The Last Song of Orpheus (11 page)

We sailed up that uncharted westward-flowing river through bitter lands of ice and snow, shivering in northern gales that slowed the very course of our blood. The oarsmen’s hands froze as they gripped the oars. Storms assailed us and came close to shattering our mast. Huge deadly floating masses of ice came drifting all about us, jutting up far above us and making every day seem like a running of the Clashing Rocks. We grew gaunt and weak with hunger, but Ancaeus did wondrous deeds at the helm and I beat time for the weary men with whatever energy remained in me, and we managed to go on. 

Deep in the heart of the continent we found at last another mighty river, likewise unknown then to any Hellene mariner, that rose somewhere at the world’s end and flowed southward into our own broad-breasted ocean. When we emerged finally into a place of warmer weather, new storms caught us and spun us around, driving us northward again past the coast of what we surmised was Italy. We fought our way south once more, entering at last into the Tyrrhenian Sea that we knew would take us back to the Hellene lands, only to find ourselves confronted by the isle where the Sirens dwelled, those seductive singers who are put there to lure mariners to their destruction. “There is no other way for us,” said Ancaeus, “but to go past their shore. But who can resist the Sirens’ song?” 

Well, I had sung three-headed Cerberus into pleasant slumber, and I had soothed the serpent guardian of the Fleece the same way, and now I took lyre in hand to get us past this peril as well, for I knew that other tasks awaited me beyond this voyage and we were not destined to end our days here.

These Sirens are my cousins, daughters of my mother’s sister Terpsichore the muse. Their voices are clear and beautiful, and when travelworn seamen pass their island they sing out in chorus, beckoning them ashore to supposed delights, but actually intending their deaths. They offer soft bosoms and a warm resting-place to weary travelers, and few can say no to them. 

But I know a little about the art of song myself; and as the Sirens began their lovely song, I cut across it with a rousing chanty of my own that entirely canceled out their alluring harmonies, breaking over them and engulfing them in robust manly rhythms. I sang to the oarsmen of all that we had endured, and all that we had achieved, and of how close we were now to home and the glory that awaited us upon our return. My song lifted their spirits, and, exhausted and famished though they were, they pulled hard at their oars, and the Sirens were powerless to make themselves heard above my voice and the steady thrumming of my lyre. Only one of our number, young Butes of Iolcus, was able to tune his ear to their song instead of mine, and leaped overboard and swam on toward shore, where those devilish sisters pounced upon him in the surf. 

To Sicily then we came, King Alcinous’ realm. There we were met with a welcoming feast. But even as we rejoiced in this comfort after our hard voyage, dark sails appeared off shore: yet another fleet of Colchis, sent out by Aietes to rove the seas in search of Medea and the Fleece. Of course they could not attack us while we were Alcinous’ guests; but the Colchian envoy who went before the king accused us of theft and worse, and asked Alcinous to turn over to them all that we had stolen from their king. And Alcinous, fearing to make an enemy of Aietes and unwilling also to bring the wrath of thundering Zeus upon himself, showed a willingness to do so. 

Jason was unable to refute these accusations, and was helpless and baffled here. But Medea stood up boldly before the king and begged for mercy from him, pleading with him not to separate her from Jason, whom the gods had destined for her as her mate. Surely, she said, her father, who had never loved her and now looked upon her as a traitor, would put her to death if she were brought back to Colchis. Did Alcinous, that wise and generous king, mean to send a guest of his household to such a death? 

Alcinous was moved by her tender words, just as Jason, earlier, had been swayed by her angry ones. The king declared that if she was still a virgin, he would indeed send her back to Aietes, for Aietes had a father’s right to her and Jason had none at all. But if Medea and Jason were married, he would not come between a husband and his wife. That night we poured the wine and honey for the gods, and sacrificed the sheep, and built a wedding bed for Jason and Medea with the Golden Fleece spread upon it as a coverlet; and so, in haste, their marriage was consummated in this foreign land instead of in Jason’s father’s house in Iolcus, as he had intended. It may have been a happy night for them but there would be little happiness for these two in the years ahead. 

Concerning the remainder of our long time of tribulations I will be brief. When we left Sicily we were caught by a northerly gale and blown toward sun-parched Africa, into the Gulf of Libya, where our ship was caught by one of the wild tides of that place and carried far up onto the desert shore. Ancaeus the helmsman gave way to grief at this; for not only were we beached, but he knew that when the tide returned it would sweep us just as irresistibly out upon the rocky shoals that rose everywhere in this desolate place, and our hull would be shattered beyond hope of repair. So there was no alternative for us but to take the terrible weight of the
Argo
upon our backs, lifting the ship and hauling it across the desert, day after brutal day, an effort that very nearly was beyond our ability. At last, just as we were coming to the last of our endurance, we reached navigable waters beyond. No suffering in all the time since we had first set out was equal to the suffering that this portage imposed on us; and we were weeping tears of blood by the time we staggered at last to the brink of a
brackish lake and put the
Argo
’s keel into water once more. 

To the open sea we sailed, and thence to Crete, and by one way and another we made our way homeward. You will know that Jason took the Fleece and his bride to Pasagae, where there was great rejoicing. Even King Pelias, he who had sent Jason on the long quest, pretended to be pleased at his return with the Fleece. Old Aeson, Jason’s father, had died during his absence. Medea, who by then was with child by Jason, charmed Pelias into believing that she could through her witchcraft make him young again, but that monstrous woman gave him poison instead of some magic elixir, so that he perished in a terrible way and Jason became king in Iolcus. After which, as you know, he strayed from Medea in his affections, embracing Glauce, the daughter of the Theban king; but fierce vengeful Medea slew not only Glauce but her own two young children, leaving only their corpses for Jason, and fled from Thessaly to many other dark exploits elsewhere, of which I need not sing here. And the last years of splendid Jason were blackened by grief and shame. 

