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