heard the laments
of the maids and the groans of Medeia. And when it
was noon, and the sun
so fierce that the very air crackled, they came, for pity of the maidens, doomed unfulfilled, having neither
men nor sons,
and stood above me, and brushed my cloak’s protection
from my eyes
and called to me in a strange voice, a voice I
remembered
yet could not place—some shrew with the flat Argonian
accent
I’d known as a child.— ‘Jason!’ I looked, saw nothing
but the blinding
sun. They cried, ‘Pay back the womb that has borne so
much.
Call strength from murdered men. Redeem these
thousand shames.
Embrace your ruin, you who have preached so much
on mindless
struggle, unreasoning hope. Have you still no love?’ So
they spoke,
voices in the white-hot light. I had no idea what they
meant,
whispers of madness, guilt. I slept again, awaiting death. And then sat up with a start, a crazy idea tormenting me: the womb was the Argo who’d borne us
here,
the murdered men not those I’d lost before but those around me, grounded by the sun; and my ruin was
the sun himself:
I must go to the center of the furnace, my only prayer
for the men,
the Phaiakian maidens, and Medeia. Oh, do not think
I believed
it reasonable! The desert was hotter where I meant to
go,
and the Argo no weight for men half-starved, no water
to drink
on a trip that might take us days, if not all eternity. Nevertheless, I roused them, fierce, a lion gone mad, and stumbling, incredulous, they obeyed. I sent no
scouts ahead,
and no man there suggested it. Blind luck was our
hope,
perhaps blind love, the Argonauts bearing that
monstrous ship,
spreading her weight between shoulders meaningless
except for this,
their union in a madman’s task. In their shadow the
maidens walked,
singing a hymn of heatwaves, the pitiless sun, a dirge for all of us. And so those noblest of all kings’ sons, by their own might and hardihood, lips cracked and
bleeding,
carried the Argo and all her treasures, shoulder high, nine days and nights through the death-calm dunes
of Libya.
“I shared the weight till the seventh day. Then
Medeia fell,
unconscious, and could not be wakened. So I carried
my wife in my arms,
shouting encouragement to the men, reassuring the
maidens. The sun
filled all the sky, it seemed to us. But the maidens sang, struggled to help with the load till they fell, befuddled,
giggling
like madwomen. We dragged them on. Told lunatic
jokes,
talked with the sun, the sand, a thousand sabuline
visions—
and so we came to water. But left the desert strewn with graves, unmarked by stick or stone. One half my
crew
and two of the maidens we buried in the white-hot sand;
and not
the least of those who fell there, slaughtered by the heat,
was Ankaios,
nobleman robed in a bearskin and armed with an axe.
We buried
the twelve-foot child and wept. Our tears were dust.
Then set
the Argo down in the calm Tritonian lagoon, and
searched
for drinking water.
“The sky was blinding white, all sun. It seemed to us that we came to the body of a huge
gray snake,
head smashed, by the trunk of an appletree. From the
venom sacks down
the corpse was asleep, undreaming, the coils a thicket
of arrows,
such deadly poison that maggots perished in the
festering wounds.
And close to the corpse, it seemed to us, we saw fiery
shapes
wailing, their mist-pale arms flung past their golden
heads.
At our first glimpse of the beautiful strangers, majestic
beings
in the white-hot light, they vanished in a swirl of dust.
Then up
leaped Orpheus, praying, wild-eyed: ‘O beautiful
creatures, mysteries,
whether of Olympos or the Underworld, reveal
yourselves!
Blessed spirits, shapes out of Ocean or the violent sun, be visible to us, and lead us to a place where water
runs,
fresh water purling from a rock or gushing from the
ground! Do this
and if ever we bring our ship to some dear Akhaian port, we’ll honor you even as we honor the greatest of the
goddesses,
with wine and with hecatombs and an endless ritual of
praise!’
No sooner did he speak, sobbing and conjuring strangely
with his lyre
than grass sprang up all around us from the ground,
and long green shoots,
and in a moment saplings, tall and straight and in full
leaf—
a poplar, a willow, a sacred oak. And strange to say, they were clearly trees, but also, clearly, beings of fire, and all we saw in the world was clearly itself but also fire.
“Then the beams of the oak tree spoke. ‘You’ve been
fortunate.
A man came by here yesterday—an evil man—
who killed our guardian snake and stole
the golden apples of the sun. To us he brought anger
and sorrow, to you release
from misery. As soon as he glimpsed those apples, his
face
went savage, hideous to look at, cruel,
with eyes that gleamed like an eagle’s. He carried a
monstrous club
and the bow and arrows with which he slew our
guardian of the tree.
