Jason and Medeia (61 page)

moaned, for at last

he saw to the end. And then he was running in the wild

hope

that still there was time. He flew down the palace

steps—no guards

in sight there now—and down through that smoky,

endless rain,

the clattering thunder and the sudden bursts of fire out

of heaven,

to his own locked gate. He hurled his shoulder against it

with the force

of Herakles' club, and the huge bronze hinges snapped

like wood.

The Corinthian women inside all ran to the windows in

fear,

hearing the racket of his coming. But he came no

further. Above

his head, like a hovering lightning shape, Medeia

appeared

in a chariot drawn by dragons—beside her, the bodies

of his sons.

Squinting, throwing up his arm against that blood-red

light,

his throat convulsing till his words were barely

intelligible,

he shouted, “Monster! Female serpent abhorred by

mankind,

by the gods, and by me—you who could find it in your

heart to murder

the children you bore yourself, to leave me childless

and broken—

by all the gods in heaven or on earth or under the earth I curse you! May you live forever in the pain you've

brought yourself,

and with every passing day may your sorrow triple, and

your mind

grow more unsure, more tortured by doubt of what's

happened here,

till nothing is certain but hopeless and endless sorrow.”

   Even now— the proof of her victory gray and inert beside her—she

turned

her face from the lash of his words; broken as he was,

he knew

her chief point of vincibility: self-doubt, her fear that all she might do on earth was nothing but the

afterburn

of her father's mindlessly rumbling, teratical blood. She

shouted,

“Curse all you please. You've turned too late to religion,

Jason.

Why should the gods pay heed to the curses of an

oath-breaker?”

She laughed, terrible and false, a crash of ice. He

howled,

“Yield me one thing and go then, free of me forever.”

She waited.

“The bodies of my sons,” he said, “to bewail and bury.”

But again

Medeia laughed, monstrous in her spite. “Never, my

husband!

I'll bear them myself to the shrine of Hera in the high

mountains

and there bury them where none who hate me will climb

to insult them,

scattering their stones. For the land of Sisyphus I'll

ordain a feast

with solemn rites to atone for the blood I've impiously

spilled,

then afterward away to Erekhtheus I'll go, and live in

protection

of Aigeus, Pandion's son. And you, vile wretch—this

curse

I place on you, in the hearing of earth and the burning

sun

and the multitudinous gods: May you now grow old

alone,

childless and silent, and die at last a shameful death, crushed by a beam from your own
Argo.
Then, then or

never,

shall our marriage end.” He listened in silence, his skin

burning

from the heat of the sun-god's chariot. He wailed:

“Medeia, give back

my sons.” But again her reply was, “Never!” Then,

turning slowly,

she pointed to the palace. “Burials enough you'll have,

I think,

without these, husband.” He looked. All the palace was

churning fire—

the tapestried walls, the trusses and cantled beams,

the doors,

the vaulting roofs. His muscles knotted more tightly

than before,

and his mind went wild. “Not
my
work, husband,”

Medeia said.

“The friends you'd have saved, in your own good time,

from Kreon's dungeon

have fashioned keys of their own. I'll bury our children,

Jason.

Deal with the dead mad Idas and Lynkeus scatter in

their wake!”

More darkly than ever he'd have cursed her then, but

his tongue was a stone,

his thick neck swollen as an adder's. With the strength

of fifteen men

he seized the great bronze gate he'd torn from its hinges,

twisted it,

breaking it free of its latch and lock, swung it around

once,

and fired it upward at his wife. The chariot and dragons

vanished,

cunning illusions, and the door went planing through

the night, arching

upward and away six furlongs, gleaming. All the sky

was alight from the fire in the palace; and now there

were more fires burning,

the brothers taking remorseless Argonaut revenge on a

king

now dead. Jason could do nothing, kneeling in the

cobbled street,

bellowing wordless fury, clinging to his skull with both

hands,

for the heat of burning Corinth was nothing to the fire

in his mind.

Kneeling, his muscular thighs bulging, he swayed and

strained

for speech. He'd forgotten the trick of it. And now he

grew silent,

became like the focus of the whole world's pressure. The

city all around him

roared, full of fire and shouts, alive with people on the

run.

And now, as steady and endless as the rain, gray ashes

fell.

Kneeling, furious, no longer sane, Lord Jason grew

old.

Before my eyes his skin withered and his hair turned

white.

The street became the
Argo.
I shouted in terror for the

goddess.

Waves crashed over the gunnels; from the sailyard

icicles hung.

And still, like snow, white ashes drifted through the

universe,

and above the sailyard, circling, circling in the darkness,

the ravens.

24

I stood on an island of flaking shale, where snow lay

gray,

in sickly patches; an island barren except for one tree by a miracle not yet dead, but bare and aging, failing, the surrounding air so choked and smoky that, for all I

knew,

I'd stumbled on the kingdom of Death. From every side

I heard,

ringing across what must have been black and sludgy

waters,

cracks and explosions, rumblings, shots; the air was

filled

with the whine of what might have been engines. I could

see, through the snow and smoke,

no smouldering fires, no rocket's glare, no proof that

the earth

was not, itself, unaided by man, the attacker and

attacked.

Holding my right hand—stiff and useless, violently

throbbing—

in my left, the collar of my old black coat drawn high

to shield me,

I moved with feeble and tottering steps toward the

center of the island.

