gift—
the mantle of scarlet that Argus wove, majestic but
gloomy—
it sent out a dull, infernal light—or the sky blue mantle King Thoas gave to Hypsipyle when she wept and
spared him,
sending him out on the sea. The son of Aison chose the blue, hurled it on the pile as if in anger; then, suddenly smiling, transformed, he came where I stood.
The heralds
approached. My mind went strangely calm, as calm as it
was
when I charmed the guardian snake. They left with the
message. When I
had come to the temple of Artemis—so the message
ran—
Apsyrtus must meet me, under cover of night. I would
steal the fleece
and return with the treasure to Aietes, to bargain for
my life. Such was
the lure. I know pretty well how Apsyrtus received it,
sweet brother!
His heart leaped up and he laughed aloud. ‘Ah, Medeia! Brilliant, magnificent Medeia of the many wiles!’ He
could scarcely
wait for nightfall, pacing restless on his ship and
smiling,
beaming at his sister’s guile.
“The sun hung low in the heavens,
reluctant to set, but at last, blood red with rage, it sank. As soon as darkness was complete he came to me,
speeding in his ship,
and landed on the sacred island in the dead of night.
Unescorted,
he rushed to the torchlit room where I waited and paced.
He seized me
with a cry of joy, proud of my Kolchian cunning. And
for all
my grief and revulsion, my murderer’s certainty of his
imminent death—
tricked for an instant by his smile of love—may the
gods forgive me!—
I returned the smile. With his bright sword lifted,
Jason leaped
from his hiding place. I turned my face away, shielding
my eyes.
Apsyrtus went down like a bull, but even as he sank
to the flagstones
he caught the blood in his hands, and as I shrank from
him,
reached out and painted my silvery veil and dress.
I wept,
soundless, rigid as a column. We bid the corpse in the
earth.
Orpheus was there, standing in the moonlight. There
was no other way,’
I said, rage flashing. He nodded. I said: ‘I loved my
brother!’
Perhaps even Jason understood, dark eyes more veiled
than a snake’s.
He took my hand, head bowed. We returned to the
Argonauts.
Apsyrtus’ fleet was heartsick, divided and confused,
when they learned,
by local seers, that the prince was gone forever. And
so
the Argo escaped.
“Such was our crime, our helplessness.
16
“In Artemis’ temple we killed him. The blood-wet corpse
we hid
in the goddess’ sacred grove. Then Zeus the Father of
the Gods
was seized with wrath, and ordained that by counsel of
Aiaian Circe
we must cleanse ourselves from the stain of blood, and
suffer sorrows
bitter and past all number before we should come to
the land
of Hellas. We sailed unaware of that, though with heavy
hearts,
praying, the sons of Phrixos and I, for their mother’s
escape
when news of the murder came to Aietes’ dragon-dark
mind.
Our fears, we learned much later, were not ill-founded.
He lay
on the palace floor for days, shuddering in lunes of rage, calling on the gods to witness the foul and unnatural
deed
committed in Artemis’ temple. He’d neither lift his eyes nor raise his cheek from the flagstones, but wept and
howled imprecations,
hammering his fists till they bled. And at last it reached
his thought
that she who had seemed most innocent, bronze
Khalkiope,
was most at fault. Then soon chaogenous dreams of
revenge
were fuming in his serpent brain, the last of his sanity
burned out,
and he called her to him.
“She knew when the message came what it meant.
She touched her bedposts, the walls of her room, with
the air of one
distracted, and since they could grant her no time for
parting words,
she left with the guards themselves her sad farewell to
our mother.
She looked a last time at the figures of her sons, the
work of a sculptor
famous in the East, and tears ran down her cheeks in
streams.
Then, walking in the halls with her silent guards, her
sandals a whisper
on fire-bright tessellated floors, she prayed for the safety
of her sons;
and for all her trembling—most timid of all Aietes’
children,
her hair like honey as it rolls from the bowl—she kept
her courage,
and came where Aietes lay. He rose up a little on his
arms
and hissed at the guards. They backed away as
commanded. And then,
though he’d planned slow torture, unspeakable pain
for the sly eldest daughter
(so she seemed to him), he was suddenly wracked by
such fiery rage
that he hurled his axe, and Khalkiope, with a startled
cry,
was dead. A death to be proud of, the sweet gift of life
to her sons!
“We left behind the Liburnian isles, and Korkyra with its black and somber woods, and passed Melite,
riding
in a softly blowing breeze; passed steep Kerossus, where
the daughter
of Atlas dwelt, and we thought we saw in the mists the
hills
of thunder.
