saw
the fleece, and remembered the words of the blind old
seer of Apollo,
I too, blindly—like a mad fool, from the point of view of the old, all-seeing gods … I checked myself. They
were phantoms,
dead centuries ago if they ever lived. It was all absurd. I remembered: The wise are attached neither
to good
nor to evil. The wise are attached to nothing. I laughed.
Christ send me
wisdom!
Still trembling, I went to the door, then out to the
garden
to walk, examine the plants and read the grave-markers. I could hear the city waking—the clatter of carts on
stones,
the cry of donkeys and roosters, the brattle of dogs
barking.
I sat for a long time in the cool, wet grass, and as the day warmed, and the children’s voices came down
from the house—
soft, lazy as the butterflies near my shoes— I fell asleep.
7
Kreon beamed—propped up, plump, on scarlet pillows— wedged in, hemmed on all sides by slaves, some feeding
him,
some manicuring his nails, some waving fans, great gleaming plumes. His cheeks and bare dome
dazzled,
newly oiled and perfumed, as bright as the coverture of indigo, gold, and green. The pillars of the royal bed were carved with a thousand liquid shapes: fat serpent
coils,
eagles, chariots, fish-tailed centaurs, lions, maidens … Writhing, twisting, piled on top of one another, the
forms
climbed up into the shadows beyond where the sunlight
burst
like something alive—a lion from the golden age—past
spacious
balconies, red drapes.
“He was magnificent!”
the king said. The slave in black, standing at his
shoulder,
smiled, remote. “Poor Koprophoros!” the king exclaimed, and laughed till the tears ran down. The slave by the
bed laughed with him.
“And poor Paidoboron,” he said, and looked more sober
for an instant;
but then, unable to help himself, he laughed again. You’d have sworn he was ten years younger today, his
cares all ended.
His laughter jiggled the bed and made him breathless.
The dog
at the door rolled back his eyes to be certain that all was
well,
his head still flat on his paws. When the fit of laughter
passed,
the old king patted his stomach and grew philosophical. “Well, it’s not over yet, of course.” Ipnolebes nodded, folded his hands on his beard. King Kreon lowered his
eyebrows,
closed one eye, and pushed out his lower lip. “Make no mistake,” he said, “that man knows whom he’s speaking
to—
This for the princess, that for the king; this for the
Keltai,
this for the Ethiopians.’ ” He closed his left eye tighter still, till the right one gleamed like a jewel.
“And what
does he offer for Kreon and Ipnolebes?” Abruptly, the
bed
became too little span for him. He threw off the cover— slaves leaped back—reached pink feet to the floor and
began
to pace. They dressed him as he walked (somewhat
frailly, eating an apple).
This, certainly, whatever else: the trick of survival may not lie, necessarily, in heroic strength or even heroic nobility, heroic virtue— consider Herakles and Hylas, for instance. The world’s
complex.
There’s the more serious side of what’s wrong with
Koprophoros.
Graceful, charming, ingenious as he is (we can hardly
deny
he’s that), his faith’s in himself, essentially. The
strength of his muscles,
the force of his intellect. We know from experience,
you and I,
where that can lead. Oidipus tapping his way through
the world
with a stick, more lonely and terrible, more filled with
gloom
than Paidoboron himself. Or worse: Jokasta hanging
from a beam.
Or Antigone.” He paused and leaned on the balustrade
that overlooked
the city, the sea beyond, the visitors’ ships. “Antigone,” he said again, face fallen, wrecked. He raised the apple to his mouth and discovered he’d eaten it down to the
pits. He was silent.
He stared morosely seaward. Ipnolebes stood head
bowed,
as though he knew all too well what molested his
master’s thought.
The king asked, testy, his eyes evasive, “Tell me,
Ipnolebes,
once more,
grinning, casually picking at his arm. But if there was
cunning
in what he said, or if some god had entered his spirit, no one there could have known it. “My lord, what can they say?” he said at last. “No one was
wrong …
it seems to me … though what would I know, mere
foolish old slave?”
Kreon turned his bald head slightly, lips pursed,
eyebrows
low, dark, thick as a log-jam. His neck was flushed—old
rage
not yet burned out. Ipnolebes said: “With Oidipus blind, self-exiled, Queen Jokasta dead, the city of Thebes surrounded, you had no choice but to seal the gates.
That stands—”
He paused, looked baffled for a moment. That
stands … to reason. And of course
Antigone had no choice but to break your law, with
her brothers
unburied, food for vultures. So it seems … It was a terrible time, yes yes, but no one…” His voice
trailed off.
