Bright Air Black

by David Vann

In Korinth, we’ll have plenty.

  Depending on Kreon. We certainly received a great welcome from Pelias. You handed over the fleece and all was laid at our feet.

  Jason doesn’t argue. He only turns away, something in him resigned. Enough light still to watch his back as he goes. Appearing from the mist in Colchis, her new life, and disappearing now. She doesn’t know how to bring him back. She feels as if she herself is the one disappearing, losing weight and substance, being erased, hung in the air to feel loss and nothing more, some vague emptiness that is no longer painful but only true.

  She lies on this ground as it cools, pulls her sons close. They will keep her from vanishing. Anchors to this world.

  7

  Narrow land, isthmus between seas come so close to meeting. The familiar one pale and whipped white by wind, the new one dark, much deeper, and sheltered.

  A great mountain, rocky head thrust up to watch over Korinth. Some elder, outcrops of rock like a fringe of hair. Man, not woman. We should not go here, she tells Jason.

  Kreon is a friend, Jason says. Friend of my father.

  The air whited beneath blue, wind cooler, and from this hilltop they might turn any direction, set a new path. They could go along the shore of this new sea. But Jason steps down the bare slope and her sons follow, starving, wanting food.

  Medea follows because what else can she do? Her feet not touching ground, dizzy. Settlement at the base of that rocky head, small city of stone. The same mud huts spread over flatland, and one of these hovels will be their new home. Arriving in slave’s clothing, filthy and desperate.

  All stare as they pass. With every traveler, some new story begins. The only thing their arrival cannot mean is nothing.

  Fertile here, groves of olive, shade of fig, grapes low along the ground. Springs from this mountain. A fortunate place, potters with water for their work, large urns painted, a wealthy place. Fishermen, also, close enough to the sea, and farmers and shepherds. Bronze workers tending their fires in bright day. Weavers and spinners and masons, and as they near the citadel and the group of houses built in stone, signs everywhere of visitors from other lands, from Egypt and Minoa and Thracia, cloth and glass and metal foreign and rich. From that new sea, also, there must come peoples Medea cannot name, and from elsewhere on this rumored peninsula, Mycenae and Argos and many more. The poverty of Iolcus even more apparent now.

  Streets no longer of dirt but of stone, and their arrival noticed, spearmen appearing, king’s guards. Narrow alleys, a maze easily defended. Medea keeps her sons close, a hand on each one’s neck as they walk before her. Jason the slave, broad backed, sacks left behind, walking past the soldiers as if they aren’t worth notice.

  Medea would snap each of these men in two, break these walls and burn all that will burn. Another king. Grown somehow in limitless number all across the world. In each new place, some new tyrant, and why no other form of rule?

  She will be made anything today, slave or whore or friend of the king, with slaves beneath her. She will be killed or whipped or bathed and dressed and honored with a feast, all at the whim of one man she has never met, and she has no say over what will happen to her children.

  Long shadow of the mountain above, that rocky head. No accident the king is approached in this direction. Weight and presence and fear. All that Jason refuses to learn.

  Guards close now. Through a narrow entrance opens a large courtyard and, beyond that, massive stones for the throne room. Somewhere inside this other king, same as Pelias.

  They step through shadow, find a realm lit from above, four pillars and open center to the roof, raised hearth. Flat slab larger than the hearth of Pelias. Sacrificial stone, and she imagines her sons placed on that altar.

  Jason, Kreon calls. Son of my friend Aeson.

  Appearing from shadow in a great robe of gold, embracing Jason. Closing his eyes in pleasure. Guards on every side.

  Graybeard king welcoming home what could be a lost son. How did Pelias let you go? he asks. I heard he kept you as a slave, and you wear the clothing of a slave.

  Pelias is dead, Jason says.

  I killed him, Medea says. I am Jason’s barbarian wife, covered in blood. Jason’s words. Iolcus was his, and he left it to Acastus. The tyrant Pelias, false king, was killed by his own daughters, cut up into a stew.

  Kreon drops his arms from around Jason. What do you bring here?

  Medea.

  Is Acastus behind you with his army?

