Jocasta: Wife and Mother

by Brian Aldiss

  Oedipus called his favourite daughter. Antigone came promptly from her sister’s side, her darkly fair tresses straggling on her shoulders.

  She showed some respect for her father, but no affection as formerly.

  ‘Father, Ismene said a spirit came to her and told her she would signify nothing, that she signifies nothing at present, and will signify nothing in future.’

  ‘Blessed are they who signify nothing,’ said Oedipus dismissively. ‘There are more important things to concern us.’

  ‘But Ismene is upset, Father.’

  ‘It’s the condition of Thebes, child. Why, being upset is common practice. No harm in it. Now look – one of Creon’s soldiers lurks out there, on the other side of the street. You are close to your ambitious uncle. Go you to him and tell him to take proper command of his soldiery. Get that fellow away from my sight.’

  Antigone was peering across the street, on which people were already gathering. She could not see Chrysippus.

  ‘Oh, Father, that’s such a small thing. Why should it be important to you?’

  ‘Great storms commence with a single drop of rain. Go to Creon as I tell you to.’

  ‘Send a messenger, Father. Not me.’

  ‘I am telling you to go. You like Creon. Tell him what I say. We shall see then if Creon has set this fellow to watch our palace. There’s my good girl, be obedient. Hurry!’

  Obedient Antigone did as she was instructed, leaving the palace by a rear entrance.

  Oedipus summoned a musician to calm him. He then called Jocasta.

  ‘I hope for some comfort from you, my dear,’ he said heavily.

  She gave him the beginnings of a smile as she stood before him. ‘What if I have little comfort in myself at present?’

  ‘I was unhappy when you strayed from the palace. You know it to be dangerous. Worse still, you were so cold to me.’

  He began grumbling in a manner which was becoming increasingly familiar. She sank down on a nearby chair to listen, or part-listen. At last she broke into his speech, to say that her anxieties were deep-rooted: that she had fears they were mere figures in a drama, set to act out various roles consigned to them by the gods.

  He interrupted. ‘Are you mad?’

  Oedipus said that her fears were liars. Was she claiming that he and she had no reality? That their surroundings – that they themselves – had no reality? He stamped his foot on the tiled floor to prove its reality.

  She replied that the stamping proved nothing. He could have imagined that he stamped.

  ‘That’s absurd! Come into my arms. You are unwell, my dear Jocasta. Fear has overtaken you!’

  Turning her pallid face away from him, she pulled her hair down to veil her countenance, for an instant reminding Oedipus of the hag Semele.

  ‘Then I will be more unwell and suggest that it is possible that someone or something imagined you stamping. What would you say to that? I suppose you find that absurd too? How distant is the moon? Tell me.’

  ‘You are playing with words, my queen. My foot reassures me that I stamped.’ He stamped again to demonstrate, then laughed.

  She was unable to reassure herself so easily. There had been an apparition who had come from another world – or ‘probability sphere’, as he called it – who asserted that she was nothing more than a minor player in a drama of some kind, a drama with an unhappy ending.

  To this Oedipus, leaning forward, asked her if she was not crazed, being frigid. He asked if it was not more likely that they lived in reality, that they were flesh and blood; it was her apparition which was imaginary. The mind, he pointed out, was full of mischievous things. To escape those things, it was necessary to turn to the gods.

  ‘What comfort did the gods ever give you?’ she asked. She threw back her hair to ask the question, so that her face appeared like the moon from behind a cloud.

  His response was to pick up a scroll lying near at hand, and to read a passage to her in an oracular voice.

  ‘“We have yet to comprehend how the ordinary world can possibly derive from ordered material elements without the aid of the gods. Who would claim that land and sea are somehow natural divisions, occurring of their own volition, without divine intervention? The events in our lives are formed of joy and grief, the metaphysical equivalents of sea and land. We cannot deny that gods have a hand in them also.

  ‘“It would be wise to have the schools draw up for their pupils a list of all those elements about which Science and a modern mistrust of our natures can furnish no information at all.”’

  He asked, ‘Is that not well said?’

