woman
twisted an old, murky oracle and suggested to the king that Phrixos be given in sacrifice for the pleasure of
Zeus.
The king agreed, but Phrixos escaped with his brother,
flying
on a monstrous ram of gold which the great god
Hermes sent.
Above the Hellespont, Helle fell off and was lost. The
huge ram
turned his head, encouraging Phrixos on, and so they came at last to Kolchis, and there, on the ram’s
advice,
Phrixos gave up the ram in sacrifice to Zeus, and gave the fleece to Aietes, the king, in return for his eldest
daughter.
Now the four sons had abandoned Aietes’ city to return to their father’s homeland, city of the Orkhomenians, intending to claim their rights. But Zeus, to show his
power,
stirred Boreas up from his sleep and ordered pursuit of
them.
The North Wind had softly blown all day through the
topmost branches
of the mountain trees and scarcely disturbed a leaf; but
then
when nightfall came, he fell on the sea with tremendous
force
and raised up angry billows with his shrieking blasts. A
dark mist
blanketed the sky; no star pierced through. The sons of
Phrixos,
quaking and drenched, were hurled along at the mercy
of the waves,
spinning like a top at each sudden gust and flaw. The
dark wind
tore off the sailsheets, split the hull at the keel. They
caught hold
of a beam, the last of the firmly bolted timbers that
scattered
like birds alarmed in the night as the ship broke up.
Black wind
and waves were pushing them to shore when a sudden
rainstorm burst.
It lashed the sea, the island, and the mainland opposite. They gave up hope, passed out, still clinging to the
beam. So we
discovered them, close to the shore, some whimsical
gift or tease
from the gods.
“ ‘Whoever you are,’ the sons of Phrixos said, ‘
we beg you by Zeus to provide us help in our need.
We are men
on a mission we cannot abandon, not even now,
stripped bare,
weakened, ridiculed by winds. We have sworn a solemn
vow
to our father, the hour of his death, that we will
redeem his throne
and wealth. No easy adventure, beaten as we are, pushed
past
despair. Yet the vow’s been made, and we will fulfill it
if we can.’
“I glanced at my crew. It seemed they hardly
understood what wealth
the sea had sent. No need of a Tiphys or an Idmon now! We had, right here in our hands, men born and bred in
the east,
sailors who knew these streams as we knew the Pegasai, and they knew the kingdom of Aietes—no doubt had
friends among
that barbarous race. We could use these poor drowned
rats! I seized
the hands of the man who spoke for them, youngest of
the brothers, Melas.
‘Kinsman!’ I said, and laughed. I turned to the others.
“You
who beg us for strangers’ help are long lost kinsmen,
for I
am Jason, son of Aison, son of Dionysos, Lord of the Underworld. Your famous father and my own
father
were cousins, and I have sailed with these friends for
no other cause
than to seek you out and return you safe to your
homeland, with all
the chattel and goods you may rightfully claim as your
own. Of all that
more in a while. For now, let us dress you and arm you,
and offer
a sacrifice, as is right, to the god of this island.’ The crew brought clothes, the finest we had, and heirloom swords,
and we built
an altar and made a great sacrifice of sheep. When that was done and we’d feasted our fill, I spoke to them
again, framed words
to suit their needs and mine, and to please the
Argonauts,
indeed, to please even Orpheus, if possible.
“ ‘Zeus is most truly the all-seeing god! Sooner or later
we god-fearing men that uphold the right must come to
his attention.
See how he rescued your father Phrixos from a heartless
woman,
his cruel step-mother, and made him a wealthy man
besides.
And see how he saved you yourselves, preserved you in
the deadly storm
and brought you directly to those who have come here
in search of you!
And finally this: see how he’s armed you, not only with
swords
but with fighting companions, the mightiest fighters now
living—Akastos,
my cousin, and Phlias, my father’s half-brother (don’t
mind those staring
eyes: he has no mind; a dancer)—and Orpheus, king of all harpers, and Mopsos, king of all seers, and
Argus,
famous artificer—’ Thus I named them all, and praised
them,
praising the god. They listened smiling, heads bowed.
I said:
The sacred vow you have sworn to your dying father
gives all
this crew, I think, new purpose. For it cannot be hidden,
I think,
loath though I am to speak of it—that we’ve suffered
great losses,
sorrows and pains that have checked us, nearly
overcome us. Your vow—’
I paused, as if undecided. ‘On board our ship you can
travel
eastward or westward, whichever you choose. Either to
the city
Aietes rules, or home to your dear Orkhomenos. You’ll
need
no stronger craft, your own smashed to bits by the
angry sea,
never having come, if I remember, even to the Clashing
Rocks,
those doors no ship but the Argo has ever passed.’ I
frowned,
pretended to reflect, like a man who’s lost his thread.
