stared with fierce eyes at Jason. The lord of the
Argonauts
paled, but he neither lowered his gaze nor flinched.
King Kreon
glanced at Pyripta in alarm. She opened her mouth as if to speak, but said nothing, pressing one hand to her
heart. The Northerner
said, grim-voiced: “Treason by treason he undermines morality. He tells of the treason of the Doliones, how they offer, one moment, a feast, fine wine, and
the next moment turn,
forgetting the sacred laws of hospitality, more barbarous even than the spider people, who were,
at least,
within their earthborn natures consistent. Are the
Doliones
condemned in Jason’s tale? Not at all! They get
threnodies!
For even the gods betray, according to Jason, as do their seers. So Hylas — whom Jason excuses by virtue
of his youth
and the soft, warm weather that shameful night—
betrays his trust
as squire, goes up to the furthest of the pools. So the
Argonauts
all turn, as one, against Herakles. So Phineus betrays, defying the gods; so Mopsos turns in scorn on dying men; and so all the crewmen, spurred by
the mad
philosophy of Idas, betray the core of humanness,
become
a mindless, fascistic machine. Thus cunningly Jason
persuades
that treason is life’s great norm. He pulls the secret wires of our angular heads, makes us empathize with his
own foul sin,
and bilks us all of the heart’s sure right to condemn
such sin.
Corrupter! Exploiter! No more such fumets! The world
is alive
with laws, and all who defy them will at last be
destroyed by them.
Think back on the days of old, think over the years,
down the ages.
Are the gods blind? indifferent to evil and stupidity? They’ve spoken in all man’s generations, and they speak
even now:
‘You are fat, gross, bloated, a deceitful and underhanded
brood,
a nation wealthy and empty-headed. Your hills will
tremble
and your carcases will be torn apart in the midst of
streets.
A great fire has blazed from my anger.
It will burn to the depths of Hades’ realm.
It will devour the earth and all its produce;
it will set fire to the foundations of mountains’ ”
The dark king paused, his words still ringing, and
his eyes had no spark
of humanness in them, it seemed to me. Jason said
nothing.
Then, once more, Paidoboron spoke, more quietly now, his hoarse, dry voice like an oracle’s voice through
cavern smoke:
“You’ve raised up again and again that towering son
of Zeus,
fierce Herakles, as the chief of betrayers, suggesting
that nought
you’ve done, or might do, could hold a candle to his
perfidy.
Shame, seducer! The ideal of loyalty raged in that man! Loyalty to Zeus, to Hylas, to his friends. He struck
down Hylas’
father from passionate hatred of his evil State — never
mind
how cheap his murderous stratagem. He threatened
to lay
all Mysia waste out of passionate sorrow at loss of his
friend.
And in the same mad rage he murdered the sons of
Boreas,
who had loved him weakly, intellectually, and
prevented your ship
from turning back when you’d stranded him.
Wide-minded Zeus
did not bequeath his wisdom to his son: from
Alkmene he got
his brains. But the sky-god’s absolutes burned in
Herakles
like quenchless underground fire. They do not burn in
you.
Impotent, wily, colubrine, you’d buy and sell all man’s history, if it lay in your power. Ghost ships
indeed!
Civilization beware if Jason is the model for it! When feelings perish — the wound we share with the
cow and the lion—
then rightly the world will return to the rule of spiders.”
So
he spoke, and would say no more. And Aison’s son said
nothing.
I would not have given three straws, that moment,
for Jason’s hopes.
And then, all at once, came an eerie change. The
red-leaved branches
framed in the windows, blowing in the autumn wind,
snapped into
motionlessness. Every man, fly, cricket, the wine that fell streaming from the lip of the pitcher
in the slave boy’s hand,
hung frozen. It seemed the scene had become a divine
projection
on a golden screen. Then, in that stillness, Hera leaped
up,
eyes blazing, and, turning to Athena, flew into a rage.
“Sly wretch!”
she bellowed. I flattened to the floor. Her voice made
the rafters shake,
though it failed to awaken the sea-kings, frozen to
marble. Athena
fell a step backward, quaking. I had somehow dropped
my glasses,
so that all I could see of the goddesses was a luminous
blur.
I felt by the wall, furtive as a mouse, and at last I found
them,
hooked them over my ears in haste and peeked out
again.
The queen of goddesses wailed: “What a perfect fool
I was
to trust you even for an instant! You just can’t resist,
can you!
I think you’re my true ally, and I listen to Jason’s
cunning,
and I think, That Athena! The goddess of mind is surely
Zeus’s
masterpiece!’ And what are you thinking? You’re
dreaming up answers!
You don’t care! You don’t care about anything! He
stops to take a breath
and your quick wit darts to old Fatslats there, and you
inspire him with words
and you ruin all Jason’s accomplished! — And you,
you halfwit—”
She whirled to confront Aphrodite. “You caused the
whole thing! You change
your so-called mind and forget about Medeia and make
our Pyripta
all googley-poo over Aison’s son, and Athena can’t
help it,
she has to oppose you. It’s a habit, after all these
centuries.”
Aphrodite blushed scarlet and backed away as her sister
had done.
‘Your Majesty, do be reasonable,” Athena said. Her voice was soft — it was faint as a zephyr, in fact,
from fear.
But the wife of Zeus did not prefer to be reasonable. Her dark eyes shone like a stormcloud blooming and
rippling with light. “
Betrayal,” she groaned, and clenched her fists. “That’s
good. That’s really
good! You make Paidoboron talk of betrayal, how fine true loyalty is, and you, you don’t bat an eyelash at how your trick’s a betrayal of me! Does nothing in the world
count?
How can you do it, forever and ever manufacturing
structures,
when the whole vast ocean of Time and Space is
thundering aloud
on the rocks, and the generations of men are all on the run, rootless and hysterical?”
“Your Majesty, please,
I beg you,” Athena said. The queen of goddesses
paused,
still angry, I thought, but not unaware of gray-eyed