Free Jason and Medeia by John Gardner Page B

observing carefully. His beloved slave, Ipnolebes, standing beside him,
    watched
    with eyes like dagger holes, his arms folded. He seemed carved out of weathered rock. Jason gazed at the
    table—
    forehead resting on his hand, his wide shoulders low-listening thoughtfully, biding his time. Could it be
    because
    I knew the story—children murdered, Corinth in
    flames—
    that the game seemed to me suddenly ominous, a
    conflict of demons?
    Whatever the reason, I felt cold wind run down my
    spine.
    The fat man, harmless as he seemed, comically
    clowning, filled me
    with superstitious alarm.
    â€œMy noble lords,” Koprophoros
    began, bowing profoundly, “alas, you see before you a fool. How dare I deny it?” He clenched his fists,
    mock tragic,
    and let out a terrible noise, an enormous sigh. He
    winked—
    winked as if someone had pulled some secret string
    in his back.
    â€œI do my best,” he said, and gave us a sheepish smile, “but you see how it is. The gods have, in their infinite
    wisdom,
    dealt me a belly like a whale’s, fat breasts like a
    woman’s, a face
    androgynous to say the least. I manage as I can!”
    He chuckled.
    He began to pace back and forth, above the seated
    crowd,
    shaking his head and wincing, making morose faces. Mechanically each footstep picked up his tonnage from
    the last.
    He stretched his arms in Pyripta’s direction and
    shivered with woe.
    â€œI labor for dignity. Alas! Sorrow! I seem, at best, some poor old goof who’s arrived at the wrong man’s
    funeral
    and hasn’t the courage to sneak to the house next door!
    â€”Ah, well,
    the gods know what they’re doing, I always say.”
    He rolled
    his eyes up almost out of sight, then leered, mischievous,
    goatlike,
    goatlike even to the horns, the folds of his turban.
    He looked
    like the whalish medieval demon-figure Beëlzebub, in brazen armor, sneeping out jokes at God. “It has advantages, my ludicrous condition. Who’d believe a lump like me could argue religion with priests, split
    hairs
    on metaphysics with men who make it their specialty— men of books, I mean, who make scratches on leaves
    or hides
    and read them later with knowing looks, appropriate
    belches,
    foreheads wrinkled like newploughed fields? I do,
    however—
    to everyone’s astonishment. ‘We in fact may have misjudged this creature,’ they say, and look very
    solemn, and listen
    with ears well-cocked henceforth—and they get their
    money’s worth!
    I have theories to baffle the wisest sages!” He leered,
    looked sheepish,
    snatched up a winebowl, drank. “I’ve a theory that
    Time’s reversed,”
    he said then, rolling his coy, dark eyes at Pyripta.
    She blushed.
    â€œA stunning opinion, you’ll admit, though somewhat
    absurd, of course.”
    He shrugged, slid his glance to the king. When he
    winked, old Kreon smiled.
    â€œThen again, I know all the ancient tales of the scribes,
    and can tell them
    hour on hour for a year without ever repeating myself, tale unfolding from tale like petals from a rosebud,
    linked
    so slyly that no man alive can seize the floor from me, caught in my web of adventures (ladies, ensorcelled
    princes,
    demons whose doors are the roots of trees) …
    A womanish skill,
    you’ll say—and I grant it: a skill more fit for a harem
    eunuch;
    nevertheless, a skill I happen to possess—such is my foolishness, or the restlessness of my clowning mind.
    â€œ ‘How,’ you must surely be asking, ‘can this rank
    lunatic
    have power befitting a god’s—the rule of a kingdom
    as wide
    as Indus was, in the old days?’ ” He sighed and shook
    his head,
    deeply apologetic. “I must tell you the bitter truth. All my art, my theology, my metaphysics have earned me nothing! I could weep! I could tear out
    my hair!” He became
    the soul of woe. “I reason, I cajole, I confound