so horribly.”
   Zeus said, “If Artemis wishes to speak let her speak.”
But the goddess
at my side said nothing. âThen I will speak,” said
Zeus crossly,
disdaining to shift his glance to tearful Aphrodite.
“The fire
of zeal has never had a purpose. It is what it is, simply, and any ends it may stumble to it's indifferent to. As for Medeia, make no mistake, nothing on earth is more pureâmore raised from self to selfless
absoluteâ
than a woman betrayed. For all their esteem,
immortal gods
follow like foaming rivers the channels available
to them.
Enough. Annoy us no more, Goddess.” She backed off,
curtsying,
glancing furtively around to see who might be snickering
at her.
   And now gray-eyed Athena spoke, the goddess of cities and goddess of works of mind. In her shadow professors
crouched,
stern and rebuking, with swollen red faces and
pedantic hearts;
lawyers at the edge of apoplexy from righteous
indignation;
poets and painters with their pockets crammed full of
sharp scissors and knives;
and ministers cunning in Hebrew. With a smile
disarming and humorousâ
but I knew her heart was troubledâshe said, “Father
of the Gods,
no one has firmer faith than I in your power to keep all promisesâcomplex and contradictory
as at times they seem.” She glanced at the goddess
of love and smiled,
then added, her tone too casual, I thought, and her teeth
too bright,
“But I cannot deny, my lord, that my mind's on fire
to understand
how you can hope to keep this one, for surely your
promise to me,
that Jason shall rule in Corinth, must cancel the
opposing promise
that Jason will cleave to Medeia. I beg you, end
our suspense
and explain away this mystery, for my peace of mind.”
   For the first time, the beams of the eyes of Zeus
swung down
and he met the gaze of his cunning child Athena.
He said,
his voice dark beyond sadness, “By murder and agony on every side, by release of the dragons and the burning
of Corinth,
by shame that so spatters the skirts of the gods that
never again
can any expect or deserve man's praiseâby these
cruel means
I juggle your idiot demands to their grim
consummation.” So he spoke,
So he spoke,
and spoke no more. The goddesses gazed at each other,
aghast,
then looked again, disbelieving, at Zeus.
   It was Hera who spoke, queen of goddesses. “Husband, your words cut deep,
as no doubt
you intend them to. But I know you too well, and I
think I know
your disgusting scheme. You told us at the time of
your promises
that our wishes were selfish and cruel. In your bloated
self-righteousness,
you imagine you'll shock us to shame by these terrible
threats, pretending
we've brought these horrors on ourselves. My lord,
we're not such children
as to tumble to that! The cosmos is fecund with
ways and means,
and surely you, who can see all time's possibilitiesâ such, if I'm not mistaken, is your claimâsurely you
could find
innumerable tricks to provide us with all we desire,
without
this monstrous bloodbath and, at last, this toppling of
the whole intent
of our three wishes. O Master of Games, I remain
unpersuaded
by your floorless, roofless nobility. You want no more
or less than
we
do:
triumph and personal glory. It's to spite us you do these things. Like the spiteful bigot who
dances in the street
when the brothel burns and the wicked run screaming
and flaming to the arms
of Death, you dance in your hell-cavern mind
at the terrible sight
of hopes-beneath-your-lofty-dignity shattered, proved
shameful.
Well Iâfor oneâI'll not bend to that high-toned
dogmatism!
Bring on your death's-heads! Kindle your hellfires!
Unleash the shrieks
of humanity enraged! Prate, preach, pummel us!
I'll not be fooled:
from rim to rim of the universe, all is selfishness
and wrath.”
So saying, she struggled to free her hand from the
arm of the throne
and Zeus's grip, but his hand lay on hers as indifferent
and heavy
as a block of uncut stone. Then Hera wept. And before my baffled eyes her form grew uncertain, changing
and shadowy,
as if hovering, tortured, between warring potentials,
and one of them
was
Life.
I remembered Phineus.
   Gently and softly Athena spoke. Her eyes were cunning, watching
her father
like a hawk. “My lord, your words have upset us,
as you see. If we speak
in haste, our words not carefully considered, I'm sure
your wisdom
forgives us. Yet perhaps the queen of goddesses is right
after all
that there may be some way you've missed that could
lead to a happier issueâ
satisfaction of our wishes without such deplorable
waste.”
“There's none,” said Zeus. She glanced at him, sighed,
then began again.
“Perhaps nowâknowing what our wishes entailâwe
might modify them.”
She glanced at Aphrodite. The goddess of love with
a fiery glance
at Hera said, “It was youâyou twoâif you care
to remember,
who begged me to
start
this love affair. But now,
just like that,
I'm to turn my back on it. “Run along, Aphrodite, dear, you've served your purpose.' ” She stretched out an arm
to Zeus. “I ask you,
would
you
put up with such treatment? Am I some
scullery-slave,
some errand runner? What have they ever done for me?”
Zeus sighed,
said nothing. Athena pleaded, “But what are we to do?
Am I
to grovel at the sandals of this cosmic cow? And
even if I did,
would Hera do it?” The queen of goddesses flashed,
“Don't be fooled!
If tragedy strikes, there's no one to blame but Zeus!”
Then they waited,
leaving the outcome to Zeus. He stared into space. At last he lowered his fist slowly from his chin. “Let it be,”
he said.
