John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

die,

like the wicked. Indeed, if anyone has the advantage,

it seems

the violent, crafty, unprincipled, who seize earth’s goods while the pious stretch out their arms in prayer, and

leave empty-handed.

I could tell you, Argonauts … Dark, unfeeling,

unloving powers

determine our human destiny. The splendid rewards, the ghastly punishments your priests are forever

preaching of,

have no real home but the shores of their violent brains.

Learn all

your poisons! There’s man’s peace!’ The old seer smiled

and sighed,

gentle as a kindly grandmother. The firelight flickered soft on his forehead and cheeks as he leaned toward

it, stretching

his hands to it. We studied him, polite.

“At last I said:

Phineus, these are strange words of yours. You tell us

tales

of doom, inescapable senselessness, yet all the while you smile, stretching your hands to the comfort of the

fire.’

“ ‘That’s true;

no doubt it’s a trifle absurd.’ But he nodded, smiling on. ‘I was sick to the heart, fighting reality tooth and nail, staggering, striking — and, behold! you’ve made me well.

My mind

made monsters up, and all the self-understanding in

the world

could no more turn them back than weir down history.’ He paused; then, abruptly, ‘I must muse no more on

that.’ He turned

his head, listening to the darkness in the room behind.

We began

to smell something. His face went pale. And then, once

more,

he smiled, remembered our presence, remembered the

fire. He said:

‘Life is sweet, Argonauts! Behold us, each of us

drinking down

his own unique sweet poison! May each see the bottom

of the cup!

As for myself, I can say this much with good assurance:

I will not

last much longer, now that the Harpies have left me.

The balance

is gone. Death’s not far hence, the death I carry within

me.

One grants one’s limits at last — one’s special strength.

One sinks

and drowns there, tranquil, no more at war with the

universe,

and therefore dying, like poison sumac become too

much

itself, unstriving, released at last into anorexy. — No, no! No alarm, dear friends! No distress! It was

a great service!

There is no greater joy, no greater peace, my friends, than dying one’s own inherent death, no other. The

truth!’

He paused, looked back at the darkness again with his

blind eyes.

He smiled. His smile came forward like a spear. ‘I will

tell you more:

You ask me: How can you smile, reach out to the

warmth, knowing all

you know? Let me tell you another thing about Oidipus. He knows where he is — where humanity is: in the tragic

moment,

locked in the skull of the sky: the eternal, intemporal

moment

which lasts to the last pale flash of the world. There

tragic man,

alone, doomed to be misunderstood by slumbering

minds,

exposed to the idiot anger of hidden and absent forces, nevertheless stands balanced. In his very loneliness, his meaningless pain, he finds the few last values his

soul

can still maintain, drive home, construct his grandeur by: the absolute and rigorous nature of its own awareness, its ethical demands, its futile quest for justice, absolute truth — dead-set refusal to accept some compromise, choose some sugared illusion!’ His face was radiant. He wrung his hands; his voice was unsteady. He was

deeply moved.

What could I say? It was not for me to pose the

question.

We were guests. He might be of use to us. I was glad,

however,

when Idas asked it. Sweat drops glistened on his ebony

forehead

like firelit jewels.

“ ‘Why? — Why soul? Why values? Why greatness?

Why not “Not love: just fuck”?’

“Old Phineus turned his face,

with a startled look, toward Idas. ‘I will tell you more,’

he said.

“ ‘We should sleep,” I broke in. ‘It’s a long trip, and

dawn near at hand.’

“The stink in the room was suddenly thick as a

dragon’s stench.

“All that day, far into the next night, Phineus talked. I rose, we all did, tiptoed out. By the following morning the stink was more than we could bear. There was

some dark meaning in it.

No matter. Aietes’ city was still a long way north, and that was where we were aimed. We’d gotten used

to it,

rowing, at one with the cosmos, as if we’d emerged

from something.

So old comedies end, the universe and man at one. Incorporation, purgation, harmony restored. Well, it wasn’t exactly like that. We had no complaints,

rowing

hard against an eastern wind. Some famous old tale …

Never mind.

Exhaustion was the name of the game.

‘Then came the stranger. I dreamed

(it was no mere dream) a terror beyond all the

wildest fears

of man. I dreamed Death came to me and smiled, and

said:

Fool, you are caught in an old, irrelevant tale. I will

speak

strange words to you, a language you won’t understand.

When you do,

too late! Such is my wile. I will tell you of horror beyond belief; you won’t believe, and so it will come. That is my trick. I will tell you: Fool, you are caught in

irrelevant forms:

existence as comedy, tragedy, epic. The heart divided, the Old Physician who cures the world by his ambles pie; the magician cook (Hamburger Mary), “Eternal

Verities,”

the world as the word of the Ausländer. Those are the

web I’ll

kill you by. And neither will you believe my power, or if you believe, imagine it. When I speak of death, you will think of your own; poor limited beast. What

man can’t face

his paltry private death? The words are, first: Trust not to seers who conceive no higher force than Zeus. And

next:

Beware the interstices. There lies thy wreck. Remember!’ I sat up, trembling in the dark, still ship; I cried out,

‘Wait!

Who are you?’ And then all at once the shore was sick

with light:

there were cities like rotten carcases black with

children dead;

there were women, befouled, deformed by mysterious

burns; and the burnt ground

glowed, a deadly green. ‘My name is Never,’ he said. ‘My name is: It Cannot Be. My name is Soon.’ I saw his eyes and cried out. Then I was alone. It was

dark.

I racked my wits for the meaning. Old Mopsos had

theories. Said:

‘You’ve listened too much to old Phineus, Jason, with

all his talk

of dark, opposing forces — Love and Death. You’ve

conceived

the final war, the ultimate goal of humanity.’ Then it isn’t true?’ I asked. He sighed. ‘Who knows?

Who cares?

Don’t think about it. It’s millennia off. The dream’s mere

chaff.’

I wasn’t convinced. I could change the outcome. Why

send, otherwise,

the terrible vision to me? He smiled when I asked him

that.

‘Write it down that truth is whatever proves necessary. Write down the dream as a dream. You created your

goblin, Jason,

fashioned him out of your own free-floating guilt and

the babble

of Phineus. Go back to sleep, take a friend’s advice.

— Go to sleep

and don’t give your fears more rope.’ He turned away.

I gazed

through darkness, listening. All still well; no cause for

alarm;

nothing afoot but the wind, as usual — endlessly walking, darkening into the void … Then, far away, a flash, a sun, and the shock of it sent out astounding, sky-high