by the shoulder,
my wild heart pounding, and threw him off balance—
in the same motion
snatching my sword from its clasp by the headboard and
striking. He fell,
his head severed from his body. Now the room was
clamoring with guards,
babbling, shouting, the children and slaves in the
hallway shrieking,
the room a-sway in the stench of blood. I snatched up
the head
to learn who’d struck at us. For a long moment I stared
at the face,
scarlet and dripping, the eyes wide open. Then someone
said,
‘Akastos!’ and I saw it was so. While the palace was
still in confusion,
we fled—snatched the children, our two oldest slaves,
and, covered by darkness,
sought out the seaport and friends; so made our escape.
“So ended my rule of the isle of Argos. For all our glory once, for all my famous deeds, my legendary wealth, I became an exile begging asylum from town to town. I became a man dark-minded as Idas, whimpering in anger at the
gods,
glancing back past my shoulder in fear. For a time I lost all power of speech—I, Jason of the Golden Tongue. The child of Aietes was baffled by the troubles befallen
us.
Why had we fled? Was I not the true, the rightful king
of Argos, Pelias a usurper, as all men knew? Had I not done deeds no king of Argos had done before me?—
not only
capture of the fleece, but temples, waterlocks, rock-firm
law?
Like a mute, more crippled than stuttering Pelias, I
rolled my tongue
and strained at the cords of my throat, but sound
refused me. When I closed
my eyes, I saw Akastos. Though I travelled from temple
to temple,
no priest alive could assoil me.
“And then one morning, groaning, the walls of my skull on fire with evils, I found I could
say
his name. Akastos! Akastos, forgive me! I felt no flood of peace, no sudden sweet purgation. But I learned a
truth:
I’d loved him, and I learned I was right in my rule of
Argos. Yet right
to escape, save Medeia from the citizens’ rage. I’d made
Medeia
promises. For love of me she had left her home, the protection of kinsmen, and managed the murder of
a brother she loved,
and outraged all that’s human by arranging the
patricide
of Pelias’ foolish daughters—and then that cannibal
feast,
everlasting shame of Iolkos. I understood that her mind, whatever her beauty and intelligence, was no more like
ours—
the minds of the sons of Hellas—than the mind of a
wolf, a tiger.
I owed her protection and kindness, and I meant to pay
that debt.
But in promising marriage—if marriage means
anything more than the noise
of vows—I spoke in futility. If earth and sky
are marriage partners, or the land and sea, or the
interdependent
king and state—if Space and Time are marriage
partners—
then Medeia and I are not.
“In the hills above Iolkos I watched Medeia at her midnight rites. I’ve told you
the effect.
I was wide awake as a preying animal—as charged
with power
as I’d felt as a boyish adventurer sailing with the
Argonauts.
Though I slept no more than a jackal on the hunt, I
awakened refreshed,
scornful of Pelias and his idiot daughters, at one with
Akastos
riding his war-cart as I rode the clattering state. I
could do
the same by the meat of women: shuck off obscurities, considerations, the labored balance of the pondering
mind.
A great discovery! Though I meant the state to be
reasonable,
I need not famish the animal in me, put away the past, the chaos of a hero’s joys. And so, as a foolish shepherd brings in wolf pups, dubious at first, and runs them
with the sheep
for experiment, gradually learning their queer docility, and so progresses in his witless complacence to the
night when—stirred
by a minor cut, a droplet of blood that for wolves rolls
back
the centuries—he hears a bleating, and rushes to find his herd destroyed, the fruit of his labors in ruin—
so I
a foolish king, let passions in, the divinity of flesh. Gradually lessening my reason’s check, I freed Medeia, agent of my own worst passions; I granted a she-dragon
rein.
Screams in the palace, the sick-sweet smell of blood.
I saw,
once and for all, my wife was her father’s child,
demonic.
There could be no possibility now of harmony between
us;
no possibility of marriage. We must either destroy each
other—
struggling in opposite directions for absolutes, thought
against passion—
or part. And there, for a moment, I left it. By arduous
labor
I won back the power of speech, won back the control
of my house.
Not all my hours on the Argo required such pains. So
now,
prepared to deal with the world again, prepared to make
use,
as the gods may please, of difficult lessons, I bide my
time
in exile, caring for my sons and Medeia.
