by John Gardner
the king—
his eyes were mortal now—appeared at the columned
door.
“Amekhenos,” the old man called. The fair-haired slave looked down, drew back his hand. Whatever smoldered
in his mind
was cooled, for the time. He turned, waiting, to the
old man.
Take more wine to the king’s guests, Amekhenos.” The young man bowed, withdrew. The old man watched
him go,
then turned to his business, supervision of the kitchen
slaves
at work on the evening meal. Wherever the old man
walked,
slave girls scrubbed or swept more busily, their
whispering ceased,
laments and curses—silenced not by fear, it seemed, but as if all the household were quickened by something
in the old man’s face,
as if his character carried some wordless meaning in it To a boy he said, “Go help Amekhenos with the wine.”
Without
a word, quiet as an owl in the hall, the boy ran off.
Travellers were gathered in the dark-beamed central
room of the palace,
men from farther away than the realm of Avalon, men who brought gold from Mesopotamia, silks from
Troy,
jewels from India, iron from the foot of the Caucasus. They sat in their fine apparel, kings and the minions
of kings,
drinking from golden bowls and exchanging noble tales of storms, strange creatures, islands enveloped in
eternal night;
they told of beasts half bird, half horse, of talking trees, ships that could fly, and ladies whose arms turned men
to fish.
They told of the spirits and men and gods in the war
now raging
on the plains of Ilium. The kings and Corinthian nobles
laughed,
admired the tales and treasures, awaiting their host’s
return.
The time for exchange was near. The strangers itched
for canvas,
sea-salt spray in their beards, the song of the halcyon, sweeter to sea-kings’ ears than all but the shoals of
home.
Kreon would hardly have slighted such men in the old
days,
they said. They’d burned men’s towns for less.
The lords of Corinth
smiled. The king was old, and the wealthiest Akhaian
alive.
It gave him a certain latitude, as one of the strangers saw more clearly than the rest. He spoke to his
neighbors—a fat man,
womanish-voiced, sow-slack monster of abdomens and
chins—
a prominent lord out of Asia known as Koprophoros. His slanted eyes were large and strangely luminous, eyes like a Buddha’s, an Egyptian king’s. His turban was gold, and a blood-red ruby was set on
his forehead.
I heard from one who claimed to know, that if he
stamped his foot
the ground would open like a magic door and carry him
at once
to his palace of coal-black marble. He wore a scimitar so sharp, men said, that if he laid the edge on a tabletop of solid oak, the blade would part it by its own weight. I laughed in my hand when I heard these things, yet
this was sure:
he was vast—so fat he was frightening—and painted
like a harlot,
and his eyes were chilling, like a ghost’s.
He said:
“Be patient, friends, with a good man’s eccentricity. We all, poor humble traders, have got our pressing
affairs—
accounts to settle, business mounting while we sit here cross-legged, stuffing our bellies like Egypt’s pet baboons, or fat old queens with no use left but ceremony. And yet we remain.” He smiled. “I ask myself, “Why?’
And with
a sly wink I respond: ‘His majesty’s daughter, you’ve
noticed,
is of marrying age. He’s not so addled in his wits, I hope, as not to have seen it himself.’” The young man
chuckled, squinted.
“I’ll speak what I think. He’s displayed her to us twice
at meals,
leading her in on his arm with only a mump or two by way of introduction. Her robe was bridal white impleached with gold, and resting in her golden hair, a
crown
of gold, garnets, and fine-wrought milleflori work. Perhaps he deems it enough to merely—venditate’— not plink out his thought in words. These things are delicate, friends. They require some measure of
dignity!”
They laughed. The creature expressed what had come
into all their minds
at the first glimpse of Pyripta. What he hinted might
be so:
some man whose treasures outweighed other men’s,
whose thought
sparkled more keen, or whose gentility stood out white as the moon in a kingdom of feebly blinking stars, might land him a lovelier fish than he’d come here
baited for—
the throne of Corinth. Even to the poorest of the foreign
kings,
even to the humblest second son of a Corinthian lord, the wait seemed worth it. For what man knows what his
fate may bring?
But the winner would not be Koprophoros, I could pretty
well see,
whatever his cunning or wealth. Not a man in the hall
could be sure
if the monster was female or male—smooth-faced as a
mushroom, an alto;
by all indications (despite his pretense) transvestite, or
gelded.
And yet he had come to contend for the princess’ hand—
came filled
with sinister confidence. I shuddered, looked down at my
shoes, waiting.
