Jason and Medeia (46 page)

blatantly—

his blood cried out of the earth, cried out of the beams

and stones

of the palace for revenge. The son raised never a finger.

And the mother,

poor Alkimede, my mistress once, was driven from her

home

to lodgings fit for a swineherd. There she lived with

her boy,

as long as he'd stay. It was none too long. For all her

pleas,

for all the great sobs welling from her heart, he must

leave her helpless,

friendless in a world where once she'd stood as high as any in Akhaia. ? shameless! Shame on shame he heaped on her: not on his own but in foul collusion with the very usurper who seized that throne, he must

sail to the shores

of barbarians, and must bear off with him on his mad

expedition

the finest of Akhaia's lords! Few enough would return,

he knew.

O that he too had been drowned in the river with

innocent Hylas,

or fallen like Idmon to a maddened boar, or withered

in Libya!

She might have had then some comfort in death,

though little before,

wrapped in a winding-sheet wound by strangers,

tumbled to her tomb

like a penniless old farm woman. And Jason returned, joyful with his barbarous bride, and shamelessly joined

the usurper,

smiling on half of his father's blood-soaked throne. See

how

he preaches justice and reason, preaches fidelity, trades on his great past deeds to avoid all present risks. “Do not rave,” he raves; “no shame can trouble our city. Prophesy wealth and wine! The past is obliterated! Tell us no more about crimes in the tents of our

ancestors!

Justice and reason, like tamed lions, have settled in

Iolkos.”

Where
is his justice and reason? Where is his loudly

bugled

fidelity? The throne was stolen; stolen it remains. What of fidelity to fathers and mothers? What of

fidelity

to the dead in their winecupped graves?'

   “So the old shrew raged, shaking. Medeia, standing beside me, glared with eyes like ice. Softly, she said, ‘Who is this creature

you allow to berate you in the streets?' I touched her

hand to calm her.

“A woman who loved my mother,' I said. Medeia was

silent.

It was not till another day she asked, ‘Is this accusation just, that Pelias stole your father's throne?' I thought,
Everything is true in its time and place.
But answered

only:

‘I was young; my father was unsure of me. There were

vague rumors …

It was all a long, long time ago.' But after that when I spoke in the assembly or debated plans with my

fellow king,

and Pelias had qualms, found reasons for doubt,

objected, found cause

for delay, she would watch him with tigress eyes.

   “Pelias, as his mind dimmed with the passing years, grew

increasingly a burden.

It's a difficult thing to explain. He interfered with me

less.

He grew deaf as a post and nearly blind, his mind so

enfeebled

that in the end he relinquished all but a shadow of his

former power.

The trouble was, he seemed to imagine that both of us had abandoned the nuisance of government.

Old-womanish, dim,

he'd call me to his bedroom and beg from me stories of

the Argonauts,

or he'd tell me, as if we were shepherds with all

afternoon to pass,

tedious tales of his childhood. It proved no use to send his daughters instead, willing as they were—

good-hearted, sheltered

princesses with the brains of nits. It had to be me— myself or Akastos, and Akastos rarely came. I would

stoop,

absurd in my royal robes, by the old man's bed, and

listen,

or pretend to listen, brooding in secret on Argos' affairs. The drapes would be drawn, a whim of his daughters,

as though he were

some apple they hoped to preserve through the winter

in a cool dark bin.

He would stutter like a fond old grandmother, on and

on. At times

he'd recall with a start the prophecy, and he'd hastily

offer

his cringing act, lading on flattery, protesting his

life-long

love. His fingers, clinging to mine, gripped me like a

monkey's.

His daughters would listen, drooping like flowers from

slender stalks,

and whenever they spoke it was tearfully, with a kind of

idiot

gratitude for the affection I showed their belovèd father. At last he'd sleep; I'd be free to leave the place.

   “I'd go to the wing of the palace I kept with Medeia and the

children; I'd pass

in silence among our slaves, and my heart was sullen

with suspicion.

Surely, I thought, they must mock me. Jason in his

kingly robes,

shouldered like a bull, gray eyes rolling as he sits, polite

as a cranky old shepherd's serving boy, by the bed of

Pelias,

hanging on stammered-out words. O shameless coward

indeed!

I would stand alone at the balustrade of marble, glare

out

at the sea, Orion hanging low, contemptuous.

I was not a coward, I knew well enough,

and it ought not to matter what others supposed.

I governed well—no man denied it. If I wasted time on a fusty, repulsive old man, I had excellent reasons

for it.

I was no Herakles pummelling the seasons with passionate, mindless fists. Oh, I could admire the

crone

who cackled in the streets, full of rage and scorn, her loves and hates as forthright as boulders in the

grass. No doubt

she would, in my place, have struck down Pelias at the

first suspicion,

as would Herakles; or failing that, she'd have schemed

and plotted—

would never have seemed to accept, as I did, his right

to the throne,

or half of it. She'd have schemed and slaughtered,

maintained the honor

of Iolkos' noble dead, whatever the cost to the living— bloodshed of factions, houses in furor, families divided, chaos for ages to come. I had no doubt that the course I'd chosen was best, my seemingly shameful

compromise.

Absolute passion, absolute glory, was for gods, not men. I could claim the status of a demigod, but the future

was not

with them.

   “Yet glaring out toward sea, resolved on a course no man of sense could conceivably mock,

I was filled with a dangerous weariness.