  Jocasta was silent for a minute. Then she asked, ‘Am I to take it that you believe this philosopher you consult has more authority over me than my own feelings?’

  ‘Perhaps your feelings are less well thought out than these philosophical writings.’ He thumped the scroll for emphasis.

  ‘If you believe that, then I can understand why you give your scroll priority over my feelings. My feelings are nothing to you.’

  He indicated that he required no more of this kind of conversation.

  ‘It’s just a normal conversation between a man and wife who have been married too long,’ Jocasta said sarcastically.

  They sat in silence, feigning to listen to the music, with its sweet and empty sound.

  Antigone, being still rebellious, did not return from her father’s task until the morrow. Accompanying her came Creon and his wife Eurydice, both very serious in their demeanour. With them came a meek tonsured priest in white vestments, his hairy toes peeping from leather sandals. He trailed a small black servant boy, no higher than his master’s thigh. This party stood in the street and would not enter the palace of Oedipus.

  Oedipus shouted down to his stony-faced brother-in-law from his balcony.

  ‘I have no quarrel with you, Creon. Enter in, both of you, all of you. Be welcome.’

  He heard Eurydice say to her husband, ‘Is not a protestation that there is no quarrel a sign that there is a quarrel?’

  Creon looked disconcerted.

  Oedipus went down the marble stairs, gathering Jocasta to his side, holding tightly to her hand as he descended. At his portals where the sentries stood, he demanded of Creon if he had sent soldiers to spy on him.

  When Creon denied it, Oedipus crossed the street to the building where he had seen Chrysippus lurking the day before. No one was there, but Oedipus pretended to be searching amid the arches. The day was the tint of sepia under clouded sunlight.

  ‘You occupy yourself with small matters, brother,’ said Creon contemptuously. ‘Why don’t you attend to the larger matter of your kingdom? Our Attic predecessors discoursed in public on grand themes – themes of liberty, justice and order – while the populace listened with awe and excitement to their words. Thus the masses were given a taste for learning. Nowadays, everything is petty, and the people easily swayed.

  ‘When did someone last discourse publicly on what happens to us when we quit this mortal life, or consider the numbers of stars above our heads? Now, now, we chatter about the price of melons. Our souls are being polluted, Oedipus. If nothing’s done, we shall be destroyed.’

  Eurydice added, ‘And just look at how expensive melons have become!’

  Oedipus replied that their well-being was very much involved with the price of melons. In times of drought, it was natural that melons were scarce. Men with empty stomachs and dry mouths would not listen to learned discussions. Thin bellies hated wisdom.

  ‘If Creon would only take heed of facts, he would find that the savants who discoursed so memorably in the Athenian agora spoke only in seasons when melons were cheap and market stalls crammed with plenty.’

  But, argued Creon, a discussion on human endeavour, or the usages of slaves, or the uselessness of gods, would distract the common people from the discomfort of their stomachs.

  ‘Yes, good talk will fill their heads if not their stomachs!’ said Eurydice with a screech, but was igno
red.

  Seeing these two powerful men in argument in the middle of the main street, a crowd gathered, so thickly that a donkey could not pass without difficulty. It was a ragged crowd, some with gowns, some without; many displayed boils on their faces, goitres at their throats, or abscesses on their bare legs. All listened avidly, some covertly grinning, not displeased to see the mighty at loggerheads.

  ‘It’s a bad season, admittedly,’ said Oedipus. ‘But no man can put right the weather. The cleverest dialogues in the world won’t help the drought.’

  ‘I’m talking about the drought of souls,’ said Creon. ‘There is an unclean thing here, a presence lurking in the very soil on which we stand. Why do you not feel it yourself, Oedipus? There is not a man here who does not suffer from its dire effect. Famine is among us, with its destroying hand.’

  At this, a murmur of agreement came from the crowd.

  A youth standing near Creon called, ‘All right! We suffer, but what are we to do about it?’

  ‘I recommend,’ said Creon sternly, ‘stoicism.’

  ‘All this you say to win attention, brother-in-law,’ Oedipus said. ‘But what do you suggest is required to purify the city and its lands? What act can make Thebes whole and clean once more?’