Kreon’s mouth tightened. “I should have relented sooner.
I was wrong.
To think otherwise … Would you have me consider
our lives mere dice?”
Ipnolebes wrung his hands. “I’m a foolish old man,
my lord.
It seems improbable …” “If it’s true, then Koprophoros’
way’s the best:
Seize existence by the scrotum! Cling till it shakes you
loose,
hurls you out with an indifferent horn toward emptiness! I refuse to believe it’s true!” But his eyes snapped shut,
and he whispered,
“Gods, dear-precious-holy-gods!” I looked at Corinth’s
towers,
baffled by the sudden change in him. I looked, in my
vision,
at the parks, academies, sculptured walkways, houses
of the people
(white walls, gardens, children in the streets)—a city
as bright
as Paris, greener than London, as awesome in its power
for good
or evil as rich New York; and suddenly I knew what
shattered him:
Thebes on fire. (Berlin, San Francisco, Moscow,
Florence …
New York on fire. Babylon is fallen, fallen ...)
The slave shook his head,
rueful. “My lord, what got you back onto this? We
should think
of the present, be grateful for the gifts the generous
gods give now!”
For a long time Kreon was silent, looking at the sea.
Below him
the city, blazing in the sunlight, teemed with tiny
figures
moving like busy insects through the streets. The tents of the marketplace were shimmering patches of color.
By the walls
stood hobbled donkeys, loaded with goods—bright cloth,
rope, leather,
great misshapen bags of grain, new wineskins,
implements;
above it all, like the tinny hum that rises from a hive, the sound of the people’s voices buying and selling,
begging,
trading—people of every description, thieves, jewellers, shepherds driving their bleating sheep and goats, sailors up from the ships in the harbor, zimmed and
clean-shaved spintries—
shocking as parrots—and prostitutes, old leathery
priests …
The old king pointed down at them, touching
Ipnolebes’ arm.
“See how they live off each other,” he said. “Shoes for
baskets,
honey for wine, filigree for gold, a few pennies for a prayer. Picture of the world—so Jason claims.
Picture
of the Argo, gods and men all ‘arm in arm,’ so to
speak:
no one exactly supreme. If Antigone and I had been like that, more willing to give and take …” Ipnolebes
scowled
but kept his thoughts to himself. When Kreon glanced
at him
he saw at once that something festered in the old slave’s
mind.
“Don’t keep your thoughts from me, old friend,” he said.
His look
had a trace of anger in it. Ipnolebes nodded, avoiding the king’s eyes. His gnarled hands trembled on the
white of his beard
and it came to me that, for all their talk of friendship,
they were
slave and master. Ipnolebes touched his wrinkled lips with two bent fingers and mumbled, as if to himself,
“I was thinking—
trying to think—the old brain’s not what it used to be,
my lord—thinking …
from Aietes’ point of view… how he felt when the Argo—every man at his task, the south wind
breathing
his steady force in the sails—came gliding to the
Kolchian harbor
to steal the fleece, bum ships, seduce his daughter—
destroy
his house.” Suddenly he laughed—the laugh of a
halfwit harmless
slave. King Kreon looked at him, his small eyes wider, glinting. “Aietes was wrong,” he said. The gods were
against him.”
Ipnolebes nodded, looking at the ground. They must
have been.
But what was his error, I wonder?” King Kreon glanced
away.
“Who knows?” he said. Tyranny perhaps. Or he
slighted some god—
who knows? It’s none of our business.” He closed his
mouth. It became
a thin, white line, perspiring at the upper lip. “Who
knows?”
He shot a glance at Ipnolebes, but the old man’s face was vacant. His mind had wandered—a trick of Athena,
at his back—
and Kreon pressed him no more. Ipnolebes excused
himself,
mumbling of work, and the king released him, frowning
slightly.
When the slave was gone, he stood on the balcony alone,
thinking.
All around him, gods stood watching his mind work, slyly disguised as crickets, spiders, a lone eagle ringing slowly sunward, on Kreon’s left
Below,
Ipnolebes paused on the stairway, listening. A frail
old woman,
slave from the south, was singing softly:
“On ivory beds
sprawling on divans,
they dine on the tenderest lambs from the flock
and stall-fattened veal;
they bawl to the sound of the minstrel’s harp
and invent unheard-of instruments of music;
they drink their wine by the bowlful, use
the finest oil for anointing themselves;
death they do not sing of at all.
and death they do not think of at all;
But the sprawlers’ revelry is over,”
Without a word, Ipnolebes descended, thinking.
