John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

done some wrong?

Have I rashly offended some god by, for instance,

misusing my skill?

If you help me and foil the justice of some great god,

will he turn

on you? Say no more! I give you my vow, it’s your

destiny.

No harm will come! I swear by Apollo, by my own

second sight,

by my cataracts, by the home of the dead — may the

powers of Hades

blast me to atoms if I die! No ultion will fall on you, no vengeful alastor seek you out by decree of the gods.’

“ ‘Very well,’ Zetes said. And now the brothers backed

off from Phineus,

ready to faint from his stink. At once, we prepared a

meal

for the poor old seer — the last the Harpies were to get.

And Zetes

and Kalais took up their watch, knees bent, a short way

off

from the prophet who squatted by the steps. Before he

could reach for a morsel,

down came the Harpies. They struck and were gone with

no more warning

than a lightning flash — the meal had vanished — and

we heard their raucous

chattering far out at sea. It seemed the whole world

had turned

to stench. But Zetes and Kalais too were gone, we saw— vanished like ghosts. They nearly caught them—

touched them, in fact.

But just as their fingers were closing on the creatures’

throats, the sky

went white, and a voice said: ‘Stop! The Harpies are

the hounds of Zeus!

Don’t harm them! They’ll trouble your friend no more,

swift sons of Boreas!’

And so the brothers turned back, and the curse was

ended.

“We cleansed

the old man’s house with sulphur fire, and washed him

in the creek,

then picked out the finest of the sheep we’d gotten from

Amykos

and made them a sacrifice to Zeus. We set out a banquet

in the hall

and sat with Phineus to eat. He ate like a man in a

dream,

astounded, baffled by the sweetness of life.

“When we’d eaten and drunk

our fill, the old man, sitting among us by the fireplace,

said:

‘Listen. I can tell you many things. Not all I know, but a good deal. I was a fool, once. I used to tell people the whole nature of the universe. Deeper and deeper I plunged into things long-hidden, until for some

strange reason

(which I understand) those Harpies came, called down

from the sky

(not “sent,” mind you: called —called down as surely

as if

I’d raised my hands and cried, “Harpies, snatch away

my food!”). Since then I’ve

learned my place, so to speak, or learned my weakness,

which is

the same: my strength. As the glutton eats till it kills

him, the visionary

sees. (My father, by the way, had a truly amazing eye for omens, though nothing like mine. But I’d rather not

speak of that.)’

He glanced past his shoulder, furtive, then smiled again

and gazed

at the flames with his chalk-white eyes. ‘I could tell you

many things,’

he said again, and smiled. His corrugate hands and

cheeks

glowed in the firelight, shining with joy of life like the

eyes

of a lover. We waited. He said, ‘I knew a man one time who suffered in a somewhat similar way. He murdered

his father

and married his mother, unwittingly. It was a classic

case.

I spoke to him many years afterward. I said, “Come,

come, Oidipus!

Surely you recognized the man you killed! Surely,

in the hindmost

corner of your mind you saw your image in his face

and remembered

his shadow between your mother’s breast and you.”

The king

considered me — or considered my voice (he was

blind) — then answered,

“Doubtless, Phineus. Clearly I was fooled, one way or

another:

if not by reality, then clearly by something in myself.

There are shadows

more than we dream, in the ancient cave of the

mind — dark gods,

conflicting absolutes, timeless and co-existent, who

battle

like atoms seething in a cauldron, each against all, to

assert

their raucous finales. Gods illogical as sharks. We roof their desperate work with the limestone and earth of

reason, but the roof

has cracks: as seepages, springs, dark meres push

through earth’s crust,

those old, mad gods burst through the mind’s thick

floor, mysterious

nightmares, twitches, accidents perverting our gentlest

acts.

I’ve made my peace with them.” I saw that events had

made him

wise. I said: “Perhaps the old man was not your father, merely another of reality’s tricks.” He smiled. “Perhaps. I’ve heard much stranger things. I’ve learned that the

primary law

of Time and Space is that nothing is merely what it is.

The seed

of the flower harbors the poison of the flower. I’ve

watched old lions

pause, befuddled by warring instincts, surrounded by

huntsmen.

I’ve watched my own soul — strange drives forcing me

higher and higher

to goals I can barely discern, and one of them is

beauty of mind,

true majesty; and one of them is death. I am, I’ve found a rhythm, merely: a summer and winter of creation

and guilt.

I’m the phoenix; the world. Thanatos and Eros in

all-out war,

the chariot drawn by sphinxes, one of them black,

one white:

one pulls toward joy, the other toward total eclipse of

pain.

With all that, too, I’ve made my peace. I’ve fallen out

of Time.

I stumble, a blind man guided by a stick. After all

this — sick,

meaningless, old — I’ve lost my reason at last: gone

sane.”

I said nothing, humbled by the wisdom Oidipus had

won — and not by

gift: by violence and grief. I could have expanded

what he knew.

I did for others. But I bowed, retired in silence. I have

said

to kings that their hope is ridiculous — the hope that

someday

kingdoms, heroes, philosophers, laws, may end forever the natural state — the jungle of the gods in all-out

war—

the secret whispers of the buried man, the violence

of seas,

benthal stirrings of the blind, pythonic corpse of

Atlantis,

the earth in upheaval, thundershouts, whirlwinds, foxes

snapping

at the rooster’s heels, or the silent victories of termites,

spiders,

ants. I have said to other men that the natural state is final. The forces that crack the efficient crust of mind crack nations: no hunger, no evil wish to seduce or kill is lost in the sky god’s brain. This darkling plain we flee toward love is the darkling plain toward which we flee.

But why

say all these things to him? I left him groping,

stumbling

stone to stone, as we all move stone to stone, each step catching the balance from the last, or failing to catch

it, tumbling us

humbly home to the dust. Don’t ask of a man like

Oidipus

programs, plans for improvement, praise of nobility.

(What are,

to him, great deeds of heroism? A matter of glands, nerves, old patterns of reaction: —a slight deficiency of iodine in the thyroid [I speak things long-forgotten], a sadistic aunt, a bump on the back of the head, and

the hero’s

a coward.) Every tragedy is fragmentary, a cut of Time in the cosmic whole, the veil without

which

nothing. A man’s inability to flee his father’s guilt, his city’s, his god’s. A man’s coming to grips with his

own

unalterable road to death. Don’t look to the gods for help in that. For the purpose you ask of them, they were

never there.

Earthquakes, fires, fathers, floods make no distinctions: the good survive and suffer, discover their truths and