Jason and Medeia by John Gardner Read Free Book Online Page B

them.
    Cities exist to make possible the splendid life—the life of mind and sense in harmony, fulfilled to the utmost.
    Good!
    But what of Jason’s life? But that doesn’t matter, of
    course. Not to you!
    Not with her there, pleading with her big pink boobs!
    What counts with you,
    O mixed-up Master Planner? You reason by whim, like
    the rest of us,
    for all your pompous, grandiose pretensions. Fact! You purse your lips, you muse in beatific silence, you
    nod,
    and you do what you damn well please! Well not to me,
    husband!
    I want what I want, and I’m not putting elegant names
    on it.”
    Hardly moving, Zeus glanced at her. The queen’s lips
    closed.
    Then no one spoke for a long time. The attendant
    gods
    shifted uncomfortably, sullen, from leg to leg. Yet more than a few in that hall, I thought, would have backed
    her if they dared. Athena
    gazed demurely at the floor, as if checking a smile.
    Zeus sat
    with one hand over his eyes.
    At length, as if contrite,
    Athena said softly, “It’s fair and just that you
    upbraid me, Lord.
    But my heart spoke truer than my tongue. I gave you,
    foolishly,
    the reasons I thought expedient. But it was not the
    survival
    of the city—not that alone—that I meant to beg of you. I plead for a good and patient man, a long-suffering
    man,
    one who merits what I ask for him. Aphrodite’s madness has chained him too long. Without the assistance of
    any god,
    he’s seen through it. O kind, wise Lord, don’t frustrate
    the climb
    of a virtuous man on the rising scale of Good! I claim no special virtues for cities, but this much, surely,
    is true:
    Virtue tested on rocky islands, country fields, however noble we call it, is virtue of a lesser kind— the virtue that governs the hermit, the honest shepherd.
    The common
    bee, droning from flower to flower in his garden, can
    choose
    what’s best for him and for his lowborn, pastoral clan.
    The common
    horse can be diligent at work, if his hide depends on it. The lion can settle his mind to fight, if necessary, but his virtue, for all his slickness, the speed of his
    paws, is no more
    than the snarling mongrel dog’s. It’s by what his mind
    can do
    that a man must be tested: how subtly, wisely he
    manipulates
    the world: objects, potentials, traditions of his race.
    In sunlit
    fields a man may learn about gentleness, humility— the glories of a sheep—or, again, learn craft and
    violence—
    the glories of a wolf. But the mind of man needs more
    to work on
    than stones, hedges, pastoral cloudscapes. Poets are
    made
    not by beautiful shepherdesses and soft, white sheep: they’re made by the shock of dead poets’ words, and
    the shock of complex
    life: philosophers’ ideas, strange faces, antic relics, powerful men and women, mysterious cultures. Cities are not mere mausoleums, sanctuaries for mind. They’re the raw grit that the finest minds are made of,
    the power
    that pains man’s soul into life, the creative word that
    overthrows
    brute objectness and redeems it, teaches it to sing.”
    The goddess
    bowed, an ikon of humility, and turned to the queen, stretching an arm in earnest supplication: “O Hera, Queen of Heaven, center of the world’s insatiable will, support my plea! Speak gently, allure as only you can allure great Zeus to the good he would wish,
    himself.” She bowed,
    and the dew on a fern at dawn could not rival the
    beauty of the dew
    on Athena’s delicate lashes. Aphrodite wept aloud, shamelessly, melted by Athena’s words. Even Hera was
    softened.
    As the sea whispers in the quiet of the night when
    gentle waves
    lap sandy shores, so the great hall whispered with the
    sniffling of immortal gods.
    But Zeus sat still as a mountain, unimpressed, his hand
    covering
    his eyes. The gods stood waiting.
    At last, with a terrible sigh,
    he lowered the hand. From the sadness in his eyes,
    the crushed-down