moment. What force
it learned from yesterday’s lions is now mere handsel
in the den
of the dragon Present Space. And therefore I raise
opposition
to Jason’s will, to temper it. His anguine mind, despite those rueful looks, will find some way.”
The queen
seemed dubious. It was not absolutely clear to me that she perfectly followed the train of thought. But hardly knowing what else to be, she was
reconciled.
Gray-eyed Athena, encouraged, and ever incurably
impish,
turned to the love goddess. “You, sweet sister,” she said
with a look
so gentle I might have wept to see it, “don’t take it to
heart
that the queen of goddesses turns on you in her fury
when I,
and I alone, am at fault. If my motives indeed were
those
she first suspected, then well might I call to my dear
Aphrodite—
sitting graveolent in her royal hebetation, surrounded by
all
her holouries—for help. Such is not the case, however. Let there be peace between us, I pray, as always.”
So speaking
she raised Aphrodite’s hands and tenderly kissed them.
The love goddess
sobbed.
Then everything moved again—the branches in the
windows,
the people, the animals, wine in the pitcher. Then Kreon
rose.
The roar died down respectfully.
“These are terrible charges,”
the old man said, and his furious eyes flashed fire
through the hall,
condemned the whole pack. “I’ve lived many years and
seen many things,
but I doubt that even in war I have seen such hostility. When Oidipus sought in maniacal rage that man who’d
brought down
plagues on Thebes—when Antigone left me in fiery
indignation
to defy my perhaps inhuman but surely most reasonable
law—
not then nor then did I see such wrath as has narrowed
the eyes
of Paidoboron and Koprophoros. It’s not easy for me to believe such outrage can trace its genesis to reason!
However,
the charge, whatever its source, requires an answer.”
He turned
to Jason, bowed to him and waited. The warlike son of
Aison
sat head-bent, still frowning. At last he glanced up, then
rose,
and Kreon sat down, gray-faced. The smile half breaking
at the corners
of Jason’s mouth was Athena’s smile; the dagger flash
in his eyes was the work
of Hera. Love was not in him, though his voice was
gentle.
“My friends,
I stand accused of atrocities,” he said, “and the chief is
this:
I have severed my head from my heart, a point made
somehow clear
by dark, bifarious allegory. I have lost my soul to a world where languor cries unto languor, where
cicadas sing
‘Perhaps it is just as well.’ In the real world—the world
which I
have lyred to its premature grave—there is love between
women and men,
faith between men and the gods. If you here believe all
that,
believe that in every condition the good cries fondly to
the good,
and the heart, by its own pure fire, can physician the
anemic mind,
I would not dissuade you. Faith has a powerful
advantage over truth,
while faith endures. But as for myself, I must track
mere truth
to whatever lair it haunts, whether high on some noble
old mountain,
or down by the dump, where half-starved rats scratch
by as they can,
and men not blessed with your happy opinions must feed
on refuse
and find their small satisfactions.
“My art is false, you say.
I answer: whatever art I may show is the world itself. The universe teems with potential Forms, though only
a few
are illustrated (a cow, a barn, a startling sunset); to trace the history of where we are is to arrive where
we are.
There are no final points in the journey of life up out of silence: there are only moments of process, and in some
few moments,
insight. Search all you wish for the key I’ve buried, you
say,
in the coils of my plot, Koprophoros. The tale, you’ll
find,
is darker than that—and more worthy of attention. It
exists.
It has its history, its dreadful or joyful direction. The
ghostly allegory
you charge me with is precisely what my tale denies. The truth of the world, if I’ve understood it,
is this:
Things die. Alternatives kill. I leave it to priests to speak of eternal things.
“And as for you, Paidoboron,
if I claim that the world has betrayals in it, don’t howl
too soon.
Every atom betrays; every stick and stone and galaxy. Notice two lodestones: notice how they war. But turn
one around
and behold how they lock like lovers embraced in their
tomb. So this:
some things click in. Some sanctuaries, at least for a
time,
are inviolable. What fuses the metals in the ice-bright
ring
of earth and sky, burns mind into heart, weds man to
woman
and king to state? What power is in them? That,
whatever
it is, is the golden secret, precisely the secret I stalk and all of us here must stalk. I’ve told you failure on
failure,
holding back nothing. But I still have a tale or two to
tell—
meaningless enough in the absence of all I’ve told
already—
that you may not mock so quickly.”