And then:
‘However, it seems to me that you may have forgotten
something.
Who but Zeus could have brewed up this terrible
storm? Must we not
atone, disavow the intended sacrifice to Zeus of
Phrixos—
curse, these many years, of all the Akhaian isles, and mockery of all his justice? And was not the golden fleece your father’s—a prize he gave up to Aietes’ might,
forgetting
that gifts of the gods are loans? I am not a seer, of
course.
I may be wrong. On the other hand, if you served as
our pilots,
running no risk but the sea, who knows what peace
it might mean
for Phrixos’ ghost? This much seems sure: When winds
churn waves,
the god of the sky is aware of it. If we help you flee, against his will, it may be not even Athena can save her ship. —But the deathbed vow is yours, of course,
not ours.’
I spoke it gently, like a slow man thinking aloud. They
stared—
the sons of Phrixos—aghast. They knew well enough,
no doubt,
Aietes would not prove affable if we dared to steal that f
leece. Young Melas spoke, when he found his voice.
‘Lord Jason,
be sure you can count on our help in any other trouble
but this!
Aietes is nobody’s fool, and anything but weak. He
claims
his father was the sun. You’d believe it, if ever you saw
him! His men
are numberless, and the fiercest warriors on earth. His
voice
is terrifying. He’s huge as the god of war. It will be no easy trick to snatch that fleece. It’s guarded, all
around,
by a serpent, deathless and unsleeping, a child of Hera
herself,
the mightiest beast in the world. Your scheme’s
impossible!’
The Argonauts paled at his words. Then Peleus spoke.
‘My friend,
if all you say is true, and the thing’s impossible, at least we might see this snake, as a tale for our
grandchildren.
And yet it may be, at the last minute, we may happen
to spot
some oversight in Aietes’ careful precautions. I say we look, then scurry if we must.’ At once all the
Argonauts
took heart. Mad Idas rolled up his eyes, all piety. ‘Men who make vows to the dying should try to fulfill
them, if it’s
convenient,’ he said. We laughed to prevent him from
more. I said:
‘It’s late. We’ll talk of this further tomorrow.’ The crew
agreed.
We slept, Peleus on watch, by my order, lest Phrixos’
sons
evade the promised discussion and leave us marooned.
At dawn
we persuaded them, sailed east. By dark we were passing
the isle
of Philyra. From there to the lands of the Bekheiri, the Sapeires, the Byzeres, travelling with all the speed the light wind gave. The last recess of the Black Sea
opened
and gave us a view of the lofty crags of the Caucasus, where Prometheus stood chained with fetters of bronze,
screaming,
an eagle feeding on his liver. We saw it in late
afternoon,
the eagle high above the ship in the yellow-green light.
It was near
the clouds, yet it made all the canvas quiver in the
wind as its wings
beat by. The long white feathers of its terrible wings
rose, fell,
like banks of highly polished oars. Soon after the
eagle passed,
we heard that scream again. Then again it passed
above us,
flying the same way it came. So Aietes would scream,
I swore,
and all his sycophants.
“Night fell, and after a time,
guided by Melas, we came in the dark to the estuary of Phasis, where the Black Sea ends. Then quickly we
lowered sail
and stowed the sail and yard in the mastcage, and
lowered the mast
beside them; then rowed directly to the river. It rolled in
foam
from bank to bank, pushed back by the Argo’s prow.
On the left,
the lofty Caucasus Mountains and the city of Aia; on
the right,
the plain of Ares and the sacred grove where the snake
kept watch
on the fleece, spread coil on coil through the groaning
branches of an oak,
the mightiest oak in the world. We stared in wonder,
in the moonlight.
I glanced at Orpheus’ lyre. He smiled, shook his head.
‘Not this one.’
I turned toward Mopsos. Tire in the tree, you think?’
He laughed.
‘And make that creature cross, boy? Not on your life!’
The dusky
eyes stared out at us, dreaming, if old snakes dream.
I poured
libations out, pure wine as sweet as honey from a golden cup—a gift to the river, to earth, to the gods of the hills, to the spirits of the Kolchian dead. Then the boy
Ankaios spoke:
‘We’ve reached the land of Kolchis. The time has come
to choose.
Will we speak to Aietes as friends, or try him some
harsher way?’
Nobody answered him, all of us weighing the power
of the snake.
