with a princess.
And now in impotent rage and anguish, Medeia invokes their oaths, their joined right hands, and summons
the dangerous gods
to witness the way he’s rewarded her life-long
faithfulness.
Worse yet, she curses old Kreon himself, and Kreon’s
daughter,
howling her wild imprecations for all to hear. In
her rage
she refuses to eat, sacrificing her body to grief as she sacrificed her home, her kinsmen, her happiness for Jason’s love. She wastes in tears; she cries and cries in such black despair that her sobs come welling too
fast for Medeia
to sound them. She lies stretched wailing on the stones
and refuses to lift
her eyes or to raise her face from the floor. To all we say she’s deaf as a boulder, an ocean wave. She refuses
to speak—
she can only curse her betrayal of her father, murder
of her brother,
death of her sister Khalkiope, through Aietes’ rage— for all of which she blames herself alone, as if no one before her had ever betrayed on earth. She takes no joy anymore in her sons: her eyes seem filled
with hate
when she looks at them. It shocks me with fear to see it.
Her mood
is dangerous. She’ll never submit to this monstrous
wrong.
I know her. It makes me sick with fear. Let any man
rouse
Medeia’s hate and hard indeed he’ll find it to escape unmarked by her.”
Agapetika opened her eyes in alarm, straining — grotesquely fat, feeble — to turn her head for a view of the door at her back. In the hallway,
the old male slave
and the children approached, the two boys squealing
and laughing, the old man
shushing them. She slued clumsily, inching around on the hassock to watch them pass. The old man
paused, looked in,
his lean face drawn and crabbed. The eyebags drooping
to his cheeks
were as gray and wrinkled as bark. He whispered,
“What’s this moaning
that fills all the house with noise? How could you
leave your lady?
Did Medeia consent?”
She shook her head, lips trembling, tears now brimming afresh. “Old man — old guardian
of Jason’s sons—
how can the troubles of masters not soon bring sorrow
to their slaves?
I’ve left her alone for a little to grant my own grief
vent.”
He turned his head, as if looking through walls to
Medeia’s room.
“No change?” he asked. She covered her face.
“No change,” she said.
“My poor Medeia’s troubles have scarcely begun.”
The old man narrowed his eyes. Then, hoarsely: Poor blind fool—
if slaves
may say such things of masters. There’s reason more
than she knows
for all this woe and rage.”
Agapetika inched around more to stare at the man in fear. “What now?” she exclaimed.
“Sir, do not
keep from me what you’ve heard.”
He shook his head. “No, nothing. Vague speculation. Mere idle talk.” The twins had
run on—
romping to their room, indifferent and blind to misery— and his eyes went after them, grudging. The whole
afternoon they’d kept him
plodding with hardly a rest. At the crest of every hill his old heart thudded in his throat, and his brains went
light, so that
to keep his knees from buckling he would stretch out
his hands to a tree
or ivied gatepost, coughing and gulping for air.
In the park
high above seacliffs, he’d met with a fellow slave,
a servant
in Kreon’s palace, and there, where leafless ramdikes
arched
past hedges still bright green — where the sky,
the distant buildings,
highways and bridges were as drab as in winter
despite the glow
of lawns grown rich and lush, deceived by late
summer rain—
he’d heard this newest catastrophe. He revealed it now, compelled by the old woman’s eyes. He said: “The
palace slaves,
who know the old king’s purposes sooner than
Kreon himself,
are certain the contest’s settled already, as though
no man
had spoken in all this time but Jason alone.”
“Then our fears are realized,” the old woman said; “no hope of escape!”
There’s more,” he said, and avoided her look. “In the
palace they say
the king is resolved to expel our mistress and her
two sons
from Corinth. He thinks it a generous act, considering
her powers
and her sons’ inevitable position as royal pretenders.
I cannot
say all this is true. But I fear it may be.”
“And will our Jason allow such things?” the old woman asked.
But already
she saw that he might. She whimpered, Though he and
Medeia are at odds,
surely he hasn’t forgotten so soon what pain she
suffered,
torn long ago from her homeland and dearest friends!
Though he needs
no friends himself, quick to win facile admirers, thanks to that dancing tongue, and at any rate more pleased,
by nature,
with work than with love — like Argus, like the
god Hephaiastos,
a creature sufficient to himself, his heart all schemes—
surely
he knows our lady’s needs! She might have been queen,
herself,
of all dark-forested Kolchis, had her fate run otherwise; she might have had no more need than he of enfolding
arms,
shield against darkness and senselessness. He robbed
her of that—
became himself her homeland, father, brother and sister, her soul’s one labor and religion. Can he dare make all
that void?—
by a fingersnap make all she’s lived an illusion?
Can he turn
on his own two children, change them to shadows,
to nothing, as though
they’d no more solid flesh than a glimmering
wizard’s trick?”
As if to himself, the old man said, “The familiar ties are weaker now. He’s no more a friend to this gloomy,
crumbling
house. — Say nothing to Medeia.”
Just then, beside him at the door, the twins appeared and looked in, curious, no longer
laughing,
coming to see what was wrong. The woman cried,
“Children, behold
what love your father bears for you! I will not
curse him—
my master yet — but no man alive is more treasonous?
The male slave scowled. “Let the children be, mere
eight-year-olds,
what have they to do with treasons? As for Jason,
what man
is better, old woman? Now that you’re old, look squarely
at the world.
All men care for themselves and for nobody else.
All men
would joyfully swap away sons for the pleasures of a
new bride’s bed.”
She was still, looking at the children. At last, with
a heavy sigh:
“Go, boys, play in your room. All will be well.” And then to the attendant: “You, sir, keep them off to themselves,
I beg you.
Take them nowhere in range of their mother in
her present mood.
Already I’ve seen her glaring at the children savagely,
threatening mischief. She’ll not leave off this rage,
I know,
till she’s struck some victim dead. I pray to the gods
her wrath
may light among foes, not friends.”
From deeper in the house then came a wail deep-throated and wild as the cry of a
jungle beast.
My veins ran ice and I jerked up my arm to my face.
A shock
of pain flashed through me, innumerable bruises, and
I nearly revealed
my hiding place in the shadow of the black oak bed.
The slaves
listened to Medeia’s wail as if numbed. When the
old woman
could speak, she said: “Go to your room now quickly!
Be wary!
Do not provoke that violent heart! Hurry! Go swiftly!