their streets,
waiting for some unquestionable wrongâwaiting on
graveward â¦
Precisely because of all that I've done what I've done,
raised men
to test this lord of the Argonauts. I have never failed
him
yet, and I will not now; but I mean to annoy him to
conflict,
badger till he racks his brains for a proof he believes,
himself,
of his worthiness. I mean to change him, improve him,
for love
of Corinth, Queen of Cities. You speak of Space and
Time.
No smallest grot, O Queen, can shape its identity outside that double power: a thing is its history, the curve of its past collisions, as it locks on the
moment. What force
it learned from yesterday's lions is now mere handsel
in the den
of the dragon Present Space. And therefore I raise
opposition
to Jason's will, to temper it. His anguine mind, despite those rueful looks, will find some way.”
The queen
seemed dubious. It was not absolutely clear to me that she perfectly followed the train of thought. But hardly knowing what else to be, she was
reconciled.
Gray-eyed Athena, encouraged, and ever incurably
impish,
turned to the love goddess. “You, sweet sister,” she said
with a look
so gentle I might have wept to see it, “don't take it to
heart
that the queen of goddesses turns on you in her fury
when I,
and I alone, am at fault. If my motives indeed were
those
she first suspected, then well might I call to my dear
Aphroditeâ
sitting graveolent in her royal hebetation, surrounded by
all
her holouriesâfor help. Such is not the case, however. Let there be peace between us, I pray, as always.”
So speaking
she raised Aphrodite's hands and tenderly kissed them.
The love goddess
sobbed.
Then everything moved againâthe branches in the
windows,
the people, the animals, wine in the pitcher. Then Kreon
rose.
The roar died down respectfully.
“These are terrible charges,”
the old man said, and his furious eyes flashed fire
through the hall,
condemned the whole pack. “I've lived many years and
seen many things,
but I doubt that even in war I have seen such hostility. When Oidipus sought in maniacal rage that man who'd
brought down
plagues on Thebesâwhen Antigone left me in fiery
indignation
to defy my perhaps inhuman but surely most reasonable
lawâ
not then nor then did I see such wrath as has narrowed
the eyes
of Paidoboron and Koprophoros. It's not easy for me to believe such outrage can trace its genesis to reason!
However,
the charge, whatever its source, requires an answer.”
He turned
to Jason, bowed to him and waited. The warlike son of
Aison
sat head-bent, still frowning. At last he glanced up, then
rose,
and Kreon sat down, gray-faced. The smile half breaking
at the corners
of Jason's mouth was Athena's smile; the dagger flash
in his eyes was the work
of Hera. Love was not in him, though his voice was
gentle.
“My friends,
I stand accused of atrocities,” he said, “and the chief is
this:
I have severed my head from my heart, a point made
somehow clear
by dark, bifarious allegory. I have lost my soul to a world where languor cries unto languor, where
cicadas sing
âPerhaps it is just as well.' In the real worldâthe world
which I
have lyred to its premature graveâthere is love between
women and men,
faith between men and the gods. If you here believe all
that,
believe that in every condition the good cries fondly to
the good,
and the heart, by its own pure fire, can physician the
anemic mind,
I would not dissuade you. Faith has a powerful
advantage over truth,
while faith endures. But as for myself, I must track
mere truth
to whatever lair it haunts, whether high on some noble
old mountain,
or down by the dump, where half-starved rats scratch
by as they can,
and men not blessed with your happy opinions must feed
on refuse
and find their small satisfactions.
“My art is false, you say.
I answer: whatever art I may show is the world itself. The universe teems with potential Forms, though only
a few
are illustrated (a cow, a barn, a startling sunset); to trace the history of where we are is to arrive where
we are.
There are no final points in the journey of life up out of silence: there are only moments of process, and in some
few moments,
insight. Search all you wish for the key I've buried, you
say,
in the coils of my plot, Koprophoros. The tale, you'll
find,
is darker than thatâand more worthy of attention. It
exists.
It has its history, its dreadful or joyful direction. The
ghostly allegory
you charge me with is precisely what my tale denies. The truth of the world, if I've understood it,
is this:
Things die. Alternatives kill. I leave it to priests to speak of eternal things.
“And as for you, Paidoboron,
if I claim that the world has betrayals in it, don't howl
too soon.
Every atom betrays; every stick and stone and galaxy. Notice two lodestones: notice how they war. But turn
one around
and behold how they lock like lovers embraced in their
tomb. So this:
some things click in. Some sanctuaries, at least for a
time,
are inviolable. What fuses the metals in the ice-bright
ring
of earth and sky, burns mind into heart, weds man to
woman
and king to state? What power is in them? That,
whatever
it is, is the golden secret, precisely the secret I stalk and all of us here must stalk. I've told you failure on
failure,
holding back nothing. But I still have a tale or two to
tellâ
meaningless enough in the absence of all I've told
alreadyâ
that you may not mock so quickly.”
He was silent. Had he tricked them again,
danced them out of their wits like a prophet of
gyromancy?
Athena smiled and winked at Jason. Dark Aphrodite glanced at Hera for assurance that all was well.