As for me, I left the
Argo
in the Peloponnese and undertook a pilgrimage to Hades’ gate at Tainaron, that place where I had parted forever from my Eurydice. A commandment had been laid upon me to offer up a ceremony of thanksgiving there to the gods for my safe return, which I duly performed, asking no questions. And then finally I went back to Thrace, where the gods meant me to resume my responsibilities as a teacher and a leader, and eventually to meet my doom.

14

I dwelled in Thrace for a good many years, then, continuing the work among the harsh and rude Ciconians that I had begun before Cheiron summoned me off to the voyage for the Fleece, and I achieved much that was useful in bringing them toward civilization. Not that I remained there constantly, for an oracle I had consulted had warned me that a kind of restlessness would overcome me from time to time and, with nothing more than my lyre and the sack upon my back, I must get myself off to some distant land and take part in whatever sacred Mysteries were celebrated there. Such journeys were all part of my task. To fulfill my role in maintaining the great harmony of the universe I must go from place to place as I am told, either to teach or just to sing and play, as is needed. 

During one of these absences the great war broke out between Hellas and Troy. I need not sing that tale here, the story of Agamemnon and Menelaus and Helen and Paris and Achilles and Hector and all the rest, for others have sung it as well as any mortal ever could. When all that was happening I was far away, visiting Egypt once more—a new Pharaoh ruled there now, a shriveled, fleshless boy whose soul was as dry as the desert sounds of his kingdom. He showed no sign of mortal emotion whatever and wore his double crown like the aegis of a god. This king wanted none of my songs and would have sent me away, though after a time he relented and let me stay, and even had me shown into the richly painted underground chamber where the Pharaoh whom I had known now lay
buried amid all his lavish treasures. 

Pharaoh’s priests shared much arcane wisdom with me, and I stayed with them for several years, to my great benefit, until finally an inner voice told me it was time to go, that the course of my destiny would now take me elsewhere. So back I went to rugged mountain-girt Thrace again. There I learned that while I was still in Egypt, renewing my studies in the lore of that ancient land, the war at Troy had ended and Odysseus of Ithaca, the wily son of my old
Argo
shipmate Laertes, had put ashore at my capital city of Ismarus in the early days of his long voyage home. And Odysseus had let his men sack the place, so that I found much of it wrecked upon my return. 

Well, it is the will of the gods that the fortunes of cities ebb and flow; and so I led my people in a great rebuilding, and soon we had the place restored again. Then I considered the work of the spirit that still remained for me to do among the Ciconians. Thrace was then, as it had always been, under the thrall of the violent god Dionysus, who brings the frenzy of madness to men. It is well known that I myself have been sworn all my days to the tranquility and sanity of great Apollo, and I saw it as my duty to bring my people over to Apollo’s noble creed, a difficult task indeed. Now, though, I had new knowledge that I could employ. In the course of my second visit to Egypt it had become clear to me that Dionysus and Apollo are merely different aspects of the same divinity, the two sides of the image in the mirror, and I hoped to make use of that revelation as a force for the conversion of my people. But the work went slowly. The Ciconians loved their wild god. 

I was interrupted now and again in my task by that restlessness of which I have spoken. On one of those journeys I encountered tireless Odysseus, ever a rover himself, who in the autumn of his years, gray-bearded and bent with age, his once-bright eyes now dimmed and his burly shoulders rounded and slumping, had left his home and wife in Ithaca to roam the world as so often he had done in his stormy youth. We met—by chance, some might say, though I know otherwise—in a tavern in Athens, the city that Theseus had founded in Attica. “The seer Teiresias told me,” he said, “that I would make one more voyage in my old age, though he did not tell me where I would go. But Poseidon, who visits me by night in dreams that shake my bed, will give me no rest until I do.” 

He was thinking of going to Egypt, he said. But I saw nothing promising for that crafty man in so staid and rigid a land. He would only break himself against the immovable hieratic stillness of that unchanging place. Instead I urged him toward the west, toward the undiscovered realms beyond the sunset. What you have always chosen to do, I told him, was to follow knowledge like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought; and that is what you must do again on this new and final voyage of yours. As I spoke, an unearthly light entered his eyes, which took on again all that eagerness and hunger for experience that had driven him in earlier times, and the years seemed to drop away from him so that he seemed once more to be the potent far-seeing leader whose sagacity and guile had guided the Hellenes so well in their war against Priam’s Troy. 

So I went to sea with Odysseus. He bought a ship in Athens—it was not nearly so fine as the
Argo
, but it would do—and put up postings for crewmen—they flocked to his banner, not a band of heroes such as the Argonauts had been, but good enough for the job—and westward off we went, past the isles of Hellas, past Italy, into the unknown. 

Early in the journey he spoke to me, of his own accord, of the sacking of my city. “The wind,” he said, “drove us from Troy to your Ismarus, and we came ashore very hungry and badly in need of fresh water. You know how that is. As you might guess, we weren’t greeted with any sort of friendliness. But we had just come from the destruction of a much greater city than yours and were full of a sense of our own strength, and so we fell upon your Ciconians and took from them by force what they wouldn’t give us out of generosity. You know how it is.” 

“I know how it is, yes.” 

“But then”—and such a look of great sadness and regret came into those cunning eyes that for a moment I could almost believe was a genuine show of his feelings—“then, after swilling too much wine and slaughtering too many sheep, my foolish men turned mutinous and began to loot the city and seize the women, and nothing I could say would hold them back. How that angered me, to see them running wild that way!”