  ‘And its citizens well fed,’ added Jocasta, but was ignored as her husband spoke.

  ‘Bloody murder is the cause of our ills,’ announced Creon, gesturing grandly. ‘Murder requires payment. Man must not kill man. He who committed regicide must be expelled from our city, or pay for the spilled blood with his own blood.’

  ‘That is the verdict hallowed by centuries,’ agreed the priest. ‘Man must not kill man. Man must not kill woman, nor woman woman. Nor child child.’

  Ignoring the priest, Jocasta stepped forward. ‘How can blood pay for blood, dear brother? Don’t confuse life with coinage. If it is bad for one man to be killed, then doubly worse is it for two. Is that your law, brother? For if it is so, I, Queen Jocasta, have only scorn for it.’

  Creon affected to laugh, whereupon some idle fellows in the crowd affected to laugh with him.

  ‘No, it’s not my law. It is the law handed down through many ages, since mankind’s first birth. That he who wields his knife against his fellow men shall be cut down by them.’

  Now the fair Eurydice, noticing that Jocasta was not silenced just because she was a woman, joined in the attack. She spoke up sharply, waving a fist at Oedipus.

  ‘He who wields the knife shall be cut down – yes! That is the verdict of both mind and body. And has been from time everlasting, as Creon says. Spilled blood, blood unredeemed – that’s the cause of all our present trouble.’

  ‘Revenge! Is that all Thebans can think of?’ asked Jocasta, but was ignored.

  ‘What blood? Whose blood? Who is supposed to have been killed?’ asked Oedipus. His face was red with anger rising within him.

  The priest, who had recently confined himself to nodding his head in agreement with everything Creon said, spoke in a reedy voice. ‘Indeed, he who wields the knife shall be cut down, even as great Creon says. He who lifts a hand against another is himself struck. He who kicks another gets kicked in turn. He who strikes is himself stricken. These are ancient laws, and what is ancient is become law. As for him who bleeds—’

  ‘You speak nothing but truth, good priest,’ said Creon, cutting him off in mid-flow. ‘Indeed, too much.’ Annoyed, the priest turned and cuffed the little slave boy, telling him to stand still.

  Antigone had remained silently with her uncle and Eurydice and the priest. Now she came over to her father. She took his hand in both of her smaller hands, looking up at him anxiously. ‘Be calm, Father,’ she whispered. ‘Anger will not serve here. Let us go within the palace. The street is too hot a place for argument.’

  He told the girl gently to be quiet, that he must contradict Creon.

  ‘Oedipus asks who was killed!’ cried Creon, turning to the crowd and affecting again to laugh. ‘Was this king of ours born yesterday? Has he forgotten recent history?’ Turning to Oedipus, he continued, saying, ‘Before you entered this city, we in Thebes were ruled by a certain king by name Laius.’

  ‘Oh, yes, that pederast! I certainly know his name, although I never set eyes on him. Are you about to praise him, Creon? Do you share his tastes?’

  Some there were in the crowd who laughed at the jibe.

  ‘Laius was killed,’ said Creon, unmoved. ‘Slain by brigands in the wilderness, on the road to Paralia Avidos.’

  The priest who had been standing silent beside Creon interposed a word to confirm that it was so. Everyone, he said, knew that lawless men had killed King Laius.

  Oedipus turned on the priest. ‘So this is the curse of Thebes? That a disgraced man died in the wilderness? It happened long ago, distant both in time and space. How can we hope to find this killer now? Why should we hope to find him? Where could we possibly start looking?’

  ‘We should look here, dread king, if I may make so bold as to suggest it, in these very streets,’ said the priest, assuming meekness but looking venom. ‘Zeus tells us to seek the guilty man here in Thebes. Those who do not look never see. Those who never seek never find. Those who never think never care. Those who never care never think. So the unpursued pass undetected, because the undetected are not pursued.’

  Some in the crowd cheered mockingly at this exercise in logic. The slave boy stuck out his tongue at them.

  Oedipus was silent. He was stroking his beard and thinking. ‘Were there no witnesses to the murder of the disgraced king?’

