Jason and Medeia (54 page)

refused us,

insisting on duties elsewhere. So now you make me fear that my father and I have offended you, stirred up

some cause

for grief you can neither suppress nor, because of your

well-known kindness,

reproach us with. Or perhaps your heart is still troubled

by the cruel

and shameful behavior of Koprophoros. If it's so, let me

soothe you

with my father's own words not an hour ago: There's

no man in Corinth

not shocked to the soles of his feet by that fat swine's

treachery.”

As she spoke, her fears melted, and she gazed at him

only with tenderness,

like a loving sister. She was unaware that her servant

had gone

to Kreon, propelled by duty perhaps, perhaps by cruelty, and told of Pyripta's meeting with Jason in the

moonlit hall.

As fast as his feet would carry him, the king ran down and now stood, barefoot and in sleeping dress, peeking

from the doorway,

slyly observing their mutual temptation and blessing

heaven

for his rare good luck.

   He held her hand, aware of her virginal fear of him, and answered softly, “Princess, you

need not

frighten yourself with such gloomy thoughts. If I

tell you the truth,

I remain here for no other reason than pleasure in

the place.” He smiled,

looked down at her. “But now—you're right—I must

go find some bed.

Forgive me for giving you a moment's alarm.” He

had not missed,

I knew by his half-checked smile, the fact that she

spoke in a whisper,

not sorry to be caught here alone with him. Nor did

he miss

her searching look now, desire she newly understood.

He met

her gaze and, after a moment, kissed her. Her hands

moved hungrily

on Jason's back. The pillared room hung frozen like

a crystal

in the light of the vengeful moon. The princess

whispered in his ear.

He frowned, as if torn, and studied her, and could give

her no answer.

The hall gleamed dully. She whispered again, sweet

blue-eyed princess,

with the voice of a child, a curious droplet of moonlight

shining

on her forehead. And again he gave no answer, but

held her in his arms,

looking at her, listening thoughtfully, biding his time.
__________

*
Greek,
zatrikion.

21

The oak where I clung with my eyes tight shut like

a terrified lizard,

bruised and battered, kicked like old rubbish from

pillar to post,

went flat suddenly in the screaming gale, and I lost

my hand-hold—

I pressed up closer and hunched my back, but there

was nothing to cling to.

The rough-barked tree became a road of stone on a steep

rock mountain,

endless—the labor of emperors—but humbled by

pebbles,

cluttered at the sides with bramble bushes and with

shining scree.

And now all around me a slum lurched up till it

blocked out the darkness—

or became the darkness—staggering, skewbald. No

longer did the wind

come raging like a lion at the canyon mouth, or

dancing, as if

under pines and cedars, or flying swiftly, whistling and

wailing,

spluttering its anger, or crashing like thunder, whirling,

tumbling

in confusion, shaking rocks, striking trees—no longer

was the wind

so godly, nor the night so godly that sent it; but

rattling it came,

wheeling, violent, from wynds and alleys, poking in

garbage cans,

stirring up the dust, fretting and worrying. It crept into

holes

and knocked on doors, scattered sand and old plaster,

swirled ashes,

muddled in the dirt and tossed up bits of filth. It sidled through tenement windows, crept under double- and

triple-locked doors

of furnished rooms. I huddled, raising my collar

against it,

clamping my lips against street dust and holding my

poor battered hat on.

   And then all at once I was lurching in a rickety

vehicle

through streets so crowded the horses pulling had

nowhere to move—

fat black warhorses with ears laid flat and with

steep-rolling eyes,

snorting and stamping irritation at the crowd, but

obedient to the driver.

Staring at his back, I knew by the tingle at the nape

of my neck

that I'd seen him before and should fear him. He turned

his head and I saw

his thick spectacles and smile—my mirror image,

my double!

With the crowd packed tight around us, I had nowhere

to flee.

   Despite the ragged, churning horde, the chariot was making

some headway.

It rolled in silence, the wheels climbing over small

stones, bits of rubble,

as if struggling onward with conscious effort, the driver

never swerving

to the left or right, like stoop-shouldered, cool-eyed

Truth in a frayed

black coat and hat. We ascended a hill made strange

by haze,

its upper part not dazzling, exactly, its lower region not exactly obscure—dimly visible, impossible to name, changing, shadowy, deep as the ancestor of all

that lives,

awesome and common. The chariot wheels seemed to

move in old ruts;

the wind, the smell of the horses, the writing on the

chariot walls—

hieroglyphs smoothed down to nothing, as if by blind

men's fingers—

had all a mysterious sameness.

   “You're enjoying your vision?” he said and smiled again, showing all his teeth.

The strangest vision that ever was seen in this world,”

I said.

He laughed. “No doubt it seems so,” he said. “So each

man's vision

seems to him. And no doubt it seems a profound

revelation?”

“Yes indeed!” I said, inexplicably furious. He grinned,

tipped his hat,

icily polite. Then, seeing my swollen hand, he remarked, The vision has rules, I hope?” He smiled. “It's not one

of those maddening—”

“Certainly not!” I said. “It's an absolute tissue of rules, though not all of them, of course, at
this
stage—”

“Yes, of course, of course.”

He seemed both myself and, maddeningly, my superior, and deadly. He tapped his chin. “So you're piercing to

the heart of things.”

“Exactly,” I said. He beamed. “Excellent! —And there's

something there?

