Jason and Medeia (40 page)

overwhelmed

by stench where the body of Phaiton still burned. At

night, by the will

of the gods, we entered an unknown stream whose rock

shores sang

with the rumble of mingling waters. So on and on we

rushed,

lost in the endless domain of the murderous Kelts. Now

storms,

now raging men dismayed us, thinning our company. My sickness stayed. My hand on the gunnel was

marble-white;

my face grew gaunt, rimose. We touched at the

kingdom of stone,

the kingdom of iron men, the kingdom of the ants. As

dreams

insinuate their unearthly cast on the light of the sick man's room, making windows alien eyes, transforming

chairs

to animals biding their time, so now to the heartsick

Argo

the world took on a change. The night was unnaturally

dark,

crowded with baffling machines we could not quite see.

And then

at dawn we looked out, in our strange dream, on

motionless banks

where no beast stirred and even the leaves on the trees

were still.

No songbird sang, and the clouds above us were as void

of life

as stones. We struggled to awaken, but the ship was

sealed in a charm.

We waited. Then came to a fork in the stream, a great

hushed island,

and the Argonauts, half-starved, rowed in, cast anchor,

and made

the long ship fast. As far as the eye could see on the

windless

rockstrewn beach, there was nothing alive. The tufts of

grass

on the meadow above were still, as if lost in thought.

“On a hill,

rising at the center of the island, there stood a grove so

dense

no thread of light came through, and between the boles

of the trees

lay avenues. We went there, Lynkeus leading the way with his powerful eyes. I walked behind him, my hand

in Jason's,

and my spirit was filled with uneasiness. I was sure the

air—

chill, unstirring—was crowded with thirsty ghosts. We

found

no game; it seemed that even the crawling insects slept.

“Without warning from Lynkeus, we reached a glade

and, rising

in the center of the glade, a vast stone building in the

shape of a dome.

The gray foundation rocks were carved with curious

oghams:

spirals like eddies in a river, like blustering winds—

the oldest

runes ever made by man. At the low, dark door of the

building

a chair of stone stood waiting. We studied it, none of us

speaking.

And suddenly, even as we watched, there appeared a

figure in the chair,

seated comfortably, casually, combing his beard. He was

old,

his hair as white as hoarfrost. But as for his race, he

was nothing

we knew—a snubnosed creature with puffy eyes. His

face,

like his belly, was round, and he wore an enormous

moustache. He said: ‘

Ah ha! So it's Jason again!' The lord of the Argonauts

stared,

then glanced at me, as if thinking the curious image

were somehow

my creation. The old man laughed, impish, a laugh that rang like bells on the great rock mound and the

surrounding hills.

He laughed till he wept and clutched his sides.

“I asked: “Who are you?

Why do you mock us with silent sunlit isles and

laughter,

when Zeus has condemned us to travel as miserable

exiles forever,

suffering griefs past number for a crime so dark I dare not speak of it?' He laughed again, unimpressed by

grief,

unmoved by our hunger. “Mere pangs of mortality,' he

said.

‘If you knew
my
troubles—' He paused, reflecting, then

laughed again.

‘However, they slip my mind.' I repeated the question:

‘Who are you?'

He tapped the tips of his fingers together, squinting,

though his lips

still smiled. ‘Don't rush me. It'll come to me.' He

searched his wits.

‘I'm something to do with rivers, I remember.' He pulled

at his beard,

pursed his lips, looked panic-stricken. ‘Is it
very

important?'

Suddenly his face brightened and he snapped his

fingers. At once—

apparently not by his wish—an enormous sow appeared, sprawled in the grass beside him, her eyes alarmed.

He snapped

his fingers again, looking sheepish, and at once the huge

beast vanished.

Again the name he'd been hunting had slipped his

mind. Then:

‘Spirit of sorts,' he said. ‘Not one of your dark ones, no

god

of the bog people, or the finger-wringing Germans, or—' His bright eyes widened. ‘Ah yes! I'd forgotten!

—We have dealings, we powers,

from time to time. I received a request from the goddess

of will.

Abnormal. But isn't everything? —Forgive me if I seem too light in the presence of woe. We're not very good at

woe,

we Grand Antiques. Treasure your guilt if you like, dear

friends.

Guilt has a marvelous energy about it—havoc of

kingdoms,

slaughter of infants, et cetera. Discipline! That's what

it gives you!

(Discipline, of course, is a virtue not all of us value.)

However,

Time is wide enough for all. Indeed, in a thousand years (I've been there, understand. A thousand thousand

times I've heard

the joke, and that lunatic punchline) … But what was

I saying? Ah!

Sail on in peace!—or in whatever mood suits your

temperament.

The passage is opened, this once, after all these

millennia.

Make way for the flagship
Argo,
ye golden generations!

Make way

for purification by fire, salvation by slaughter!' His

eyes—

pale blue, mocking, were a-glitter; but at once he

remembered himself.

‘Forgive me, lady. Forgive an old bogyman's foolishness,

lords

of Akhaia.' His smile was genuine now. The universe has time for all experiments. Sail in peace!' He

vanished.

And the same instant the sky went dark and we found

ourselves

on the
Argo,
on a churning sea. Black waves came

combing in,

and mountains to left and right were yawing apart for

us,

and the opening sucked the sea in, and like a chip on

a torrent

the
Argo
went spinning, careening, the walls half buried

in foam,

to the south. I clung to the capstan. I would have been

washed away,

but the boy Ankaios abandoned the useless steering oar and caught my arm and held me till Jason could

reach me, crawling

pin by pin along the rail. He held me by the waist,

his arm

like rock. So we stood as we fell, dropped down from

a dizzying height,

a violent booming around us, as if the earth had split, and we looked up behind us in terror and saw the

mountains close,

and the same instant we struck and were hurled to the

belly of the ship.

