by John Gardner
motto.
Even those beautiful images of me he’s ordered ripped
down
from end to end of Argos, for fear some humble herder may dare to assert himself as Pelias himself did once, when his brother was rightful king. I won’t mince
words:I want
his skull, and I want it by Jason’s hand—not just
because
he’s proved himself as a warrior (though heaven knows
he’s done so).
Once, disguised as an ugly old woman with withered
feet,
I met him at the mouth of the Anauros River. The river
was in spate—
all the mountains and their towering spurs were buried
in snow
and hawk-swift cataracts roared down the sides. I called)
out, pleading
to be carried across. Jason was hurrying to Pelias’ feast, but despite the advice of those who were with him,
despite the rush
of the ice-cold stream, he laughed—bright laugh of a
demigod—
and shouted, ‘Climb on, old mother! If I’m not strong
enough
for two I’m not Aison’s son!’ Again and again I’ve
tested
his charity, and he’s always the same. Say what you
like
about Jason, he does not blanch, for himself or for
others.”
Words failed
the queen of love. The sight of Hera pleading for favors from her, most mocked of all goddesses, filled her with
awe. She said:
“Queen of goddesses and wife of great Zeus, regard me as the meanest creature living if I fail you now in your need! All I can say or do, I will, and whatever small strength I
have
is yours.” Her sweet voice broke, and her lovely eyes
brimmed tears.
Athena looked thoughtful. She could not easily scorn
Aphrodite,
whatever her dullness. You might have imagined, in
fact, that the goddess
of mind felt a twinge of envy. She was silent, studying
her hands.
She knew nothing, daughter of Zeus, of love; but she
knew by cool geometry
that she was not all she might be—nor was Hera.
Hera spoke, choosing her words with care. “We are
not
asking the power of your hands. We would like you to
tell your boy
to use his wizardry and make the daughter of Aietes fall, beyond all turning, in love with the son of Aison. Her
aid
can make this business easy. There lives no greater
witch
in Kolchis, even though she’s young.”
Then poor Aphrodite paled
and lowered her eyes, blushing. “Perhaps Hephaiastos,”
she said, “
could make some engine. Perhaps I could speak to—”
Her voice trailed off.
“The truth is, he’s far more likely to listen to either of
you
than to me. He sasses me, scorns me, mocks me. I’ve
had half a mind
to break his arrows and bow in his very sight. Would
that be right, do you think?”
She wrung her fingers, looked pitiful. “As you well
know, his father and I
do everything for him. And how does he pay us? He
won’t go to bed,
refuses to obey us, says horrible, horrible things, and
in front of company!—
but he’s a child, of course. How can he learn to be loving if we don’t show love and forgiveness?
How can he learn
to have generous feelings toward others if we aren’t
first generous to him?
Parenthood really is a horror!”
Athena and Hera smiled
and exchanged glances. Aphrodite pouted. “People
without children,”
she said, “know all the answers. Never mind. I’ll do
what you ask,
if possible.”
Then Queen Hera rose and took Aphrodite’s
milkwhite hand in hers. “You know best how to deal
with him.
But manage it quickly if you can. We both depend on
you.”
She turned, started out. Athena followed. Poor
Aphrodite,
sighing, went out as well. She’d never been meant to
be a mother.
But too late now. (Married to a dreary old gimpleg—
she
who’d slept, in her youth, with the god of war himself!
—Never mind.
—Nevertheless, it was a bitter thing to waste eternity with a durgen, genius or not.) She wiped her eye and
sniffed.
She glanced through the world and saw Jason, watchful
on the Argo, a man
as handsome as Ares in his youth. And she turned her
eyes to the palace
of Aietes, and saw where Medeia slept, and suddenly
her heart
was warmed. The goddesses were right: they made a
lovely couple!
Things not possible in heaven she meant to shape on
earth.
The Argonauts were sitting in conference on the
benches of their ship.
Row on row sat silent as Jason spoke. “My friends, my advice is this—if you disagree, speak up. I’ll go with three or four others, to Aietes’ palace and parley,
find whether
he means to treat us as friends or to try out his army
against us.
No point killing a king who, if asked, would gladly
oblige us.”
With one accord, the Argonauts approved.
With the sons of Phrixos, and with Telamon, the father
of Alas,
and with Augeias, Aietes’ half-brother, the captain of
the Argonauts
set forth. Queen Hera sent a mist before them, so
covered the town
that no man saw them till they’d reached Aietes’ house.
