by John Gardner
We sailed on, sliding northward, the Argo silent in the
night.
11
“I suppose the truth of the matter is that I was bored, simply. As you’ve seen in everything I’ve said, I was an ambitious young man—a born leader, I wanted to believe—and fiercely impatient. Think how it must have been with me, hour after hour, mile after mile, river after river. I wanted that fleece closed in my fist, Pelias praising me, the people all wildly shouting ‘Hats off!’ Perhaps more. No doubt of it. A small, dull kingdom, mere farming country … I had glories more vast in the back of my mind than Pelias’ kingdom, my fever’s rickety stepping stone. Yet all I burned for, all my wolf-heart hungered for, was outrageously far away. No wonder if at Lemnos I nearly gave up on it. Blind from a vision that even at the time was too bright to get a good picture of, I must slog on now through laborious skirmishes with barbaric fools, wearily manipulate my Argonauts (men big as mountains, worrisome as gnats), moil on north, outfox old Aietes, outfox his snake … I’ve seen shepherds at home sit all day long on a single rock, staring out at hillsides, wide green valleys. Well enough for them! As for me, I wanted a ship that would outrace an arrow, fighters beyond imagination. I wanted the unspeakable. I was hardly aware of all this, of course. But I knew well enough that the hours dragged and the adventures were less in the living than I would make them in the telling, later. (If I were a mute, like Polydeukes, I too would abandon the night to Orpheus’ lyre.) I lost men, lost time, and in secret I shook my fists at the gods tormenting me. Whatever my strength, compared to the strength of Herakles, whatever my craft compared to that of old Argus or Orpheus, I was a superman of sorts: I could not settle for the reasonable. The Good, pale as mist, would be that which even I would find suitable to my dignity, satisfying food for my sky-consuming lust. The fleece, needless to say, would not suffice. The risk—the clear and present danger— was that nothing would suffice.
“And so the nightmare voice came to me—ghostly hint that I was caught up in more than anyone knew, some grandiose ultimate agon. If the crew was caught up, to some extent, in these same weird delusions …
“However, it is also true that the place was strange, uncanny … and true (we’ve begun to learn to see) that explanation is exhaustion: The essence of life is to be found in frustrations of established order: the universe refuses the deadening influence of complete conformity. Though also, needless to say …
“How can the mind accept such a pointless clutter
of acts,
encounters with monsters, kings, strange weather—
no certainty, even,
which things really occur, which things are dreams?
I’ve barely
hinted at the sights we saw, dull shocks to our sanity. I’ve told many times how we slipped through the
Clashing Rocks, and have been
believed; but who would believe me now, if I said to you we slipped in and out of Time, hurled crazily backward
and forward?
A man learns how much truth he can get away with.
Suppose
I leaned toward you, like this, abandoning dignity, and moaned, eyes wide: Oh friends, the worst of it all
was this:
Time swept over us in waves: one moment the hills
were green,
the next, crawling with cities, the next, black deserts
where things
like huge black insects belched out smoke and devoured
one another.
Suppose I reported that, sailing through fog, we heard
dreadful moans,
terrible deep-throated bellows we took to be
sea-monsters,
and all at once we’d see lights coming at us—no
common torches,
but lights blue-white as stars—and even as we gazed
at them,
shaking in terror, believe me, we saw they were eyes—
the eyes
of enormous drifting beasts. And sometimes the lights
would vanish
and the huge sea-beasts would sink, as if for a purpose,
like whales.
Suppose I told you I saw whole seas of dead men
floating—
women and children as well—a smell unbelievable— corpses from shore to shore, and ship prows parting
them.
You’d soon grow uneasy, I think. You’d call me a
tiresome liar,
and rightly. Then only this: we were riding in eerie
waters,
countries of powerful magic. And the strangest part was
this:
all that we saw, or thought we saw, was of no
importance.
At times the river was poison. At times the sky caught
fire.
At times the land we passed seemed virgin wilderness, and the river birds would land on our ship as if never
yet
attacked by the implements of man. The world was a
harmless drunk.
“A ship that reeked of incense drifted by us, filled with sleepy people, eerie music, children in rags or naked, as some of the adults were naked. They smiled
gently,
listlessly waved and jabbered in some outlandish tongue, human livestock packed in rail to rail on the sailless ship. They did not mind. Some coupled publicly, staring nowhere. They filled us, God knows why, with
anger.
Even Athena’s magic ship was changed, beside that rotting barque from the world’s last age. The
planking sang:
“ ‘For men, not earth, the time has run out. Though
oceans die,
meadows and fields, green hills, they hold no grudge
against their murderer.
They drift through time in their long
slumber,
secretly waiting, like beasts asleep in caves. Deep space bombards the poisoned seas with bits of life, and the
seas
grow whole again, renew themselves like a heart
awakening.