  No.

  And Pelias butchered by his own daughters?

  Yes.

  But how?

  They cut up an old ram, and Medea made a lamb appear.

  Peisidike made a lamb appear.

  Medea bent the world and made the daughters of Pelias see strangely. They cut up their own father with axes and believed he could be made young.

  Medea, Kreon says. You cut your own brother into pieces.

  Yes.

  You are not welcome here, Medea. You may stay with your sons because Jason is welcome. But you will not speak to my daughter. You will not be alone with her. And you will not walk at night. If my guards find you at night anywhere but your own bed, you will be killed.

  Coward-king, Medea says. Afraid of the dark.

  Take her away before I kill the wife of Jason, Kreon tells his guards.

  Be careful not to sleep, Medea says as guards take her arms. Touch my sons and I boil you alive. Another king in a stew.

  Medea! Jason yells. Kreon welcomes us into his home.

  Welcomes you.

  Guards pull her away and her sons follow, instinct in them. They will always follow their mother.

  She’s not taken far. No mud hut at the edge of Korinth. Royal room, walls painted with hunts and battles and women. Chariots, though what chariot has ever been here in Korinth, driven on what road? Echoes of Egypt. These people unable to imagine themselves, seeing only the pharaohs.

  A royal couch, lined in lamb’s wool. She sits her sons here, kneels before them. Listen, she says, and she touches their faces, traces the shape of them. Skin softer than lamb’s wool, eyes large pools unending, deep brown without surface, color of caves, Jason’s eyes, not the gray of her own or her father’s. They will try to take you away from me.

  Aeson looking into her eyes bravely, remnant of a lost king, heir to another. How many kings in him? Blood of how many tyrants?

  I am the only one who loves you, she tells her sons. I am the only one.

  She rises and takes their hands, leads them to the large bed. Lies down on her back and they come to her, rest their cheeks on her breasts, and she wraps her arms around. Their legs intertwined with hers, roots grown together. Let Kreon try to separate them.

  8

  A feast that night for the hero-slave. Triumphant return for a son who never left and is not a son. Medea seated far away, corner of the courtyard with Aeson and Promachus. Vines along stone walls, and she’s been buried here, separated from Jason. Guards with torches standing to either side, as if they are only providing light.

  Jason held close between Kreon and his daughter, Glauce, who stretches her neck and tilts and coos and studies his arms and eyes and mouth. Young, very young, hardly more than a girl, and never made a slave or mother. Her only concern is ornament. Glancing at her own wrists, at gold bracelets, how they fall, folds of thin Egyptian cloth over her breasts. If her breasts were cauldrons, she would fall in, drawn by her limitless desire for herself, and Jason would fall with her. He speaks with Kreon and never sees him, sees only young flesh.

  Aeson and Promachus devouring meat. Sounds of their mashing. Eyes for nothing more than their food, unaware of all that is changing. Ramming their faces into hot flesh, their mouths not big enough.

  Medea is starving, but she cannot eat. Forced to watch this show without sound, without words, too far, only gestures and glances, and Jason doesn’t look her way, not even once. Barbarian wife, too much trouble, left behind now. Somehow she didn’t believe this would happ
en. They were tied together with wet rope, bound and crushed in the sun.

  All happening so quickly, everything changed in a single day. Years of slavery, days unnumbered, lost as nothing, slow separation but not final, and now everything slips in an instant. Something in Jason waiting for this.

  Women of Korinth, wealthy, watching her but looking away, refusing to catch her eye. They all know what’s happening. Every person in this courtyard, even the men, and every servant, every guard, all know that Jason is being taken from her and that she’s being forced to watch. Glauce the center of all desire, Medea outcast. Both daughters of kings, but Colchis far away, not only in distance but also in time and event. No return possible.

  Women, Medea says, just loud enough for the nearest tables to hear. Women with children, how can you watch?

  They continue to eat, obscene feast, dressed as Egyptians, headdresses falling in bars of black and gold, finely turned cups of wine, fingers thick with rings. Animals pretending to be gods, daughters of shepherds aping royalty. The luck of a crossroads, city of two seas.