“I claim, with conviction, I haven’t outlived all usefulness to the gods. All those who scorn just reason and scoff at the courts of honest
men,
men whose ferocious will is revealed by calm like the
lion’s—
those who scorn, the gods will deafen with their own
lamentations;
their proud pinnacles the gods will shatter and hurl in
the ocean
as I myself was torn down once for my foolishness and cast in the trackless seas. Or if not the gods, then
this:
the power struggling to be born, a creature larger than
man,
though made of men; not to be outfoxed, too old for us; terrible and final, by nature neither just nor unjust, but wholly demanding, so that no man made any part
of that beast
dare think of self, as I did. For if living says anything, it’s this: We sail between nonsense and terrible
absurdity—
sail between stiff, coherent system which has nothing
to do
with the universe (the stiffness of numbers,
grammatical constructions)
and the universe, which has nothing to do with the
names we give
or seize our leverage by. Let man take his reasoning
place,
expecting nothing, since man is not the invisible player but the player’s pawn. Seize the whole board, snatch
after godhood,
and all turns useless waste. Such is my story.”
So Jason ended. The kings sat hushed, as silent as the goddesses.
19
Kreon sat pondering, propped on his elbows, eyebags
puffed,
protrusive as a toad’s, the table around him as thick
with flowers
as a swaybacked bin in the marketplace. He
remembered himself,
at last, and rose. Still no one spoke. Athena, stand
ing at Jason’s back, was smiling, serene and wild at once, majestic as the Northern Lights. Beside her Hera stood with hooded eyes, awesome in the flush of victory— for I could not doubt that Athena and she had won.
The goddess
of love, by Kreon’s virginal daughter, was wan and
troubled,
her generous heart confused. I was tempted to laugh,
for an instant,
at how easily they’d confounded her—those wiser
goddesses,
Mind and Will. But Aphrodite’s glance at Jason
stopped me, filled me with sudden alarm.
The hunger in Aphrodite’s eyes—
hunger for heaven alone knew what—
consumed their wisdom, made all the mechanics of
Time and Space
foolish, irrelevant. Beyond the invisible southern pole of the universe her feet were set. Her reach went up, like the carved pillars of Kreon’s hall (vast serpent coils, eagles, chariots, fish-tailed centaurs), writhing to the
darkness
beyond the star-filled crown of Zeus. Kreon, half-giant, his head drawn back, one eye squeezed shut, addressed
the sea-kings,
lords of Corinth and sons of lords:
“My noble friends, princes gathered from the ends of the earth, we’ve heard
a story
stranger than any brought down in the epic songs, and
one
more freighted with troublesome questions. As you see,
the hour is late,
and the day has been troubled by more than Jason’s
tale. It therefore
seems to us fit that we part till tomorrow morning, to
reflect
in private. Let us all reassemble to pursue by the light
of day
what brings us together here.” He paused for answer,
and when no one
spoke, he bowed, assuming assent, and prepared to
leave.
He reached for Pyripta’s hand and raised her to her feet;
then, pausing,
he glanced at Jason, saying, “Would you care to speak,
perhaps,
with Ipnolebes before you go?” He was asking more
than he spoke
in words, I saw, for Jason frowned, reluctant, then
nodded.
And so they left the central table, Kreon and his
daughter
and Aison’s son. And now all the wide-beamed hall
arose,
sea-kings murmuring one to another, and slowly made
way
to the doors. I pushed through the crowd to keep my
eye on Jason.
The sea-kings looked at me, puzzled, perhaps amused.
They seemed
to think me, dressed so strangely, some new
entertainment. None
addressed me. On the dais, the goddess of love had
vanished. I searched
the room, my heart in a whir, to discover what form
she’d taken.
I saw no trace of her.
Then we were standing in a shadowy chamber, plain as a cavern, where slaves moved silently to and fro with sullen, burning eyes. There Ipnolebes stood, alone, quietly issuing commands. Since the time I’d seen him
last
he was a man profoundly changed. His skin was ashen,
his eyes
remote, indifferent as a murdered man’s. When Jason
approached him,
the black-robed slave gazed past him as though he were
a stranger. Old Kreon
rubbed his jaw, looked thoughtful, keeping his distance.
In his shadow
Kompsis stood, the violent red-headed man who’d
attacked
them all when the goddess Hera was in him. By the
calm of his eyes,
I thought she had entered him again, but I was wrong.
It was
another goddess—as deadly as Hera when the mood
was on her.
The son of Aison bowed to the slave and touched his
shoulder
as he would the shoulder of an equal he wished to
console. For all
his cunning, for all the magic of that golden tongue,
he could find
no words. It was thus the slave who broke the silence.
He said,
“You knew him, I think—Amekhenos, Northern
barbarian
who thought himself a prince in spite of the plain
evidence
of welts and chains.”
