John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

it vanished. If there was some meaning in that, we

evaded it;

blinked twice, stared fiercely ahead.

“We’d come to Kallikhorus;

we passed the tomb of Sthenelos, son of Aktor, who

fought

with Herakles in his Amazon raid. His dusky ghost rose up and signalled to the ship in his warlike panoply, moonlight gleaming on the four plates and the scarlet

crest

of his helmet. We brailed the sail. The old seer

Mopsos said

we must stay, put the ghost to rest. I was not in a

mood to debate,

still half dazed by my insight into the beast we’d

become

a part of — Mopsos an impulse, an instinct, a pressure

not to be

resisted. I gave the order. We cast our hawsers ashore, paid honor to the tomb. Libations; sheep. Sang praise

of the ghost

invisible except for his armor. And then set forth once

more

on the sea. At dawn, came round the Cape of Karambis, and all that day and on through the night we rowed

the Argo

north along endless shores. So came to the Assyrian

coast,

and took on water, sheep, recruits — three friends of

Herakles

stranded by him long since, when he fought with the

Amazons.

They bore no grudge, as was right. We took them

aboard in haste—

the wind brooked no delay. So, that same afternoon, rounded the headland that cantled above us like a

stone sheltron

guarding the Amazons’ harbor. The old men told us a

curious

story of the place. They said that once there Herakles captured the daughter of Ares, Hippolyta’s younger sister Melanippa. He took her by ambush, intending to rape

her,

but Hippolyta gave him her own resplendent cestus by

way

of ransom, and when he saw her naked, that beautiful

virgin—

in later days she was Theseus’ queen — the great oaf

wept,

all his virtue in his senses. The queen wouldn’t lie with

him;

the man couldn’t think what to do. He might have won,

then and there,

his war, but he backed away from her — fled in confusion

to the woods—

abandoning the beautiful sisters, his half-wit head full

of grandiose

booms, such as Innocence, Honor, Dignity, Virtue.

— Not so

when Theseus came. He’d seen a great deal — had walked

through Hades

for his friend, when Peirithoös was taken. He knew the

meaninglessness of things.

Brought the Amazon forces to check and might, if he

wished,

have slaughtered them all. He held back. Observed the

naked virgin

on her knees before him, in chains, surrounded by

Akhaian guards,

men in great plumes, their war gear gleaming in the

tent, and said:

‘I’ll speak with her majesty alone.’ They laughed. Who

wouldn’t have laughed? —

but Theseus’ eyes were cool. The guards withdrew. He

said:

‘Queen, don’t answer in haste. I’ve won this dreary war, as you see by the plainest of signs. I could injure

you more, if I wished.

Chained hand and foot, you can hardly resist me. I

could teach you more

than you dream of humiliation. Yet all I’ve done — or

might

do yet — is nothing to the humiliation of life itself, this waste where men are abandoned to the whims of

gods. I’ve seen

what games they play with the dead.’ And he told of

Briareos

with his hundred whirling arms, a beast of prey more

terrible,

more ludicrous, to divine minds, than the hurricane that makes men scurry like squealing rats to shelter,

trembling,

whimpering obscenely, clinging to one another’s bodies

until,

unspeakably, their fear collapses to lust, and under the screaming winds they couple like dogs in a crate. He

told

of the Hydra, from whom the unwoundable dead fly

shrieking, bug-eyed,

chased by the thunderous rumble of the laughing gods.

Told then

of Tityus, whose obscene weight mocks finitude, turns heroes’ powerful thighs to ridiculous sticks, and

told

of pitch-black Prince Dionysos and his soundless dance.

‘All this,’

said Theseus, ‘I have seen. I can abandon you to death and all its foolishness, and follow, in time, as all men must; or we can forestall that mockery for now. Choose what you will. Either way, I grant

you, we’re

not much. We’ve sent our thousands, you and I, to

the cave

to wait for us. It hardly matters how long they wring their shadowy hands and watch. Choose what you will.’

The Amazon

laughed. ‘Nothing of my virgin beauty? Nothing, O king, of my fierce pride, my loyalty? Nothing of how, in the

hall,

passing the golden bowl, my great robes trailing, I

might

adorn your royal magnificence? — Nothing of my breasts,

my thighs?’

Theseus sighed. ‘I’d serve you better than you think.

I have seen

dead women — shadowy thighs, sweet breasts — going out

and away

like a sea.’

“Then, more than by all his talk of Briareos

and the rest, the queen was moved. She said: ‘You do

not fear

I’ll kill you, then, in your bed?’ Old Theseus touched

her chin,

tipped up her face. ‘I fear that, yes.’ And so he left her, and so the war was resolved; she became his queen.

The two

became one creature, a higher organism with meanings

of its own,

groping upward to a troubled kind of sanctity. (All that was later. We knew, at the time the old men told the

tale

of Herakles, nothing of Theseus’ later gains.) I saw, whatever the others saw, one more clear proof of the

beauty

of cool, tyrannical indifference, and the comic stupidity of Herakles’ simpering charity, girlish fright. The future lies, I thought, not with Herakles, howling in the night

for love

of a boy — much less with such boys themselves, sweet

scented, lost.

The future lies with the sons of the Argo’s officers, rowing in furious haste past peace, past every peace, searching out war’s shrill storm of conflicting wills.

“We struck

and plundered, then fled that Amazon land, moved on

to the shores

of the Khalybes, that dreary race that plants no corn, no fruit, never tames an ox. They dig in search of iron, darken the skies with soot. They see no sun or moon, and know no rest. From a mile offshore you can hear

their coughing,

dry as a valley of goats. We took on water and left in haste. We’d seen too much, of late, of death. Yet they were men like ourselves, we knew by the eyes in their

smudged faces,

blacker than Ethiopians’. Surely they had not meant to evolve into this! — But we had no heart to pity or ponder that. Ghost ships passed us. Vast, dark dreams, troubles in the smoky night. Sometimes the strangers

hailed us,

called out questions in a foreign tongue. We bent to

the oars,

pushed on. And so we eluded them.

“We passed the land

of the Tibareni, where men go to bed for their wives in

their time

of labor. He lies there groaning, with his quop of a head

wrapped up,

and his good wife lovingly feeds him, prepares a bath.

We passed

the land of the Mossynoeki, where the people make love in the streets, like swine in the trough; oh, they were a

pretty race,

as gentle as calves. When Orpheus sang to them of

shame, remorse,

of beasts and men, they smiled, blue-eyed, and

applauded his song.

We were baffled; finally amused. We kissed them,

women and men,

and left. Let the gods improve them. And so to the

island of Ares,

where the war god’s birds attacked us. We soon