On a bridge in the palace gardens, Pyripta stood looking
down
at fernlike seaweed, the wake of a swan, the blue-white
pebbles
below. She stood till the water was still and her reflection—pensive, silk-light hair falling over
her bosom—
looked back at her. She seemed to be trying to read the
face
as she would the face of a stranger. The face said
nothing—as sweet
and meaningless as a warm spring day. She pouted,
frowned,
experimented with a smile. She glanced away abruptly, with a frightened look, alarmed by art. I hurried nearer, picking my way through flowers. Aphrodite appeared
beside her,
faintly visible on the bridge, like a golden haze, and
touched
Pyripta’s arm. The princess stared at the water once
more
and sighed, shook back her hair. “I won’t,” she
whispered. “Why must I?
Later! Please, gods, later! I need more time!” The
goddess
moved her hand on Pyripta’s hair. The girl looked
down,
posing, as before. The flowers of the garden rimmed the
pool
like a wreath of yellows and pinks. The swans moved
lazily,
like words on the delicate surface of a too-calm dream.
Above,
on the palace roof, a songbird whistled its warning to
the sky,
the encroaching leaves: Take caret Take care! Take
care up there!”
As I raised my foot, stepping over a flower, the garden vanished.
I stood in the shadow of Jason’s wall. There were vines, the scent of black earth, old brick. I went to the open
window,
cleaned my glasses on the sleeve of my coat and,
standing on tiptoe,
peeked through the louvers. He was dressed to go out,
standing at the mirror,
his back to Medeia, brushing his long black hair.
She said:
“Don’t go, Jason.” He said nothing, brushing, his arm
and shoulder
smooth, automatic as a lion’s. He put down the brush
and took
his cape from the slave. Except for his eyes, he seemed
relaxed.
His eyes had blue-black glints like sparks.
But he swung the cape to his shoulders gently, graceful
as a dancer.
“Jason,” she whispered, “for the love of God, don’t
make me beg!”
He turned to the door. She paled. “Don’t go,” she said.
“Don’t go!”
She went past him, blocking the door, and her eyes were
wild. “Jason!”
He moved her aside like a child and walked from the
house. “Jason!”
she screamed, clinging to the jamb. He didn’t look back.
He walked
to the gate and through it. I hurried after him, amazed,
stumbling,
trying to watch Medeia over my shoulder, where she
stood
on the steps.
“Jason, you’re insane!” I hissed. I snatched at his arm. My hand passed through his wrist. Ghosts, I
remembered. Shadows.
I kept close to him, whispering. If Medeia had seen me,
so could he,
if
he’d use the right part of his mind. “I know the whole
story!” I hissed,
“the fiercest, most horrible tragedy ever recorded! God’s
truth!”
I might as well have complained to the passing wind.
We came
to the palace steps. There was a crowd gathering. He
started up,
three steps at a bound, his cape flaring out behind. At
the door
I caught a glimpse of the blond young slave Amekhenos. Gone before Jason saw him.
Then, from behind us in the street,
came a thin, blood-curdling wail. “Jason!” We stopped
in our tracks.
The crowd shrank back. She stood with blood running
down her cheeks,
the skin torn by her own nails. “Jason, I warn you,” she called, and sank to her knees, stretched out hex
arms to him.
“By the sign of this blood, I warn you—Medeia,
daughter of Aietes,
as mighty a king as has ever ruled on earth—come
away!”
He stared, shrinking. I was sick, so weak that my
knees could barely
hold me. Her hair was beautiful—red-gold, shimmering
with light,
too lovely for earth—but her face was torn and swollen,
bleeding…
We looked away, all of us but Jason. At last he went
down to her
and, gently, he took her hands. After a moment, he said, firmly, but as if he were speaking to a child, “No,
Medeia.”
She searched his face, trembling, clinging to his hands.
“Go home,”
he said. “I know you too well, Medeia. Not that your rage and grief are lies. You feel what you feel. Nevertheless, this once you can’t have your way. If you could show
what I do
in any way unjust or unlawful—if you could raise the shadow of a logical objection, I’d change my course
for you.
You cannot. Long as we’ve lived together, you were
never my wife,
only the lady I’ve loved. There’s a difference, in noble
houses
with large responsibilities. For love of you I fled my homeland, abandoned my throne, sharing
the exile
your crimes earned. I was innocent myself—all Argos
knew it;
no one more shocked than I when I learned of that
monstrous feast.
Ask anyone here.” He turned to the crowd, then to her
again.
“Now, and partly for your sake, I mean to rebuild my
power,
gain back part of what I’ve lost. Go home and wait for