Algae forms along shores. Great, dark, ungainly beasts dream from the deeps toward land, and out of the
slime of blood
and bone—witless, charged with sorrow like a dying
horse—
mind comes groping, tentative, fearful, sly as a snake and as quick to love or strike. So spring moves in
again,
as usual, and flowers are invented, and wheels and
clocks,
and tragedies, and eventually, as the mind grows old, familiar with its quirky ways, even comedy is born
again—
fat clowns strutting, alone and ridiculous, shaking
their fists
at mirrors and fleeing in alarm, to teach that the joke
on them
is them. So autumn comes again, as usual: splendid triumph of color, when every tree turns
philosophical
and the seas, dying, past all repair,
provide mankind with jokes. (All consciousness is
optimistic,
even a frog’s. Otherwise who would evolve the handsome
prince?)
So plankton dies, and the whales turn belly up, become one world-wide stench of decaying symphonies; the grass withers. Starvation; plague. A silent planet again, for a time; drifting boulder pocked with old cities till space sends life. And once more goggle-eyed
creatures gaze
amazed at the brave new world with goggle-eyed
creatures in it,
as usual. And all that past minds dreamed or wrote, feared, predicted with terrible insight—all mind loved and mocked—is vanished like snow, cool archaeology. Cheer up, sailors! The wind of time was always dark with ghosts, pacing, angrily muttering to be born.’
“The death-ship
vanished, and a moment later, the music; finally the
smell.
We talked, held councils; but obviously w
e could make
no sense
of senselessness, and so, in the end, pushed on. And had adventures, each more lunatic than the last. Not even Orpheus knew how to twist the thing toward reason,
impose
some frame. In any case, I can tell you, it wasn’t
courage
that kept us going. It wasn’t sweet curiosity. For reasons we hadn’t understood at the time—nor did
we now—
we’d launched this expedition, and so we continued.
They did not
love me for it now. Muttered and grumbled.
“As I say,
we passed the Clashing Rocks. Never mind the details.
Two great black
boulders that rose from the sea like a pair of jaws,
and snapped
at any who passed between. The prank of some playful
god
in the First Age, before the gods grew ‘serious.’ A prank deadly for men, though one can see, in a way, the entertainment value. We’d been forewarned of
them
by Phineus—one of his endless, tedious meanderings. We followed instructions—hurled in a dove, by which
we learned
the pace of the thing … Never mind. We rowed for our
lives, and made it,
and saw the stone jaws lock, to move no more. Ironic. We could have sailed through at ease, like merchants,
chatting, if we’d known their
time was almost out. But in any case, we made it, and travelled senselessly on.
‘Then Tiphys spoke, overpleased
at how slyly his oar had steered us through—fatuous, unctuous with success … unless already the mortal
fever
was in him, befuddling his wits, and some subliminal
fear,
intuition of silence, now stirred his soul to noise. He
said,
pompous and hearty, too jovial: ‘I think, Lord Jason, we can safely say all’s well! The Argo’s safe and sound, and so are we! For which we may thank pale-eyed
Athena,
who gave our ship supernatural strength when Argus
drove in
the bolts. The Argo shall never be harmed. That seems
to be Law.
And so, since heaven’s allowed us to pass through the
Clashing Rocks,
I beg you, put off all worries. There can be no obstacle this crew can’t easily surmount!’
“Our brilliant pilot, I thought,
is a dolt. I turned my head, looked back at the two
great rocks,
now motionless, then glanced at him, one eyebrow
raised.
But the next instant it struck me that Tiphys’ words
could be turned
to use. I frowned and steeled myself for the necessary dullness, and, sighing, taking him gently to task, I said:
“ ‘Tiphys, why do you comfort me? I was a blind fool, and the error’s fatal. When Pelias ordered me out on
this mission
I should have refused at once, even though he’d have
torn me limb
from limb. It was selfish madness which even in selfish
terms
has turned out all to the bad. Here I am, responsible for all your lives—and no man living less fit for it! I’m wracked by fears, anxieties—hating the thought
of the water,
hating the thought of land, where surely hostile natives will claim some few of our lives, if not the majority. It’s easy for you, good Tiphys, to talk in this cheerful
vein.
Your care is only for your own life, whereas I, I must
care
for all your lives. No wonder if I never sleep!’ So
I spoke,
playing the necessary game (and yet I confess, I
enjoyed it,
querning the world to words)—and the whole crew rose
to it,
or all but one. ‘No man,’ they cried, ‘in the whole world could vie with Jason as fitting lord of the Argonauts! It’s surely that very anxiety which wrecks your sleep that steers the Argo safely past every catastrophe! Never doubt it, man! We’d rather be dead, every one
of us,
than see you harmed by Pelias!’ With old unwatered
wine
they drank my health and set up such shouts that the
sea-wall rang
and I nearly shouted myself. But Orpheus looked
toward shore,
not drinking. I ignored the matter. ‘My friends,’ I said,
‘your courage
fills me again with confidence. The resolution you show in the face of these monstrous perils has
made me feel
I could sail through hell itself and be calm as a god.’
