Tower of Ivory - "A Twisted, Wending Road"

A Twisted, Wending Road

Another story of Oedipus,

being

Excerpted Fragments from the Journal of the Playwright Sophocles
Day 50

It is hard to believe that this is the fiftieth day of this accursed war. W W ent out for a wander today, to clear my brain and see if I could come up with another idea for a play. It’s time I took up another one, but I’m still lost as to a plot. This war takes up too many thoughts – I’ve no energy to create anymore. On my ramble I found myself in that same odd cleft in the mountain. It seems to draw me. I’m not sure why. Perhaps the ghosts of an old family haunt it, waiting for someone to tell their story.

Day 56

A queer thing happened today. I went out wandering again and, while watching the clouds, I stumbled back into that strange cleft. As I looked around and realized where I was, I heard a noise like wind in the treetops, or a voice sighing over some ancient sorrow. It rushed past me and as it reached the end of the ravine, a small rockslide occurred, leaving a gaping hole that appeared to be a cave. I went inside and found a jar with several scrolls secreted inside. On them was recorded the most unusual story. I think it might do, with a little alteration, as a plot for a play. The man who wrote it got his facts clearly out, but jumbled in metaphors and similes of the oddest sort, and not consistently at all. He has a bad habit of ending every paragraph with an ominous statement. Some parts are very detailed and one can almost see them. Others are just the bare bones of a story. The man seems rather disposed to ramble on with whatever tangent pops into his head. He tells the story of his life, but gets confusing when he starts into "I didn’t know this until after such and such event" and "I found out later that." He certainly didn’t lead an easily understood life. Well, I’ll copy the gist of it here.

~*~

"I am Oedipus, one-time King of Thebes. My father was Laius, King of Thebes, and my mother Jocasta, his queen. I never knew this as a child, for when I was born an oracle declared a terrifying fate for me: one day I would murder my father and then compound the sin by marrying his wife, my mother. Jocasta and Laius were naturally horrified, and my mother gave me to a servant with orders to destroy me. Oh, that he had! But he did not.

Instead, the servant took pity on me, lying on the grass with my ankles bound, and gave me to a shepherd traveling to a far-away land. This shepherd freed my feet from the straps, bound about them so tightly that I was crippled for life, and took me to his homeland, Corinth. Better that I had died there than to have followed that path to its end!

~*~

The next part of the story is uncertain. I grew up in the court of Polybus, King of Corinth, thinking I was his son. I am not sure how I came to be adopted by him, coming as it were from the hand of a shepherd, but adopt me he did, and brought me up as his son. When I grew up, I traveled to an Oracle of Apollo, and learned of the fearful prophecy given at my birth. I was horrified and, still believing Polybus and his Queen to be my true parents, fled far from Corinth to try to escape my fate. I should have known there is little one can do to escape fate. Even had I tried to kill myself, I would probably not have succeeded. Futile is every attempt to circumnavigate the gods!

Here occurred the first event that stains me with guilt. I had been traveling several days with little food and little water to drink, none to bathe with. No doubt I was quite a spectacle. About mid-afternoon, a party of five or six men, some walking, one driving a wagon with a single passenger, approached. Being very hungry, I stopped the herald and asked for food. He started to open a purse, then looked up in fear.

I looked up as well, to find the wagon bearing down on me, the driver and passenger apparently attempting to drive me from the road! I was frightened and angry, besides tired and dirty and hungry – I struck the driver with my stick as he passed. Turning, the passenger struck me with a two-pronged goad, and I swung my walking stick at him and struck him as well. He saw the blow coming, and there was an odd flash of something – knowledge, or recognition, perhaps – in the old man’s eyes; but I did not stop to care.

I was possessed with a calm fury, if such a thing is possible. It was like a dream. All I did was in rage, but yet perfectly calm and deliberate. It is horrifying to look back on now, but then it was as if I had stepped out of myself and was watching someone else quite dispassionately. I have felt myself in that dream on a couple of occasions since: on my wedding day, and more than once during the search for Laius’ murderer. But I am getting ahead of myself. In no time at all, I had killed the whole party – all save one, but this I did not realize. I thought them all dead. I refreshed myself with what food had not been spoiled, cleaned myself up, and continued along the road of my accursed fate.