  Jocasta caught his arm and said in a low, urgent voice, ‘Oedipus, pursue this theme no further. It leads only to trouble. I warn you!’

  As she was speaking, a dark-clad warrior pressed through the crowd. It was Chrysippus. From under his leather and metal helmet curled a mass of dark hair, shielding his blue eyes. He wore a light beard. His figure was slender and wiry and a sword was at his side.

  ‘I am Chrysippus, of a warrior class by birth. I soldier with Creon. I stand as witness to the murder of King Laius.’

  His statement commanded attention. The crowd became silent. Jocasta grasped Oedipus’ arm and hissed, ‘Send him away, silence him!’

  But Oedipus seemed transfixed. The crowd gathered in closer to hear what Chrysippus had to say.

  ‘I am a true witness. I was then but a boy, yet I saw the regicide with my own eyes, as savage men came and dragged the king from his chariot. Being so young, I ran away for safety and hid in some bushes nearby. The brigands stabbed Laius repeatedly in throat and chest. One of them kicked him as he lay.’

  Here Chrysippus paused to look about him and see what effect his account was having. The crowd were listening open-mouthed.

  ‘Once Laius rose. They beat him into the dust. He gave not a single cry. I saw it all. It has remained with me. Its bitterness rules my life.’

  As he spoke, the young warrior’s eyes blazed. He seemed to speak through his bared teeth. He dragged at his beard as if trying to extract the memory from his head.

  ‘There lay the royal body, blood and dirt covering him, without movement, without life …’

  Chrysippus’ statement made a great impression on his audience. There were those who ran off to gather their friends to listen to this amazing quarrel, and to look at a man who had witnessed the murder of a king.

  ‘And were you in company with the king or the brigands?’ asked Jocasta. Like Oedipus, she had become very pale.

  Chrysippus looked about him, proudly and challengingly, before saying, ‘At that young age I was the catamite of Laius. I was accompanying the king in his chariot. I was spared because I was but a boy.’

  Antigone’s voice rose shrill above the murmur of the crowd. ‘How could you see what you claim to have seen if you had run off and were hidden in the bushes?’

  A hush filled the street. Men waited for the young warrior’s answer. All he could manage by way of answer was to assert again that he had seen the mu
rder.

  She tried to pursue the matter. ‘Did you not cover your eyes with your hands, to prevent yourself seeing the bloodshed?’

  ‘No,’ Chrysippus replied. ‘At least, not all the time.’

  ‘How many brigands were present?’ asked Oedipus.

  ‘Four – four of the brutes, I believe.’ He did not attempt to respond properly to Antigone’s question, though she called it again. Indeed, his manner, previously arrogant, was now more uncertain. It looked as if he was preparing to escape through the crowd, had not Creon given him an order to remain where he stood.

  The company shuffled about, not knowing what to do or say next. Some men jeered. Some in the crowd were heard to remark that they had been told there was only one brigand involved. They asked also how trustworthy was the word of a child as witness. This child in particular, a self-confessed catamite.

  ‘You don’t know what you saw,’ a man shouted. ‘You were just a frightened child. Begone!’

  Jocasta said in a firm voice, ‘All this business is past history. Nothing is certain. My former husband is all but forgotten. Nothing was done about Laius’ murder at the time. Let it rest! The years have passed. Nothing can be done about it now.’

  ‘If nothing was done at the time, then something should be done now,’ began the priest. ‘That time was not this time, nor this time that. And if something is done now—’

  Creon poked him in the ribs and the priest desisted.

  The black slave boy squeaked that what was dead was dead, but the priest cuffed him and he fell silent, rubbing his head.

  ‘This was a royal death, sister, which is what makes the difference,’ Creon replied, using a mild admonishing tone. ‘The news of the murder was slow to reach us, since it befell King Laius in the wilds. Then came the Sphinx to our very gates, the mother of all our difficulties. Why should you be so keen to turn your back on this serious matter, concerning your late husband, when the fate of our city may depend on our knowing what actually befell?’

  Jocasta surveyed her brother angrily.