John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

follow, and strode

like a man to the place where her chariot waited, all

gleaming silver.

As soon as I’d set one foot in it, we arrived at the house of Jason. The chariot vanished. I was down on my

hands and knees

in the street. I got up, dusting my trousers, and hurried

to the door.

No one saw me or stopped me. I found, in Medeia’s

chamber,

Artemis — enormous in the moonlit bedroom, her bowed

head

and shoulders brushing the ceiling beams — stooped at

the side

of Medeia’s bed like an eagle to its prey. “Wake up!”

she whispered.

“Wake up, victim of the mischief god! Seek out thy

light,

sweet Jason, life-long heartache! You are betrayed!”

Medeia’s

eyes opened. The goddess vanished. The moonlight

dimmed,

faded till nothing was left but the glow of the golden

fleece.

The slave Agapetika wakened and reached for Medeia’s

hand.

Medeia sat up, startled by the memory of a dream. She

met

my eyes; her hand reached vaguely out to cover herself with the fleece. I remembered my solidity and backed

away.

“Devil!” she whispered. In panic I answered, “No,

Medeia.

A friend!” She shook her head. “I have no friends but

devils.”

And only now understanding that all she’d dreamt was

true—

as if her own words had power more terrible than

Jason’s deeds—

she suddenly burst into tears of rage and helplessness. She tried to rise, but her knees wouldn’t hold her, and

she fell to the flagstones.

I said: “I come from the future to warn you—”

My throat went dry. The room was suddenly filled, crowded like a jungle

with creatures,

ravens and owls and slow-coiled snakes, all manner of

beings

hated by men. In terror of Medeia’s eyes, I fled.

On the palace wall, in his blood-red cape, the son of

Aison,

arms folded, gazed down over the city of Corinth. He knew pretty well — Hera watching at his shoulder,

sly—

that he’d won, for better or worse — that nothing

Paidoboron

or Koprophoros could say would undo the work he’d

done

or open the gates of Kreon’s heart or the heart of the

princess

to any new contender. He smiled. On the palace roof behind him, a raven watched, head cocked, with

unblinking eyes.

For reasons he scarcely knew himself, Jason had

avoided

his home today. It was now twilight; the light, sharp

breeze

rising from stubbled fields, dark streams, fat granaries, brought up the scent of approaching winter. There

would come a time

when Medeia would rise and insist upon having her

say. Not yet.

Though light was failing, the house, lower on the hill,

was dark

save one dim lamp, dully blooming — so yellow in the

gloom

of the oaks surrounding that it brought to his mind

again the fleece

old Argus wove, and the obscure warning of the seer.

The vision blurred; I hung unreal. Then, crushed to flesh once

more,

my swollen hand brought alive again to its drumbeat

of pain,

I stood — dishevelled as I was, my poor steel spectacles

cracked

and crooked — in the low-beamed room of the slave

Agapetika,

hearing her moans to the figure of Apollo on the wall.

Her canes

of gnarled olive-wood waited on the tiles, her stiff, fat

knees

painfully bent on the hassock before the shrine.

She wailed, whether in prayer or lament, I could hardly tell: “O

Lord,

would that an old slave’s wish could wind back time

for Medeia

and she never beguile those dim, too-trusting daughters

of Pelias,

who slaughtered their father; or would that Corinth

had never received them,

allowing a measure of joy and peace, pleasure in the

children,

Medeia still loved and in everything eager to please her

lord,

her will and his will one, as even Jason knew, for all his anger, bitterness of heart. The loss of love makes all surviving it blacker than smoke at sunrise.

What once

was sweet is now corrupt and cankered: our Jason plans heartless betrayal of his wife and sons for marriage

with a princess.

And now in impotent rage and anguish, Medeia invokes their oaths, their joined right hands, and summons

the dangerous gods

to witness the way he’s rewarded her life-long

faithfulness.

Worse yet, she curses old Kreon himself, and Kreon’s

daughter,

howling her wild imprecations for all to hear. In

her rage

she refuses to eat, sacrificing her body to grief as she sacrificed her home, her kinsmen, her happiness for Jason’s love. She wastes in tears; she cries and cries in such black despair that her sobs come welling too

fast for Medeia

to sound them. She lies stretched wailing on the stones

and refuses to lift

her eyes or to raise her face from the floor. To all we say she’s deaf as a boulder, an ocean wave. She refuses

to speak—

she can only curse her betrayal of her father, murder

of her brother,

death of her sister Khalkiope, through Aietes’ rage— for all of which she blames herself alone, as if no one before her had ever betrayed on earth. She takes no joy anymore in her sons: her eyes seem filled

with hate

when she looks at them. It shocks me with fear to see it.

Her mood

is dangerous. She’ll never submit to this monstrous

wrong.

I know her. It makes me sick with fear. Let any man

rouse

Medeia’s hate and hard indeed he’ll find it to escape unmarked by her.”

Agapetika opened her eyes in alarm, straining — grotesquely fat, feeble — to turn her head for a view of the door at her back. In the hallway,

the old male slave

and the children approached, the two boys squealing

and laughing, the old man

shushing them. She slued clumsily, inching around on the hassock to watch them pass. The old man

paused, looked in,

his lean face drawn and crabbed. The eyebags drooping

to his cheeks

were as gray and wrinkled as bark. He whispered,

“What’s this moaning

that fills all the house with noise? How could you

leave your lady?

Did Medeia consent?”

She shook her head, lips trembling, tears now brimming afresh. “Old man — old guardian

of Jason’s sons—

how can the troubles of masters not soon bring sorrow

to their slaves?

I’ve left her alone for a little to grant my own grief

vent.”

He turned his head, as if looking through walls to

Medeia’s room.

“No change?” he asked. She covered her face.

“No change,” she said.

“My poor Medeia’s troubles have scarcely begun.”

The old man narrowed his eyes. Then, hoarsely: Poor blind fool—

if slaves

may say such things of masters. There’s reason more

than she knows

for all this woe and rage.”

Agapetika inched around more to stare at the man in fear. “What now?” she exclaimed.

“Sir, do not

keep from me what you’ve heard.”

He shook his head. “No, nothing. Vague speculation. Mere idle talk.” The twins had

run on—

romping to their room, indifferent and blind to misery— and his eyes went after them, grudging. The whole

afternoon they’d kept him

plodding with hardly a rest. At the crest of every hill his old heart thudded in his throat, and his brains went

light, so that

to keep his knees from buckling he would stretch out

his hands to a tree

or ivied gatepost, coughing and gulping for air.