The heart of the matter is not, as we've feared …”

He smiled, mock-sheepish.

I tried in panic to think what it was that it was

teaching me,

and my head filled with ideas that were clear as day,

but jumbled—

images that had no words for them. Somewhat

disconcerted,

I concentrated, clarifying what I saw by explaining to the stranger as I looked. And now suddenly things

grew much plainer.

I now understood things never before expressed—

inexpressible—

though everywhere boldly hinted, so plain, so absurdly

simple

that a fool if he learned the secret would laugh aloud.

I saw

three radiant ladies like pure forms gloriously bright—

three ladies

and one, as separate roads may wind toward one

same city,

or one same highway be known by separate names.

The floor

of the chariot extended to the rims of the universe,

wheeling away

like a rush of silver spokes devised by the finest of a

rich king's

silversmiths, a man so devoted that he never looks up, and never considers the value of his work, but with

every stroke

proclaims the majesty of silver as the wings of an eagle

praise wind.

There the three ladies danced like dreams in the

limitless skull

of the Unnamable. And the first held a book with great

square pages.

Her name was
Vision,
and her tightly woven robe

was
Light.

The second lady held a wineglass to me and smiled

at my shyness,

and when I saw her smile I remembered I'd met her

a thousand times,

in a thousand unprepossessing shapes, and my heart

was as glad

as the heart of a lonely old man when he sees his son.

Her name

was
Love,
and her robe was
Gentleness.
The third

bright dancer,

nearer than the rest and so plain of face that I laughed

when I saw her,

was lady
Life,
and her attire was
Work.
They danced,

and their music—

one with the dancers as a miser's mind grows one

with his guineas

or the soul of a man on the mountain and the soul of

the mountain are one,

subject and object in careful minuet—was
Selflessness.
I stared dumbfounded at the universal simplicity and the man at my side stared with me, unconvinced.

The whole wide vault

of the galaxies choired, rumbling with the thunder,

what
Life
sang (Give),

and
Love
(Sympathize), and
Vision
(Control).

   I laughed, and the sound was a quake that banged through the bed of Olympos

(the stranger vanished

like a shadow at the coming of a torch), and
Love

was transformed to Aphrodite,

Vision
to Athena, and
Life
to Queen Hera in an

undulant cloak

of snakes. I shrank in dismay—all around me to the

ends of the vision,

the numberless, goggle-eyed gods. Beside me in the

palace, a voice said,

“Calm yourself!” and a hand touched me. “Goddess!”

I whispered,

for though she remained no clearer to my sight than

the morning memory

of a dream, I knew her, and at once I was filled with

an eerie calm

as gentle as the calm of sleeping lovers or the solemn

stillness

of wrecked and abandoned towns. The goddess said,

“Listen!” and raised

her shadowy arm to point.

   On his high throne Zeus sat motionless, cold and remote as the Matterhorn, his right fist raised to his bearded chin. His left hand rested on the hand

of the queen

on the throne beside him. The beams of his eyes shot

calmly to the heart

of the universe, and he did not shift his gaze when

the goddess

of love came forward and kneeled at his feet,

surrounded by her host

of suivants—gasping old men still crooked with lust,

drooling,

winking obscenely, their flies unbuttoned; middle-aged

women

with plucked eyebrows, smiling serenely past

cocktail glasses,

with eyes artificially eyelashed and slanted, and

propped-up bosoms

exuding the ghostly remains of whole nations of

civet cats;

young lovers crushed-to-one-creature as they staggered

down crowded streets

lunging through fish-smells and sorrow, from bed to bed.

   Aphrodite lifted her hands, dramatic, and cried, “O mighty Lord, hear the prayer of your sorrowful Aphrodite! I've waited, faithful as a child, remembering your promise. In this

same hall

you swore that Jason and Medeia would be known

forever as the truest,

most pitiful of lovers, saints of Aphrodite. Yet

every hour

their once-fierce love grows feebler, turning toward hate.

Queen Hera

revels in my shame, egging him on toward betrayal

in the hall

of Kreon, and Athena bends all her wit to dredging

up excuses

in his fickle heart for trading Medeia for Pyripta. If all you promised you now withdraw, you know I'm

powerless to stop you;

but understand well: fool though you think me—

all of you—

you'll never fool me twice with your flipflop

gudgeon-lures.”

The love goddess closed her lovely fists at her sides,

half rising,

and with bright tears rushing down her cheeks,

exclaimed:

“I'll throw myself in the sea! Take warning! We gods

may be

indestructible, but still we can steal death's outer

semblance,

stretched out rigid and useless in the droppings of

whales.” At the thought

of dark desolation at the slimy bottom of the world,

the goddess

was so moved she could speak no more, but sobbed into

her fingers, shaking,

and her worshippers bleated in chorus till the floor of

the palace was slick

with tears. But Zeus, like an old quartz mountain, was

visibly unmoved.

“I've promised you what I've promised,” he said.

“Be satisfied.”

   “But that's not all,” she said, eyes wide, a bright

blush rising

in her plump cheeks. “I find I'm mocked not only

by Hera

and Athena, but even by Artemis—she who claims to be so pure! I begged her, like a suppliant, to charge

the spirit

of Kreon's daughter with a fiery love of chastity. And what did the cruel and malicious thing do? Went

straight to Medeia

to stir up strife in marriage I Let Artemis explain to

the gods

her purpose in this, and by what right she behaves