to speak, but couldn’t. I glanced up the hill at the
palace, aglow
like the galaxy with torches. When I turned to the seer
again
he was moving slowly downhill, leaning hard on the
boy. I found
my voice and called, “Teiresias!” He turned, waiting. I realized in alarm we had nothing to say.
Enveloped
in a mist that hid me from the watch, I climbed to the
palace. The crowd
was thinner by half than when last I’d listened to
Jason speak.
It filled me with dread. I knew well enough what the
reason was.
The best had abandoned the contest, and not because
Jason appeared
to be winning. The brutal quelling of the riot, tyrannic
use
of the law’s whole force on their own long-suffering,
disgruntled crews—
and perhaps something more, the murder I’d heard of,
the crew arrested—
had turned them to scorn of Corinth and Corinth’s
prize. Without
a word, I suspected, they’d turned their steps to the
harbor and sailed
for home. I was partly wrong, I learned later. There
were shouts in the palace,
young kings outraged, old kings quietly astounded at
Kreon’s
ways. But my guess was right in this: the best who’d
come
had abandoned Corinth, prepared to become, on further
provocation,
her enemies.
I moved, among those who remained, to a stairway, a raised place where I could see. Except for the kings
who’d departed
all was the same, I thought — the princess Pyripta in
her chair
of gold, with her hand on her eyes (her light-filled hair
fell softly,
swirling, enclosing her shoulders as if as protection);
Kreon
stern in his place, lips pursed, eyes squeezed half shut;
the goddesses
listening, watching like kestrels, except Aphrodite,
who sat
half-dreaming, studying Jason and Pyripta. I noticed
at last
that Kreon’s slave Ipnolebes was missing, as was the blond Northerner, Amekhenos. But I had no time
to brood much on it. Jason was speaking. His voice
was gentle,
troubled, I thought. How much had he seen, in his
lordly isolation,
of the day’s events? I saw him with the eyes of the
young Medeia,
stunned in her father’s courtyard. He would have been
thinner then,
as big in the chest, less thick in the waist, his gestures
tentative,
boyish despite all those daring deeds already. His eyes seemed hardly the eyes of a power-grabber. What was
he, then?
Yet perhaps I knew. His guarded glance at the princess,
for instance.
Age-old hunger of vanity, hunger to be loved just one more time, and just one more, one more — give the
lie to death
for an instant. But it wasn’t enough for him, the total
adoration
of a girl. He must have whole cities’ adoration — and
he’d had that, once,
rightful prince of Iolkos, the throne his uncle had
usurped
and he might have won back, without shame, by
bloody deeds; yet chose
the reasonable way, for all his might in arms, for all his people’s love. “Evil deeds commit their victims,” Medeia had said, “to responses evil as the deeds
themselves.”
That was the law he’d sought to change.
No wonder if the child of Aietes hadn’t understood,
had struck—
sky-fire’s child — with the pitiless force of her father’s
father.
And so Lord Jason had lost it all. I remembered again the crowd of outraged sailors, turning and turning,
grinding …
My memory seethed with the image, all space astir like
grain
in the narrowing flume of a gristmill. Against that
ceaseless motion,
Jason stood in the great hall still as a rock, a tree, as gentle of mind, as reasonable, as firm of will as the cool, intellectual moon. Ah, Jason knew, all right, of the riots. Calm, his voice an instrument, he spoke:
“Six weeks the god’s wrath banged us shore to shore
among foemen,
men who fought naked, cut off their enemies’ heads.
All that
for Circe’s failure to forgive. Old Argus’ wonderful
engine,
driven as if by its own will, struck rocks and laughed at the steering oar of Ankaios. I lost there fourteen men to wrecks and those savage raids. I gave what attention
I could
to Medeia — whatever was left, to the needs of my men.
She was sick,
hour on hour and day on day, some strange collusion of body and mind, or a poison shot down from Helios. I loved her, yes, though her bowels ran black, and at
times, in pain,
she raged. I loved her, if anything, more than before
that time,
as you love a child you’ve nursed through the night,
alarmed by his trembling,
cooling his forehead in terror of convulsions. Loved her
for the shame
that closed her hands to fists, made her jawline clench.
A love
that trenched past body to the beauty deeper, the
humanness
astounded by love not earned by its outer form. She was, in her own crazed, blood-shot eyes, a thing despicable,
vile;
to me the wealth of kingdoms, dearer than my flesh,
her acrid
lips, distilled wild honey, her tangled hair more joy
than goat flocks frisking in the hills. — Yet rage she did;
demanded
more than my hands could give, my reeling mind hold
firm.
Raged and wept, while claws of rock reached up at us and savage strangers struck us from every tree and rock on shore. I clung to my scrap of sanity like Theseus
clutching
Ariadne’s thread in the Labyrinth. At times I sobbed, clenched my teeth at the loss of friends. At times, with
the help
of Butes, king of the spear, and Phlias and Akastos,
kept calm
by fear for me, I heartened my men with words. Mad
Idas
mocked, shouted at the winds, demanded that Zeus
destroy him.
He beat his chest with his great black fists and
slobbered, convinced
that for him, for his slight against Zeus, we endured
this punishment.
Once, in the night, he went overboard. Medeia
awakened
with a scream, aware of catastrophe.
We saw him at once, and Leodokos, mighty as a bull,
went over.
Swimming like a dolphin, he dragged him back to the
Argo, poor Idas
spluttering, cursing the gods and the skewbald sea.
“So, hurled by unknown winds and waters, we came to the Sirens’
isle.
I shackled my men and Medeia like slaves; myself as
well.
Orpheus played, struggling to drown out their song,
or untune it.
The sea was calm, full of sunlight.
“I heard it well enough: music peeling away like a
gull
from Orpheus’ jazz. Dark cavern music, the music of
silent
pools where no moon shines: the music of death as
secret
hunger. What can I say? They were not innocents, those sirens: it was not peace they sang, fulfillment
in joy.
Who’d have been sucked to his death by that? — by
holy dreams
of isles forever green, where shepherds play their pipes softly, softly, for girls forever white? It wasn’t gentleness, goodness, the sweetness of age those sirens