Jason and Medeia (53 page)

   “I suggest to you, gentlemen, that however my personal vision may construct the hungry tiger, however boldly I assert (as my scrupulous logic may require) that the tiger I sense is not really there, the tiger will eat me, and I've known it all along, whatever my logic may asseverate. I suggest, in short, that Jason's theory is a deep-seated lie: I do
not,
in fact, think merely with my mind. If I did, I could not explain to myself why you hate me for cooking the stranger. I suggest that philosophers, whose chief business is to think things through, not slog on by faith, like the rest of us, make dangerous, nay, deadly kings. Ideas quite harmless in the philosopher's attic, mistaken opinions which time can easily unmask, can turn to devouring dragons if released on the world.

   “What I claim, with respect to Jason's idea—though I do not pretend to prove my claim, being no true philosopher myself but only a man philosophically equipped to defend himself against philosophers—is that man is whole, his passions as priceless as his crafty mind, and mysteriously connected, if not, indeed, identical—so that rejection of the body is a giant step toward madness. If evil actions are transparently evil, the reason is that I can feel them as surely and concretely as I feel a cow or a pang of love. That, I suspect, and nothing baser, is the reason we make cities. Not to flee raw experience of Nature, but to arrive at it, to escape the drudgery of hunting and gobbling so that when we sit down to supper we can take our time and notice it. Show the crude country singer the noblest achievements of our epic poets, and he'll shame all critics in his praise of it.” He looked at me again, and again winked. I looked around in alarm and embarrassment. He continued: ‘The crude balladeer King Paidoboron praises—where are his verses most quoted and loved? In the city, of course. There, there only, have clodpate mortals the time and experience to perceive and appreciate artlessness, or be moved by plain-brained message.

   “But I was speaking of Jason.” Gesture. “He would curb the flesh in iron chains, deny all passions for the common good. I ask you one question. Can a man make laws for other men if he's purified out of his blood all trace of humanness? I can say to god-struck Paidoboron, ‘I disagree,' and no one is overmuch offended by it. But let him constrain me by inflexible laws to behave and frame my affirmations exactly as he does, and you know very well what the upshot will be. Let the tyrant gird his loins and cement his alliances, because make no mistake, I am coming for him!

   “Though I've no intention of crushing light-winged opinions into staggering and groaning legislation, I have opinions of my own that I value as dearly as Jason does his—and between you and me and the gatepost, I think mine more tenable. I celebrate the flesh unashamedly: I watch and guide it with mind as a doting mother does her child. I celebrate dancing and the creation of images and uplifting fictions; I celebrate among other bodily sensations, health and wealth and power, which does not mean I'm unmoved by sickness and poverty and weakness. Search high and low through this moaning world, you'll find no man's illachrymable but the man of stern theories, the ice-cold slave of mere intellect, donzel with a ponderous book, or six loosely knotted opinions he's fashioned to a whip. Don't tell
me,
when you speak of such men, of their liberalism.

   “So much for that. Return to Jason's more important principle. He claims we should balance idealism with pragmatic awareness of the changing world. No man of sense would deny the point.” He gestured wearily. “But gentlemen, consider. As once all the princes of Akhaia rallied around Jason for pursuit of the golden fleece, so now all the princes have rallied around King Agamemnon, to avenge the ravishing of Helen by Paris of Troy. The morality of the war may be right or wrong—I take no stand—but one thing seems certain: when the Trojan war is won or lost, those princes who bravely stood together to fight it will emerge a league as powerful as any the world has ever seen. How is it that Jason— given his theory of power by alliance—sits here in comfort, drinking Kreon's wine—though a man no older than Hektor, I think, and no less wily than Odysseus— when the men he'll need to ally himself with, if he ever achieves a position as king, are wading knee-deep in dear friends' blood toward Troy? Not that I mean to criticize unduly. I express, merely, my puzzlement. He has given us difficult and complex reasons for believing what we all believe anyway, as surely as we believe, for no explicable reason, that we ought not to bake harmless strangers in our ovens—yet he seems to me not to live by them. The matter needs clarification.”

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

mistress to report what she'd seen.

Quickly, silently, the princess arose, her heart pounding like a drawn kestrel's, and, moving more softly than

a huntress in the night,

she went to discover for herself if the message were

true. Alone,

her quick mind rushing more swiftly than her small

and silent feet,

she entered the hall where Jason paced. He saw her

coming

and paused, his eyes averted from the shimmer of hex

gown. She spoke

in a whisper, a-tremble with the thought that she

might be discovered with him,

a-tremble with the thought that she might say more

than she ought to say.

Speaking, she half by accident reached out shyly for

his hand.

“My lord, what can this mean, that you stay when all

others have gone,

pacing the floor like a man tormented by doubts?

Though we've asked you

on many occasions to stay with us here, you have always