John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

However,

the charge, whatever its source, requires an answer.”

He turned

to Jason, bowed to him and waited. The warlike son of

Aison

sat head-bent, still frowning. At last he glanced up, then

rose,

and Kreon sat down, gray-faced. The smile half breaking

at the corners

of Jason’s mouth was Athena’s smile; the dagger flash

in his eyes was the work

of Hera. Love was not in him, though his voice was

gentle.

“My friends,

I stand accused of atrocities,” he said, “and the chief is

this:

I have severed my head from my heart, a point made

somehow clear

by dark, bifarious allegory. I have lost my soul to a world where languor cries unto languor, where

cicadas sing

‘Perhaps it is just as well.’ In the real world — the world

which I

have lyred to its premature grave — there is love between

women and men,

faith between men and the gods. If you here believe all

that,

believe that in every condition the good cries fondly to

the good,

and the heart, by its own pure fire, can physician the

anemic mind,

I would not dissuade you. Faith has a powerful

advantage over truth,

while faith endures. But as for myself, I must track

mere truth

to whatever lair it haunts, whether high on some noble

old mountain,

or down by the dump, where half-starved rats scratch

by as they can,

and men not blessed with your happy opinions must feed

on refuse

and find their small satisfactions.

“My art is false, you say.

I answer: whatever art I may show is the world itself. The universe teems with potential Forms, though only

a few

are illustrated (a cow, a barn, a startling sunset); to trace the history of where we are is to arrive where

we are.

There are no final points in the journey of life up out of silence: there are only moments of process, and in some

few moments,

insight. Search all you wish for the key I’ve buried, you

say,

in the coils of my plot, Koprophoros. The tale, you’ll

find,

is darker than that — and more worthy of attention. It

exists.

It has its history, its dreadful or joyful direction. The

ghostly allegory

you charge me with is precisely what my tale denies. The truth of the world, if I’ve understood it,

is this:

Things die. Alternatives kill. I leave it to priests to speak of eternal things.

“And as for you, Paidoboron,

if I claim that the world has betrayals in it, don’t howl

too soon.

Every atom betrays; every stick and stone and galaxy. Notice two lodestones: notice how they war. But turn

one around

and behold how they lock like lovers embraced in their

tomb. So this:

some things click in. Some sanctuaries, at least for a

time,

are inviolable. What fuses the metals in the ice-bright

ring

of earth and sky, burns mind into heart, weds man to

woman

and king to state? What power is in them? That,

whatever

it is, is the golden secret, precisely the secret I stalk and all of us here must stalk. I’ve told you failure on

failure,

holding back nothing. But I still have a tale or two to

tell—

meaningless enough in the absence of all I’ve told

already—

that you may not mock so quickly.”

He was silent. Had he tricked them again,

danced them out of their wits like a prophet of

gyromancy?

Athena smiled and winked at Jason. Dark Aphrodite glanced at Hera for assurance that all was well.

Then Kreon

rose again, gazed round. When no one dared to speak, he turned to his slave Ipnolebes, who nodded in silence. Kreon rubbed his hands together, furious, and at last pronounced the matter closed. He dismissed the whole

assembly

till the hour of the evening meal, when Jason would

resume his tale,

and, taking the princess’ elbow in his hand, bowing to

left

and right, unsmiling, he descended from the dais. As

the two passed

the threshold, the others all rose and followed, and so

the hall

was emptied except for the slaves — near the door the

Northerner

and the boy. The goddess vanished. The vision went

dark. I heard

the nightmare crowd on the move again, in the shadow

of the beast,

smothered in the skirts of the prostitute. Then sound,

too, ceased,

and I hung in darkness, nowhere, clinging to the oak’s

rough bark.

A blore of wind, like the breeze at the entrance to a cave,

tore

at the ragged tails of my overcoat, sheathed my

spectacles in ice.

I stood, by the goddess’ will, in Medeia’s room. Pale

light

fell over her, fell swirling, burning on the golden fleece beside her, and then moved on, moved past the two old

slaves

to the door where the children watched. I could not

look at them

for pain and shame. Dreams they might be, as old and

pale

as ghosts in the cairns of Newgrange, but dream or

solid flesh,

they were children, inexplicably doomed. How could

I close my wits

on truths so weird? (Who can believe in the spectre

who walks

leukemia wards, who stands severe above laughing girls whose hearts pump dust? Who can believe those

pictures in the news

of a million children, senselessly cursed, dying in

silence,

caught up in Dionysos’ wars, or the refugee camps of Artemis?) All time inside them … And then I did

look,

searching their eyes for the secret, and found there

nothing. Softly,

my guide, invisible around me, spoke. “Poor dim-eyed

— stranger,

you’ve understood the question, at least. Look! Look

hard!

Study their eyes, windows of the world you seek and

they

have not yet dreamed the price of: the timeless instant.

They have

no plans, only flimmering dreams of plans, intentions

dark

as the lachrymal flutter of corpse-candles. Their time

is reverie.

But already will is uncoiling there. They flex their

fingers,

restless at the long dull watch. The garden is filled with

birds,

bright sunlight. They remember a cart with a broken

wheel, a cave

of vines by the garden wall. They have now begun to be of two minds. Now love and hate grow thinkable, sacrifice and murder, mercy and judgment. And now,

look close:

with a glance at each other — sly grins, infectious, so

that we smile too,

remembering, projecting (for we, we too, were children

once,

slyly becoming ourselves, unaware of the risk) — they

step,

soundless as deer, to the doorway and through it to

their liberty.

Or so they guess, unaware that the house will vanish,

and the garden—

and the palsied slaves they’ve slipped they will find

transmogrified

to skulls, bits of ashen cloth, dark bone. And they’ll

wring their hands,

restless again, and search in children’s eyes for peace, in vain. Yet there is peace. Strange peace: from the

blood of innocents.

You’ll see. The gods have ordained it.” I stared, alarmed

at that,

and snatched off my glasses to hunt with my naked

eyes for the shade—

she-witch, goddess, I knew not what — but no trace

of her.

I turned up the collar of my coat, for the room had

grown chilly. And then

she spoke one brief word more: “Listen.”

On the bed, eyes staring,

Medeia spoke, ensorcelled — death-pale lips unmoving. I glanced, alarmed, at her eyes and my glance was held;