And so the strangers continued to eat, drank Kreon’s
wine,
and talked, observing in the backs of their minds the
muffled boom
of thunder, the whisper of rain. Below the city wall, the thistle-whiskered guardians watching the sea-kings’
ships
cursed the delay, huddled in tents of sail, and cursed their fellow seamen, hours late in arriving to stand their stint—slack whoresmen swilling down wine like
the hopeful captains
packed into Kreon’s hall. The sea-kings knew their
grumbling—
talked of that nuisance from time to time, among
themselves,
with grim smiles. They sent men down, from time to
time,
to quiet the sailors’ mutterings; but they kept their seats. The stakes were high, though what game Kreon meant
to play
was not yet clear.
The Northern slave, Amekhenos, moved
with the boy from table to table, pouring Cretan wine to the riveted rims of the bowls, his eyes averted, masked in submissiveness. The boy, head bent, returned the
bowls
to the trestle-tables, where the strangers seized them
with jewelled hands
and drank, never glancing at the slaves—no more aware
of them
than they would have been of ghosts or the whispering
gods.
The sun
fell fire-wheeled to the rim of the sea. King Kreon’s
herds,
dwindling day by day for the sea-kings’ feasts, lay still in the shade of elms. The storm had passed; in its
green wake
songbirds warbled the sweetness of former times, the age when gods and goddesses walked the world on feet so
light
they snapped no flower stem. The air was ripe with the
scent
of olives, apples heavy
on the bough, and autumn honey. Already the broadleafed oaks of every coppice and hurst had turned, pyretic, sealing their poisons away for the
time
of cold; soon the leaves would fall like abandoned
wealth. Below,
the coriander on the cantles of walls and bandied posts of hayricks flamed its retreat. The very air was medlar, sweet with the juice of decay. The palace of Kreon,
rising
tier on tier, as gleaming white as a giant’s skull, hove dreamlike into the clouds, the sea-blue eagles’
roads,
like a god musing on the world. As far as the eye could
see—
mountains, valleys, slanting shore, bright parapets— the world belonged to Kreon.
The smells of cooking came,
meat-scented smoke, to the portico where Kreon stood, his hand on his faithful servant’s arm, his bald head
tipped,
listening to sounds from the house. The meal was served.
The guests
talked with their neighbors, voices merging as the sea’s
welmings
close to a gray unintelligible roar on barren shoals, the clink of their spoons like the click of far-off rocks
shifting.
“Old friend,” the king said thoughtfully, looking at
the river with eyes
sharpened to the piercing edge of an evening songbird’s
note,
“all will be well, I think.” He patted the slave’s hard arm. “We’ll be all right. The fortunes of our troubled house
are at last
on the upswing. Trust me! We’ve nothing more to do
now but wait,
observe with an icy, calculating eye as tension mounts—churns up like an oracle’s voice. We’ll see,
my friend,
what abditories of weakness, secret guile they keep, what signs of virtue hidden to the casual glance.
Remember:
No prejudgments! Cold and objective as gods we’ll
watch,
so far as possible. The man we finally choose we’ll choose not from our own admiration, but of simple necessity. Not the best there, necessarily—the mightiest fist, the smoothest tongue. Our line’s unlucky. The man we
need
is the man who’ll make it survive. Pray god we recognize
him!”
He smiled, though his brow was troubled. It seemed
more strain than he needed,
this last effort of his reign, choice of a successor. He
stood
the weight of it only by will. He opened his hands like a
merchant
robbed of all hope save one gray galleon, far out at sea, listing a little, but ploughing precariously home. “What
more
can a man do?” he said, and forced a chuckle. “Some may well be surprised when we’ve come to the end of
these wedding games.
We two know better than to lay our bets on wealth alone, honor like poor Jokasta’s, or obstinate holiness, genius like that of King Oidipus—the godly brain he squanders now on gulls and winds and crawling
things.
Yet some man here in this house …” The king fell
silent, brooding.
“And yet there’s one man more I wish were here,” he
said.
He pulled at his nose and squeezed one eye tight shut.
“A man
with contacts worth a fortune, a man who’s talked or
fought
his way past sirens, centaurs, ghosts, past angry seas … a slippery devil, honest, not overly scrupulous, flexible, supple, cautious without being cowardly, a proven leader of men … ‘the man who brought
help,’ as they call him,
for such is the meaning of his name.” The slave at his
elbow nodded,
smiling. His eyes were caves. King Kreon wrinkled
his forehead
and picked at his silvery beard like a man aware, dimly, of danger crouching at his back.
Just then, from an upper room,
a girlish voice came down—Pyripta, daughter of the
king,
singing, not guessing that anyone heard. Wan, giant
Kreon
raised one finger to his lips, tipped up his head. His
servant
leered, nodding, wringing his fingers as if the voice were sunlight falling on his ears. She sang an ancient
song,
the song Persephone sang before her ravishment.
Artemis, Artemis, hear my prayer, grant my spirit the path of the eagle; in high rocks where only the stars sing, there let me keep my residence.