“I knew him, yes.”
“You could have prevented, if it suited you …”
But Aison’s son shook his head. “No.” His voice was heavy, as weary as the voice of an old,
old man.
Ipnolebes sighed and still did not swing his eyes to
Jason’s.
“No. It was not, after all, as if you’d sworn him some
vow.
There are laws and laws, limitless seas of extenuation eating our acts. Otherwise no man alive would grow old maintaining, in his own opinion, at least, the shreds
and tatters
of his dignity.” He forced out a ghastly laugh. “Who
am I
to judge? And even if you had, so to speak, let slip some
vow,
many years ago—” He paused, wrinkling his brow,
having lost
the thread. There are vows and vows,” he mumbled.
“I merely say …
I merely say …”He broke off with a shudder and
turned
his face. “I find no fault in you,” he said. “Good night.”
Lips stretched taut in a violent grin, he stared at Jason.
They spoke no further, and finally Jason withdrew. Old
Kreon
followed him, Kompsis at his side. I hurried behind
them. In the hall
that opened on the great front door with its thickly
figured panels,
its hinges the length and breadth of a man, the old
king bowed,
without a word, and they parted. The short, red-bearded
man
accompanied Jason, walking out into the night. I kept to the shadows, following behind.
At the foot of the palace steps red Kompsis paused, and Jason reluctantly waited for
him.
“You amaze me, Jason.” He folded his beefy hands and
smiled,
malevolent. ‘The hanged boy was a friend of yours.” Jason said nothing. “He was, I think, the son of a king who defended the Argo from ruin by northern
barbarians.
He was a mighty chieftain, at that time.
But later, his luck abandoned him.
His palace fell to marauders from the South. He himself,
though old
and cunning as a dragon, was driven to the hills and
there surrounded
by Danaans and slain, still clinging to his two-hand
sword. His head
they hacked from his shoulders and threw in the river,
and all his animals,
horses and dogs, they slaughtered, in scorn of the habit
of the Kelts;
and his son in scorn they christened Amekhenos.
Shackled as a slave,
for all his angry pride, they brought him to Corinth.
Here Kreon
bought him, believing he could tame that wolfish heart.”
To all this
Jason listened in silence, his eyes on the ground. Red
Kompsis
laughed, but his voice was violent, his body hunched.
He said:
“He recognized you at once, of course. At the first
chance,
he spoke with you. I saw your lo
ok of bewilderment
You’d heard that voice before somewhere, but you couldn’t recall it. Faces, voices, they don’t last
long
in the snatching brain of Jason.” He laughed again.
“You would
have remembered him soon enough, I think, if you’d
needed his aid.
But the shoe was on the other foot. He was not a man
to press
for favors owed to his house. Though a single word
from you
to Kreon—fond as he is of his mighty adventurer—
would have freed that prince in the same instant, you
kept your peace.
Because of bad memory.” He leaned toward Jason
fiercely. “—Because of
shallowness of heart. I name it its name! Your every
word
reveals your devilish secret!
“—Very well, you forgot his name. He must seek his freedom by other means. And so
escaped,
slipped—incredible!—even past sleepless Ipnolebes’
eyes.
We know better, of course. You saw his rage. For once
in his life
the old man chose to blink. —But whatever his
barbarous courage,
whatever the cunning of his savage Keltic brain, no
slave
escapes from the gyves of Kreon. And so he was missed,
and hunted,
and eventually found in—incredible again …”
“I know. That’s enough!” Jason broke in without meaning to. He stood
tight-lipped,
saying no more. Red Kompsis laughed,
swollen with righteous indignation, godlike scorn.
“—was found in the chief ship of the Arenians, in command of a
man
you once knew well—mad Idas, son of Aphareos.
Surely it did not escape the wily Jason’s mind that something, somewhere, was amiss! Why would
Idas, for all his famed
insanity, give help to a perfect stranger, a dangerous
Kelt? All the crew was arrested, the runaway slave
was hanged,
and still from Jason not a syllable. Though all the
harbor
churned up seething in fury at Kreon’s tyranny— grizzly, base-born seadogs with no more nobility of
blood
than jackals—still the golden tongue was silent. You
can
explain, no doubt. The golden tongue can explain away the moon, the sun, the firmament, explain away birth and death, not to mention marriage—leave all this
universe pale
as mist.” So he spoke, lips trembling with anger, and
while he spoke,
the sky grew darker, glowering and oppressive. I
understood
it was no mere mortal whose anger charged the night,
but the wrath
of a goddess whose power was rising. The Father of