he knew.
O that he too had been drowned in the river with
innocent Hylas,
or fallen like Idmon to a maddened boar, or withered
in Libya!
She might have had then some comfort in death,
though little before,
wrapped in a winding-sheet wound by strangers,
tumbled to her tomb
like a penniless old farm woman. And Jason returned, joyful with his barbarous bride, and shamelessly joined
the usurper,
smiling on half of his father’s blood-soaked throne. See
how
he preaches justice and reason, preaches fidelity, trades on his great past deeds to avoid all present risks. “Do not rave,” he raves; “no shame can trouble our city. Prophesy wealth and wine! The past is obliterated! Tell us no more about crimes in the tents of our
ancestors!
Justice and reason, like tamed lions, have settled in
Iolkos.”
Where is his justice and reason? Where is his loudly
bugled
fidelity? The throne was stolen; stolen it remains. What of fidelity to fathers and mothers? What of
fidelity
to the dead in their winecupped graves?’
“So the old shrew raged, shaking. Medeia, standing beside me, glared with eyes like ice. Softly, she said, ‘Who is this creature
you allow to berate you in the streets?’ I touched her
hand to calm her.
“A woman who loved my mother,’ I said. Medeia was
silent.
It was not till another day she asked, ‘Is this accusation just, that Pelias stole your father’s throne?’ I thought, Everything is true in its time and place. But answered
only:
‘I was young; my father was unsure of me. There were
vague rumors …
It was all a long, long time ago.’ But after that when I spoke in the assembly or debated plans with my
fellow king,
and Pelias had qualms, found reasons for doubt,
objected, found cause
for delay, she would watch him with tigress eyes.
“Pelias, as his mind dimmed with the passing years, grew
increasingly a burden.
It’s a difficult thing to explain. He interfered with me
less.
He grew deaf as a post and nearly blind, his mind so
enfeebled
that in the end he relinquished all but a shadow of his
former power.
The trouble was, he seemed to imagine that both of us had abandoned the nuisance of government.
Old-womanish, dim,
he’d call me to his bedroom and beg from me stories of
the Argonauts,
or he’d tell me, as if we were shepherds with all
afternoon to pass,
tedious tales of his childhood. It proved no use to send his daughters instead, willing as they were—
good-hearted, sheltered
princesses with the brains of nits. It had to be me— myself or Akastos, and Akastos rarely came. I would
stoop,
absurd in my royal robes, by the old man’s bed, and
listen,
or pretend to listen, brooding in secret on Argos’ affairs. The drapes would be drawn, a whim of his daughters,
as though he were
some apple they hoped to preserve through the winter
in a cool dark bin.
He would stutter like a fond old grandmother, on and
on. At times
he’d recall with a start the prophecy, and he’d hastily
offer
his cringing act, lading on flattery, protesting his
life-long
love. His fingers, clinging to mine, gripped me like a
monkey’s.
His daughters would listen, drooping like flowers from
slender stalks,
and whenever they spoke it was tearfully, with a kind of
idiot
gratitude for the affection I showed their belovèd father. At last he’d sleep; I’d be free to leave the place.
“I’d go to the wing of the palace I kept with Medeia and the
children; I’d pass
in silence among our slaves, and my heart was sullen
with suspicion.
Surely, I thought, they must mock me. Jason in his
kingly robes,
shouldered like a bull, gray eyes rolling as he sits, polite
as a cranky old shepherd’s serving boy, by the bed of
Pelias,
hanging on stammered-out words. O shameless coward
indeed!
I would stand alone at the balustrade of marble, glare
out
at the sea, Orion hanging low, contemptuous.
I was not a coward, I knew well enough,
and it ought not to matter what others supposed.
I governed well — no man denied it. If I wasted time on a fusty, repulsive old man, I had excellent reasons
for it.
I was no Herakles pummelling the seasons with passionate, mindless fists. Oh, I could admire the
crone
who cackled in the streets, full of rage and scorn, her loves and hates as forthright as boulders in the
grass. No doubt
she would, in my place, have struck down Pelias at the
first suspicion,
as would Herakles; or failing that, she’d have schemed
and plotted—
would never have seemed to accept, as I did, his right
to the throne,
or half of it. She’d have schemed and slaughtered,
maintained the honor
of Iolkos’ noble dead, whatever the cost to the living— bloodshed of factions, houses in furor, families divided, chaos for ages to come. I had no doubt that the course I’d chosen was best, my seemingly shameful
compromise.
Absolute passion, absolute glory, was for gods, not men. I could claim the status of a demigod, but the future
was not
with them.
“Yet glaring out toward sea, resolved on a course no man of sense could conceivably mock,
I was filled with a dangerous weariness.
More real than the seven-story fall
that gaped below me, more sharp to my sense than the
quartz-domed tomb
of Alkimede on its high hill north of the temple of Hera, or the figure of Medeia at my back, as heavy as bronze
with anger—
visions of flight would snatch my mind — the Argo’s
prow
bobbing like the head of a galloping horse, half
smothered in foam,
dark shapes looming out of fire-green water, then
vanishing—
the wandering rocks.
“I was protected once by an old Kelt, sired by a bear on a moon-priestess, or so he claimed.
We talked, in his shadowy hall, of freedom. His boy
sat hunched
by the hearthstone, listening, watching with eyes like a
cat’s. From the beams
of the old king’s walls hung the heads of his vanquished
enemies,
and above the fire, nailed firmly to the slats, hung the
leathern arm
of a giant. He said: ‘I see no freedom in peace and
justice.
I see no meaning in freedom that leaves some part of
my soul
in chains. I grant, it’s a noble ideal, this thing you
purpose—
a state well governed, where no man tromps on another
man’s heel,
the oppressed are aided, the orphan and the widow win
justice in the courts,
and each man holds to his place fox the benefit of all.
But I’d lose
my wind in a state so noble. I’d develop maladies— mysterious, elusive, beyond any doctor’s skill. Like a bat in a cage, I’d wither, for no clear reason, and die.’ The
boy
at the hearthstone smiled, sharp-eyed, heart teeming
with thought. The king
with mild blue eyes — cheeks painted, startling on that