Our green world shrank to brambles and thistles, to
sand and sun,
and in terror, like a man gone blind, he turned to left
and right
bellowing and howling like a lost child.
And now he was parched with thirst, half mad. He
hammered the sand
with his club until, by chance, or pitied by a god, he
struck
that great rock there by the lagoon. It split at the base,
and out
gushed water in a gurgling stream, and the huge man
drank, on his knees,
moaning with pleasure like a child and rolling his eyes
up.’
“As soon as we heard these words we rushed to the place, all our
company,
and drank. Medeia—still unconscious, more cruelly
punished
than those we’d buried in the sand—I placed in the
shadow of ferns
at the water’s edge. I bathed her arms and legs, her
throat
and forehead, and dripped cool water in her staring
eyes. With the help
of her maidens, I made her drink. She groped toward
consciousness,
rising slowly, slowly, like Poseidon from the depths of
the sea,
until, wide-eyed with terror at some fierce vision in the
sun,
invisible to us, she clenched her eyes tight shut, clinging with her weak right hand to my cousin Akastos, with
her left to me.
&nbs
p; Mad Idas wept. Doom on doom he must witness, and sad premonitions of doom, to the end of his dragged-out
days. No more
the raised middle finger, the obscene joke through
bared fangs;
no more the laughter of the trapped, that denies, defies
the trap.
He’d recognized it at last: more death than death, and
he rolled
his eyes like a sheep in flight from the wolf, and
nothing at his back
but Zeus. Such was the sorrow of Idas, the bravest of
men,
now broken.
“As soon as our minds were cooled, we came to see that the giant savage of whom the tree had spoken
could be none
but Herakles, much changed by his many trials. We
resolved
to hunt for him, and carry him back to Akhaia, if the
gods
permitted. The wind had removed all sign of his tracks.
The sons
of Boreas set off in one direction, on light-swift wings; Euphemos ran in another, and Lynkeus ran, more
slowly,
in a third, with his long sight. And Kaanthos set out
too,
impelled by destiny. Kaanthos was one who’d ploughed
for his living
and his heart was steady and gentle. He had had a
brother once,
a man of whom nothing is known. He found a grazing
flock
of goats kept alive by desert thistles, and he sought the
goatherd
to ask for news of Herakles, the sky-god’s son. Before he could speak, the herd leaped up with a look
of alarm
and threw a stone at him. It struck the poor man
squarely on the forehead,
and Kaanthos, astounded, fell, and his life ran out.
Nor was that
the least of my men to be lost on sandswept Libya. As for Herakles, we found no trace. They all returned; we prepared to set sail for home.
“And then came Mopsos’ time, foreseen by him from the beginning, thanks to his
birdlore. He was
the noblest of seers, for all his peculiarity— his whimsy, the grime on his fingers, the bits of dried
food in his beard—
but little good his wisdom did him when his hour
arrived.
“An asp lay sleeping in the sand, in shelter from the
midday sun,
a snake too sluggish to attack a man who showed no
sign
of hostility, or fly at a man who jumped back. It meant no harm to anything alive, though even a drop of its
venom
was instant passage to the Underworld. Old Mopsos,
chatting
and strolling with Medeia and her maidens, while the
rest of us worked on the ship,
by chance stepped lightly, with his left foot, on the
tip of the creature’s
tail. In pain and alarm, the asp coiled swiftly around the old man’s shin and calf and struck, sinking its fangs to the gums. Medeia and her maidens shrank in horror.
Old Mopsos
clenched his fists in sorrow. The pain was slight enough, but he knew he was past all hope. He lifted his foot to
free
the asp. Already he was paralyzed, numb. A dark mist clouded his sight, and his heavy limbs fell. In an instant,
he was cold,
his flesh corrupting in the heat of the sun, his hair
falling out
in patches. We dug him a grave at once and buried him. Then went down to the ship, full of woe.
“With Ankaios dead, no sure helmsman among us, our chances of reaching
Akhaia
were slim. But Peleus took the oar, the father of
Akhilles,
and we drew the hawsers in. There must surely be
some escape
from the wide Tritonian lagoon, we thought. Having no
aim,
we drifted, helpless, the whole day long. The Argo’s
course,
as we nosed now here, now there, for an outlet, was
as tortuous
as the track of a serpent as it wriggles along in search
for shelter
from the baking sun, peeping about him with an angry
hiss
and dust-flecked eyes, till he slips at last through a dark
rock cleft
to freedom. And so we too found freedom. Once in the
open,
we kept the land on our right, hugging the coast. The
sun
was kinder now, though fierce enough. We slept in the
shadow
of rocks by day, and drove the Argo by the power of our
backs
from twilight till dawn’s first glance. And so wore out
by stages
the curse of Helios.”
