John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

down Hylas’

father from passionate hatred of his evil State — never

mind

how cheap his murderous stratagem. He threatened

to lay

all Mysia waste out of passionate sorrow at loss of his

friend.

And in the same mad rage he murdered the sons of

Boreas,

who had loved him weakly, intellectually, and

prevented your ship

from turning back when you’d stranded him.

Wide-minded Zeus

did not bequeath his wisdom to his son: from

Alkmene he got

his brains. But the sky-god’s absolutes burned in

Herakles

like quenchless underground fire. They do not burn in

you.

Impotent, wily, colubrine, you’d buy and sell all man’s history, if it lay in your power. Ghost ships

indeed!

Civilization beware if Jason is the model for it! When feelings perish — the wound we share with the

cow and the lion—

then rightly the world will return to the rule of spiders.”

So

he spoke, and would say no more. And Aison’s son said

nothing.

I would not have given three straws, that moment,

for Jason’s hopes.

And then, all at once, came an eerie change. The

red-leaved branches

framed in the windows, blowing in the autumn wind,

snapped into

motionlessness. Every man, fly, cricket, the wine that fell streaming from the lip of the pitcher

in the slave boy’s hand,

hung frozen. It seemed the scene had become a divine

projection

on a golden screen. Then, in that stillness, Hera leaped

up,

eyes blazing, and, turning to Athena, flew into a rage.

“Sly wretch!”

she bellowed. I flattened to the floor. Her voice made

the rafters shake,

though it failed to awaken the sea-kings, frozen to

marble. Athena

fell a step backward, quaking. I had somehow dropped

my glasses,

so that all I could see of the goddesses was a luminous

blur.

I felt by the wall, furtive as a mouse, and at last I found

them,

hooked them over my ears in haste and peeked out

again.

The queen of goddesses wailed: “What a perfect fool

I was

to trust you even for an instant! You just can’t resist,

can you!

I think you’re my true ally, and I listen to Jason’s

cunning,

and I think, That Athena! The goddess of mind is surely

Zeus’s

masterpiece!’ And what are you thinking? You’re

dreaming up answers!

You don’t care! You don’t care about anything! He

stops to take a breath

and your quick wit darts to old Fatslats there, and you

inspire him with words

and you ruin all Jason’s accomplished! — And you,

you halfwit—”

She whirled to confront Aphrodite. “You caused the

whole thing! You change

your so-called mind and forget about Medeia and make

our Pyripta

all googley-poo over Aison’s son, and Athena can’t

help it,

she has to oppose you. It’s a habit, after all these

centuries.”

Aphrodite blushed scarlet and backed away as her sister

had done.

‘Your Majesty, do be reasonable,” Athena said. Her voice was soft — it was faint as a zephyr, in fact,

from fear.

But the wife of Zeus did not prefer to be reasonable. Her dark eyes shone like a stormcloud blooming and

rippling with light. “

Betrayal,” she groaned, and clenched her fists. “That’s

good. That’s really

good! You make Paidoboron talk of betrayal, how fine true loyalty is, and you, you don’t bat an eyelash at how your trick’s a betrayal of me! Does nothing in the world

count?

How can you do it, forever and ever manufacturing

structures,

when the whole vast ocean of Time and Space is

thundering aloud

on the rocks, and the generations of men are all on the run, rootless and hysterical?”

“Your Majesty, please,

I beg you,” Athena said. The queen of goddesses

paused,

still angry, I thought, but not unaware of gray-eyed

Athena’s

fear and helplessness. Aphrodite kept quiet, her dark eyes large. Hera waited — stern, but not tyrannical,

at last;

and at last Athena spoke, head bowed, her lovely arms stretched out, imploring. “You’re wrong, this once, to

reproach me, Goddess.

I do know the holiness of things. I know as well as you the hungry raven’s squawk in winter, the hunger of

nations,

the stench of gotch-gut wealth, how it feeds on children’s

flesh.

I’ve pondered kings and ministers with their jackals’

eyes,

presidents sweetly smiling with the hearts of wolves.

I’ve seen

the talented well-meaning, men not chained to greed, able to sacrifice all they possess for one just cause, fearless men, and shameless, earnestly waiting, lean, ready to pounce when the cause is right — waiting,

waiting—

while children die in ambiguous causes, and wicked men make wars — waiting — waiting for the war to reach

their streets,

waiting for some unquestionable wrong — waiting on

graveward …

Precisely because of all that I’ve done what I’ve done,

raised men

to test this lord of the Argonauts. I have never failed

him

yet, and I will not now; but I mean to annoy him to

conflict,

badger till he racks his brains for a proof he believes,

himself,

of his worthiness. I mean to change him, improve him,

for love

of Corinth, Queen of Cities. You speak of Space and

Time.

No smallest grot, O Queen, can shape its identity outside that double power: a thing is its history, the curve of its past collisions, as it locks on the

moment. What force

it learned from yesterday’s lions is now mere handsel

in the den

of the dragon Present Space. And therefore I raise

opposition

to Jason’s will, to temper it. His anguine mind, despite those rueful looks, will find some way.”

The queen

seemed dubious. It was not absolutely clear to me that she perfectly followed the train of thought. But hardly knowing what else to be, she was

reconciled.

Gray-eyed Athena, encouraged, and ever incurably

impish,

turned to the love goddess. “You, sweet sister,” she said

with a look

so gentle I might have wept to see it, “don’t take it to

heart

that the queen of goddesses turns on you in her fury

when I,

and I alone, am at fault. If my motives indeed were

those

she first suspected, then well might I call to my dear

Aphrodite—

sitting graveolent in her royal hebetation, surrounded by

all

her holouries — for help. Such is not the case, however. Let there be peace between us, I pray, as always.”

So speaking

she raised Aphrodite’s hands and tenderly kissed them.

The love goddess

sobbed.

Then everything moved again — the branches in the

windows,

the people, the animals, wine in the pitcher. Then Kreon

rose.

The roar died down respectfully.

“These are terrible charges,”

the old man said, and his furious eyes flashed fire

through the hall,

condemned the whole pack. “I’ve lived many years and

seen many things,

but I doubt that even in war I have seen such hostility. When Oidipus sought in maniacal rage that man who’d

brought down

plagues on Thebes — when Antigone left me in fiery

indignation

to defy my perhaps inhuman but surely most reasonable

law—

not then nor then did I see such wrath as has narrowed

the eyes

of Paidoboron and Koprophoros. It’s not easy for me to believe such outrage can trace its genesis to reason!