his check on her. The houses of heaven had changed.
Then quietly Jason spoke, his gaze groundward. He stood like a spur of rock when gale winds pound it from all directions
and trees
roll crazily, torn up by the roots. “It seems an easy thing to claim a man should react like a loyal dog, leap out fangs bared, whatever the attacker, and die at the swipe
of a club,
true to the last to his instincts. I cannot defend myself from the charge that I haven’t behaved like a loyal
dog — except
that once, by the leap of instinct, I killed my cousin.
I might
have saved the slave, as you claim, by a careful word
or two
to Kreon; I might by a well-framed speech have rescued
Idas
and all his men from prison. I might. You know well
enough
the risk. Old Kreon’s a stubborn man. He does not like his judgment doubted or his will crossed. Be sure, if
I’d won
those favors from him, I’d then and there have
exhausted the old man’s
love of me. Whatever good I might hope to do for all the enslaved, for all my friends, for future
generations,
that good I’d have traded for an instant’s sweet
self-righteousness.
Though all the harbor rose up in rage at an immoral
act—
a thousand, three, five thousand men? — I do not find that the evil deed was rectified, or the sentence undone.
A good man out of power is worth
a pine-seedling in the Hellespont!
Such are the brutal realities, my friend.
Do not be such a fool, Kompsis, as to think man’s
choice
lies between evil and good. All serious options are
moral,
and all serious choices inherently risky, if not, for the heart that’s pure, impossible.” So Jason spoke, and I could not doubt, listening in the shadow of the
colonnade,
that his words came not from guilt but from honest
intent. His heart
was heavy, his purpose firm. But the god in human
shape
was scornful. Kompsis grinned, his eyes like thunder
blooming
in the low, black night. “However, the house you owed
your life
hangs motionless there in the marketplace, food for
crows. Consider:
No grand law will preserve your state if fools succeed
you;
and every line comes down, soon or late, to fools. Create the noblest constitution the mind of man can frame: eventually fools will crumple it. You plan for the
splendid
future, though decay is certain; and you let the present
rot
though a single word could cleanse it. Do as you must.
I warn you,
heaven is against you. Trouble is coming to the man
who builds
his town on blood, or founds his kingdom on crimes
unavenged.
Like a shepherd rescuing a couple of legs or a bit of an
ear
from the lion’s mouth, you salvage justice murdered.”
As Jason
turned in fury, his blood in his face,
the last man living to be tricked by the jangle of
rhetoric,
he saw that the stones where Kompsis had stood were
bare, and knew
he’d spoken with a god. His cheeks went white, as if
lightning-struck,
and his muscles locked in rage and frustration. “It’s the
truth,” he shouted.
He lifted his face to the midnight sky, his features
anguished,
and raised his fists. He seemed to struggle for speech.
The cords
of his throat stood out and his temples bulged. Then
suddenly
from his chest came the bellow of a maddened bull.
“I’ve been cheated enough!
I’ve told you nothing but the truth!” So he raged, then
clutched his head
as if shocked by searing pain. The sky was silent.
Later— it was nearly dawn — I saw him in the windswept
temple of Apollo,
hissing angrily, on his knees before the seer. The blind
man
listened in silence, his filmed eyes wandering, out of
control.
“The gods are many. Who knows how many? They
endlessly contradict each other like aphorisms. Tell me what to fear!
I’ve honored the gods both known and unknown,
emptied my coffers on temples, images, hillside
shrines. Not from conviction — I grant that too.
Is a man made holy by boldfaced lies?
There was a time I believed that the skies could open,
make horses stagger,
the soldier throw up his arms in fear. I believed, in fact, I’d seen such things. But the world changed, or my
vision changed.
What possible good in denying the fact? I could see no
proof
that Hypsipyle was evil, whatever the magic of Argus’
cloak,
tradition-trick, subtle distorter of patent truth
not, in itself, allegorical.
I saw when we beached at Samothrace
and watched the mysteries, how man’s mind
(Herakles swelling to what he believed was a god-sent
power)
was all that the mind could be sure of, how even my
own conversion
if such it was, had no sure cause in the universe.
And so descended from death to death;
learned on the isle of the Doliones
the fallacy of faith in technique and faith in perception;
learned
by the death of Hylas and loss of Herakles — the stupid
and yet unassailable assertion of Amykos—
old murderer — and the deadly confusion in Phineus’
heart—
the fundamental absurdity of the world itself, mad gods
in all-out war. I did not
shrink from these grim discoveries. Neither did I whine,
renounce
my quest, though I knew no reason for the quest.
I slogged on
toward Kolchis. What reason could hammer no
justification for,
I justified by groundless faith. Slog on or die,
abandon hope — the hope of eventual clarity.
Those were the choices. I bowed to the gods I could
not see—
or could not trust if I happened to see them, as I saw
Apollo,
striding, astounding, when we’d rowed our blood to a
state of exhaustion—
bowed because life unredeemed by the gods would be
idiocy,
bowed, yet refused to lie, claim to see things invisible.
Let the future judge me. I give you my grim prediction,
seer:
Famine is coming, deadliest of droughts.
Mankind will stagger from sea to sea, from north to
east,
seeking the word of some god and failing to find it.
“But yes, I bowed, dubious, true to my nature yet granting its
limits.
What more can heaven demand of a man?
Tell me what to fear!
I’ve walked, cold-bloodedly honest, to the rim of the
pit. I’ve affirmed
Justice, compassion, decency. When granted power
I’ve used it to benefit man. I’ve fiercely denied that life is bestial — having seen in my own life the leer of the
ape.
Yet the sky turns dark, and gods threaten me. If the
universe
is evil, then let me be martyred in battle with the
universe.
If not, then where am I mistaken?”
In silence, the seer of Apollo stretched out his arms to Jason, touching his shoulders.
The night
hung waiting. “Lord Jason, you ask me to speak as a court counsellor, a prince of wizards, a philosopher