John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

carpentered illusions to wall off the truth, man’s

otherness—

eternal, inexpiable — from this. The Argonauts

remembered again

Prometheus’ screams — first thief of celestial fire;

remembered

the whispering ram on the mantle that Argus had made,

off Lemnos,

Phrixos listening, all attention, and all who looked on it listening, tensed for the secret; but the smouldering

ram’s eyes laughed,

and the secret refused their minds. Stay on! It’s not

far now!

A moral meaningless, outrageous. For a long time they

stared,

like mystics gazing at an inner sun, some nether

darkness,

pyralises. But now the sharp unsleeping eyes of the

snake had seen them,

and the head swung near like a barque on invisible

waters. Their minds

came awake again, and even the bravest of the

Argonauts shook

till their armor rang, and their legs no longer held

them. The serpent

hissed, and the banks of the river, the deep recesses

of the wood

threw back the sound, and far away from Titanian Aia it reached the ears of Kolchians living by the outfall of

Lykos.

Babies sleeping in their mothers’ arms were startled

awake,

and their mothers, awakening in terror, hugged them

close. Apophis,

in his sheath of blue-green scales, rolled forward his

interminable coils

like the eddies of thick black smoke that spring from

smouldering logs

and pursue each other from below in endless

convolutions. Then

he saw the witch Medeia rise from the ground and

stand,

her hair and eyes like flame, her strangely gentle voice invoking sleep, a sing-song soothing to his ancient mind; he heard her calling to the queen of the Underworld—

softly, softly—

and as Jason looked up, stretched out flatlings in the

shadow of her skirt,

the snake, for all its age and rage, was lulled a little. The whole vast sinuate spine relaxed, and its

undulations

smoothed a little, moving like a dark and silent swell rolling on a sluggish sea. Even now his head still

hovered,

and his jaws, with their glittering, needlesharp tusks,

were agape, as if

to snap the intruders to their death like fear-numbed

mice. But Medeia,

chanting a spell, sprinkled his eyes with a powerful

drug,

and as the magic assaulted his heavy mind, the scent

spreading out

around him, his will collapsed. His wedge-shape head

sank slowly,

his innumerable coils behind him spanning the wood.

Then, rising

on feeble legs, Jason dragged down the fleece from the

oak,

Medeia moving her hand on Apophis’ head, soothing his wildness with a magic oil. As if in a trance herself, she gave no sign when Jason called. He returned for her, touching her elbow, drawing her back to the ship. And

so

they left the grove of Ares.

“Magnificent triumph, you may think.

Was Aietes not a devil, and his downfall just? Ah, yes. But the legend of human triumph coils inward forever,

burns

at the heart with old contradictions. The goddess was

in us, the anguine

goddess with sleepy eyes.

“Victorious Jason, on the Argo,

lifted the fleece in his arms. The shimmering wool

threw a glow,

fiery, majestic, on his beautiful cheeks and forehead.

And Jason

rejoiced in the light, as glad as a girl when she catches

in her gown

the glow of the moon when it climbs the welken and

gazes in

at her window. The fleece was as large as the hide

of an ox, a stag.

When he slung it on his shoulder, it draped to below

his feet. But soon

his mood changed. With a look at the sky, he bundled

the fleece

to a tight roll and hid it in a place only Argus knew in the Argo ’s planking, for fear some envious man or

god

might steal it from him. He led Medeia aft and found a seat for her, then turned to his men, who watched

him thoughtfully,

puzzled by the hint of strangeness he’d taken on. He

said:

‘My friends, let us now start home without further

delay. The prize

for which we’ve suffered, and for which you’ve labored

unselfishly,

unstintingly, is at last ours. And indeed, the task proved easy, in the end, thanks to this princess whom

I now propose,

with her consent, to carry home with me and marry.

I charge you,

cherish her even as I do, as saviour of Akhaia and

ourselves.

And have no doubt of our need for haste. Aietes and

his devils

are certainly even now assembled and rushing to bar our passage from the river to the sea. So man the

ship — two men

on every bench, taking it in turns to row. Those men not rowing, raise up your ox-hide shields to protect us

from arrows.

We hold the future of Hellas in our hands! We can

plunge her into sorrow,

we can bring her unheard-of glory.’ So saying, he

donned his arms.

They obeyed at once, without a word. Dramatically,

Jason

drew his sword — the same he’d used for goading the

bulls—

and severed the hawsers at the stern, abandoning the

anchor stones.

Then, in his brilliant battle gear, he took his stand at Medeia’s side, near the steersman Ankaios. And the

Argo leaped

at the mighty crew’s first heave. And still none spoke.

They watched him.

And she — I — knew it, and was sick at heart,

remembering the song

of the moon. We had done a splendid thing — and I

above all,

— was that not true? — forsaking my dragon-eyed father,

rejecting

his treachery, turning half-blindly, innocently to the strange new doctrine, Love. Oh, it was not glory

I asked,

throwing myself on the mercy of Jason’s Akhaians.

I asked

to live, only that, to live and be treated unshamefully. Yet Jason glanced at the sky, the shore, still thinking of

the fleece,

and the ship rode low in the water, it seemed to me,

with guilt.

The snake would be waking now, I knew; its dumb wits

grieved,

its earth-old spirit shaken. It made no sound.

“We came

to the harbor mouth like a high sentry-gate guarding

the port

where my father maintained five hundred of his fastest

ships. Inside,

the water was dark, the sun still struggling with the

hills. Mad Idas

spoke, eyes rolling, mule-teeth gleaming, spitting in

Jason’s

ear. The Argo could slip in and out of there quicker’n

a weasel.

Consider what warmth we could get for our chilly bones,

out of all

that wood! Recall how we sent up the city of the

Doliones—

a city well guarded and wide awake — whereas here

there’s hardly

an upright creature, discounting the chain-wrapped

bollards.’ His brother,

catlike Lynkeus, studied the docks, the black-hulled

ships.

He pointed the guards out — ten of them. Jason mused,

then nodded.

‘We’ll risk it,’ he said, and signalled Ankaios at the

steering oar.

The ship veered in, oars soundless all at once, though

those on the selmas

rowed more swiftly than before. In the shadow of the

sleeping hills

the Argo was black as the water, invisible as death

except

for the silver virl on her bows, a downswept sharksmile,

cruising.

We shot in nearly to the anchor stones of the resined

fleet—

I’d hardly guessed their skill, those professional killers

of Akhaia,

and my heart thrilled with pride. Then suddenly all