I walked for another couple of days, until I came to a land of rolling hills, with gentle slopes and green valleys. It was a beautiful country, and I felt as i f I’d knocked on a door in a strange land and suddenly found myself at home. A feeling of peacefulness washed over me all at once, and I sat me down by a blue creek and watched it flow. All heaven l leapt and sang in the current of that brook. I can see and hear it even now when I close my eyes. If I could only return to that brook now, I believe it would heal and rest me, just as it did then. I have never been so content before nor since.

After a couple of hours in a kind of wakeful doze, I suddenly woke completely, feeling as if someone had called my name. I saw no one, but it was high time I was on my way; so I bade farewell to the stream and set off. As I came over the top of a hill about a quarter of a mile later, I saw a sight which left me standing, gasping as a baby whose breath has been taken by a cat.

There before me, sitting on a cliff of rock some fifty feet above the valley with its back turned to me, was a great and beautiful, and terrifying, beast. It had the body of a lion, with a shimmering, supple coat of pure gold that caught the light and seemed to glow. From its withers there sprouted glorious ivory wings, powerful as eagles’ wings and delicate as a dove’s. But it was the head that inspired awe. As it turned to look at me, I saw it was the head of a woman, more beautiful than any I had ever seen. It had perfectly regular, Grecian f features, with a pale, clear complexion and full coral lips. A glorious mass of spun-gold curls tumbled in charming disarray down its shoulders, and two or three threatened to drop down her forehead. But no man could ever think of her beauty for very long – not once he had looked into her eyes. They were as green as the grass in my valley, green like a cat’s. And indeed, looking in her eyes, that was all one could think of her – a great, prowling, malicious cat, waiting to pounce on the first vulnerable creature that passed its way. I looked into the eyes of this creature, and I could sense the evil all around me. And then she spoke.

The Sphinx’s voice was clear as a bell and remote as an echo, as gently beautiful as a bubbling spring, but also austere and deadly as an icicle. It was that quality of ice that made it horrible. One knew that within all that loveliness was a core of evil. And I knew it was that voice that had awakened me.

"Welcome, Son of Men," rang out the voice. I stood transfixed.

"I say, welcome!" she repeated. "And I do mean welcome, to this valley. But none may pass here, until they have answered my riddle. Will you try, valiant Oedipus?"

I stood a moment more, looking her up and down. I knew quite well why I was welcome.

"If I answer incorrectly, you will eat me," I stated.

One eye twitched. "Quite likely."

"And if I don’t try at all, you will consume me anyway."

"True, oh man."

"What if I answer correctly?"

"I can give you no assurance of that. But you will not."

I felt daring (which nobody ought if they can possibly help it.) " How can you be so sure of that? Do you read what is written in the minds of the gods?"

"No," replied she. "But no one has ever been able to answer me correctly."

"Very well, m’ Lady. I will try."

"Very well," she replied. "Here is the riddle. ‘What animal is that which goes in the morning on four feet, at noon on two and in the evening upon three?’"

She looked at me with cunning. And waited.

I looked her in the eye. And I felt a power washing over me. An immense, soul-filling, rejoicing power. The knowledge of having the upper hand. I stood there, my gaze locked with hers, and I gloated. Her eyes read mine. She saw the knowledge of power there, and I saw a single, faint, brief flash of fear. But then it was gone.

"Well?"

I answered, with a single word of a single syllable.

"Man."

She looked at me with complete, unfeigned and unguarded disbelief.

"What…?" she started, and then broke off.

"Man," I answered patiently. "He starts out in the morning of his life, crawling on all fours. Then, in his afternoon, he walks on two legs. And in his old age, the evening of his life, he goes on three legs – he uses a cane."

"No, no," she muttered.

"What?" It was my turn to stare with incredulity.

"No! You cannot have answered the riddle! You cannot have! That was my riddle! Mine…it is gone, flown to pieces! A riddle is not a riddle once it is answered! You have killed the riddle…you have killed me!"

