John Gardner - Jason and Medeia

watching the fiery rain, apprehensive, knowing

well enough

that the weather bore some message in it. He knew

beyond doubt

he was caught up now in a race against time. He could

hardly guess

in which direction the danger lay, couldn’t even be sure how grave it was; but he knew he must be in command

when she struck—

or best, get control before she struck — must stand

in position

to counter her, issue commands to protect them all.

Yet he could not press; he dared not even suggest that

the sceptre be granted to him

for fear that even now the king might repent and everything be lost. He remained with Pyripta,

smiling like a bridegroom,

stroking her cheeks and throat, lightly kissing her

eyelids, feigning

the adoration he must wait for a calmer time to feel.

The princess talked, pouring her pleasure in her new

husband’s ear—

talked as she never had talked before, and sometimes

broke off

to laugh at her chatter, yet believed his assurance and

chattered still more.

She had not known how much she loved him. With a

frightened look

she asked of his life with Medeia. He smiled and gently

kissed her,

silencing her. “You demand too much,” he said lightly,

his mind

racing down other, far darker lanes. “We have sons,”

he said.

“You must understand …” But catching the anger

and jealousy flashing

in her glance, he swiftly and easily guided her

elsewhere. I watched,

protected by a mist from their seeing me, and my heart

was divided,

loyal to the woman on the hill below, yet to Jason too, for he meant no harm, only good for them all, though

all he was doing

was false and tragically harmful. Again and again I felt on the verge of speaking to warn him, but each time

fear kept me silent.

The new solidity the gods had given was no great

advantage,

I knew to my sorrow. It seemed unlikely that empty

shadows

could harm me, or dreams turn real. Yet how could I

doubt those bruises,

that stabbing pain in my poor right hand, or my

spectacles’ ruin?

I constructed theories. Haven’t there been cases, I said

to myself,

when men fell down stairs while sleep-walking, and with

broken backs

dreamed on, explaining the pain by imagined giants?

And might

some action of mine inside this dream not trigger

repercussions

wherever it is that I really am? So I labored, guessing, and what was true I had no way of knowing, the rules

of the vision

kept hidden from me, however I strained to grasp them,

sweating,

and I kept my cowardly silence despite all nobler urges, huddling in protective mist.

At noon, at the midday feast, his waiting ended. In the presence of kings, high priests

in attendance,

the goddesses Hera and Athena behind him

(I alone saw them—

their look triumphant and wary at once, Aphrodite

glaring,

furious at Jason for the love he feigned, scornful of

her power),

Kreon — with an endless rambling speech — allusions

to Oidipus,

Jokasta, Antigone — transferred his sceptre and power

to Jason.

Great lords of Corinth unfastened the cloak from the

old king’s shoulders

and draped it on Aison’s son, its wide flow covering

the cape

Argus had made at Lemnos. Attended by lords, he took the central chair on the dais. His kingship was ratified

by vows

to Zeus and Hera and the chief gods of the pantheon, such vows as no man on earth would break. And high

in the rain

some saw Zeus’s eagle, they thought, though others

thought not.

The assembled kings, his equals, came to him,

confirming alliances

promised to Kreon in the past, and one by one they

bowed to him,

taking his hands, and bowed to Pyripta beside him,

his queen.

Again there were drums and trumpets, and slaves

poured wine.

And then a thing so strange took place that no one felt certain,

afterward,

whether it had happened or not. All in gold, the Asian,

Koprophoros,

stood before Jason, solemn. He bowed to the ground

in the fashion

of the Orient, then bowed to Pyripta in the same manner. When he spoke, his voice was as deep and soft as the

slow thundering

of far-off rainclouds, a voice so changed I was filled

with alarm.

“So the game is ended at last, good prince,” he said,

and smiled.

“All you were robbed of in life, you have now back in

hand, though opposed

by more than you dreamed.” He turned to the kings

around him. “Let men

report it to the world’s last age that once, in a palace

called Akhaia,

a man, by cunning and tenacity, out-fought the gods

of the Underworld for a city and princess, though the

gods of Death

were granted their prey in advance by fate. Yet lose

they did,

for the moment, playing too lightly — as the mighty will

do sometimes.

But fate, after all, is inexorable, whatever man’s power. The dagger blade has already cut deep in the

shimmering veil;

the dream is nearly done. Fear now no god, Jason. Fear things human, and infinitely more terrible. He smiled his scarcely perceptible smile. “If my words

seem strange,

ponder them after I’m gone. And so, good-day.”

With that

he tapped the stone floor lightly with his foot. In a flash,

where he’d stood

there loomed an enormous serpent whose wedge-shaped

head struck the roof

and whose coils were thicker than an ancient oak—

a female serpent

obscenely bloated with eggs; and I thought of Harmonia, noblest of queens, transformed by the Master of

Life and Death

to Queen of the Dead. She vanished.

While the hall still stared, dumbfounded, Paidoboron bowed to the throne. His words were stern

and brief:

“Now all escape is sealed.” And immediately he, too,

vanished,

and there in his place stood a dragon who filled all the

palace with fire,

and his scales were like plates of steel. Each nail on

his saurian claws

was longer than a man, and his two bright fangs were

massive stalactites,

children of the world’s first cave. Then the dragon too

was gone.

Kreon, pale as a sea-ghost, clutched at his chest,

shaking,

and even Jason was trembling. The nobles around him

swore

it was Hades himself he’d contended with, or his

surrogate, Kadmos,

man-god ruler of the dead. They swore that Death

and his wife

had come for their sport and had made long-winded

mockery

of Kreon’s fears and Jason’s desires and the hopes of

the sea-kings,

the whole fierce struggle a sardonic joke. The princess

suddenly

cried out, waking from a vision. But at once, though

his throat was working

and dark blood rushing to his face, the son of Aison

seized

his new bride’s hand and calmed her. When his tongue

would work, he said,

“Don’t be afraid! I swear all this terror will prove

some trick

of Medeia’s. If not, you’ve heard what the two ghosts

say: The gods

have retired from the conflict. It’s now no more than

mere human craft

we must guard against. — Yet I’m certain it’s only as

I said at first,

some heartless illusion by Medeia, designed to

terrify us.”

At once they believed him, for surely the gods play

no tricks so base,

not even the gods of the Underworld. So they told

themselves,

and so, little by little, their calm was restored.