John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

He smiled, waiting. I saw that the Asian was

serenely certain

he’d carried the day. I was half-inclined — even I—

to believe it,

though I knew the whole story. Athena herself looked

alarmed, in fact,

uncomfortably watching at Jason’s side. Above all,

Kreon,

it seemed to me, was shaken in his faith. Though no

one had doubted

that Jason’s victory was settled from the start,

Koprophoros’ words

had shattered the old man’s complacency as a few

stern blows

of Herakles’ club could loosen trees. He stared with eyes like dagger holes at Koprophoros. He seemed to be

seeing for the first time

the wealth and splendor of the Asian’s dress, white and

gold impleached,

majesty and taste unrivalled in Akhaia. He seemed

to grasp

the remarkable restraint of that master of tricks. Though

he might have astonished

the hall with a battery of startling illusions, and

dazzled the wits

of the sea-kings with bold transformations and

vanishings no one — no mortal,

not even the wily Medeia — could match (for

Koprophoros’ skill

as an illusion-maker was known far and wide) he had

used no weapon

but plain argument, and by that alone had made

Jason appear

a fool. As the hall sat restlessly waiting, Jason

drew shapes

with his fingernail on the tablecloth, deep in thought.

At last,

the king turned to him, evading his eyes, and asked,

his voice

almost a whisper, toneless except for a hint of irritation: “Would you care to offer some comment, Jason?” He

smiled too late,

and Jason saw it, and returned the smile; and the

whole room knew

that instant that Jason would win.

He let a long moment pass, then rose, head bowed, regally handsome and, you

would have sworn,

embarrassed as an athlete praised. With an innocent

openness

that no mere innocent boy could match, he said,

“ I confess,

Koprophoros is right.” He smiled, not harmed in the

least by that;

glad to be instructed. “I’ve admitted already that my

judgment was faulty,

though by no means consistently so, I hope. (That

you must decide.)

And Koprophoros would be right, too, if I claimed,

indeed,

what he seems to believe I claimed. I’ve spoken

of marriages just and unjust: the king and state,

the gods

and nature, mind and body. I meant no attempt

to split off

mind, as if body and mind were not one — as surely

as Orpheus

and Eurydike were one, while they lived, and are one

even now

in the cool and dark of the Underworld — or as Theseus and Hippolyta are one. The world is rife with

inadequacies—

imperfect creatures starving for completion. To survive

at all,

weakling must fadge with weakling, and out of that

marriage win strength.

Not all unions are therefore holy. The blazing

trumpet-vine

clinging to the elm may drive the branches of the tree

toward light,

leaning on the strength of the tree for its own

expansions; but at last

both fall together. We therefore prudently hack down

the vine

in its earliest stages, and tear up its underground tubers

and burn them.

I intended no more than that when I spoke.

“As for the business of Troy—” He paused, looked straight at the Asian, then

down, much troubled,

for all the world like a man betrayed by an old,

old friend,

and confounded by it. He said at last, too softly

for many

in the hall to hear, “I cannot fathom his attacking me

with that.

I’m an exile, a man with no army to lead and no

leader willing

to take me with his troops, though I’ve formally pleaded

and sworn with oaths

that no past glory of mine would impede his leadership.

Koprophoros knows all that. I told him myself. Why

he now

forgets it, and twists my misfortune to shame …”

His voice trailed off.

When, little by little, they grasped the force of what

he was saying,

the kings were astounded. Those in the back who’d

missed what he said

whispered to be told. Shock at Koprophoros’ treachery

rolled

to the outer walls like a wave. Only three in the room—

Koprophoros,

Jason, and I (for all that Artemis knew, I knew)— were aware that — for all his wounded but forgiving

innocence

(army or no army, lord or no lord) — Jason had spoken a cold-blooded lie. He’d told Koprophoros nothing

of the kind.

The effect of the lie was immediate and deadly, as he

knew it would be.

Not a man there had one single word of good he

could say

for Koprophoros.

(So once King Arthur, playing the demonic Other King, understood that to lose the game

meant death,

and with powerful fists he ground the chessmen of gold

to dust

and smashed the board. In horror the Other King

reached out wildly,

and, the same instant, vanished. So Jason too refused to play the game — he who had played so many far

so long.

What was I to think?)

Kreon rose, politician to the last. As if he’d seen nothing, as if merely finishing one more

evening

of banqueting, he thanked all who’d spoken and,

pleading the lateness

of the hour, dismissed the assembled kings to their beds.

As they left

the kings talked earnestly, bending to one another’s ears.

With Koprophoros,

no one exchanged a word. He gazed at the floor, furious and smiling, torn between anger and rueful admiration.

In his room, Ipnolebes watching like a man turned stone, old Kreon

talked,

pacing, wildly gesticulating as his slaves undressed him.

“There it is, you see. Right from the start!” His bald

head gleamed

in the candlelight. His shadow leaped up, stretched

on pillars,

the shadows of the slaves reaching out to him like

ghostly enemies

clutching at his life. He paused, hiked up one foot

to relinquish

a sandal, then paced again, short-legged. “We two

know better,

you and I,” he said, “than to lay our bets on wealth

alone,

honor like Jokasta’s, genius like that of—” Ipnolebes

watched

like a wolf; said nothing. The king prattled on.

Ipnolebes’ eyes

fell shut, his spirit more fierce than a god’s. “There

is no anger,”

the voice of the moon-goddess whispered in my ear,

invisible beside me,

“more deadly than a slave’s.” She laughed, aloof.

‘There lies the evil

in tyrannous oppression. It ends in the gem-pure fury

of the man

who has tolerated the intolerable, no longer loves himself or anything living.” I observed that the rest

of the slaves

were the same, as if Ipnolebes’ emotion, ravaged and

inhuman,

inwardly burning like a coal that appears (at first

glance) ash,

had crept into all their veins through the shadowed,

impotionate air.

He broke in abruptly: “Suppose your magnificent Jason

was lying.”

Kreon, in his nightcap, fat arms stretching to receive

his nightgown,

seemed not to hear him at all.

In the wide-beamed banquet hall, dark and abandoned except for one figure, moonlight

fell—

cold shadow of Artemis — mottled on the tables and

floor. A slavegirl,

servant of Pyripta, watched in the shadow of the

doorway as the man

who remained, though the others had left, paced

musingly back and forth.

She watched for some while, then hurried to her