And she went on so, in a very wild fashion, making less and less sense. I watched her as a curiosity. She seemed to think that her life would shortly end. I could not see why, but it appeared that she had connected her identity so closely with the riddle that once it was solved and no longer a riddle (and she was certainly correct about that,) she felt that she could herself no longer remain a Sphinx. But what on earth did she think she was, then? Even in her madness she could not allow the impossibility of being other than she was. So she assumed, then, that she would die? But how strange! When a candle is spent, it goes to ashes and a little wax; but when the candle maker can no longer support himself on the profit of his candles, he sells himself to another man and provides for himself by working for another, or else lies down by the roadside and dies. But I stood bold on the road, watching the Sphinx and her anguish.

The Sphinx was getting quite wild now. She was screeching and running about, wild as a man in unfathomable pain. She would dart a couple of yards, pull up suddenly, look around, and then dart in the opposite direction. Quite suddenly she stopped short, looked at the steep side of the rocks for a moment as if considering, dashed to the side and flung herself over. (Happy the Sphinx, who thus moved beyond suffering!)

[Here I omit a page and a half as the author rambled on and on about whether anything was accomplished by the Sphinx’s death, and how he should feel about it as the Sphinx was evil, and the moral implications of the condemnation of evil things.]

I walked on and about an hour later I met two men, hurrying along with rather fearful countenances. I greeted them, and one looked at me oddly – as if he read some ominous thing writ on my brow.

"You have the accent of a foreigner," he said.

"So I do." I replied. "My name is Oedipus, and I am from Corinth."

"But you did not come from this direction." It was more of a question than a statement, and he pointed in the direction from which I had either come, or was insane (but I did not know then what insanity was).

"Why, yes, I did."

"But…" started the second man, and then the two exchanged glances.

"What about the Sphinx?" the first man finished.

"Oh, the Sphinx is dead. I answered her riddle and she was so distraught she cast herself over a cliff." The men looked at me with shock, wonder and a reverence that I think of now with shame.

"You answered her riddle?"

"But this is amazing!"

"She has been plaguing our city for months. No one could go in or come out along this road."

"Our merchants were at a loss. Nothing could be imported or exported."

"No one could even go to consult the oracle for help. Many have been killed, and we are without order in the city. We have no king."

"Come along with us. You will be hailed as a hero!"

"But…" I started. I didn’t know that I quite wanted to be hailed as a hero, and I didn’t fully understand anything that they were saying. But they were practically dragging me in the direction from which they had come, chattering innocently all the way, ignorant of the evil fate they dragged in with me.

"You remember Alexander was killed?"

"And old Theseus."

"And young Cassandra! What a pretty girl she was! Her mother was quite distraught."

"Not to mention the young men!"

It appeared, then, that I was to be taken to the city.

[Here I again take it upon myself to remove long and unnecessary details about the trip into town, the town itself, and the mentality of the villagers, and a whole lot of philosophical wanderings. I will pick up as Oedipus is introduced to the late King’s wife and her brother.]

I walked down the marble hall and thought that life held some very inconvenient situations sometimes. I did not want to be in this particular situation, even though it was a nice land and I felt satisfied in some odd way to be here. I felt a little uneasy, though, as if I were about to be put in an uncomfortable position. Not an unlikely thing, if they were going to play hero worship. No one but the very narrow minded really like hero worship. The hero doesn’t like to be worshipped unless he is incredibly selfish – his mind is narrowed in to focus entirely on himself. The worshipper doesn’t like to worship a man, who is no greater then himself in reality, unless his mind is narrowed to a point entirely focused on the hero, which is very unlikely. Most often, the worshipper’s mind is narrow for selfishness as well, and his focus is really on himself, only on the hero for what the hero can give him. So, as the first condition of the worshipper is exceedingly rare, we must assume that the whole of hero worship comes from incredible selfishness. I felt this in a vague sort of way, and so thought I wanted none of it. I was to learn later what a horrible trap it could form, and that even I could fall into it.

The hallway ended at a door. The guard accompanying me stopped outside the room that held my destiny.

"This is the Queen’s sitting room," he informed me. "She awaits you within." Then he opened the door for me and I – fool that I was – I w ent in.

