He chuckled,
a sound automatic as an old-man actor’s laugh, or
a raven’s.
He’d ruled long, presiding, persuading. Each blink,
each nod
was politics, the role and the man grown together
like two old trees.
Then, solemn, he squeezed one eye tight shut, his head drawn back. He scowled like a jeweller of thirty
centuries hence
studying the delicate springs and coils of a strange
timepiece,
one he intended to master. He touched the old slave’s
arm.
“The gods may test their creatures to the rim of
endurance — not
beyond. So I’ve always maintained. What man could
believe in the gods
or worship them, if it were otherwise?” He chuckled
again,
apologetic, as if dismissing his tendency toward bombast. “In any case,” he said, “our luck’s
changing.
I give you my word.” He nodded, frowning, hardly glancing at the husk from which the god peeked
out
as the rim of a winecup peeks from the grave of the
world’s first age.
The spying, black-robed power leered on, wringing his hands in acid mockery of the old servant’s love.
Whatever shadows had crossed
the king’s mind, he stepped out free of them. Tentatively, he smiled once more, his lips like a
woman’s,
faintly rouged, like his cheeks. His bald head glowed like polished stone in the failing light. A breeze, advancing ahead of the storm, tugged at his heavy skirts and picked at his beard. “It’s difficult, God knows,”
he said,
“to put those times behind us: Oidipus blind and wild, Jokasta dead, Antigone dead, high-chambered Thebes yawning down like a ship in flames… Don’t think
I haven’t
brooded aplenty on that. A cursed house, men say; a line fated to the last leaf on the last enfeebled branch. It’s a dreadful thought,
Ipnolebes.
I’m only human. I frighten as easy as the next man. I won’t deny that I’ve sat up in bed with a start,
sometimes,
shaking like a leaf, peering with terrified, weeping eyes at the night and filling the room with a frantic rush
of prayers—
‘Dear gods, dear precious-holy-gods …’ —Nevertheless, I can’t believe it. A man would be raving mad to think the luculent powers above us would doom us willy-nilly, whether we’re wicked or virtuous, proud or not. No, no! With all due respect, with all due love for Oidipus and the rest, such thoughts are the sickness of faulty
metaphysics.”
The king stared at the darkening sky, his soft hands folded, resting on his belly. Again he closed one eye and reached for the old slave’s arm. “I do not mean
to malign
the dead, you understand. But working it through in
my mind
I’ve concluded this: the so-called curse has burned
itself out.”
He paused, thought it over, then added, as if with a
touch of guilt,
“No curse in the first place, actually. They were tested
by the gods
and failed. Much as I loved them all, I’m forced to
say it.”
He shook his head. They were stubborn. So they went
down raging to the grave
as Oidipus rages yet, they tell me, stalking the rocks of his barren island, groping ahead of himself with
a stick,
answering cries of gulls, returning the viper’s hiss, tearing his hair, and the rest. Well, I’m a different breed of cat. Not as clever, I grant — and not as noble,
either—
but fit to survive. I’ve asked far less than those did. I ask for nothing! I do my duty as a king not out of pride in kingship, pleasure in the awesome power
I wield,
but of necessity. Someone must rule, and the bad luck’s
mine.
Would Kreon have hanged himself, like poor Jokasta?
She was
unfortunate, granted. But there have been cases, here
and there,
of incest by accident. She set her sights too high,
it seems.
An idealist. Couldn’t bend, you know. And Antigone
the same.
All that — great God! — for a corpse, a few maggots, a passing flock of crows! Well, let us learn from their
sad
mistakes. Accept the world as it is. Manipulate the possible. “
Strange…
“I’ve wondered sometimes if the gods were aware
at all of those terrible, noble deeds, those fiery
orations—
Oidipus blind on the steps, Antigone in the tomb,
Jokasta
claiming her final, foolish right to dignity.”
He covered his mouth with his hand and squinted.
He said, voice low:
“Compare the story of the perfect bliss of ancient
Kadmos,
founder of the line, with Harmonia, whose marriage
Zeus
himself came down to attend. King Kadmos—
Kosmos, rightly—
loved so well, old legends claim, that after his perfect joy in life — his faultless rule of soaring Thebes, great golden city where for many
centuries
nothing had stirred but the monstrous serpent
Kadmos slew—
the gods awarded him power and Joy after life,
Zeus filled
his palace with lightning-bolts, and the well-matched
pair was changed
to two majestic serpents, now Lady and Lord of all the Dead. So, surely, all who are good get recompense. If Oidipus did not — hot-tempered and vain — or
haughty Jokasta …
— But let it be. I don’t mean to judge them, you
understand.
They behaved according to their natures. Too good for
the world.” He nodded.
The wind came up. The sky overhead was as
dark-robed
as the god. Old Kreon pursed his lips as if the storm had taken him unawares. A spatter of rainfall came, warm drops, and the king hiked up his skirts and ran,
his servant
close behind, for shelter under the portico. The trees bent low, twisting and writhing, their
parched leaves
swaying like graygreen witches in a solemn dance.
The sky
flashed white. A peal of thunder shook the columned
house,
the stamping hoof of Poseidon’s violent horse above, and rain came down with a hiss, splashing the
flagstones. The king
breathed deep, a sigh, stretched out his arms. “Rain!” It was as if the gods had sent down rain for his
pleasure. “God
bless rain!” The king and his servant laughed and
hugged themselves,
watching it fall and listening, breathing the charged air.
Inside the king’s vast house a hundred servants
padded
softly from room to room, busy at trivial chores, scrubbing, polishing, repairing — the unimportant lives reamed out of time by the names of kings. Slaves, the children of far-famed palaces broken by war, moved through the halls of Kreon’s palace carrying
flowers,
filling the smoke-black vases that darkened the royal
chambers,
driving away the unpleasant scents of humanness— sweat, the king’s old age, the stink of beloved dogs, stale wine, chamberpots, cooking. Eyes on the floor,
young men
of fallen houses from Africa to Asia moved silently opening doors to admit the lightning smell—
then,
eyes on the floor, soundless as jungle birds, moved on. The rumble of thunder, the dark murmur of rain,
came in.
A young blond slave with eyes as gray as the