I began to see now there was more life here than I'd

guessed at first:

insects struggling in the ice, and sluggish serpents,

hissing,

venomous mouths wide open. I kept my distance, and

passed.

In every crevasse of that sickened place, there were

lean, white gannets

crying forlornly in inconstant, snow-filled brume. I found a man with a stick walking slowly in front of the

entrance to a cave,

turning in slow, stiff circles, as if in search of something. His beard came nearly to his knees; his ankles were

knobby and swollen

from some old injury; he had no eyes. He frowned, stern and strangely unbent for a man so old, and a

hermit.

“Who's there?” he said, and pointed his stick. I struggled

to answer,

but no words came. He reached toward me with his

square, gray hand

to feel out my features and manner of dress, then shook

his head

dully, wearier than ever, and turned his face away, thinking, or listening to something out on the water.

I thought

he'd forgotten my presence; but he said suddenly,

“Whoever sent you,

tell them to take you back. Say to them, ‘Oidipus thanks

you,

but he takes no interest in the future.' Now go.” He

waved at me gruffly,

not unkindly but impatiently, like a man interrupted. “Are you gone?” he said. I tried to think how to tell him

I was not as

free in my comings and goings as he seemed to think.

He said,

“Good, good!” and nodded, thankful to be rid of me. I said, “I can tell you of Kreon's death.” He started,

indignant.

But after a moment my words registered,

and he scowled, standing quite still, as if carefully

balancing.

“He's dead, then,” he said. I said: “A horrible death. I

saw it.”

He wiped his eyebrows. “Don't tell me about it. Kreon

was dead

from the beginning.” He mulled it over. ‘That was the

difference between us.”

There, to my surprise, he let it drop.

   And then I too heard, breaking through the smoky dark, the

queer sound Oidipus

strained to catch: a rhythmic cry and the faint whisper of oars swinging. He leaned both hands on the crook of

his cane.

“More company,” he said, and braced himself. A moment

later

I saw the
Argo's
silver fangs come gliding out of

darkness,

the long oars swinging like the legs of a huge, black

sea-insect,

crusted with ice. The sail was stiff. On the island

around us

the ice and dark snow reddened, as if the war had

come nearer,

riding in the black ship's wake.

   Straight in toward shore she came, the oars now lifted like wings, and as soon as the

keel-beam struck,

down leaped a man in a great brown cape that he

swirled with his arm

as if hoping to frighten the night. His icy beard and

mane

were wild, his bright eyes rolling. When he saw me he

halted and covered

his eyes with both hands, then carefully peeked through

his fingers at me.

At last, convinced that the curious sight was no

madman's dream,

he bowed to me, then turned and tip-toed over, through

the snow,

to Oidipus. He whispered, smile flashing, “My name is

Idas,

or so men call me, and I answer to it. Why increase,

say I,

the general confusion? Which is, you may say, an

immoral opinion.”

He glanced past his shoulder to the ship, then whispered

in Oidipus' ear:

“I deftly reply, after careful study: I burned down the

city

of Corinth, sir, in the honest opinion it belonged to a

man

who'd sorely grieved me—but found too late that the

fellow had left it

to my dear old friend, in whom I was only, at worst,

disappointed,

which is not, you'll agree, just cause for destroying an

old friend's town.

But what's done is done, as Time is forever inkling at us.

And, being a reasonable man, within limits, I turned

my faltering

attention to doing him good. I must make you privy to

a secret:

He'd had it worse than I, this friend. He'd lost his lady.

A nasty business. She murdered his sons and reduced

him to tatters—

it's the usual story. In the merry words of our old friend

Phineus,

‘Dark, unfeeling, unloving powers determine our

human

destiny.' He was beaten hands-down, poor devil. She

made

considerable noise about oath-breaking, and believed

herself,

as well she might, since she spoke with enormous

sincerity,

which is to say, she was wild with rage. She called down

a curse,

that Jason should die in sorrow and failure, on his own

Argo
—

a curse that may well be fulfilled. On our sailyard,

ravens perch,

creatures beloved of the master of life and death,

Dionysos.

Having struck, she fled to Aigeus' kingdom in

Erekhtheus,

which now we seek. Our luck has not been the best, as

you see.

Winds play sinister games with us; familiar landmarks change in front of our eyes, outrageously cunning—no

doubt

ensorcelled by Jason's lady. From this it infallibly

follows,

if you've traced all the twists of my argument, that

we've landed here

to gain some clue to our bearings.” He smiled, eyes slyly

narrowed,

pulling at his fingers and making the knuckles pop.

King Oidipus

with his old head bent as if looking at the ground, said

nothing for a time.

At last he said, “Let me speak with this man.” Mad Idas

bowed.

“Of course! I had hoped to suggest it myself!” He

signalled to the ship,

and a moment later Lynkeus jumped down, and after

him Jason.

They came toward us. “You must understand,” mad Idas

said,

“that my friend cannot speak. He was once the most

eloquent of orators,

but a secret he suspected for a long time, and

continually resisted,

eventually got the best of him and took up residence in his mouth. Look past his teeth and you'll see it there,

blinking like an owl,

huddled in darkness. He's grown more mute than Phlias,

who could answer