Jason and Medeia (49 page)

them. In the hall

that opened on the great front door with its thickly

figured panels,

its hinges the length and breadth of a man, the old

king bowed,

without a word, and they parted. The short, red-bearded

man

accompanied Jason, walking out into the night. I kept to the shadows, following behind.

   At the foot of the palace steps red Kompsis paused, and Jason reluctantly waited for

him.

“You amaze me, Jason.” He folded his beefy hands and

smiled,

malevolent. ‘The hanged boy was a friend of yours.” Jason said nothing. “He was, I think, the son of a king who defended the
Argo
from ruin by northern

barbarians.

He was a mighty chieftain, at that time.

But later, his luck abandoned him.

His palace fell to marauders from the South. He himself,

though old

and cunning as a dragon, was driven to the hills and

there surrounded

by Danaans and slain, still clinging to his two-hand

sword. His head

they hacked from his shoulders and threw in the river,

and all his animals,

horses and dogs, they slaughtered, in scorn of the habit

of the Kelts;

and his son in scorn they christened Amekhenos.

Shackled as a slave,

for all his angry pride, they brought him to Corinth.

Here Kreon

bought him, believing he could tame that wolfish heart.”

To all this

Jason listened in silence, his eyes on the ground. Red

Kompsis

laughed, but his voice was violent, his body hunched.

He said:

“He recognized you at once, of course. At the first

chance,

he spoke with you. I saw your look of bewilderment
You'd heard that voice before somewhere, but you couldn't recall it. Faces, voices, they don't last

long

in the snatching brain of Jason.” He laughed again.

“You would

have remembered him soon enough, I think, if you'd

needed his aid.

But the shoe was on the other foot. He was not a man

to press

for favors owed to his house. Though a single word

from you

to Kreon—fond as he is of his mighty adventurer—
would have freed that prince in the same instant, you

kept your peace.

Because of bad memory.” He leaned toward Jason

fiercely. “—Because of

shallowness of heart.
I name it its name! Your every

word

reveals your devilish secret!

   “—Very well, you forgot his name. He must seek his freedom by other means. And so

escaped,

slipped—incredible!—even past sleepless Ipnolebes'

eyes.

We know better, of course. You saw his rage. For once

in his life

the old man chose to blink. —But whatever his

barbarous courage,

whatever the cunning of his savage Keltic brain, no

slave

escapes from the gyves of Kreon. And so he was missed,

and hunted,

and eventually found in—incredible again …”

   “I know. That's enough!” Jason broke in without meaning to. He stood

tight-lipped,

saying no more. Red Kompsis laughed,
swollen with righteous indignation, godlike scorn.

   “—was found in the chief ship of the Arenians, in command of a

man

you once knew well—mad Idas, son of Aphareos.
Surely it did not escape the wily Jason's mind that something, somewhere, was amiss! Why would

Idas, for all his famed

insanity, give help to a perfect stranger, a dangerous
Kelt? All the crew was arrested, the runaway slave

was hanged,

and still from Jason not a syllable. Though all the

harbor

churned up seething in fury at Kreon's tyranny— grizzly, base-born seadogs with no more nobility of

blood

than jackals—still the golden tongue was silent. You

can

explain, no doubt. The golden tongue can explain away the moon, the sun, the firmament, explain away birth and death, not to mention marriage—leave all this

universe pale

as mist.” So he spoke, lips trembling with anger, and

while he spoke,

the sky grew darker, glowering and oppressive. I

understood

it was no mere mortal whose anger charged the night,

but the wrath

of a goddess whose power was rising. The Father of

Gods had withdrawn

his check on her. The houses of heaven had changed.

   Then quietly Jason spoke, his gaze groundward. He stood like a spur of rock when gale winds pound it from all directions

and trees

roll crazily, torn up by the roots. “It seems an easy thing to claim a man should react like a loyal dog, leap out fangs bared, whatever the attacker, and die at the swipe

of a club,

true to the last to his instincts. I cannot defend myself from the charge that I haven't behaved like a loyal

dog—except

that once, by the leap of instinct, I killed my cousin.

I might

have saved the slave, as you claim, by a careful word

or two

to Kreon; I might by a well-framed speech have rescued

Idas

and all his men from prison. I might. You know well

enough

the risk. Old Kreon's a stubborn man. He does not like his judgment doubted or his will crossed. Be sure, if

I'd won

those favors from him, I'd then and there have

exhausted the old man's

love of me. Whatever good I might hope to do for all the enslaved, for all my friends, for future

generations,

that good I'd have traded for an instant's sweet

self-righteousness.

Though all the harbor rose up in rage at an immoral

act—

a thousand, three, five thousand men?—I do not find that the evil deed was rectified, or the sentence undone.

A good man out of power is worth

a pine-seedling in the Hellespont!

Such are the brutal realities, my friend.

Do not be such a fool, Kompsis, as to think man's

choice

lies between evil and good. All serious options are

moral,

and all serious choices inherently risky, if not, for the heart that's pure, impossible.” So Jason spoke, and I could not doubt, listening in the shadow of the

colonnade,

that his words came not from guilt but from honest

intent. His heart

was heavy, his purpose firm. But the god in human

shape

was scornful. Kompsis grinned, his eyes like thunder

blooming

in the low, black night. “However, the house you owed

your life

hangs motionless there in the marketplace, food for

crows. Consider:

No grand law will preserve your state if fools succeed

you;

and every line comes down, soon or late, to fools. Create the noblest constitution the mind of man can frame: eventually fools will crumple it. You plan for the

splendid

future, though decay is certain; and you let the present

rot

though a single word could cleanse it. Do as you must.

