing. Trust me! We’ve nothing more to do

now but wait,

observe with an icy, calculating eye as tension mounts — churns up like an oracle’s voice. We’ll see,

my friend,

what abditories of weakness, secret guile they keep, what signs of virtue hidden to the casual glance.

Remember:

No prejudgments! Cold and objective as gods we’ll

watch,

so far as possible. The man we finally choose we’ll choose not from our own admiration, but of simple necessity. Not the best there, necessarily — the mightiest fist, the smoothest tongue. Our line’s unlucky. The man we

need

is the man who’ll make it survive. Pray god we recognize

him!”

He smiled, though his brow was troubled. It seemed

more strain than he needed,

this last effort of his reign, choice of a successor. He

stood

the weight of it only by will. He opened his hands like a

merchant

robbed of all hope save one gray galleon, far out at sea, listing a little, but ploughing precariously home. “What

more

can a man do?” he said, and forced a chuckle. “Some may well be surprised when we’ve come to the end of

these wedding games.

We two know better than to lay our bets on wealth alone, honor like poor Jokasta’s, or obstinate holiness, genius like that of King Oidipus — the godly brain he squanders now on gulls and winds and crawling

things.

Yet some man here in this house …” The king fell

silent, brooding.

“And yet there’s one man more I wish were here,” he

said.

He pulled at his nose and squeezed one eye tight shut.

“A man

with contacts worth a fortune, a man who’s talked or

fought

his way past sirens, centaurs, ghosts, past angry seas … a slippery devil, honest, not overly scrupulous, flexible, supple, cautious without being cowardly, a proven leader of men … ‘the man who brought

help,’ as they call him,

for such is the meaning of his name.” The slave at his

elbow nodded,

smiling. His eyes were caves. King Kreon wrinkled

his forehead

and picked at his silvery beard like a man aware, dimly, of danger crouching at his back.

Just then, from an upper room,

a girlish voice came down — Pyripta, daughter of the

king,

singing, not guessing that anyone heard. Wan, giant

Kreon

raised one finger to his lips, tipped up his head. His

servant

leered, nodding, wringing his fingers as if the voice were sunlight falling on his ears. She sang an ancient

song,

the song Persephone sang before her ravishment.

Artemis, Artemis, hear my prayer, grant my spirit the path of the eagle; in high rocks where only the stars sing, there let me keep my residence.

When the song ended, tears had gathered in the old

king’s eyes.

He said, “Ah, yes”—rubbing his cheeks with the back

of his hand.

“Such beauty, the innocent voice of a child! Such

radiance!

— Forgive me. Sentimental old fool.” He tried to laugh,

embarrassed.

The god feigned mournful sympathy, touching an ash-gray cheek with fingers gnarled like

roots.

Kreon patted his servant’s arm, still rubbing his

streaming

eyes and struggling for control. He smiled, a soft

grimace.

“Such beauty! You’d think it would last forever, a

thing like that!

She thinks it will, poor innocent! So do they all, children blind to the ravaging forces so commonplace to us. They live in a world of summer sunlight, showers, squirrels at play on the lawn. They know of nothing

worse,

and innocently they think the gods must cherish them exactly as they do themselves. And so they should!

you’d say.

But they don’t. No no.” He rolled up his eyes.

“We’re dust, Ipnolebes. Withering leaves. It’s not a thing to break too soon to the young, but facts are facts.

Depend

on nothing, ask for nothing; do your best with the time you’ve got, whatever small gifts you’ve got, and leave

the world

a better place than you found it. Pass to the next

generation

a city fit for learning, loving, dying in.

It’s the world that lasts — a glorious green mosaic built of tiles that one by one must be replaced. It’s that— the world, their holy art — that the gods love. Not us. We who are old, beyond the innocent pride of youth, must bend to that, and gradually bend our offspring

to it.”

He sighed, head tipped. “She asks for freedom, lordless, childless, playing out life like a fawn in the

groves.

A dream, I’m sorry to say. This humble world below demands the return of the seed. Such is our duty to it. The oldest oak on the hillside, even the towering plane

tree,

shatters, sooner or later, hammered by thunderbolts or torn-up roots and all by a wind from Zeus. On the

shore,

we see how the very rocks are honed away, in time. Accept the inevitable, then. Accept your place in the

march

of seasons, blood’s successions. — In the end she’ll find,

I hope,

that marriage too, for all its pangs, has benefits.”

He smiled, turned sadly to his slave. “It’s true, you

know. The song

that moved us, there — bubbled up feelings we’d half

forgotten—

I wouldn’t trade it for a hundred years of childhood play. The gods are kinder than we think!” The servant nodded,

solemn.

Kreon turned away, still sniffling, clearing his throat.

“Carry a message for me, good Ipnolebes. Seek out Jason — somewhere off by himself, if that proves feasible — and ask him, with all your skill and

tact

— with no unwarranted flattery, you understand (he’s nobody’s fool, that Jason) — ask, with my

compliments,

that he dine in the palace tomorrow night. Mention our

friends,

some few of whom he may know from the famous days

when he sailed

the Argo. Tell him—” He paused, reflecting, his

eyebrows raised.

“No, that’s enough. — But this, yes!” His crafty grin came back, a grin like a peddler’s, harmless guile. ‘Tell

him,

as if between you and himself — tell him I seem a trifle ‘miffed’ at his staying away, after all I’ve done for him. Expand on that as you like — his house, et cetera.” The king laughed, delighted by his wit, and added, “Remind him of his promise to tell more

tales sometime.

Mention, between the two of you, that poor old Kreon’s hopelessly, sottishly caught when it comes to adventure

stories—

usual lot of a fellow who’s never been away, worn out his whole long life on record keeping, or sitting in