brother once,
a man of whom nothing is known. He found a grazing
flock
of goats kept alive by desert thistles, and he sought the
goatherd
to ask for news of Herakles, the sky-god’s son. Before he could speak, the herd leaped up with a look
of alarm
and threw a stone at him. It struck the poor man
squarely on the forehead,
and Kaanthos, astounded, fell, and his life ran out.
Nor was that
the least of my men to be lost on sandswept Libya. As for Herakles, we found no trace. They all returned; we prepared to set sail for home.
“And then came Mopsos’ time, foreseen by him from the beginning, thanks to his
birdlore. He was
the noblest of seers, for all his peculiarity— his whimsy, the grime on his fingers, the bits of dried
food in his beard—
but little good his wisdom did him when his hour
arrived.
“An asp lay sleeping in the sand, in shelter from the
midday sun,
a snake too sluggish to attack a man who showed no
sign
of hostility, or fly at a man who jumped back. It meant no harm to anything alive, though even a drop of its
venom
was instant passage to the Underworld. Old Mopsos,
chatting
and strolling with Medeia and her maidens, while the
rest of us worked on the ship,
by chance stepped lightly, with his left foot, on the
tip of the creature’s
tail. In pain and alarm, the asp coiled swiftly around the old man’s shin and calf and struck, sinking its fangs to the gums. Medeia and her maidens shrank in horror.
Old Mopsos
clenched his fists in sorrow. The pain was slight enough, but he knew he was past all hope. He lifted his foot to
free
the asp. Already he was paralyzed, numb. A dark mist clouded his sight, and his heavy limbs fell. In an instant,
he was cold,
his flesh corrupting in the heat of the sun, his hair
falling out
in patches. We dug him a grave at once and buried him. Then went down to the ship, full of woe.
“With Ankaios dead, no sure helmsman among us, our chances of reaching
Akhaia
were slim. But Peleus took the oar, the father of
Akhilles,
and we drew the hawsers in. There must surely be
some escape
from the wide Tritonian lagoon, we thought. Having no
aim,
we drifted, helpless, the whole day long. The Argo’s
course,
as we nosed now here, now there, for an outlet, was
as tortuous
as the track of a serpent as it wriggles along in search
for shelter
from the baking sun, peeping about him with an angry
hiss
and dust-flecked eyes, till he slips at last through a dark
rock cleft
to freedom. And so we too found freedom. Once in the
open,
we kept the land on our right, hugging the coast. The
sun
was kinder now, though fierce enough. We slept in the
shadow
of rocks by day, and drove the Argo by the power of our
backs
from twilight till dawn’s first glance. And so wore out
by stages
the curse of Helios.”
Here Jason paused, looked down, his dark eyebrows knit. The hall was silent, waiting, Kreon leaning on his arms, his gaze intent. I could feel their dread of the man’s conclusions.
He said: “Except, of course, that no man — no house — wears out a curse by his own
power.
We may with luck propitiate the gods, live through our
trials;
but the offense is still in the blood, and our sons
inherit it,
and our sons’ sons, and shadow progeny arching to the
end
of time. I half understood them now, those ghostships
riding
the Argo’s wake. By some inexplicable accident we were, ourselves, the point of no turning back. We
closed
an age. The Golden Age,’ men will call it. They’ll honey
it with lies
and hone for it, with languishing looks, and bemoan
their fall
and curse my name and treason…. Their curses will
not much stir
my dust. I was there; I saw the truth. A childish age of easy glory in petty marauding, of lazy flocks on bluegreen hills where every stream had its nymphs,
each wood
its men half-goat; where the rightful monarch of a
sleepy throne
could be set aside, as was I at Iolkos, and given the
choice
of fighting for his right like a long-horned ram
dispossessed of his gray
indifferent ewes, or accepting the slight humiliation and moving on. I changed the rules — declined the
gauntlet,
made deals, built cunning alliances, ambitious in
secret,
with always one thought foremost: keep to the logic
of nature.
Be true, within reason, to friends, with enemies ruthless.
Be just,
but not beyond reason. Honor the gods and men and
the stones
of the earth, but not to excess. Have faith sufficient to
fight;
beware all expectations.
“For there is no power on earth but treaty, no love but mutual consent — whatever the
relative
power of those consenting. Not even the gods are firm of character; much less, then, men. The promise I make, I make to a man who may change, become anathema
to me.
Therefore, be just, recall no vows still meet, but know we sail among wandering rocks. By these few
principles—
some known to me at the start, some not — I organized the Akhaians. It would be, from that day forward, powers pitted against powers, the labor of monstrous
machines—
at best, a labor for universal good; at worst, perhaps, exploiters faceless as forests, and the cringing exploited,
the forests’
beasts.
“So riding by night, my hand on Medeia’s, I watched the shadowy ships like mountains that followed in our
wake. As before,
Time washed over us in waves. I dreamed it was stars
we sailed,
and our oars stirred dust on the moon, or our shadow
stretched out, prow
to stern, in the shadows that tremble and float down
Jupiter.
At times stiff birds passed over us, roaring, and
mountains took fire.
Medeia, watching at my side, said nothing, and whether
or not
she understood these visions, I could not guess. I told
her
the words I’d heard in my dream, off the isle of Phineus: You are caught in irrelevant forms. Beware the
interstices.
She studied me, child of magic; could tell me nothing.
Gently,
I covered her hand. Sooner or later, I knew, I’d grasp
that mystery.
I’d pierced a part of it already: it was there at the
intersections
of the billion billion powers of the world that the danger
lay,
and the hope; the gaps between gods, or men, or gods
and men;
the gaps between minds — my own and Aiaian Medeia’s.
Invisible
gaps at the heart of connectedness, where love and will leaped out, seek to span dark chambers, and must not
fail. I seemed
for an instant to understand her, as when one knows
for an instant
a tiger’s mind; the next, saw only her face, her radiant, wholly mysterious eyes. I was not as I was, however, with Hypsipyle on the isle of Lemnos. It was not mere