John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

Argo in the night.

The Argonauts hurled up prayers to the gods as the

ship leaped on

through dark welms streaming like a wound. O, dark as

my soul was the place!

Sick those seas as my body in riotous rebellion—

fevers,

chills, mysterious flashes of pain. His ghost was in me, a steady nightmare, a madness. I vomited, fouling my

beauty

in Jason’s sight. Not even Orpheus’ lyre could check that sickness throbbing in my head, or the fire in my

bowels. They looked

away, one and all, as from Hell itself. I hissed

imprecations,

and they listened with white teeth clenched.

“And as for the sea, it was

the water of Helios’ wrath. No bird, for all its rush, for all the lightness of its arching wings, could cross

that deep,

but mid-course, down it would plunge, fluttering,

consumed in flames;

and all around it, the daughters of Helios, locked in

poplars,

wailed their piteous complaint, and their weeping eyes

dripped amber.

“There sailed the joyless Argonauts, weary of heart,

overwhelmed

by stench where the body of Phaiton still burned. At

night, by the will

of the gods, we entered an unknown stream whose rock

shores sang

with the rumble of mingling waters. So on and on we

rushed,

lost in the endless domain of the murderous Kelts. Now

storms,

now raging men dismayed us, thinning our company. My sickness stayed. My hand on the gunnel was

marble-white;

my face grew gaunt, rimose. We touched at the

kingdom of stone,

the kingdom of iron men, the kingdom of the ants. As

dreams

insinuate their unearthly cast on the light of the sick man’s room, making windows alien eyes, transforming

chairs

to animals biding their time, so now to the heartsick

Argo

the world took on a change. The night was unnaturally

dark,

crowded with baffling machines we could not quite see.

And then

at dawn we looked out, in our strange dream, on

motionless banks

where no beast stirred and even the leaves on the trees

were still.

No songbird sang, and the clouds above us were as void

of life

as stones. We struggled to awaken, but the ship was

sealed in a charm.

We waited. Then came to a fork in the stream, a great

hushed island,

and the Argonauts, half-starved, rowed in, cast anchor,

and made

the long ship fast. As far as the eye could see on the

windless

rockstrewn beach, there was nothing alive. The tufts of

grass

on the meadow above were still, as if lost in thought.

“On a hill,

rising at the center of the island, there stood a grove so

dense

no thread of light came through, and between the boles

of the trees

lay avenues. We went there, Lynkeus leading the way with his powerful eyes. I walked behind him, my hand

in Jason’s,

and my spirit was filled with uneasiness. I was sure the

air—

chill, unstirring — was crowded with thirsty ghosts. We

found

no game; it seemed that even the crawling insects slept.

“Without warning from Lynkeus, we reached a glade

and, rising

in the center of the glade, a vast stone building in the

shape of a dome.

The gray foundation rocks were carved with curious

oghams:

spirals like eddies in a river, like blustering winds—

the oldest

runes ever made by man. At the low, dark door of the

building

a chair of stone stood waiting. We studied it, none of us

speaking.

And suddenly, even as we watched, there appeared a

figure in the chair,

seated comfortably, casually, combing his beard. He was

old,

his hair as white as hoarfrost. But as for his race, he

was nothing

we knew — a snubnosed creature with puffy eyes. His

face,

like his belly, was round, and he wore an enormous

moustache. He said: ‘

Ah ha! So it’s Jason again!’ The lord of the Argonauts

stared,

then glanced at me, as if thinking the curious image

were somehow

my creation. The old man laughed, impish, a laugh that rang like bells on the great rock mound and the

surrounding hills.

He laughed till he wept and clutched his sides.

“I asked: “Who are you?

Why do you mock us with silent sunlit isles and

laughter,

when Zeus has condemned us to travel as miserable

exiles forever,

suffering griefs past number for a crime so dark I dare not speak of it?’ He laughed again, unimpressed by

grief,

unmoved by our hunger. “Mere pangs of mortality,’ he

said.

‘If you knew my troubles—’ He paused, reflecting, then

laughed again.

‘However, they slip my mind.’ I repeated the question:

‘Who are you?’

He tapped the tips of his fingers together, squinting,

though his lips

still smiled. ‘Don’t rush me. It’ll come to me.’ He

searched his wits.

‘I’m something to do with rivers, I remember.’ He pulled

at his beard,

pursed his lips, looked panic-stricken. ‘Is it very

important?’

Suddenly his face brightened and he snapped his

fingers. At once—

apparently not by his wish — an enormous sow appeared, sprawled in the grass beside him, her eyes alarmed.

He snapped

his fingers again, looking sheepish, and at once the huge

beast vanished.

Again the name he’d been hunting had slipped his

mind. Then:

‘Spirit of sorts,’ he said. ‘Not one of your dark ones, no

god

of the bog people, or the finger-wringing Germans, or—’ His bright eyes widened. ‘Ah yes! I’d forgotten!

— We have dealings, we powers,

from time to time. I received a request from the goddess

of will.

Abnormal. But isn’t everything? — Forgive me if I seem too light in the presence of woe. We’re not very good at

woe,

we Grand Antiques. Treasure your guilt if you like, dear

friends.

Guilt has a marvelous energy about it — havoc of

kingdoms,

slaughter of infants, et cetera. Discipline! That’s what

it gives you!

(Discipline, of course, is a virtue not all of us value.)

However,

Time is wide enough for all. Indeed, in a thousand years (I’ve been there, understand. A thousand thousand

times I’ve heard

the joke, and that lunatic punchline) … But what was

I saying? Ah!

Sail on in peace! — or in whatever mood suits your

temperament.

The passage is opened, this once, after all these

millennia.

Make way for the flagship Argo, ye golden generations!

Make way

for purification by fire, salvation by slaughter!’ His

eyes—

pale blue, mocking, were a-glitter; but at once he

remembered himself.

‘Forgive me, lady. Forgive an old bogyman’s foolishness,

lords

of Akhaia.’ His smile was genuine now. The universe has time for all experiments. Sail in peace!’ He

vanished.

And the same instant the sky went dark and we found

ourselves

on the Argo, on a churning sea. Black waves came

combing in,

and mountains to left and right were yawing apart for

us,

and the opening sucked the sea in, and like a chip on

a torrent

the Argo went spinning, careening, the walls half buried

in foam,

to the south. I clung to the capstan. I would have been

washed away,

but the boy Ankaios abandoned the useless steering oar and caught my arm and held me till Jason could

reach me, crawling

pin by pin along the rail. He held me by the waist,