"Oedipus of Corinth, My Lady."

"Thank you. You are very welcome, Oedipus." She rose to greet me. She was older than I had expected, but a queenly lady for all that. "I am Jocasta. I hope you will stay here with us for some time. My people wish to show you their thanks for the great service you have rendered us."

"Thank you, My Lady. But all I did was answer a riddle. It was no great feat. To some the gods give minds adept at mental puzzles. To others, they give other gifts."

"But still it takes courage to stand and answer a Sphinx. And so you have two great talents; mental abilities and courage. And now," rising, "Dinner is ready to be served," and she led us out into the dining room.

The meal was rich, as was the conversation, and the atmosphere. Besides Jocasta and myself, there were two women who were friends of Jocasta and Jocasta’s brother, Creon. They treated me with the utmost respect, which could not be increased by much when they discovered whose son I was. They seemed to think it explained in a part the courage and ability I had shown when faced with the Sphinx, which I dismissed; I would have done just the same had I been a peasant’s son. And if only that is what I had been! Better a happy peasant than a cursed king, for the closer one is to the stars, the more one longs to attain them; but a lowly peasant is content.

Sometimes the next few years seem like someone else’s life when I look back at them – and sometimes, like the only times I was ever really living. I married Jocasta, and became the King of Thebes. We had two lovely daughters, and two healthy, mischievous sons. I grew to love Thebes and her people with a passion an exiled man feels when he comes home again. But mine was not a momentary love. Sometimes I think I loved them nearly as much as I loved my family. I wanted to help them and lead them into success, prosperity and happiness. I wanted every person in that town to know that they were important and that I cared about what they needed and wanted. They say that great love for something other than oneself can give one great strength to remain pure. But purity cannot come to one who is defilement itself.

I held hearings every week, to try to establish a link between the ruler and the ruled. If they had problems that needed intervention or ideas to make the community better, or if they disagreed with a law or saw that one was needed, they could come to me, and explain what needed to be done. I was a good king. I can look back now and honestly say that. But I was growing proud—and thus began my downfall.

I suppose I had a weak mind, then, to be so influenced by the flattery and adoration all around me. The people loved me. They truly did give me the rank of hero in their land. All the resources of the country were open to me, even more so than if there had been a king to offer them. If I had asked, they would have given me the deeds to their jewel mines. I grew to take their flattery for granted. I came to think I deserved it, even before I married and became King. And their treatment of me did not wane then. All continued in growing prosperity and happiness for several years – until the riddle of my existence began to unravel.

The first blow of the god’s wrath fell when tthe Plague broke out. For months my people sickened and died. My heart as their king was wrung for them, but I was powerless to stop the rising tide of fate. M any fled to the country, only to find the sickness following. Some even fled the Country, and we heard of them no more. The elderly and the children were first laid low, and then the field hands who stayed home to care for the sick, for so many were ill that those few of the women who were well could not care for them all. So the fields were neglected, and the crop began to fail. Then the cattle and other livestock began to die, of some strange sickness none had ever seen in them before. And more and more of my people were felled.

I kept my children quarantined though they were not ill, to keep them from those who were stricken. I, myself, and Jocasta, could do no such thing. Jocasta was busy among the women, walking among them and encouraging them to work and hope. I went out daily on trips through the city and into the countryside, to see the damage and seek for new ways to work the crops without neglecting the ill. It could not be done – the crops were rotting in the fields. Nor could any be brought in, for our neighbors had heard of the plague and were afraid to come near. My people were hungry now in large numbers, and I, their king, was powerless to help them – or myself.

At last I sent Creon, my wife’s brother, to consult the oracle of Apollo. The consensus of all was that the gods must be angry o ver some grave offense to send us such destruction. And Creon’s news, when he came, was grave indeed: that a foul murder had gone unavenged, and the murderer suffered to remain among us. We must purge ourselves of the evil before order and prosperity might be restored to us. And who had been murdered? None other than Laius, my Queen’s first husband, King before me.