The
Argo
shrieked as if all her beams had burst, and

water

boiled in over us. Then, at Ankaios' shout, we knew we were safe, the ship was afloat, all her brattice-work

firm despite

contusions, a thin, dark ooze. And thus we came, by

the whim

of the river spirit of the North, to the kingdom of Circe,

daughter

of the sun, my father's sister.

“We did not speak of the dream—

the cynical god who could scoff at all human shame

and pain.

Did only I dream it? There are those who claim we

create, ourselves,

in the dark of our minds, the gods who guide us. Was

I in fact

remorseless as the snake who smiles as he swallows the

bellowing frog?

Did my dreams create, then, even the dizzying fall of the

Argo,

that dark-as-murder sky? I dared not speak of the

dream,

but the image of the god remained, like the nagging

awareness of a wound,—

that and the sunlight in which he sat, with his attention

fixed

on his beard. If I closed my eyes, relaxed, I could drift

to him again,

abandon all sorrow and guilt forever, as if such things were childhood fantasy, and only this—his twinkling

eyes,

his laugh, his comb, his silent, sunlit glade—were real. I could step, if I wished, from my sanity to peace. I

resisted,

perhaps for fear of Jason.

“We came to Circe's isle.

“At Jason's command, the Argonauts cast the hawsers

and moored

the ship. We soon found Circe bathing where spindrift

rained

on shale. That night she'd been alarmed by visions: the

walls of her palace

were wet with blood, it seemed to her, and flames were

devouring

the magic herbs she used for bewitching strangers. With

the gore

of a murdered man she quenched the flame, catching

the blood

in her hands. It clung to her skin and garments. When

she awoke, at dawn,

the mood of the dream was still upon her, and so she'd

come

to lie in the spray by the pounding surf and be cleansed.

As she lay there

it seemed to her in a waking dream that saurian beasts flopped from the water—beasts neither animal nor

human, confused

and foul, as if earth's primeval slime were producing

them, testing

its powers in the age before rain, when the terrible sun

was king.

As she looked, the creatures took on, more and more,

the appearance of men.

She rose, watching them with witch's eyes, and stepped

back softly

in the direction of the grave-dark grove and the palace

beyond. With her hand

she beckoned, a movement like wind in a sapling. And

the Argonauts, trapped

in the power of her spell, came after her. The son of

Aison

reached out, touched my hand. He knew—though

helpless to resist,

unable to command his men to stay—that Aietes' sister would prove no friend, her eyes as soulless as my

father's, her girlish

beauty as deadly as Aietes' anguine strength. At his

touch

I wakened. I gazed around me in alarm, like a

life-prisoner

startled from pleasant dreams to his dungeon reality. They walked like men asleep, smiling.On the terry

ahead,

the demonic witch smiled back. She had hair like a

raven's, a smile

malicious, seductive, uncertain as the shifting patterns

of leaves

on her ghostly face. With the long fingers of her left

hand

she touched her breast, then gently, gently, dark eyes

staring,

she moved the tips of her fingers to the cloud of hair

that bloomed

below. Make no mistake: it was not mere sex wise

Circe

lured them with. She promised violence, knowledge like

the gods',

forbidden mysteries deeper than innocence or guilt.

—Nor think

that I could prove any match for her, witch against

witch. Helpless,

in anguish at Jason's appeal for help, I cried out, ‘Circe! Spare them!”

“The queen witch swung her glowing eyes to me

and knew that I too was of Helios' race, for the

children of the sun

have eyes like no other mortals. At once, with a curious

smile,

she unmade the spell, as though her mind were far

away,

and Jason signalled his men to wait, and we two alone went up with Circe to her palace.

“The queen of witches drew on

her sable mantle and signalled the two of us over to

chairs

of gold. We did not sit, but went to the hearth at once and sat among ashes, in the age-old manner of

suppliants.

I buried my face in both my hands, and Jason fixed in the cinders the treasure-hilted sword with which he'd

slain

Apsyrtus. We could not meet her eyes. She understood, smiling that curious smile again, mind far away; and in reverence to the ancient

ordinance of Zeus,

the god of wrath but of mercy as well, she began to offer the sacrifice that cleanses murderers of guilt. To atone for the murder still unexpiated, she held above our heads the young of a sow whose dugs swelled yet

from the fruit

of the womb, and slitting its throat, she sprinkled our

hands with the blood;

and she made propitiation with offerings of wine, calling on Zeus the Cleanser, hope of the murder-stained, who

seize

in maniac pride what belongs to the gods alone; and all defilements her attendants bore from the palace.

Then Circe, by the hearth,

burned cakes unleavened, and prayed that Zeus might

calm the furies,

whether our festering souls were stained by the blood

of a stranger

or a kinsman.

“When all this ritual was done, she raised us up

and led us to the golden chairs; and she herself sat

near,

facing us. At once she asked us our names and business and why we had come here as suppliants. For she

remembered her dreams,

and she longed to hear the voice of her unknown

kinswoman.

I answered, telling her all she asked, sick at heart, answering softly in the Kolchian tongue. But I shrank from speaking of the murder of Apsyrtus.