“Then Hera remembered the counsels and anger of
Zeus.
She stirred up stormwinds before us, and black waves
caught us and hurled us
back to the isle of Elektra with its jagged rocks where
once
King Kadmos struck down the serpent and found his
wife. And suddenly
the beam of Dodonian oak that Athena had set in the
center,
as keel to the hollow ship, cried out and told us of the
wrath
of Zeus. The beam proclaimed that we’d never escape
the paths
of the endless sea, nor know any roofing but thunderous
winds
till Circe purged us of guilt for the murder of Apsyrtus.
And if
in cleansing us by ritual, the heart of Circe remained aloof, forgiving by law but not by love, then even in Hellas our lives should be cursed. The
beam cried out:
‘Pray for your souls now, Argonauts! Pray for some
track
to the kingdom of Helios’ daughter!’ Thus wailed the
Argo in the night.
The Argonauts hurled up prayers to the gods as the
ship leaped on
through dark welms streaming like a wound. O, dark as
my soul was the place!
Sick those seas as my body in riotous rebellion—
fevers,
chills, mysteriou
s flashes of pain. His ghost was in me, a steady nightmare, a madness. I vomited, fouling my
beauty
in Jason’s sight. Not even Orpheus’ lyre could check that sickness throbbing in my head, or the fire in my
bowels. They looked
away, one and all, as from Hell itself. I hissed
imprecations,
and they listened with white teeth clenched.
“And as for the sea, it was
the water of Helios’ wrath. No bird, for all its rush, for all the lightness of its arching wings, could cross
that deep,
but mid-course, down it would plunge, fluttering,
consumed in flames;
and all around it, the daughters of Helios, locked in
poplars,
wailed their piteous complaint, and their weeping eyes
dripped amber.
“There sailed the joyless Argonauts, weary of heart,
overwhelmed
by stench where the body of Phaiton still burned. At
night, by the will
of the gods, we entered an unknown stream whose rock
shores sang
with the rumble of mingling waters. So on and on we
rushed,
lost in the endless domain of the murderous Kelts. Now
storms,
now raging men dismayed us, thinning our company. My sickness stayed. My hand on the gunnel was
marble-white;
my face grew gaunt, rimose. We touched at the
kingdom of stone,
the kingdom of iron men, the kingdom of the ants. As
dreams
insinuate their unearthly cast on the light of the sick man’s room, making windows alien eyes, transforming
chairs
to animals biding their time, so now to the heartsick
Argo
the world took on a change. The night was unnaturally
dark,
crowded with baffling machines we could not quite see.
And then
at dawn we looked out, in our strange dream, on
motionless banks
where no beast stirred and even the leaves on the trees
were still.
No songbird sang, and the clouds above us were as void
of life
as stones. We struggled to awaken, but the ship was
sealed in a charm.
We waited. Then came to a fork in the stream, a great
hushed island,
and the Argonauts, half-starved, rowed in, cast anchor,
and made
the long ship fast. As far as the eye could see on the
windless
rockstrewn beach, there was nothing alive. The tufts of
grass
on the meadow above were still, as if lost in thought.
“On a hill,
rising at the center of the island, there stood a grove so
dense
no thread of light came through, and between the boles
of the trees
lay avenues. We went there, Lynkeus leading the way with his powerful eyes. I walked behind him, my hand
in Jason’s,
and my spirit was filled with uneasiness. I was sure the
air—
chill, unstirring—was crowded with thirsty ghosts. We
found
no game; it seemed that even the crawling insects slept.
“Without warning from Lynkeus, we reached a glade
and, rising
in the center of the glade, a vast stone building in the
shape of a dome.
The gray foundation rocks were carved with curious
oghams:
spirals like eddies in a river, like blustering winds—
the oldest
runes ever made by man. At the low, dark door of the
building
a chair of stone stood waiting. We studied it, none of us
speaking.
And suddenly, even as we watched, there appeared a
figure in the chair,
seated comfortably, casually, combing his beard. He was
old,
his hair as white as hoarfrost. But as for his race, he
was nothing
we knew—a snubnosed creature with puffy eyes. His
face,
like his belly, was round, and he wore an enormous
moustache. He said: ‘
Ah ha! So it’s Jason again!’ The lord of the Argonauts
stared,
then glanced at me, as if thinking the curious image
were somehow
my creation. The old man laughed, impish, a laugh that rang like bells on the great rock mound and the
surrounding hills.
He laughed till he wept and clutched his sides.