Here Jason paused, looked down, his dark eyebrows knit. The hall was silent, waiting, Kreon leaning on his arms, his gaze intent. I could feel their dread of the man’s conclusions.
He said: “Except, of course, that no man—no house—wears out a curse by his own
power.
We may with luck propitiate the gods, live through our
trials;
but the offense is still in the blood, and our sons
inherit it,
and our sons’ sons, and shadow progeny arching to the
end
of time. I half understood them now, those ghostships
riding
the Argo’s wake. By some inexplicable accident we were, ourselves, the point of no turning back. We
closed
an age. The Golden Age,’ men will call it. They’ll honey
it with lies
and hone for it, with languishing looks, and bemoan
their fall
and curse my name and treason…. Their curses will
not much stir
my dust. I was there; I saw the truth. A childish age of easy glory in petty marauding, of lazy flocks on bluegreen hills where every stream had its nymphs,
its men half-goat; where the rightful monarch of a
sleepy throne
could be set aside, as was I at Iolkos, and given the
choice
of fighting for his right like a long-horned ram
dispossessed of his gray
indifferent ewes, or accepting the slight humiliation and moving on. I changed the rules—declined the
gauntlet,
made deals, built cunning alliances, ambitious in
secret,
with always one thought foremost: keep to the logic
of nature.
Be true, within reason, to friends, with enemies ruthless.
Be just,
but not beyond reason. Honor the gods and men and
the stones
of the earth, but not to excess. Have faith sufficient to
fight;
beware all expectations.
“For there is no power on earth but treaty, no love but mutual consent—whatever the
relative
power of those consenting. Not even the gods are firm of character; much less, then, men. The promise I make, I make to a man who may change, become anathema
to me.
Therefore, be just, recall no vows still meet, but know we sail among wandering rocks. By these few
principles—
some known to me at the start, some not—I organized the Akhaians. It would be, from that day forward, powers pitted against powers, the labor of monstrous
machines—
at best, a labor for universal good; at worst, perhaps, exploiters faceless as forests, and the cringing exploited,
the forests’
beasts.
“So riding by night, my hand on
Medeia’s, I watched the shadowy ships like mountains that followed in our
wake. As before,
Time washed over us in waves. I dreamed it was stars
we sailed,
and our oars stirred dust on the moon, or our shadow
stretched out, prow
to stern, in the shadows that tremble and float down
Jupiter.
At times stiff birds passed over us, roaring, and
mountains took fire.
Medeia, watching at my side, said nothing, and whether
or not
she understood these visions, I could not guess. I told
her
the words I’d heard in my dream, off the isle of Phineus: You are caught in irrelevant forms. Beware the
interstices.
She studied me, child of magic; could tell me nothing.
Gently,
I covered her hand. Sooner or later, I knew, I’d grasp
that mystery.
I’d pierced a part of it already: it was there at the
intersections
of the billion billion powers of the world that the danger
lay,
and the hope; the gaps between gods, or men, or gods
and men;
the gaps between minds—my own and Aiaian Medeia’s.
Invisible
gaps at the heart of connectedness, where love and will leaped out, seek to span dark chambers, and must not
fail. I seemed
for an instant to understand her, as when one knows
for an instant
a tiger’s mind; the next, saw only her face, her radiant, wholly mysterious eyes. I was not as I was, however, with Hypsipyle on the isle of Lemnos. It was not mere
fondness,
shared isolation that I felt. I put my arms around her as a miser closes his arms, half in joy, half in fear,
around
his treasure sacks—as a king walls in his city, or a
mother
her child. As the raging sun reaches for the pale-eyed, vanishing moon, so Medeia’s burning
heart
reached for my still, coiled mind; as the moon reforms
the light
of the sun, abstracts, refines it, at times refuses it,
yet lives by that light as memory lives by harsh deeds
done,
or consciousness lives by the mindless fire of sensation,
so I
locked needs with Medeia, not partner, as I was with
Hypsipyle,
but part. She returned the embrace, ferocious: a wild
off-chance.
Thus as Helios’ wrath withdrew we staked our claims, all our curses smouldering still in our blood.
“And so we came at last by the will of the deathless
gods to Akhaia.
18
“It wasn’t easy, sharing the rule with senile Pelias.
All real power in the kingdom was mine. It was not for