John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

have

is yours.” Her sweet voice broke, and her lovely eyes

brimmed tears.

Athena looked thoughtful. She could not easily scorn

Aphrodite,

whatever her dullness. You might have imagined, in

fact, that the goddess

of mind felt a twinge of envy. She was silent, studying

her hands.

She knew nothing, daughter of Zeus, of love; but she

knew by cool geometry

that she was not all she might be — nor was Hera.

Hera spoke, choosing her words with care. “We are

not

asking the power of your hands. We would like you to

tell your boy

to use his wizardry and make the daughter of Aietes fall, beyond all turning, in love with the son of Aison. Her

aid

can make this business easy. There lives no greater

witch

in Kolchis, even though she’s young.”

Then poor Aphrodite paled

and lowered her eyes, blushing. “Perhaps Hephaiastos,”

she said, “

could make some engine. Perhaps I could speak to—”

Her voice trailed off.

“The truth is, he’s far more likely to listen to either of

you

than to me. He sasses me, scorns me, mocks me. I’ve

had half a mind

to break his arrows and bow in his very sight. Would

that be right, do you think?”

She wrung her fingers, looked pitiful. “As you well

know, his father and I

do everything for him. And how does he pay us? He

won’t go to bed,

refuses to obey us, says horrible, horrible things, and

in front of company!—

but he’s a child, of course. How can he learn to be loving if we don’t show love and forgiveness?

How can he learn

to have generous feelings toward others if we aren’t

first generous to him?

Parenthood really is a horror!”

Athena and Hera smiled

and exchanged glances. Aphrodite pouted. “People

without children,”

she said, “know all the answers. Never mind. I’ll do

what you ask,

if possible.”

Then Queen Hera rose and took Aphrodite’s

milkwhite hand in hers. “You know best how to deal

with him.

But manage it quickly if you can. We both depend on

you.”

She turned, started out. Athena followed. Poor

Aphrodite,

sighing, went out as well. She’d never been meant to

be a mother.

But too late now. (Married to a dreary old gimpleg—

she

who’d slept, in her youth, with the god of war himself!

— Never mind.

— Nevertheless, it was a bitter thing to waste eternity with a durgen, genius or not.) She wiped her eye and

sniffed.

She glanced through the world and saw Jason, watchful

on the Argo, a man

as handsome as Ares in his youth. And she turned her

eyes to the palace

of Aietes, and saw where Medeia slept, and suddenly

her heart

was warmed. The goddesses were right: they made a

lovely couple!

Things not possible in heaven she meant to shape on

earth.

The Argonauts were sitting in conference on the

benches of their ship.

Row on row sat silent as Jason spoke. “My friends, my advice is this — if you disagree, speak up. I’ll go with three or four others, to Aietes’ palace and parley,

find whether

he means to treat us as friends or to try out his army

against us.

No point killing a king who, if asked, would gladly

oblige us.”

With one accord, the Argonauts approved.

With the sons of Phrixos, and with Telamon, the father

of Alas,

and with Augeias, Aietes’ half-brother, the captain of

the Argonauts

set forth. Queen Hera sent a mist before them, so

covered the town

that no man saw them till they’d reached Aietes’ house.

And then

the mist lifted. They paused at the entrance, astonished

to see

the half-mile gates, the rows of soaring columns

surrounding

the palace walls, and high over all, the marble cornice resting on triglyphs of bronze. They crossed the

threshold then,

unchallenged, and came to the sculptured trees and,

below them, four springs,

Hephaiastos’ work. One flowed with milk, another

with wine,

the third with fragrant oil; but the fourth was the

finest of all,

a fountain that, when the Pleiades set, ran boiling hot, and afterward bubbled from the hollow rock ice-cold.

All that,

they would learn in time, was nothing to the

flame-breathing bulls of bronze

that the craftsman of the gods had created as a gift

for Aietes. There was also

an inner court with ingeniously fashioned folding doors of enormous size, each of them leading to a splendid

room

and to galleries left and right. At angles to the court,

on all sides

stood higher buildings. In the highest, Aietes lived

with his queen.

In another Apsyrtus lived, Aietes’ son, and in yet another, his daughters, Khalkiope and Medeia. That

Moment

Medeia was roaming from room to room in search of

her sister.

The goddess Hera had fettered Medeia to the house

that day;

as a rule she spent most of her day in the temple of

Hekate, of whom

she was priestess.

The voice of the narrator softened. I had to close

my eyes and concentrate to hear.

“And I was that child Medeia,

a thousand thousand lives ago. And yet one moment stands like a newly made mural ablaze in the sun.

I glanced

at the courtyard and saw, as the mist rose, seven men,

and their leader

wore black, and his cape was a panther skin. His hand

was on his sword,

and his look was as keen as a god’s. Without knowing

I’d do it, I raised

my hand to my lips, cried out. In an instant the

courtyard was astir—

Khalkiope joyfully greeting her sons, her children by

Phrixos,

my father approaching on the steps, all smiles, huge

arms extended,

and a moment later his servants were working with the

carcase of a bull,

more servants chopping up firewood, and others

preparing hot water

for baths. I stared from the balcony, half in a daze.

Stupidly,

unable to move a muscle, I watched sly Eros creep in (none of them saw him but me). In the porch, beneath

the lintel

he hastily strung his bow, slipped an arrow from the

quiver to the string, and,

still unobserved by the others, ran across the gleaming

threshold,

his blind eyes sparkles, and crouched at Jason’s feet.

He drew

the bow as far as his fat arms reached, and fired.

I could

do nothing. A searing pain leaped through me. My

heart stood still.

With a laugh like a jackal’s, the little brute flashed out

of sight and was gone

from the hall. The invisible shaft in my breast was

flame. Ah, poor

ridiculous Medeia! Time and again she darts a glance at Jason, and she cannot make out if the feeling is

mainly pain

or sweetness!

“How can I say what happened then? In a blur,

a baffling radiance, I moved through the feast. His eyes

dazzled,

his scent — new oil of his welcoming bath — filled me

with anguish

as blood and the smoke of incense-reckels confound the

dead.

“When they’d eaten and drunk their fill, my father

Aietes asked questions

of the sons of Khalkiope and Phrixos. I paid no

attention, but watched

that beautiful, godlike stranger. He never glanced once

at me,

but myself, I could see nothing else. For even if I closed

my eyes,

he was there, like the retinal after-image of a

candleflame.

Childish love-madness, perhaps. Yet I do not think so,