He was silent. Had he tricked them again,
danced them out of their wits like a prophet of
gyromancy?
Athena smiled and winked at Jason. Dark Aphrodite glanced at Hera for assurance that all was well.
Then Kreon
rose again, gazed round. When no one dared to speak, he turned to his slave Ipnolebes, who nodded in silence. Kreon rubbed his hands together, furious, and at last pronounced the matter closed. He dismissed the whole
assembly
till the hour of the evening meal, when Jason would
resume his tale,
and, taking the princess’ elbow in his hand, bowing to
left
and right, unsmiling, he descended from the dais. As
the two passed
the threshold, the others all rose and followed, and so
the hall
was emptied except for the slaves—near the door the
Northerner
and the boy. The goddess vanished. The vision went
dark. I heard
the nightmare crowd on the move again, in the shadow
of the beast,
smothered in the skirts of the prostitute. Then sound,
too, ceased,
and I hung in darkness, nowhere, clinging to the oak’s
rough bark.
A blore of wind, like the breeze at the entrance to a cave,
tore
at the ragged tails of my overcoat, sheathed my
spectacles in ice.
14
I stood, by the goddess’ will, in Medeia’s room. Pale
light
fell over her, fell swirling, burning on the golden fleece beside her, and then moved on, moved past the two old
slaves
to the door where the children watched. I could not
look at them
for pain and shame. Dreams they might be, as old and
pale
as ghosts in the cairns of Newgrange, but dream or
solid flesh,
they were children, inexplicably doomed. How could
I close my wits
on truths so weird? (Who can believe in the spectre
who walks
leukemia wards, who stands severe above laughing girls whose hearts pump dust? Who can believe those
pictures in the news
of a million children, senselessly cursed, dying in
silence,
caught up in Dionysos’ wars, or the refugee camps of Artemis? ) All time inside them … And then I did
look,
searching their eyes for the secret, and found there
nothing. Softly,
my guide, invisible around me, spoke. “Poor dim-eyed
-stranger,
you’ve understood the question, at least. Look! Look
hard!
Study their eyes, windows of the world you seek and
they
have not yet dreamed the price of: the timeless instant.
They have
no plans, only flimmering dreams of plans, intentions
dark
as the lachrymal flutter of corpse-candles. Their time
is reverie.
But already will is uncoiling there. They flex their
fingers,
restless at the long dull watch. The garden is filled with
birds,
bright sunlight. They remember a cart with a broken
wheel, a cave
of vines by the garden wall. They have now begun to be of two minds. Now love and hate grow thinkable, sacrifice and murder, mercy and judgment. And now,
look close:
with a glance at each other—sly grins, infectious, so
that we smile too,
remembering, projecting (for we, we too, were children
once,
slyly becoming ourselves, unaware of the risk)—they
step,
soundless as deer, to the doorway and through it to
their liberty.
Or so they guess, unaware that the house will vanish,
and the garden—
and the palsied slaves they’ve slipped they will find
transmogrified
to skulls, bits of ashen cloth, dark bone. And they’ll
wring their hands,
restless again, and search in children’s eyes for peace, in vain. Yet there is peace. Strange peace: from the
blood of innocents.
You’ll see. The gods have ordained it.” I stared, alarmed
at that,
and snatched off my glasses to hunt with my naked
eyes for the shade—
she-witch, goddess, I knew not what—but no trace
of her.
I turned up the collar of my coat, for the room had
grown chilly. And then
she spoke one brief word more: “Listen.”
On the bed, eyes staring,
Medeia spoke, ensorcelled—death-pale lips unmoving. I glanced, alarmed, at her eyes and my glance was held;
I seemed
to fall toward them, and they weren’t eyes now but
pits, an abyss,
unfathomable, plunging into space. I cried out, clutched
my spectacles.
The wind soughed dark with words and the pitch-dark
wings of ravens
crying in Medeia’s voice:
“I little dreamed, that night,
sleeping in my father’s high-beamed hall, that I’d
sacrifice
all this, my parents’ love, the beautiful home of my
childhood,
even my dear brother’s life, for a man who lay, that
moment,
hidden in the reeds of the marsh. Had I not been happy
there—
dancing with the princes of Aia on my father’s floors of
brass
or walking the emerald hills above where wine-dark
oxen
labored from dawn to dusk, above where pruning-men
crept,
weary, along dark slopes of their poleclipt vineyard
plots?