When the song ended, tears had gathered in the old
king’s eyes.
He said, “Ah, yes”—rubbing his cheeks with the back
of his hand.
“Such beauty, the innocent voice of a child! Such
radiance!
—Forgive me. Sentimental old fool.” He tried to laugh,
embarrassed.
The god feigned mournful sympathy, touching an ash-gray cheek with fingers gnarled like
roots.
Kreon patted his servant’s arm, still rubbing his
streaming
eyes and struggling for control. He smiled, a soft
grimace.
“Such beauty! You’d think it would last forever, a
thing like that!
She thinks it will, poor innocent! So do they all, children blind to the ravaging forces so commonplace to us. They live in a world of summer sunlight, showers, squirrels at play on the lawn. They know of nothing
worse,
and innocently they think the gods must cherish them exactly as they do themselves. And so they should!
you’d say.
But they don’t. No no.” He rolled up his eyes.
“We’re dust, Ipnolebes. Withering leaves. It’s not a thing to break too soon to the young, but facts are facts.
Depend
on nothing, ask for nothing; do your best with the time you’ve got, whatever small gifts you’ve got, and leave
the world
a better place than you found it. Pass to the next
generation
a city fit for learning, loving, dying in.
It’s the world that lasts—a glorious green mosaic built of tiles that one by one must be replaced. It’s that— the world, their holy art—that the gods love. Not us. We who are old, beyond the innocent pride of youth, must bend to that, and gradually bend our offspring
to it.”
He sighed, head tipped. “She asks for freedom, lordless, childless, playing out life like a fawn in the
groves.
A dream, I’m sorry to say. This humble world below demands the return of the seed. Such is our duty to it. The oldest oak on the hillside, even the towering plane
tree,
shatters, sooner or later, hammered by thunderbolts or torn-up roots and all by a wind from Zeus. On the
shore,
we see how the very rocks are honed away, in time. Accept the inevitable, then. Accept your place in the
march
of seasons, blood’s successions. —In the end she’ll find,
I hope,
that marriage too, for all its pangs, has benefits.”
He smiled, turned sadly to his slave. “It’s true, you
know. The song
that moved us, there—bubbled up feelings we’d half
forgotten—
I wouldn’t trade it for a hundred years of childhood play. The gods are kinder than we think!” The servant nodded,
solemn.
Kreon turned away, still sniffling, clearing his throat.
“Carry a message for me, good Ipnolebes. Seek out Jason—somewhere off by himself, if that proves feasible—and ask him, with all your skill and
tact
&
nbsp; —with no unwarranted flattery, you understand (he’s nobody’s fool, that Jason)—ask, with my
compliments,
that he dine in the palace tomorrow night. Mention our
friends,
some few of whom he may know from the famous days
when he sailed
the Argo. Tell him—” He paused, reflecting, his
eyebrows raised.
“No, that’s enough. —But this, yes!” His crafty grin came back, a grin like a peddler’s, harmless guile. ‘Tell
him,
as if between you and himself—tell him I seem a trifle ‘miffed’ at his staying away, after all I’ve done for him. Expand on that as you like—his house, et cetera.” The king laughed, delighted by his wit, and added, “Remind him of his promise to tell more
tales sometime.
Mention, between the two of you, that poor old Kreon’s hopelessly, sottishly caught when it comes to adventure
stories—
usual lot of a fellow who’s never been away, worn out his whole long life on record keeping, or sitting in
judgment,
struggling to unsnarl tortuous tangles of law with
further
law.” He chortled, seeing it all in his mind, and beamed, clapping his plump dry hands and laughing in wheezes.
It was
delicious to him that he, great Kreon, could be seen by
men
as a fat old quop, poor drudge, queer childish lunatic. The river shone like a brass mirror. The sky was bright “Go,” said Kreon, and patted his slave’s humped back.
“Be persuasive!
Tomorrow night!”
He turned, still laughing, lifting his foot
to move inside, when out of the corner of his eye the
king
saw—sudden, terrible—a silent shadow, some creature
in the grass,
glide down the lawn and vanish. He clutched at his
chest in alarm
and reached for Ipnolebes. The stones were bare.
“Dear gods,
dear precious holy gods!” he whispered. He frowned,
blinked,
touched his chin with his fingertips. The evening was
clear,
as green as a jewel, in the darkening sky above, no life. “I must sacrifice,” he whispered, “—pray and sacrifice.” He rubbed his hands. “All honor to the blessed gods,”
he said.
His red-webbed eyes rolled up. The sky was hollow,
empty,
deep as the whole world’s grave.
King Kreon frowned, went in,
and stood for a long time lost in thought, blinking,
watching
the frail shadows of trembling leaves. His fingertips