Thus I
played Captain, kept their morale up. I needn’t deny
I enjoyed it.
Was it my fault the Argonauts—even the slyest (Mopsos and Idmon, for instance)—had natures a flow
of words
could carry away like sticks? And was it my fault that
words
were my specialty? I ask you, what other choice did
I have?—
though Orpheus watched me, scorned me, keener than
the rest at spying
craft (a wordsman himself, though one of a very
dissimilar
kind). He said in private, later, avoiding my eyes, tuning his lyre with fingers as light as wings, ‘Come,
come!
“Limb from limb,” Lord Jason! This is surely some new
Pelias—
the stuttering mouse turned lion!’ ‘I do what I must,’
I said.
‘Would you have me tell them the truth—that life
itself, all our pain
is idiocy?’ He feigned surprise. ‘You think so, Jason?’ I knew his game. Play innocent, defensive. Draw out
your man,
give him the rope to hang himself. And I knew, too, his arrogance. It’s easy for the poets to carp at the men who lead, the drab decision-makers who waste no time on niceties—pretty figures merely for aesthetics’ sake, rhymes for the sake of rhymes. They see all the world
as forms
to be juxtaposed, proved beautiful—no higher purpose than harmony, the static world proved lovely as it is. But what world’s static? We create, and we long for
poets’ support,
we who contract for whatever praise or blame is due and get the blame—ah, blame that outlasts our acts
by centuries!
“I said: ‘My friend, we’re booty hunters. We’ve come
this far,
murdered and lost this many men—the friendly king of the Doliones, Herakles, Hylas, Polydeukes, and the rest—for nothing but a boast, an adventure
of boys. It’s time
we turned those crimes to account. I think it’s easy for
you
to be filled with pompous integrity. My job’s more dull. Whatever high meaning our journey may have—or
lack of meaning—
my job is to carry us through. That means morale, poet. That means unity, brotherhood!’ Orpheus smiled, ironic, avoiding my eyes, and not from embarrassment, it
seemed to me,
but as if to glance for a moment in my direction would
be
bad art, misuse of his skills. He glanced at Argus,
instead,
our sly artificer, who smiled. They have a league, these
artists:
a solid front in defense of their grandiose visions of the
real,
destroyers of sticks and stones. I was angry enough,
God knows.
But that, too, went with the job.
“He said: Your pilot’s sick.
I studied him, puzzled. He looked at his lyre. Tour
beloved Tiphys
is sick, at death’s very door. Does that make you
“anxious,” Captain?
Does it make you a trifle remorseful of your fine facility for turning all passing remarks to the common good?’
What could
I say? What would anyone say, in my position? I glanced at Tiphys, standing at the oar. The wind rolled through
his hair,
his eyes were alert. He looked like a fellow who’d live
six hundred
years, Queen Hera’s darling. I glanced back at Orpheus. ‘I don’t believe it.’ But the devil had shaken me, no lie.
And he spoke
the truth, as we all found later. Meanwhile Orpheus
played,
catching the rhythm of the oars, and little by little,
gently,
all but imperceptibly, he increased the tempo. We passed the river Rhebas and the peak of the Colone,
and soon
the Black Cape too, and the outfall of the river Phyllis where Phrixos once put down with the golden ram.
Through all
that day and through all the windless night we labored
at the oar,
to Orpheus’ hurrying beat. We worked like oxen
ploughing
the dark, moist earth. The sweat pours down from flank
and neck,
their rolling eyes glare out askance from the creaking
yoke,
hot blasts of breath come rumbling from their mouths,
and all day long
they plough on, digging their sharp hooves into the
soil. So we
ploughed on, goaded by the lyre. (I understood well
enough
his meaning. So poets too can govern ships. That was no news.) Near dawn—at the time of day when the sun has not yet touched the heavens, though
the darkness fades—
we reached the harbor of the lonely island of Thynias and crawled ashore exhausted, gasping for air. All at
once
the lyre was still, and the man at the lyre looked up,
strange-eyed,
and lo and behold, we saw the god Apollo striding like a man. His golden locks streamed down like
swirling sunlight,
his silver bow half blinding. The island trembled beneath his feet, and the sea ran high on the grassy shore. We
stood
stock-still and dared not meet his eyes. He passed
through the air
and was gone.
“Then Orpheus found his voice. ‘O Argonauts,
let us dedicate this island to holy Apollo, lord of peace, and song, and healing, and let us sing together and swear our lasting brotherhood, and build him a