More real than the seven-story fall

that gaped below me, more sharp to my sense than the

quartz-domed tomb

of Alkimede on its high hill north of the temple of Hera, or the figure of Medeia at my back, as heavy as bronze

with anger—

visions of flight would snatch my mind—the
Argo's

prow

bobbing like the head of a galloping horse, half

smothered in foam,

dark shapes looming out of fire-green water, then

vanishing—

the wandering rocks.

   “I was protected once by an old Kelt, sired by a bear on a moon-priestess, or so he claimed.

We talked, in his shadowy hall, of freedom. His boy

sat hunched

by the hearthstone, listening, watching with eyes like a

cat's. From the beams

of the old king's walls hung the heads of his vanquished

enemies,

and above the fire, nailed firmly to the slats, hung the

leathern arm

of a giant. He said: ‘I see no freedom in peace and

justice.

I see no meaning in freedom that leaves some part of

my soul

in chains. I grant, it's a noble ideal, this thing you

purpose—

a state well governed, where no man tromps on another

man's heel,

the oppressed are aided, the orphan and the widow win

justice in the courts,

and each man holds to his place fox the benefit of all.

But I'd lose

my wind in a state so noble. I'd develop maladies— mysterious, elusive, beyond any doctor's skill. Like a bat in a cage, I'd wither, for no clear reason, and die.' The

boy

at the hearthstone smiled, sharp-eyed, heart teeming

with thought. The king

with mild blue eyes—cheeks painted, startling on that

dignified face—

shook his head slowly, amused. ‘You speak to me of

gentle apes

in Africa and claim their kinship. Let Argus advise us, who'd studied the world's mechanics for most of a

century.

Is that indeed our line?—In this colder land we say mankind is a child of the cat, old source of our

crankiness,

our peculiar solitude—for though we may sometimes

hunt in packs,

and share the kill, if necessary, we have never hunted like brotherly wolves or bears.' He smiled.

‘By another legend, the gods made man from the skull

of a rat,

that grim and deeply philosophical scavenger who picks,

light-footed,

perilously cunning, through houses of the dead, spreads

corpses' sickness

to all he meets, yet survives himself and laughs at

carnage

and takes bright trinkets from the slaughtered.

   “ ‘Be that as it may—‘ The king glanced over at his boy.'—If my

blood's essence

is not the gentleness and wisdom of Zeus but, whatever

the reason,

has murder in it, as well as devotion and trust like

a boy's,

then freedom is not for me what it is for Zeus. The

freedom

of the eyes is to see and the ear to hear; the freedom

of the soul

is to love and defend one's friends, assert one's power,

behead

one's enemies, poison their streams.' He smiled. ‘My

words appall you.

But come! It was not I who proclaimed the supreme

value

of liberty. I might well admire the state you dream of, where nature's law is replaced by peace and justice—

though I would not

visit the place. But do not mistake these noble goods for freedom.' He reached his hand to my knee and

smiled again.

Your course will no doubt prosper, Jason. Your

philosophy has

a ring to it, a nobility of glitter that can hardly fail to appeal to the collector rat. Ten thousand years from

now

men will look back to the Akhaians with pious

admiration, and to us,

the treacherous Kelts, as bestial and superstitious,

to whom

good riddance. And they may have a point, I grant. And

yet you'll not

outlast us, lover of mind. From age to age, while your spires shake in the battery of the sun, we, living

underground,

will gnaw the animal heart, doing business as usual.' I turned to the boy, a child with the gentleness of

Hylas. I'd heard

him sing, and his voice was sweeter than dawn in a

wheat-filled valley.

The severed heads of enemies hanging on the hall's dark

beams

shed tears at his song, and the greatest of harpers,

Orpheus himself,

was silenced by the music's spell. “You, too, believe all

this?'

I asked and smiled. For the Kelts were friends; I was

not such a fool

as to hope to convert their mysterious hearts and brains

by Akhaian

reasoning. The boy said shyly, How can I doubt what I've heard from the cradle up? This much at least

seems true

for both of you: You'd gladly fight to the death for

friends,

whatever your theories.' We laughed. That much was true, no doubt. Medeia smiled and glanced at me.

   “But now, standing at the balustrade and gazing

wearily

seaward, I saw all that more darkly. The Keltic king was lighter than I'd guessed. I'd achieved the ideal of

government

I dreamed of then: equal justice for all free citizens, peace in the city. Yet my beast heart yearned, past all

denying,

for violence. I envied Akastos, balanced, alive, on the balls of his feet, riding in that rattling chariot of

war

with the army of Kastor, repelling a wave of invaders

on the plains

of Sparta. In the silence of the star-calm night, I could

hear their shouts,

piercing the hundreds of miles—the snorting and

neighing of horses,

the swish of a javelin hungrily leaping, the tumble of

weighed-down

limbs.

   “Medeia said, ‘Jason?' I turned to her. ‘Tell me your

thought.'

‘No thought,' I said grimly. She said no more. I saw mad

Idas

dancing with a corpse by the light of the burning gates

of the palace

of Kyzikos. Saw Idmon writhing, his belly ripped open. Saw the great eagle, with pinions like banks of silvery

oars,

sailing to the mountain of Prometheus.

   “Hard times those were for Medeia. She tended to the children, kept track of

the household slaves

and hid from me her mysterious illness, or struggled to. I glimpsed it at times: a tightness of mouth, an

abstracted look;

and I remembered her sickness on the
Argo.
For all her

skill with drugs,

she couldn't encompass her body's revolt—now

menstrual cramps,

sharp as the banging of Herakles' club, and indifferent

to the moon,

now unknown organs rebelling in their dens, now

flashes of fire

in her brains. I would find her standing alone,