John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

harbor and sailed

for home. I was partly wrong, I learned later. There

were shouts in the palace,

young kings outraged, old kings quietly astounded at

Kreon’s

ways. But my guess was right in this: the best who’d

come

had abandoned Corinth, prepared to become, on further

provocation,

her enemies.

I moved, among those who remained, to a stairway, a raised place where I could see. Except for the kings

who’d departed

all was the same, I thought — the princess Pyripta in

her chair

of gold, with her hand on her eyes (her light-filled hair

fell softly,

swirling, enclosing her shoulders as if as protection);

Kreon

stern in his place, lips pursed, eyes squeezed half shut;

the goddesses

listening, watching like kestrels, except Aphrodite,

who sat

half-dreaming, studying Jason and Pyripta. I noticed

at last

that Kreon’s slave Ipnolebes was missing, as was the blond Northerner, Amekhenos. But I had no time

to brood much on it. Jason was speaking. His voice

was gentle,

troubled, I thought. How much had he seen, in his

lordly isolation,

of the day’s events? I saw him with the eyes of the

young Medeia,

stunned in her father’s courtyard. He would have been

thinner then,

as big in the chest, less thick in the waist, his gestures

tentative,

boyish despite all those daring deeds already. His eyes seemed hardly the eyes of a power-grabber. What was

he, then?

Yet perhaps I knew. His guarded glance at the princess,

for instance.

Age-old hunger of vanity, hunger to be loved just one more time, and just one more, one more — give the

lie to death

for an instant. But it wasn’t enough for him, the total

adoration

of a girl. He must have whole cities’ adoration — and

he’d had that, once,

rightful prince of Iolkos, the throne his uncle had

usurped

and he might have won back, without shame, by

bloody deeds; yet chose

the reasonable way, for all his might in arms, for all his people’s love. “Evil deeds commit their victims,” Medeia had said, “to responses evil as the deeds

themselves.”

That was the law he’d sought to change.

No wonder if the child of Aietes hadn’t understood,

had struck—

sky-fire’s child — with the pitiless force of her father’s

father.

And so Lord Jason had lost it all. I remembered again the crowd of outraged sailors, turning and turning,

grinding …

My memory seethed with the image, all space astir like

grain

in the narrowing flume of a gristmill. Against that

ceaseless motion,

Jason stood in the great hall still as a rock, a tree, as gentle of mind, as reasonable, as firm of will as the cool, intellectual moon. Ah, Jason knew, all right, of the riots. Calm, his voice an instrument, he spoke:

“Six weeks the god’s wrath banged us shore to shore

among foemen,

men who fought naked, cut off their enemies’ heads.

All that

for Circe’s failure to forgive. Old Argus’ wonderful

engine,

driven as if by its own will, struck rocks and laughed at the steering oar of Ankaios. I lost there fourteen men to wrecks and those savage raids. I gave what attention

I could

to Medeia — whatever was left, to the needs of my men.

She was sick,

hour on hour and day on day, some strange collusion of body and mind, or a poison shot down from Helios. I loved her, yes, though her bowels ran black, and at

times, in pain,

she raged. I loved her, if anything, more than before

that time,

as you love a child you’ve nursed through the night,

alarmed by his trembling,

cooling his forehead in terror of convulsions. Loved her

for the shame

that closed her hands to fists, made her jawline clench.

A love

that trenched past body to the beauty deeper, the

humanness

astounded by love not earned by its outer form. She was, in her own crazed, blood-shot eyes, a thing despicable,

vile;

to me the wealth of kingdoms, dearer than my flesh,

her acrid

lips, distilled wild honey, her tangled hair more joy

than goat flocks frisking in the hills. — Yet rage she did;

demanded

more than my hands could give, my reeling mind hold

firm.

Raged and wept, while claws of rock reached up at us and savage strangers struck us from every tree and rock on shore. I clung to my scrap of sanity like Theseus

clutching

Ariadne’s thread in the Labyrinth. At times I sobbed, clenched my teeth at the loss of friends. At times, with

the help

of Butes, king of the spear, and Phlias and Akastos,

kept calm

by fear for me, I heartened my men with words. Mad

Idas

mocked, shouted at the winds, demanded that Zeus

destroy him.

He beat his chest with his great black fists and

slobbered, convinced

that for him, for his slight against Zeus, we endured

this punishment.

Once, in the night, he went overboard. Medeia

awakened

with a scream, aware of catastrophe.

We saw him at once, and Leodokos, mighty as a bull,

went over.

Swimming like a dolphin, he dragged him back to the

Argo, poor Idas

spluttering, cursing the gods and the skewbald sea.

“So, hurled by unknown winds and waters, we came to the Sirens’

isle.

I shackled my men and Medeia like slaves; myself as

well.

Orpheus played, struggling to drown out their song,

or untune it.

The sea was calm, full of sunlight.

“I heard it well enough: music peeling away like a

gull

from Orpheus’ jazz. Dark cavern music, the music of

silent

pools where no moon shines: the music of death as

secret

hunger. What can I say? They were not innocents, those sirens: it was not peace they sang, fulfillment

in joy.

Who’d have been sucked to his death by that? — by

holy dreams

of isles forever green, where shepherds play their pipes softly, softly, for girls forever white? It wasn’t gentleness, goodness, the sweetness of age those sirens

sang:

the warmth of a family well provided for, a wife grown old without a slip from perfect faithfulness. I have heard it said by wise old men that ‘history’ is all you have left in the end, the fond memories shared by a man and a woman who’ve seen it all, survived it all, together. There is no nobler reward, they say. Perhaps. But that was not the unthinkable hope they lured

us with.

They sang of known and possible evils driven beyond all bounds, slammed home like crowbars driven to the

neck in great, thick

abdomens of rock. Oh, not like sailors’ whores,

who whisper with girlish lust, the nebulous verge of love, what wickedness they mean. (She arches her back

to you,

her breasts grow firm, packed tight with passion, as if

they’re filled

to the bursting point with milk. She seizes your mouth

with hers;

plunged in, you can’t break free, clamped in by a fist,

her legs

closed on your hips like jaws.) All that, for the moment

at least,

is love. They did not sing to us of love. They sang … terrible things. No generous seaport prostitute, whispering, screaming — whatever her tricks — could

satisfy

our murderous, suicidal lust from that day on. Nothing (by no means islands forever green) could quench,

burn out

our need beyond that day. It was pain and death they

sang:

terrible rages of sex beyond the orgasm,

blindness, drunkenness bursting the walls of

unconsciousness,