John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

that once, by the leap of instinct, I killed my cousin.

I might

have saved the slave, as you claim, by a careful word

or two

to Kreon; I might by a well-framed speech have rescued

Idas

and all his men from prison. I might. You know well

enough

the risk. Old Kreon’s a stubborn man. He does not like his judgment doubted or his will crossed. Be sure, if

I’d won

those favors from him, I’d then and there have

exhausted the old man’s

love of me. Whatever good I might hope to do for all the enslaved, for all my friends, for future

generations,

that good I’d have traded for an instant’s sweet

self-righteousness.

Though all the harbor rose up in rage at an immoral

act—

a thousand, three, five thousand men? — I do not find that the evil deed was rectified, or the sentence undone.

A good man out of power is worth

a pine-seedling in the Hellespont!

Such are the brutal realities, my friend.

Do not be such a fool, Kompsis, as to think man’s

choice

lies between evil and good. All serious options are

moral,

and all serious choices inherently risky, if not, for the heart that’s pure, impossible.” So Jason spoke, and I could not doubt, listening in the shadow of the

colonnade,

that his words came not from guilt but from honest

intent. His heart

was heavy, his purpose firm. But the god in human

shape

was scornful. Kompsis grinned, his eyes like thunder

blooming

in the low, black night. “However, the house you owed

your life

hangs motionless there in the marketplace, food for

crows. Consider:

No grand law will preserve your state if fools succeed

you;

and every line comes down, soon or late, to fools. Create the noblest constitution the mind of man can frame: eventually fools will crumple it. You plan for the

splendid

future, though decay is certain; and you let the present

rot

though a single word could cleanse it. Do as you must.

I warn you,

heaven is against you. Trouble is coming to the man

who builds

his town on blood, or founds his kingdom on crimes

unavenged.

Like a shepherd rescuing a couple of legs or a bit of an

ear

from the lion’s mouth, you salvage justice murdered.”

As Jason

turned in fury, his blood in his face,

the last man living to be tricked by the jangle of

rhetoric,

he saw that the stones where Kompsis had stood were

bare, and knew

he’d spoken with a god. His cheeks went white, as if

lightning-struck,

and his muscles locked in rage and frustration. “It’s the

truth,” he shouted.

He lifted his face to the midnight sky, his features

anguished,

and raised his fists. He seemed to struggle for speech.

The cords

of his throat stood out and his temples bulged. Then

suddenly

from his chest came the bellow of a maddened bull.

“I’ve been cheated enough!

I’ve told you nothing but the truth!” So he raged, then

clutched his head

as if shocked by searing pain. The sky was silent.

Later— it was nearly dawn — I saw him in the windswept

temple of Apollo,

hissing angrily, on his knees before the seer. The blind

man

listened in silence, his filmed eyes wandering, out of

control.

“The gods are many. Who knows how many? They

endlessly contradict each other like aphorisms. Tell me what to fear!

I’ve honored the gods both known and unknown,

emptied my coffers on temples, images, hillside

shrines. Not from conviction — I grant that too.

Is a man made holy by boldfaced lies?

There was a time I believed that the skies could open,

make horses stagger,

the soldier throw up his arms in fear. I believed, in fact, I’d seen such things. But the world changed, or my

vision changed.

What possible good in denying the fact? I could see no

proof

that Hypsipyle was evil, whatever the magic of Argus’

cloak,

tradition-trick, subtle distorter of patent truth

not, in itself, allegorical.

I saw when we beached at Samothrace

and watched the mysteries, how man’s mind

(Herakles swelling to what he believed was a god-sent

power)

was all that the mind could be sure of, how even my

own conversion

if such it was, had no sure cause in the universe.

And so descended from death to death;

learned on the isle of the Doliones

the fallacy of faith in technique and faith in perception;

learned

by the death of Hylas and loss of Herakles — the stupid

and yet unassailable assertion of Amykos—

old murderer — and the deadly confusion in Phineus’

heart—

the fundamental absurdity of the world itself, mad gods

in all-out war. I did not

shrink from these grim discoveries. Neither did I whine,

renounce

my quest, though I knew no reason for the quest.

I slogged on

toward Kolchis. What reason could hammer no

justification for,

I justified by groundless faith. Slog on or die,

abandon hope — the hope of eventual clarity.

Those were the choices. I bowed to the gods I could

not see—

or could not trust if I happened to see them, as I saw

Apollo,

striding, astounding, when we’d rowed our blood to a

state of exhaustion—

bowed because life unredeemed by the gods would be

idiocy,

bowed, yet refused to lie, claim to see things invisible.

Let the future judge me. I give you my grim prediction,

seer:

Famine is coming, deadliest of droughts.

Mankind will stagger from sea to sea, from north to

east,

seeking the word of some god and failing to find it.

“But yes, I bowed, dubious, true to my nature yet granting its

limits.

What more can heaven demand of a man?

Tell me what to fear!

I’ve walked, cold-bloodedly honest, to the rim of the

pit. I’ve affirmed

Justice, compassion, decency. When granted power

I’ve used it to benefit man. I’ve fiercely denied that life is bestial — having seen in my own life the leer of the

ape.

Yet the sky turns dark, and gods threaten me. If the

universe

is evil, then let me be martyred in battle with the

universe.

If not, then where am I mistaken?”

In silence, the seer of Apollo stretched out his arms to Jason, touching his shoulders.

The night

hung waiting. “Lord Jason, you ask me to speak as a court counsellor, a prince of wizards, a philosopher

versed

in the subtleties of old, cracked scrolls. Such things I

cannot be.

Though you teach horned owls to sing, by your cunning,

or make lambs laugh in the dragon’s nest,

I can speak only what Apollo speaks.

I can say to you:

The man of high estate will be tinder,

his handiwork a spark.

Both will burn together,

and none will extinguish them.”

“Explain!” Jason said. But the seer would say no more.

In her room, Pyripta, princess of Corinth, wept. The words of Jason

had changed her: for all the smoothness of her face,

the innocence

of her clear eyes, the tale had aged her, filled her with

sorrow

beyond her years. She clung to her knees, sobbing in the

bed

of ivory, and prayed no more for purity of spirit but mourned her loss. The princess had learned her

significance.

She spoke not a word; but I saw, I understood. No hope of clinging now to childhood, the sweetness of virginity.

Let shepherds’ daughters worship in the groves of the