“Advised by Melas, I ordered my men to row the Argo to the reedy marshes, and to moor her there with
anchor stones
in a sheltered place where she could ride. We found one,
not far off,
and there we passed the night, our eyes wide open,
waiting.
No one asked me now if the thing we were doing
made sense.
War proves itself—all reason slighter than a feather
in the wind
beside that strange aliveness, chilling of the blood,
dark joy.
We’d become what we were, at last: a machine for theft:
a creature
stalking the creature in the tree, our multiple wills
interlocked,
our multiple hungers annealed by the heat of the great
snake’s threat.
I whispered my name to myself and it rang like a
stranger’s name,
the name of a god, an eagle, some famous old Titan’s
sword.
Behind me, stretching to the rim of the world, ghost
armies waited,
silent, nameless, in strange attire, watching for my sign with eyes as calm as dragon’s eyes. The goddess was
in us.”
13
So he spoke, and the visiting kings sat hushed, as if
spellbound, through
those shadowy halls. It seemed to me that his weird
vision
of armies behind him, waiting in the wings, stirred all
who heard him
to uneasiness. As he ended, the room went strange.
The walls
went away like the floor of the sea, yet vast as the great
hall seemed,
the goddess showed me chambers beyond, blue-vaulted
rooms,
expanses of marble floor like a wineglass filled to the
brim
with light, and marmoreal peristyles, each shining pillar twelve feet wide, the architraves made hazy by hovering clouds; and in those spacious rooms where no life
stirred,
I might not have guessed the existence of all those
gold-crowned kings
attending to Jason’s tale.
I found
a room where slaves were whispering the name Amekhenos. The goddess showed me where he crouched in the bowels of the palace peering
out, eyes narrowed,
watching the palace guards pace back and forth on the
wall,
their queer strut mirrored in the lilypad-strewn lake. The
grass
was as green as grass in a painting, the sky unnaturally
blue;
the walls of houses below were the white of English
cream,
with angular shadows, an occasional tree, its leaves autumnally blazing. Far to the east, beyond the sea’s last glint, it occurred to me, there were more
kings gathered,
brought together by the tens of thousands, to die for Helen, or honor, or the spoils of war on
the plains
of Troy. Beside the guests of Kreon, the numberless host of Agamemnon’s army would seem the whole human
race.
Yet beyond rich Troy lay Russia—darkforested Kolchis
—and Indus,
and beyond those two lay China, so many in a host
tha
t the eye,
even the eye of vision, couldn’t gather them in. “Behold I” the goddess said, invisible all around me. With the
word
she darkened the sky, and the grayblue waters became,
all at once,
a horde of people on the move, bearing their possessions
on their backs,
features ragged with hunger, eyes too large, luminous. The children walking at their parents’ sides or
straggling behind
had distended bellies, and I knew by the gray of their
eyes that they carried
plagues. I watched them passing—the crowd went out
from me
from horizon to horizon, and the dust they stirred made a cloud so vast that the mightiest rays of the
sun were hidden.
Suddenly the cloud was a dragon with a fat-thighed
woman on its back,
her chalk-white, hydrocephalic forehead covered all over with elegant writing, swirls and serifs that squirmed
like insects
as I tried to read. The woman had a robe of flowing
crimson
and she carried a torch which belched thick smoke like
factory smoke.
She rode toward me, and then—from north, south, east,
and west—
great louts came lumbering, treading on the people, and
made their way,
teetering and reeling, to the huge woman. With her
hands, she raised
her skirt and spread her buttocks for them, and roaring,
prancing,
they thrust themselves in, and the earth and sky were
sickened with filth,
blackened to a towering mass like a writhing,
bull-horned god.
I choked and gagged. “Goddess!” I cried out. “Goddess,
save me!”
Gulls darted back and forth above the grayblue water, mournfully calling. The slaves in the palace were
whispering.
And then, baffled, still puzzling at the meaning of the
strange revelation,
I was back in the hall of Kreon, where Jason was
standing as I’d left him,
silent, and old King Kreon was waiting, the slave beside
him,
Ipnolebes. I wondered if all I had seen I’d seen in Ipnolebes’ eyes, or perhaps the eyes of the Northern
slave
watching the guards as they strutted, this side of the
battlements,
or the slaves who whispered. I shuddered and shook
myself free of all that,
or tried to. The curious image held on. The gem-lit,
gold-crowned
heads of the visiting kings (there seemed not many of
them now)
strangely recalled the numberless hosts of ánhagas, friendless exiles forever on the move in perpetual night.
I could see by Kreon’s pleasure and the timorous smile