And then
the mist lifted. They paused at the entrance, astonished
to see
the half-mile gates, the rows of soaring columns
surrounding
the palace walls, and high over all, the marble cornice resting on triglyphs of bronze. They crossed the
threshold then,
unchallenged, and came to the sculptured trees and,
below them, four springs,
Hephaiastos’ work. One flowed with milk, another
with wine,
the third with fragrant oil; but the fourth was the
finest of all,
a fountain that, when the Pleiades set, ran boiling hot, and afterward bubbled from the hollow rock ice-cold.
All that,
they would learn in time, was nothing to the
flame-breathing bulls of bronze
that the craftsman of the gods had created as a gift
for Aietes. There was also
an inner court with ingeniously fashioned folding doors of enormous size, each of them leading to a splendid
room
and to galleries left and right. At angles to the court,
on all sides
stood higher buildings. In the highest, Aietes lived
with his queen.
In another Apsyrtus lived, Aietes’ son, and in yet another, his daughters, Khalkiope and Medeia. That
Moment
Medeia was roaming from room to room in search of
her sister.
The goddess Hera had fettered Medeia to the house
that day;
as a rule she spent most of her day in the temple of
Hek
ate, of whom
she was priestess.
The voice of the narrator softened. I had to close
my eyes and concentrate to hear.
“And I was that child Medeia,
a thousand thousand lives ago. And yet one moment stands like a newly made mural ablaze in the sun.
I glanced
at the courtyard and saw, as the mist rose, seven men,
and their leader
wore black, and his cape was a panther skin. His hand
was on his sword,
and his look was as keen as a god’s. Without knowing
I’d do it, I raised
my hand to my lips, cried out. In an instant the
courtyard was astir—
Khalkiope joyfully greeting her sons, her children by
Phrixos,
my father approaching on the steps, all smiles, huge
arms extended,
and a moment later his servants were working with the
carcase of a bull,
more servants chopping up firewood, and others
preparing hot water
for baths. I stared from the balcony, half in a daze.
Stupidly,
unable to move a muscle, I watched sly Eros creep in (none of them saw him but me). In the porch, beneath
the lintel
he hastily strung his bow, slipped an arrow from the
quiver to the string, and,
still unobserved by the others, ran across the gleaming
threshold,
his blind eyes sparkles, and crouched at Jason’s feet.
He drew
the bow as far as his fat arms reached, and fired.
I could
do nothing. A searing pain leaped through me. My
heart stood still.
With a laugh like a jackal’s, the little brute flashed out
of sight and was gone
from the hall. The invisible shaft in my breast was
flame. Ah, poor
ridiculous Medeia! Time and again she darts a glance at Jason, and she cannot make out if the feeling is
mainly pain
or sweetness!
“How can I say what happened then? In a blur,
a baffling radiance, I moved through the feast. His eyes
dazzled,
his scent—new oil of his welcoming bath—filled me
with anguish
as blood and the smoke of incense-reckels confound the
dead.
“When they’d eaten and drunk their fill, my father
Aietes asked questions
of the sons of Khalkiope and Phrixos. I paid no
attention, but watched
that beautiful, godlike stranger. He never glanced once
at me,
but myself, I could see nothing else. For even if I closed
my eyes,
he was there, like the retinal after-image of a
candleflame.
Childish love-madness, perhaps. Yet I do not think so,
even now.
We’re all imperfect, created with some part missing;
and I saw
from the first instant my crippled soul’s completion in
that dark-robed
prince. He stood as if perfectly fearless in front of
Aietes,
a king whom he could not help but know, by reputation, as one of the world’s great wizards, king of an
enchanted land,
and no mere mortal, for the sun each night when it took
to its bed
did so in Aietes’ hall. I knew at a glance that the man from the South was no skillful magician. His eyes were
the eyes of one
who lives by shrewd calculation, forethought,
willingness to change
his plans. If my father were suddenly to raise up a
manticore
at his feet, the stranger would study it a moment,
consider the angles,
converse with it, probably persuade it. There could be
no guessing what
that strange prince thought or felt, behind those
mirroring eyes;
and all my impulsive, volcanic soul—the ages of Tartar, Indian and Kelt that shaped us all, as Helios’ children, and made us passionate, mystical, seismic in love and
wrath—
went thudding as if to a god to that man for salvation.
My face
would sting one moment as if burned; the next, a
freeze rang through me.
Make no mistake! The spirit knows its physician,
howeverso halt, lame, muddled
the mind in its stiff bed reason! I watched his smile—self-assured, by no means trusting—and I
felt, as never
before, not even as a child, like a wobbly-kneed fool.