“I asked: “Who are you?
Why do you mock us with silent sunlit isles and
laughter,
when Zeus has condemned us to travel as miserable
exiles forever,
suffering griefs past number for a crime so dark I dare not speak of it?’ He laughed again, unimpressed by
grief,
unmoved by our hunger. “Mere pangs of mortality,’ he
said.
‘If you knew my troubles—’ He paused, reflecting, then
laughed again.
‘However, they slip my mind.’ I repeated the question:
‘Who are you?’
He tapped the tips of his fingers together, squinting,
though his lips
still smiled. ‘Don’t rush me. It’ll come to me.’ He
searched his wits.
‘I’m something to do with rivers, I remember.’ He pulled
at his beard,
pursed his lips, looked panic-stricken. ‘Is it very
important?’
Suddenly his face brightened and he snapped his
fingers. At once—
apparently not by his wish—an enormous sow appeared, sprawled in the grass beside him, her eyes alarmed.
He snapped
his fingers again, looking sheepish, and at once the huge
beast vanished.
Again the name he’d been hunting had slipped his
mind. Then:
‘Spirit of sorts,’ he said. ‘Not one of your dark ones, no
god
of the bog people, or the finger-wringing Germans, or—’ His bright eyes widened. ‘Ah yes! I’d forgotten!
—We have dealings, we powers,
from time to time. I received a request from the goddess
of will.
Abnormal. But isn’t everything? —Forgive me if I seem too light in the presence of woe. We’re not very good at
woe,
we Grand Antiques. Treasure your guilt if you like, dear
friends.
Guilt has a marvelous energy about it—havoc of
kingdoms,
slaughter of infants, et cetera. Discipline! That’s what
it gives you!
(Discipline, of course, is a virtue not all of us value.)
However,
Time is wide enough for all. Indeed, in a thousand years (I’ve been there, understand. A thousand thousand
times I’ve heard
the joke, and that lunatic punchline) … But what was
I saying? Ah!
Sail on in peace!—or in whatever mood suits your
temperament.
The passage is opened, this once, after all these
millennia.
Make way for the flagship Argo, ye golden generations!
Make way
for purification by fire, salvation by slaughter!’ His
eyes—
pale blue, mocking, were a-glitter; but at once he
remembered himself.
‘Forgive me, lady. Forgive an old bogyman’s foolishness,
lords
of Akhaia.’ His smile was genuine now. The universe has time for all experiments. Sail in peace!’ He
vanished.
And the same instant the sky went dark and we found
ourselves
on the Argo, on a churning sea. Black waves came
combing in,
and mountains to left and right were yawing apart for
us,
and the opening sucked the sea in, and like a chip on
a torrent
the Argo went spinning, careening, the walls half buried
in foam,
to the south. I clung to the capstan. I would have been
washed away,
but the boy Ankaios abandoned the useless steering oar and caught my arm and held me till Jason could
reach me, crawling
pin by pin along the rail. He held me by the waist,
his arm
like rock. So we stood as we fell, dropped down from
a dizzying height,
a violent booming around us, as if the earth had split, and we looked up behind us in terror and saw the
mountains close,
and the same instant we struck and were hurled to the
belly of the ship.
The Argo shrieked as if all her beams had burst, and
water
boiled in over us. Then, at Ankaios’ shout, we knew we were safe, the ship was afloat, all her brattice-work
firm despite
contusions, a thin, dark ooze. And thus we came, by
the whim
of the river spirit of the North, to the kingdom of Circe,
daughter
of the sun, my father’s sister.
“We did not speak of the dream—
the cynical god who could scoff at all human shame
and pain.
Did only I dream it? There are those who claim we
create, ourselves,
in the dark of our minds, the gods who guide us. Was
I in fact
remorseless as the snake who smiles as he swallows the
bellowing frog?
Did my dreams create, then, even the dizzying fall of the
Argo,
that dark-as-murder sky? I dared not speak of the
dream,
but the image of the god remained, like the nagging
awareness of a wound,—
that and the sunlight in which he sat, with his attention
fixed
on his beard. If I closed my eyes, relaxed, I could drift
to him again,
abandon all sorrow and guilt forever, as if such things were childhood fantasy, and only this—his twinkling
eyes,
his laugh, his comb, his silent, sunlit glade—were real. I could step, if I wished, from my sanity to peace. I
resisted,
perhaps for fear of Jason.
“We came to Circe’s isle.
“At Jason’s command, the Argonauts cast the hawsers
and moored
the ship. We soon found Circe bathing where spindrift