I’d talked, from childhood up, with spirits, with
all-seeing ravens,
sometimes with swine where they fed by the rocks
under oak trees, eating
acorns, treasure of swine, and drank black water,
making
their flesh grow rich and sweet and their brains grow
mystical.
No princess was ever more free, more proud and sure
in the halls
of her father, more eager to please with her mother.
But the will of the gods
ran otherwise.”
The voice grew lighter all at once, the voice
of a schoolteacher reading to children, some trifling,
unlikely tale
that amuses, fills in a recess, yet troubles the grown-up
voice
toward sorrow. She told, as if gently mocking the
tragedy,
of gods and goddesses at ease in their windy palaces where the hourglass-sand takes a thousand years to
form the hill
an ant could create, here on earth, in half an hour. She
told
of jealousies, foolish displays of celestial skill and
spite;
and in all she said, I discovered as I listened, one thing
stood plain:
she knew them well, those antique gods and mortals,
though she mocked
their foolishness. I peered all around me to locate the
but on all sides lay darkness, the infinite womb of
space.
She told, first, how Athena and Hera looked down
and, seeing
the Argonauts hidden in ambush, withdrew from Zeus
and the rest
of the immortal gods. When the two had come to a
rose-filled arbor,
Hera said, “Daughter of Zeus, advise me. Have you
found some trick
to enable the men of the Argo to carry the fleece away? Or have you possibly constructed some flattering
speech that might
persuade Aietes to give it as a gift? God knows, the
man’s
intractable, but nothing should be overlooked.” Athena sighed. She hated to be caught without schemes. “
I’ve racked my brains, to be truthful,” she said, “and
I’ve come up with nothing.”
For a while the goddesses stared at the grass, each
lost in her own
perplexities. Then Hera’s eyes went sly. She said:
“Listen!
We’ll go to Aphrodite and ask her to persuade that
revolting boy
to loose an arrow at Aietes’ daughter, Medeia of the
many
spells. With the help of Medeia our Jason can’t fail!”
Athena
smiled. “Excellent,” she said and glanced at Hera, then
away.
Hera caught it—no simpleton, ruler of the whole
world’s will.
“All right.” she said, “explain that simper,
Lightning-head.”
Athena’s gray eyes widened. “I smiled?” Hera looked
stern. Athena
sigh
ed, then smiled again. ‘There is … a certain logic to events, as you know, Your Majesty. Your war with
Pelias
has taken, I think, a new turn. If Medeia should fall in
love
with Jason and win him the fleece, and if she returned
with him
and reigned with him—and Pelias …” Queen Hera’s
eyebrows raised,
all shock. “I give you my solemn word I intended no such thing!” Then, abruptly, she too smiled. Then both
of them laughed
and, taking one another’s arms, they hurried to the love
goddess.
She was alone in her palace. Crippled Hephaiastos
had gone to work early,
as he often did, to create odd gadgets for gods and
men
in his shop. She was sitting in an inlaid chair, a
heart-shaped box
on the arm, and between little nibbles she was combing
her lush, dark hair
with a golden comb. When she saw the goddesses
standing at the door,
peeking shyly through the draperies—in their dimpled
fingers
fans half-flared, like the pinions of a friendly but
timorous bird—
she stopped and called them in. She crossed to meet
them quickly
and settled the two, almost officiously, in easy chairs, before she went to her own seat. “How wonderful!”
she said,
and her childlike eyes were bright. “It’s been ages!”
The queen of goddesses
smiled politely, cool and aloof in spite of herself. She
glanced at Athena,
and Athena, innocent as morning, inquired about
Aphrodite’s
health, and Hephaiastos’ health, and that of “the boy.”
She could not
bring herself to come out with the urchin’s name. When
the queen
of love had responded at length—sometimes with tears,
sometimes
with a smile that lighted the room like a burst of pink
May sun,
the goddess of will broke in, a trifle abruptly, almost sternly, saying: “My dear, our visit is only partly social. We two are facing a disaster. At this very
moment
warlike Jason and his friends the Argonauts are riding
at anchor
on the river Phasis. They’ve come to fetch the fleece
from Aietes.
We’re concerned about them; as a matter of fact I’m
prepared to fight
with all my power for that good, brave man, and I
mean to save him,
even if he sails into Hades’ Cave. You know my justified fury at Pelias, that insolent upstart who slights me
whenever
he offers libations. ‘Peace whatever the expense’ is his