“And then
my father was speaking, and shifting my rapt gaze
from the stranger
I saw in amazement that my father was shuddering
with rage, his huge
fists clenched, his red beard shaking, his eyes like a
bull’s. ‘Scoundrels!’
he bellowed at Phrixos’ sons, my nephews. ‘Be gone
from my sight!
Be gone from my country, vipers in the nest! It was
no mere fleece
that lured you—you and these troglodytes—here to
my kingdom. You think
I’m a gudgeon who’ll snap at a fishhook left unbaked?
You want
my throne, my sceptre, my boundless dominions! Fools!
Scarecrows!
D’you think you can frighten a king like Aietes with
sonorous poopings
of willow-whistles?—cause me to bang my knees
together
with the oracular celostomies of a midget concealed in an echo chamber? Boom me no more of the
Argonauts’ power,
naming off grandiose names, panegyring their murder
of centaurs,
spidermen, Amazons, what-not! I am no horse, no bug, no girl! If you had not eaten at my table, I’d tear your
tongues out
and chop your hands off, both of them, and send you
exploring
on stumped legs, as a lesson to you!’
“The man called Telamon
came a step forward, his thick neck swelling, prepared
to hurl
absurd defiance at my father. I knew what would
happen if he did.
My father would crush him like a fly, for all his
strength. But before
the word was out, the stranger in black touched his
shoulder and smiled—
incredibly (what kind of being could smile in the
presence of my father’s
wrath?)—and broke in, quick yet casual: “My lord,”
he said,
‘our show of arms has perhaps misled you. We were
fools, I confess,
to carry them in past your gate.’
‘The voice took my breath away.
It was no mere voice. An instrument. What can I say? (As my Jason says.) It was a gift, a thing seen once in,
perhaps,
a century. Not so deep as to seem merely freakish, yet
deep;
and not so vibrant, so rich in its timbre, as to seem
mock-singing,
yet vibrant and rich…. I remember when Orpheus
sang, the sound
was purer than a silver flute, but when Orpheus spoke,
it was
as if some pot of julep should venture an opinion.
The sound
of the famous golden tongue was the music of a calm
spring night
with no hurry in it, no phrenetics, no waste—the sound
of a city
wealthy and at peace
—a sound so dulcet and
reasonable
it could not possibly be wrong. Had I not been in love
with him
before, I’d have fallen now. Wasn’t even my father
checked,
zacotic Aietes? The ear grows used to that voice, in
time.
I have learned to hear past to the guile, the well-meant
trickery; but even
now when he leaves me on business, and we two are
apart for a week,
his voice, when I hear it at the gate, brings a sudden
pang, as if
of spring, an awareness of Time, all beauty in its
teeth. He said: ‘
We have not come to your palace, believe me, with any
such designs
as our bad manners impart. Who’d brave such
dangerous seas
merely to steal a man’s goods? But we’re willing to
prove our friendship.
Grant me permission to help in your war with the
Sauromantiae—
a war that has dragged on for years, if the rumors we’ve
gathered are true—
and in recompense, if we prove as loyal as we say
we are,
grant us the fleece we ask for—my only hope, back
in Argos.’
Father was silent, plunged into sullen brooding.
I knew
his look well enough, that deep-furrowed brow, the eyes
blue-white
as cracked jewels. He was torn between lunging at the
stranger, turning off
that seductive charm by a blow of his fist, or a white
bolt sucked
from heaven; or, again, putting the stranger to the test.
At last,
his dragon-eyes wrinkled, and he smiled, revealed his
jagged teeth.
“ ‘Sir, if you’re children of the gods, as you claim,
and have grounds for approaching
our royal presence as equals, then we’ll happily give
you the fleece—
that is, if you still have use for the thing when we’ve
put you to the proof.
We are not like your stuttering turkey Pelias. We’re a
man of great
generosity to people of rank.’ He smiled again. My veins ran ice.
“ ‘We propose to test your courage and ability
by setting a task which, though formidable, is not
beyond
the strength of our own two hands. Grazing on the
plain of Ares
we have a huge old pair of bronze-hoofed, fire-breathing bulls. We yoke them and drive them over the fallow of
the plain,
quickly ploughing a four-acre field to the hedgerow at
either
end. Then we sow the furrows—but not with corn:
with the fangs
of a monstrous serpent, and they soon grow up in the
form of armed men,
whom we cut down and kill with our spear as they