John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

white-faced with agony,

her corpse-pale fingers locked and her green eyes

glittering, ferocious.

At times in the dead of night she would rise and leave

our bed

and, passing silent as a ghost beyond the outer walls, hooded, a dark scarf hiding her face, she would search

the lanes

and gulleys of Argos for medicinal herbs — mecop and

marigold,

the coriander of incantation, purifying hyssop, hellebore, nightshade, the fennel that serpents use to

clear

their sight, and the queer plant borametz, that eats the

grass

surrounding it, and gale, and knotgrass … I began to

hear

reports of strange goings-on — a slain black calf in a

barrow

high in the hills; a grave molested; a visitation of frogs in the temple of Persephone. I kept my peace, watching and waiting. At times when I heard her

footfall, quiet

as a feather dropping, and a moment later the closing

of a door,

a whisper of wind, I would rise up quickly and follow

her.

She led me through fields — a dark, hunched spectre

in the moonless night—

led me down banks of creeks that she dared not cross,

through groves

of sacred willows as ancient and quiet as the stones of

abandoned

towns, then up to the hills, old mountains of the turtle

people

who cowered under backs of bone as they watched her

pass. She came

to a wide circle of stone, an ancient table of Hekate.

There she would slaughter a rat, a toad, a stolen goat, singing to the goddess in a strange modality,

older than Kolchis’ endless steppes,

and dropping her robe, her pale face lit by pain, she

would dance,

squeezing the blood of the beast on her breasts and

belly and thighs,

and her feet on the table of stone would slide on the

warm new blood

till the last undulation of the writhing dance. Then

she’d lie still,

like a bloodstained corpse, till the first frail haze of

dawn. Then flee

for home. She’d find me waiting in the bed. She

suspected nothing.

Little as I’d slept, I’d awaken refreshed,

would plunge into work as I did in the days when the

Argo’s beams

groaned at the hammering of waves or shuddered at the

blow of sunken

rocks. Pelias, weeping on the pillow, would stutter the

fruit

of his senility, clinging to my hand. “Beware of

puh-pride, my son.

My suh-son, beware of offending the g-g-g-gods.’ His

daughters’

heads hung pale as cornflowers; their pastel scarves fluttered in the flimsy wind of their love and awe. I

could bow

and smile, unoffended, as alive in the stink of his

sickness as I was

in the field of Aietes’ bulls.

“On other occasions, when she left to haunt the wilderness in search of some cure for her

malady,

I rose up, silent, and walked to the chamber of a certain

Slave

and slipped into bed beside her, my hand on her mouth.

I did not

love her, make no mistake, a cowering, mouse-shy

creature

as repulsive to me as Pelias was in his feeblest moods.

But I’d lie beside her, exploring the curves of her body

with my hands,

caressing her soft, damp fur, and at last would mount

and pierce her,

twist and stab till she cried out in pain and fright. Again and again, through the long still night I’d use her,

driving like a horse;

she’d weep — once dared like a fool to strike me. I

laughed. When dawn

crept near, I’d return to my own room, and when

Medeia came,

slyly I would make love to her. We’d awaken refreshed, rejuvenated. The slave soon came to expect my visits, came to take pleasure in my violent lust. Though

cowardly as ever—

hang-dog, feather-voiced, as stooped of shoulder as

Pelias at his most

obsequious — she began to throw me sidelong glances, for all the world like a litter-runt bitch in heat. When

she found me

alone in a room, she would come to me softly,

seductively touch

my arm, impose her scent on me. Sometimes even when Medeia was near, whose eyes missed nothing,

the wretched slave

would call to me down the room with her foxy eyes.

I gave

her warning. I was not eager to lose her — those great

fat breasts

dangling above me, glowing in the moonless night. She

refused

to hear. I gave commands; she vanished. I waited for

remorse;

it failed to arrive. I felt, if anything, nobler, more alive than before. I soon took other women,

choosing — from slaves, from noblemen’s wives — more

carefully,

women of taste and discretion. Even so, Medeia learned; flashed like a dragon, an electric storm. I pretended to

end

such pleasures. But I’d grown addicted, in fact. I’d

learned the secret

of godhood. In lust alone is mankind limitless, as vast as Zeus. Who hasn’t hungered to live all lives, pierce the secrets of the swan, the bull, the king, the

captive,

close all infinite space in his arms? Such was my desire, my absolute of hunger. I remembered the Sirens’ song.

“Meanwhile, word got abroad that Medeia had curious

powers.

I’d known, of course, it was only a matter of time.

Who learned

her secret first, I have no idea. She had visitors, impotent old men, young women with barren wombs.

They’d arrive

at the palace on flimsy pretexts, would tour, do the

honors to Pelias,

and eventually vanish with Medeia. I did not comment

on it,

though I knew in my bones we were moving toward

dangerous waters.

“I had at this time troubles more immediate. Our land

has been

divided since time began by the sacred Anauros River. In certain seasons a man or a team of oxen could ford it, but whenever the river was in spate, the kingdom

became, in effect,

twin kingdoms: if the people were starving on one side,

and corn and cattle

were plentiful over the opposite bank, the starving died while the oversupply of their immediate neighbors

corrupted. Old Argus,

at a word from me, had solved that problem, and in

the same stroke

transformed the very idea of the river. He would cut

a wide channel

where ships could pass, carrying the crops of the

midland to the sea

and foreign goods inland. So that men could cross it,

in any season,

he’d devised, with the help of Athena, the plan of an

ingenious bridge

that could span the torrent yet swing, by the force of

enormous sails

and waterwheels, so that even the loftiest vessel

might pass.

I had no doubt the assembly would quickly agree.

“By some cruel warp of fate, Pelias appeared at the assembly on the day the plan was first introduced. Who can say what

crackpot fears

assailed the man? Mixed-up memories of the oracle, which involved the river, or his well-known grudge

against all things daring—

the fear that had driven him to tear down Hera’s

images once,

his coward’s terror of acts of will … Whatever

the reason,

he opposed me. He shook like a tree in high wind.

He cajoled, whined, whimpered.

Now ashen, now scarlet, he appealed to the gods, the

fitness of things,

to tradition, to unborn generations, to all-hallowed

patriotism.

I was stunned, furious. I came close to telling him the

truth: he ruled

by my sufferance. When he tipped his head at me,

pitiful, appealing for tolerance

of an old man’s harmless whim, my rage grew

dangerous

I could feel the muscles of my cheek jerking. I hid them.