John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

beard.

“I’ll help you down. The stairs are steep.” He came

and touched

the slave’s arm and carefully took his weight. “You’ll

come,”

Ipnolebes said, and smiled. Lord Jason nodded, the

barest

flick. “Perhaps.” His eyes did not follow the black-robed

slave

to the gate. The street went dark for an instant; a

whisper of wind.

Medeia, standing in the garden with folded hands,

looked up

and winced. Take care, Hera,” she whispered. She

called the children,

pale eyes still on the sky. “I know your game, goddess.”

On a hill, late that night, in the windswept temple

of Apollo

ringed by towering sentry stones, immemorial keys of a vast and powerful astrolabe, stern heaven-watcher, Jason stood, black-caped. On a gray stone bench nearby a blind man sat, at times a reader of oracles and soothsayer, at times a man of silence. Corinth glittered below like a case of lighted jewels falling tier by tier to the sea. The palace, high and wide, like a jewelled crown at the center of the vast display,

shone

like polished ivory. The harbor was light as dawn

with sails,

the ships of the visiting sea-kings.

“I know pretty well what he’s up to,”

Jason said. “Better than he knows himself, perhaps.” The seer was silent, leaning on the staff of come! wood that served as his eyes. Whether or not he was listening, no one could say. Visions had made his face unearthly, stern cliffs, crags, the pigment blackened as if by fire, the thick lips parched. He was one of those from the

fallen city

of dark-skinned Thebes, old Kadmos’ city: the seer

Teiresias

who learned all the mystery of birth and death when

he saw, with the eyes

of a visionary, the coupling of deadly snakes. Men said he paid in sorrows. Heros Dionysos — majestic lord of the dead, son of Hades, snatched at birth from his

mother’s pyre—

sent curses from under the ground to the man who

had seen things forbidden:

changed Teiresias to a woman for a time, and for

seven generations

refused him the soothing cup, sweet sleep of death. He

was now

in his last age. Jason turned to him, not to see him but to keep from looking at the palace. He began to

pace, frowning,

bringing his words out with difficulty, by violence of will. “I’d win his prize. Terrific match, he’d think. Bold Jason, pilot of the mighty Argo, snatcher of the fleece,

et cetera …

I could do it. Oh, I’m no Telamon, no Orpheus; but I’d serve old Kreon better than he dreams. These

are stupid times,

intermixed bombast and bullshit whipped to a fine fizz. I may be a better man to ride them out than those I thought my betters once, my glorious Argonauts. I never lullabyed bawling seas with my harp, like soft-eyed Orpheus, or tore down walls with my bare hands like Herakles. But I’ve survived my glittering friends—

survived

their finest. Favored by the gods, as they say— Not

that I asked

for that. I no more trust the generosity of gods than I do that of men. I’ve seen how they

twist and turn,

full of ambiguous promises, sly double dealings.

They offer

power, then blast you with a lightning-bolt. Or if gods

are honest,

as maybe they are, their honesty’s filtered by priests

and magicians

who may or may not be frauds. How can man trust

anything, then,

beyond his own poor fallible reason? I keep an eye out, keep my wits. If the gods are with me, good. If not, I stumble on. I play the chancy world like a harp tuned by a half-mad satyr on a foreign isle, finding its secrets out by feel. If the music’s fierce and strange— kinsmen murdered, in my bed a woman from the

barbarous rim

of the world — don’t think I pause, draw back from

the instrument

in horror, shame. I play on, not lifting an eyebrow, fleeing from resolution to resolution.

“So now

I might play Kreon’s lust. — Mine too, Medeia would say. I could smile, ignore her. I’ve bent too much to that

hurricane.

Whose work but hers that I find myself where I am?—

great hero,

homeless, hopeless, my towering city in chaos, her

ancient

winding streets like interlocked serpents afire in

their own

dark blood — and I can do nothing, exiled, ruined for

Medeia—

ruined despite all my nobly intoned coronation vows. Vows indeed! Ask Trojan Hektor his feeling on vows, forced to defend an old lecher. Ask Hektor’s brother.

The gods

themselves pit vow against vow as men pit fighting

cocks.”

He paused, rubbing his throat and jaw, relaxing

muscles

that seemed to grow more constricted with every word.

Then:

“I could still be king there, sharing the throne with a

dodling uncle

I never hated, whatever he thought of me. But it wasn’t room enough for the daughter of mighty Aietes, Lord of the Bulls, Keeper of the Golden Fleece. So here

we are,

blood on the soles of our feet, heads filled with

nightmare-visions,

guilt more chilling than the halls of the dead.

My friends on the Argo would laugh, in the winds of

hell, if they heard it.

“It might be comforting … Kreon’s child. A gentler

princess,

as slight, by Medeia, as these hills next to the

Caucasus. …

” He pursed his lips, jaw muscles drawn in the

semi-dark

of temple columns, flickering torches; his eyes were

suddenly

remote, as if even casual mention of those windy days on strange seas, strange shores, could make them rise

in his mind

more real than the quiet night he loomed in now.

He closed

his eyes, breathed deep. The blind man bent his head,

as if

to listen to Jason’s mind sheared free of words. Jason turned abruptly to look at the palace, then away again. “At one quick stroke I could win not only the throne

of Corinth—

huge old city with all its wide, deep-grounded walls— but all my power back home. That’s all they’ve asked

of me:

Renounce the witch and her murder of Pelias; abandon

Medeia,

and Argos is yours — now Corinth as well. Why not?

No wife

at all, a prize of war that I treated too well, a bedslave grown too mighty to be tamed like Theseus’ Amazon. Betrayal, perhaps; but the guilt would be trifling beside

that guilt

that brings King Pelias’ ghost back night after night

to stalk

my rest — hooded like a cobra, silent, eyes as mad as Argos left without a king. And if I do nothing, what

then?

Get up, eat, take a walk, eat, stare out a window, eat again.… Surely, whatever my promises, no mere woman can hold me to that! ‘Stay clear of

the palace!’

A law. Who’d dare disobey the great, fierce daughter

of Aietes?”

He paused, musing. “There are laws and laws. I told

my tales

for Kreon, kind old benefactor. But I’d watch the girl as I told of those terrible battles, curious islands, long

nights

rolling in the arms of queens. She had a special blush she saved for me. There were times when she touched

my arm as if

by accident. I encouraged it — pressed it. I could no more

pass up

a thing like that than I could pass up a cave, an

unknown city,

in the old days. It meant nothing, God knows—

except to Medeia.

One more conquest. — Winning means more than it

should to me,

no doubt. The usual case of the overly reasonable man who’s turned his cheek too often. — And yet I resisted,

in the end.

Heaven knows why.” He studied the night. “I make up