I warn you,

heaven is against you. Trouble is coming to the man

who builds

his town on blood, or founds his kingdom on crimes

unavenged.

Like a shepherd rescuing a couple of legs or a bit of an

ear

from the lion's mouth, you salvage justice murdered.”

As Jason

turned in fury, his blood in his face,

the last man living to be tricked by the jangle of

rhetoric,

he saw that the stones where Kompsis had stood were

bare, and knew

he'd spoken with a god. His cheeks went white, as if

lightning-struck,

and his muscles locked in rage and frustration. “It's the

truth,” he shouted.

He lifted his face to the midnight sky, his features

anguished,

and raised his fists. He seemed to struggle for speech.

The cords

of his throat stood out and his temples bulged. Then

suddenly

from his chest came the bellow of a maddened bull.

“I've been cheated enough!

I've told you nothing but the truth!” So he raged, then

clutched his head

as if shocked by searing pain. The sky was silent.

   Later— it was nearly dawn—I saw him in the windswept

temple of Apollo,

hissing angrily, on his knees before the seer. The blind

man

listened in silence, his filmed eyes wandering, out of

control.

“The gods are many. Who knows how many? They

endlessly contradict each other like aphorisms. Tell me what to fear!

I've honored the gods both known and unknown,

emptied my coffers on temples, images, hillside

shrines. Not from conviction—I grant that too.

Is a man made holy by boldfaced lies?

There was a time I believed that the skies could open,

make horses stagger,

the soldier throw up his arms in fear. I believed, in fact, I'd seen such things. But the world changed, or my

vision changed.

What possible good in denying the fact? I could see no

proof

that Hypsipyle was evil, whatever the magic of Argus'

cloak,

tradition-trick, subtle distorter of patent truth

not, in itself, allegorical.

I saw when we beached at Samothrace

and watched the mysteries, how man's mind

(Herakles swelling to what he believed was a god-sent

power)

was all that the mind could be sure of, how even my

own conversion

if such it was, had no sure cause in the universe.

And so descended from death to death;

learned on the isle of the Doliones

the fallacy of faith in technique and faith in perception;

learned

by the death of Hylas and loss of Herakles—the stupid

and yet unassailable assertion of Amykos—

old murderer—and the deadly confusion in Phineus'

heart—

the fundamental absurdity of the world itself, mad gods

in all-out war. I did not

shrink from these grim discoveries. Neither did I whine,

renounce

my quest, though I knew no reason for the quest.

I slogged on

toward Kolchis. What reason could hammer no

justification for,

I justified by groundless faith. Slog on or die,

abandon hope—the hope of eventual clarity.

Those were the choices. I bowed to the gods I could

not see—

or could not trust if I happened to see them, as I saw

Apollo,

striding, astounding, when we'd rowed our blood to a

state of exhaustion—

bowed because life unredeemed by the gods would be

idiocy,

bowed, yet refused to lie, claim to see things invisible.
Let the future judge me. I give you my grim prediction,

seer:

Famine is coming, deadliest of droughts.

Mankind will stagger from sea to sea, from north to

east,

seeking the word of some god and failing to find it.

   “But yes, I bowed, dubious, true to my nature yet granting its

limits.

What more can heaven demand of a man?

Tell me what to fear!

I've walked, cold-bloodedly honest, to the rim of the

pit. I've affirmed

Justice, compassion, decency. When granted power
I've used it to benefit man. I've fiercely denied that life is bestial—having seen in my own life the leer of the

ape.

Yet the sky turns dark, and gods threaten me. If the

universe

is evil, then let me be martyred in battle with the

universe.

If not, then where am I mistaken?”

   In silence, the seer of Apollo stretched out his arms to Jason, touching his shoulders.

The night

hung waiting. “Lord Jason, you ask me to speak as a court counsellor, a prince of wizards, a philosopher

versed

in the subtleties of old, cracked scrolls. Such things I

cannot be.

Though you teach horned owls to sing, by your cunning,

or make lambs laugh in the dragon's nest,

I can speak only what Apollo speaks.

I can say to you:

The man of high estate will be tinder,

his handiwork a spark.

Both will burn together,

and none will extinguish them.”

“Explain!” Jason said. But the seer would say no more.

   In her room, Pyripta, princess of Corinth, wept. The words of Jason

had changed her: for all the smoothness of her face,

the innocence

of her clear eyes, the tale had aged her, filled her with

sorrow

beyond her years. She clung to her knees, sobbing in the

bed

of ivory, and prayed no more for purity of spirit but mourned her loss. The princess had learned her

significance.

She spoke not a word; but I saw, I understood. No hope of clinging now to childhood, the sweetness of virginity.
Let shepherds' daughters worship in the groves of the

huntress! She was

a wife already, sullied with the knowledge of

compromise,

faults in nobility, flickering virtue in the flesh-fat heart. She knew him too well, the husband each tick of the

universe

brought nearer, whatever her wish. She was no fool.

Admired

the courage of his mind. But she could not walk in

bridal radiance

to a future unknown and clean, the gradual discovery

of a past

sacred, intimate, hallowed by slow revelations of love.
Yet knew, because a princess, that she would walk,