  Even gold can burn, Medea says.

  They can hear. They don’t respond, but she knows they can hear.

  A guard takes her arm, makes her stand. She could howl now, scream and accuse Jason, remind him of all he’s promised and all she’s sacrificed, but she remains silent. Something darker working in her, some rage that refuses anything as slight as words. Led back to her room with Aeson and Promachus, left alone to lie in darkness and form waking dreams of revenge.

  Sound of the feast, laughter for hours. Stringed lute and hand drums, dancing and clapping. Jason freed, holding the hand of this girl-child. Medea can see her small mouth, waiting, scent of her bathed in cinnamon, no slave. Their children will inherit Korinth and have a claim, also, to Iolcus, surrounding Athens. Kreon’s dreams, but Jason will want only that ripe young body and release from a wife who has been difficult from the first.

  Night without end. Rise and fall of breath, her sons’ hearts beating beneath her hands, feel of their ribs. Her own body engorging, filling with hate and hollowed, void under pressure increasing in her head and chest, unfairness so enormous nothing can be done. Jason does not return. Sounds dying away, no more music, no more shouts, quiet of night, and still no husband but gone to another bed. Medea’s breath fast, in panic, though she only lies here holding her sons. Glauce in some royal bed very close, only a few arm’s lengths away, lit in torchlight, baring herself for Jason, spreading her legs, untorn by children.

  Or perhaps they’re not allowed that yet. Perhaps they linger at some gate of stone, some corner in shadow, and bend toward each other, wanting to devour, held back, what she felt for Asteropeia. Jason with his fist in Glauce’s hair, biting her neck, feeling his spine. Medea replaced, all desire for her gone, no thought of his children, no thought of consequence. Because what will happen now?

  Men never think of consequence. Given too much, and they believe all will be given still. But Medea knows, even in her rage, that she will take him back. When he returns and begs, what choice will she have? Father of her children, and all she has, alone, an outcast, unwelcome here.

  They will leave, walk back toward Athens, perhaps, somewhere beyond the base of that long valley. A friend of hers, King Aegeus. She should have insisted they flee to Athens, not Korinth. Aegeus knew her father. Another king without a son, like Kreon, but an older king, softened over time. And no friend of Kreon’s. No bordering kings ever friends. He will favor her over Jason, has no daughter to offer. Something in him likes Hekate, knows darkness and despair and loneliness and older gods born from earth. Older world in him, someone who knew the previous king of the Hittites and a different pharaoh in Egypt.

  He visited her temple to Hekate, at night surrounded by fires, came alone and wanted her. Old man and desire that he will not forget, no one to answer to and nothing left to lose in his final days. Athens more powerful than Korinth, and she will find shelter there.

  Jason never does return. Helios appearing, pale light of Medea’s defeat. Husband lost, all sacrifices made for nothing. Something in her still believes he will cross that threshold, come in and kneel before her. Her willingness to forgive him, to take him back, how could that not be used?

  Can one night mean so much?

  Aeson and Promachus rouse in the light, push and grab as they wake, yawn and flop against her, innocent. To them, an easier night than any before. Easiest night of their lives. Feast and a comfortable bed, their mother to themselves. No mud hut, no sleeping on the ground or on goat hair. Waking in a new place to explore, no longer slaves. Hungry, and slaves are listening outside, appear through the door at the first sounds, bring figs and honey, bread and cheese and milk, set a feast on a long table against the wall.

  Her sons laughing, smearing honey on each other’s faces as they devour. Calling for her to join, so she rises and sits beside them, chews a piece of bread, her jaws flat and slack, far away, some beast in the field and nothing more, dumb creature without thought, but they tug at her and make her try figs and even dates, large and too sweet, brought from somewhere over the sea. They paint her face, too, with the honey, and she should laugh and smile but she feels dead.

  What should a mother want? Her sons happy, her husband in favor with the king. After so many years of labor in stone and fire, a release. All given to them, easy lives. She should learn to bow down, forget Jason’s vows, forget all she sacrificed, and be grateful. Let him return when he wants, go away when he pleases, ask no questions, apologize to Kreon for her rough words. Isn’t this what a mother should do?

