John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

arriving by way of the Black Sea, drove Alkinoös to a choice. Medeia, by secret dealing with Alkinoös’ queen, outwitted the old man’s justice— for which I was glad enough, no warbling songbird

gladder,

for I knew then nothing of the wandering rocks we had

yet to face,

that child of the sun and I, back home in Iolkos. She

was,

not only in my eyes but even to men who despised the

race

of Aia, a woman more fair than the pantarb rising sun, the moon on the sea, the sky-wide armies of Aietes

with all

their trumpets, crimson banners, bronze-clad horsemen.

She seemed

as fair beside all others as a dew-lit rose of Sharon in a trinsicate hedge of thorn, more fine than a silver

dish

the curve of her thighs like a necklace wrought by a

master hand.

My heart sang like Orpheus’ lyre on that wedding night, played like lights in a fountain — and whose would not?

“We sailed joyful, Phaiakian maidens attending Medeia, Phaiakian sailors heaving on the rowing seats left vacant by the

dead.

And so came even in sight of Argos’ peaks. Mad Idas danced in a fit of wild joy. The prophecy of Idmon had

failed:

the hounds of Zeus had forgotten him, or if not, at least, had spared him for now, had spared him the doom he’d

dreaded most,

a death that dragged down friends. But even as

he danced for joy,

his brother, Lynkeus of the amazing eyes, put his black

hand gently

on Idas’ shoulders, gazing into the sea and beyond the curve of the gray horizon. Nor was it long before we too saw it — a stourmass terrible and swift,

blackening the western sky,

rushing toward us like a fist. We heaved at the Argo ’s oars. Too late! We lurched under

murderous winds,

black skies like screaming apes. We struck we knew

not where,

hurled by the flood-tide high and dry. Then, swift as an

eagle,

the storm was gone. We leaped down full of dismay.

Gray mist,

a landscape sprawling like a dried-up corpse, unwaled,

immense.

We could see no watering place, no path, no farmstead.

A world

calcined, silent and abandoned. Again the boy Ankaios wept, and all who had learned navigation shared his

woe.

No ship, not even the Argo, could suffer the shoals and

breakers

the tidal wave had hurtled us unharmed past. There

was no

return, the way we’d come, and ahead of us, desert, gray, as quiet as a drugged man’s dreams. Poor Idas sifted our gold and gems, the Phaiakians’ gift, and

howled

and bit at his lips until blood wet his kinky beard.

Though the sand

and sea-smoothed rocks were scorching, our hearts

were chilled. The crew

strayed vaguely, seeking some route of escape. Bereft

of schemes

I watched them and had no spirit to call them back,

maintain

mock-order. When the cool of nightfall came, they

returned. No news.

And so we parted again, each seeking a resting place

sheltered from the deepening chill. Medeia lay shivering,

moaning,

in the midst of her Phaiakian maidens, her head and

chest on fire

with the strange plaguing illness, Helios’ curse. All night the maids, their golden tresses in the sand, cried out

and wept,

as shrill as the twittering of unfledged birds when they

lie, broken,

on the rocks at the foot of the larch. At dawn the crew

rose up

once more and staggered to the sunlight, starved, throats

parched with thirst,

no water in sight but the salt-thick sea — the piled-up

gifts

of the Phaiakians mocking our poverty — and again set

out

fierce-willed as desert lions, in search of escape. And

again

returned with nothing to report.

“We gave up hope that night. All that will could achieve, we’d done. We sought out

shelters,

prepared to accept our death, the sun’s revenge, triumph of Helios. We listened to the whimpers of the maidens

and wept for them,

and secretly cursed the indifferent, mechanical stars.

“But on that Libyan shore dwelled highborn nymphs. They

heard the laments

of the maids and the groans of Medeia. And when it

was noon, and the sun

so fierce that the very air crackled, they came, for pity of the maidens, doomed unfulfilled, having neither

men nor sons,

and stood above me, and brushed my cloak’s protection

from my eyes

and called to me in a strange voice, a voice I

remembered

yet could not place — some shrew with the flat Argonian

accent

I’d known as a child. — ‘Jason!’ I looked, saw nothing

but the blinding

sun. They cried, ‘Pay back the womb that has borne so

much.

Call strength from murdered men. Redeem these

thousand shames.

Embrace your ruin, you who have preached so much

on mindless

struggle, unreasoning hope. Have you still no love?’ So

they spoke,

voices in the white-hot light. I had no idea what they

meant,

whispers of madness, guilt. I slept again, awaiting death. And then sat up with a start, a crazy idea tormenting me: the womb was the Argo who’d borne us

here,

the murdered men not those I’d lost before but those around me, grounded by the sun; and my ruin was

the sun himself:

I must go to the center of the furnace, my only prayer

for the men,

the Phaiakian maidens, and Medeia. Oh, do not think

I believed

it reasonable! The desert was hotter where I meant to

go,

and the Argo no weight for men half-starved, no water

to drink

on a trip that might take us days, if not all eternity. Nevertheless, I roused them, fierce, a lion gone mad, and stumbling, incredulous, they obeyed. I sent no

scouts ahead,

and no man there suggested it. Blind luck was our

hope,

perhaps blind love, the Argonauts bearing that

monstrous ship,

spreading her weight between shoulders meaningless

except for this,

their union in a madman’s task. In their shadow the

maidens walked,

singing a hymn of heatwaves, the pitiless sun, a dirge for all of us. And so those noblest of all kings’ sons, by their own might and hardihood, lips cracked and

bleeding,

carried the Argo and all her treasures, shoulder high, nine days and nights through the death-calm dunes

of Libya.

“I shared the weight till the seventh day. Then

Medeia fell,

unconscious, and could not be wakened. So I carried

my wife in my arms,

shouting encouragement to the men, reassuring the

maidens. The sun

filled all the sky, it seemed to us. But the maidens sang, struggled to help with the load till they fell, befuddled,

giggling

like madwomen. We dragged them on. Told lunatic

jokes,

talked with the sun, the sand, a thousand sabuline

visions—

and so we came to water. But left the desert strewn with graves, unmarked by stick or stone. One half my

crew

and two of the maidens we buried in the white-hot sand;

and not

the least of those who fell there, slaughtered by the heat,

was Ankaios,

nobleman robed in a bearskin and armed with an axe.

We buried

the twelve-foot child and wept. Our tears were dust.

Then set

the Argo down in the calm Tritonian lagoon, and

searched

for drinking water.

“The sky was blinding white, all sun. It seemed to us that we came to the body of a huge

gray snake,

head smashed, by the trunk of an appletree. From the

venom sacks down

the corpse was asleep, undreaming, the coils a thicket