Then Kreon
rose again, gazed round. When no one dared to speak, he turned to his slave Ipnolebes, who nodded in silence. Kreon rubbed his hands together, furious, and at last pronounced the matter closed. He dismissed the whole
assembly
till the hour of the evening meal, when Jason would
resume his tale,
and, taking the princess' elbow in his hand, bowing to
left
and right, unsmiling, he descended from the dais. As
the two passed
the threshold, the others all rose and followed, and so
the hall
was emptied except for the slavesânear the door the
Northerner
and the boy. The goddess vanished. The vision went
dark. I heard
the nightmare crowd on the move again, in the shadow
of the beast,
smothered in the skirts of the prostitute. Then sound,
too, ceased,
and I hung in darkness, nowhere, clinging to the oak's
rough bark.
A blore of wind, like the breeze at the entrance to a cave,
tore
at the ragged tails of my overcoat, sheathed my
spectacles in ice.
I stood, by the goddess' will, in Medeia's room. Pale
light
fell over her, fell swirling, burning on the golden fleece beside her, and then moved on, moved past the two old
slaves
to the door where the children watched. I could not
look at them
for pain and shame. Dreams they might be, as old and
pale
as ghosts in the cairns of Newgrange, but dream or
solid flesh,
they were children, inexplicably doomed. How could
I close my wits
on truths so weird? (Who can believe in the spectre
who walks
leukemia wards, who stands severe above laughing girls whose hearts pump dust? Who can believe those
pictures in the news
of a million children, senselessly cursed, dying in
silence,
caught up in Dionysos' wars, or the refugee camps of Artemis? ) All time inside them ⦠And then I did
look,
searching their eyes for the secret, and found there
nothing. Softly,
my guide, invisible around me, spoke. “Poor dim-eyed
-stranger,
you've understood the question, at least. Look! Look
hard!
Study their eyes, windows of the world you seek and
they
have not yet dreamed the price of: the timeless instant.
They have
no plans, only flimmering dreams of plans, intentions
dark
as the lachrymal flutter of corpse-candles. Their time
is reverie.
But already will is uncoiling there. They flex their
fingers,
restless at the long dull watch. The garden is filled with
birds,
bright sunlight. They remember a cart with a broken
wheel, a cave
of vines by the garden wall. They have now begun to be of two minds. Now love and hate grow thinkable, sacrifice and murder, mercy and judgment. And now,
look close:
with a glance at each otherâsly grins, infectious, so
that we smile too,
remembering, projecting (for we, we too, were children
once,
slyly becoming ourselves, unaware of the risk)âthey
step,
soundless as deer, to the doorway and through it to
their liberty.
Or so they guess, unaware that the house will vanish,
and the gardenâ
and the palsied slaves they've slipped they will find
transmogrified
to skulls, bits of ashen cloth, dark bone. And they'll
wring their hands,
restless again, and search in children's eyes for peace, in vain. Yet there is peace. Strange peace: from the
blood of innocents.
You'll see. The gods have ordained it.” I stared, alarmed
at that,
and snatched off my glasses to hunt with my naked
eyes for the shadeâ
she-witch, goddess, I knew not whatâbut no trace
of her.
I turned up the collar of my coat, for the room had
grown chilly. And then
she spoke one brief word more: “Listen.”
On the bed, eyes staring,
Medeia spoke, ensorcelledâdeath-pale lips unmoving. I glanced, alarmed, at her eyes and my glance was held;
I seemed
to fall toward them, and they weren't eyes now but
pits, an abyss,
unfathomable, plunging into space. I cried out, clutched
my spectacles.
The wind soughed dark with words and the pitch-dark
wings of ravens
crying in Medeia's voice:
“I little dreamed, that night,
sleeping in my father's high-beamed hall, that I'd
sacrifice
all this, my parents' love, the beautiful home of my
childhood,
even my dear brother's life, for a man who lay, that
moment,
hidden in the reeds of the marsh. Had I not been happy
thereâ
dancing with the princes of Aia on my father's floors of
brass
or walking the emerald hills above where wine-dark
oxen
labored from dawn to dusk, above where pruning-men
crept,
weary, along dark slopes of their poleclipt vineyard
plots?
I'd talked, from childhood up, with spirits, with
all-seeing ravens,
sometimes with swine where they fed by the rocks
under oak trees, eating
acorns, treasure of swine, and drank black water,
making
their flesh grow rich and sweet and their brains grow
mystical.
No princess was ever more free, more proud and sure
in the halls
of her father, more eager to please with her mother.
But the will of the gods
ran otherwise.”
The voice grew lighter all at once, the voice
of a schoolteacher reading to children, some trifling,
unlikely tale
that amuses, fills in a recess, yet troubles the grown-up
voice
toward sorrow. She told, as if gently mocking the
tragedy,
of gods and goddesses at ease in their windy palaces where the hourglass-sand takes a thousand years to
form the hill
an ant could create, here on earth, in half an hour. She
told
of jealousies, foolish displays of celestial skill and
spite;
and in all she said, I discovered as I listened, one thing
stood plain:
she knew them well, those antique gods and mortals,
though she mocked
their foolishness. I peered all around me to locate the
speaker,
but on all sides lay darkness, the infinite womb of
space.
She told, first, how Athena and Hera looked down
and, seeing
the Argonauts hidden in ambush, withdrew from Zeus
and the rest
of the immortal gods. When the two had come to a
rose-filled arbor,
Hera said, “Daughter of Zeus, advise me. Have you
found some trick
to enable the men of the
Argo
to carry the fleece away? Or have you possibly constructed some flattering