  How, then, can she make herself do this? Hekate, she calls. Or softer Nute. Tell me how.

  9

  Medea walks without blood. Nothing in her veins but air, no organs, hollowed chest. Aeson and Promachus somewhere at play, freed. Walk of the dead, and this must be what it feels like afterward. Severed from all but still walking. Street of rock ground into whited dust. Windy here, whorls in the air. Shade trees bending. Vendors with black skin and baskets of dates shiny golden brown, slick with sugar. Baskets in the shapes of amphoras, as if all things could be repeated in different material, a person made of clay or reed or stone or water.

  Narrow street full of sound. Humans come to fill the air, to make no place quiet. Hands reaching for her, holding shapes of root and leaf and orb. Bright colors, red and yellow and green, all without meaning. Strange dismemberments, objects without origin or use. Sound the same, in its own shapes severed and hung unrecognized. Tongues she has never heard. Smells brought together too close, undistinguished.

  Small figures in clay, painted in lines red and black. Bulls with wide thin horns, bodies narrowed impossibly like dogs. Standing alert, no heaviness of a bull, no long sideways swing of a head. Figures on thrones, for all to imagine themselves kings. Thrones rounded like baskets, and each king’s head as tiny as a bird’s. Mothers fattened. Faces with opened mouths screaming. Rams with heads thickening.

  Women offered for burial, arms become wings upspread, beaked faces, rounded breasts. Women meant for graves. Standing in crowds before her, waiting.

  Bronze in hoops and rings and bracelets, trace of each tiny dent and bending and hammer blow, sign of all that is human, shaping figures from nothing, remaking the world. Forms imagined and repeated without end.

  Herbs and remedies hung in baskets, dried root and bulb, roots black and still carrying earth, flowers and then one that would stop everything. A flower she has seen before, serpent skin petals in purple and white, pattern to confuse, so exactly like snakeskin, but this brilliant color. Black seeds to divert the eye as the petals come closer, long and tapered and reaching. Burial from when the earth was first made, when light and color and form were not yet decided, forgotten and risen now without resemblance or corollary, without place or name or belonging. Eruption of the same material from which gods were made, not meant for humans, nursed on poison. The large bulb from which it rises each autumn more poisonous
in its flesh than any other plant Medea knows. Its blood was what she used to protect Jason from the bulls, afraid it might burn his skin, but it poisons only the inside, and the bulls would not breathe it, turned their heads away.

  A dozen of these flowers and their bulbs waiting before her so unlikely, strange recognition, pattern in a life, fate we can never outrun. All the distance she has traveled from Colchis across three seas to Iolcus and through valleys and hills here to Korinth, all the years passed, and on this day, here as she wanders almost without sight, so lost, she ends up standing before crocus that might protect or heal but has another use. Crocus that would shed any name and remain only what it is, color and pattern that would end thought, sign of an unsolid world.

  Beautiful, Medea says, and the old woman selling them doesn’t smile. I’ll take them all.

  The slaves following Medea pick up the flowers and bulbs carefully, holding them away at arm’s length, some instinct.

  Medea strolls in the sun and wind, restored, present again. Some fear of Kreon’s guards, but what would they see? Only flowers. And she has made no plan. She was not looking for crocus. She takes one from a slave and cups it in her hands, walks among the women of Korinth, lets the bright petals brush arms and backs. Soft touch almost unnoticed, softer than any lover’s. Women of Korinth, Medea whispers. Do I not have a right, some right to punish my husband? Did he not make vows? I have no one here, no family, no friend. He takes away all.

  These women ignore her. She passes close enough to touch and they refuse to notice. They pick up a bracelet or admire an urn or whisper in another’s ear. Everyone here aware of only one person, Medea, sensing her every movement, but with no recognition. Body without weight, leaving no shadow. Fallen wife, usurped and left an outcast.

  Plain bulb in her hands, same as for any other flower, but holding a liquid that would loosen everything inside. Medea tried only a small amount in Colchis. At night, alone, in Hekate’s temple, wanting to learn the use of each root and bulb and growth.