From wall to wall through the infinite palace, the
gods gasped,
and instantly all the earth was filled with the rumble
of dragons
growling up out of the abyss, all the oldest, gravest
of terrors
from the age before hunters first learned to make peace
with the bear they killed,
the age when the farmer in Eden was first
understanding remorse
for the tear he made in Nature when he backed away,
became
a man, devourer of his mother and bane of his father,
his sons,
outcast of all Time-SpaceâDionysos' prey, and scorn of the endlessly fondling, fighting baboons. All progress,
like the flesh
of the sick old trapper in the lair of his daughters,
those dragons rose,
like violent sons, devouring. The sky went black
with smoke.
“No!” I whispered, “it mustn't be allowed!” The
goddess said nothing.
I grew more excited. I would do something foolish in a
moment, I knew,
but the knowledge failed to check me. I snatched off
my glasses and whispered,
“Where are those others, those three goddesses who
danced? They must help us!”
“They're here,” she answered, “but obscured, weighed
down.” She nodded at the three
by Zeus's throne, and I saw that it was so:
Vision
burned dimly,
like a hooded candle, in Athena's eyes, and
Love
flickered
in Aphrodite's, and
Life
fought weakly, like a failing
blush,
in Hera's cheeks. “But
you,”
I said then, my excitement
rising,
“you, Goddess of Purity and Zealâsurely you at least are one and unchangeable! Your power could save us,
yet here in the house
of the gods, you're silent as stone.” Then, horribly,
before my eyesâ
no surer than anything else in my vision's deluding
mistsâ
the shadowy figure altered, became like a heavy
old farm-wife,
sly-eyed, smiling like a witch. She croaked: “Come,
see me as I am.
The crowd of the living are phrenetic with business.
I alone am inactive.
My mind is like a dolt's. All the world is alert; I alone
am drowsy.
Calm like the sea, like a high wind never ceasing.
All the world
is tremulous with purpose; I am foolish, untaught. Tentative, like a man fording a river in winter; hesitant, as if fearful of neighbors; formal like a guest; falling apart like thawing ice, as vacant as a valley.⦔ I stared in amazement, though a moment's reflection
would have shown me the truth:
even the goddess of purity and zeal had her earthen side, sodden and selfish, determined to endure, outwitting
the world
by magically becoming it. The two moon-goddesses,
Artemis and Hekate,
were secretly the same.
I turned, despairing
of the purity drowned in that warty, fiat-headed lump.
But the farm-wife
reached to me, checking my impulse to flee, and argued
with me further,
queerly indifferent herself, I thought, to the argument. Her few teeth were like a dog's; her withered hands
were palsied.
“ âOn disaster,' the brave and ambitious say, âgood
fortune perches.'
But I say, âIt is beneath good fortune that disaster
crouches.' ”
She leered again, and by a gesture incredibly simple
and subtleâ
no more, perhaps, than the slightest perceptible
movement of her eyesâ
she suggested a huge and obscene bump and grind.
She cooed, eyes closed,
“The further one goes
the less one knows
for hustle and bustle,
for hustle and bustle;
Therefore the wise man moves not a muscle.”
She chuckled, foolish and apologetic, and I determined
to waste no more time on her.
Reckless and honest as a madman, I burst
through the seething ocean of gods to Zeus's feet,
where Apollo,
shining like the mirroring sea, sat tuning his lyre
for a songâ
gentle Apollo with the dragon tusks of Helios.
“Stop!” I cried outâand all motion stopped, even
the movement
of Apollo's sleeve in the gentle cosmic wind. I shouted, angrily slamming my right fist into my left-hand palm, “I object! This palace is a mockery! The whole creation is a monstrous, idiotic mockery! The silliest child on
his mother's knee
knows good from evil, selfishness from love.” Nothing
stirred, no one moved.
I turned around, gazed at the gods stretching out in
all directions from the throne,
and my soul was filled with amazement and ecstasy at
my power to instruct and lecture them.
I stretched out my hands like a preacher addressing
multitudes, and I felt aglow
like a winter sun. “If the truth is so clear even dogs
can see it, how dare the gods
be baffled and befuddled, raising up time after time mad
idiots to positions of power,
filling the schools with professors with not one jot or
tittle of love for the things
they pretend to teach; filling the pulpits with atheists
and cowards who put on their robes
for love of their mothers, merely; and filling the courts
with lawyers indifferent to justice,
the medical schools with connivers and thieves and
snivelling, sneaking incompetents,
the seats of government with madmen and bulliesâall
this though nothing in the world is clearer
than evil and good, the line between justice and
unselfishness (the way of the decent)
and cowardice, piggish greed, foul arrogance, the
filth-fat darkness of the devil's forces!”
As I spoke, declaiming, making existence as clear
as dayâ
saying nothing not spoken by the noblest of poets and
sages since time
began (and I said far more than I've set down here,
believe meâ
revealed to the gods all the wisdom of the Hindus,
the secret rediscovered
by Schopenhauer, how man must perceive that the
spirit in himself
is a spark of the fire that's in all things living, so that
hurting another
means hurting himself; told them how Jesus was angry
at the tomb
of Lazarus, how the awesome Tibetan
Book of the Dead
has a lower truth and a higher truth; told them of
the poetry
of Chaucer and Shakespeare, Homer and Virgil, Chia Yi
and Tu Fu,
and the anonymous Keltsâ
The hall of Cynddylan is
dark tonight,
without fire, without candle. But for God, who'll give
me sanity?
â
all this and more)âas I spoke I felt more and more
filled with light,