I was shocked. I had not heard of this matter! The country’s King had been murdered and they did nothing? Did they care at all for the dignity of the ruler? Oh yes, they assured me. They cared, but just then t he Sphinx had come along and distracted everyone’s attention. When one’s sons and daughters are getting eaten by a monster half lion, half bird, and half woman, and trade is terrible and people are starting to go hungry, and one’s ruler is dead, one doesn’t go looking for clues to the death outside one’s tether line. And then, of course, I had come and saved them, oh, mighty King! And then they had had a ruler again. I still didn’t understand why they had done nothing, but Jocasta said I was being annoyingly virtuous and self-righteous and for pity’s sake lay off the honorable thing and find out now, since it obviously hadn’t been done then and we absolutely had to now, or we were for it.

Jocasta was the voice of sense in my world. She basically told me now to shut my mouth up and do what needed to be done, and then find out why it hadn’t been done before if I felt I must. So that’s what we set out to do, little knowing the end our well-meaning labor would bring.

I sent Creon out again to fetch Tiresias the prophet to us, for it was clear that, for all my labors, I was unable to see clearly what was taking place around me. Tiresias came, but reluctantly. He admitted to me that he knew all the history of Laius’ murder, but he said he would not bring sorrow on both of us by divulging this information. He enraged me. This was my country, my people, and he was refusing his aid! I did not understand. I compelled him to tell me the truth, and then – to my eternal shame – I would not believe it when he had.

He told me that I was the murderer I was looking for – that I was "living in shameful intimacy with my nearest and dearest." This rocked me to the center. I remembered the prophecy of the oracle. But I tossed the thought aside, for in my origins I was of Corinth, not Thebes! But it was a twisted, wending road, the path of my life, and the riddle of my life was not yet unknotted. Inexorably I worked my way to the center of the labyrinth, with new revelations on every side to startle and ruin me.

Then came a messenger from Corinth, to tell me that my father Polybus was dead and that Corinth was ready to receive me as its king. But I found from him too that Polybus was not my father at all – that I had been given to him by this self-same messenger, and that Polybus had loved me the more because he himself was childless. I felt as if I’d been through a hard day of battle. Not because Polybus was not my father, for in reality he was the only father I could have. He had cared for me and would always be my father to me. But now I had not the least idea who my parents were, and thus no safeguard against the oracle. My world was crumbling.

We back-tracked and talked and discussed until at length I had learned how first I came to Corinth, and how for the same cause I left it again. It was a lengthy tale, for we had to search out another servant, and he too was loath to tell all he knew. But finally I knew the whole story. Finally, I held in my hands the secrets of my identity that had lain at the heart of the labyrinth for all of those years. But they were no longer secret. I could not hide the horrifying truth of the defilement I had committed. The court, and the rest of my people, watched as I learned the hidden truths one by one.

I learned how I had been born in Thebes, and how I had left it. How I had killed my father on the road that day, and married my mother – the two greatest crimes of all, and I, all unknowing, had committed them. I was grieved a nd horrified. It seems to me that a great many things in my life are horrifying. If your dreams are haunted by my sins, I am sorry. I do not mean to burden anyone, but to make an example of my mistakes so that others might learn from them.

My downfall wwas pride. I was a humble man once, of sorts, but a weak mind not guarded was influenced to pride, a mortal disease, which grew at last incurable. My people traditionally value pride; but I say that it was pride that drove me to hubris¹, which led to ate². I fell into a brief madness and blinded myself – but that act, at least, I do not regret. It seems strangely appropriate that one who was so blind in success be truly blind in his miserable truth. Jocasta, my mother and my wife, hung herself to escape the shame – and I am glad that she, at least, was able to find escape. I, though, wander the earth, never stopping in any town, never accepted at any house, never settled or at peace in any place. M y prayer is only this, that others may yet learn from my mistakes, and may the gods bless you all!"

~*~

Day 59

That is the bulk of the story. It has taken me the evenings of three days to get it all copied down; I have neglected my own journal for that of someone else! It would be good to fill out the parts that he doesn’t go into in great detail. I honestly think that it would make a good play, good enough to show that young upstart Euripides how it ought to be done.

Well, off to bed; lots of work tomorrow. The war won’t stop because I lost sleep over somebody’s miserably confused memoirs!

[end of fragment; only the plays remain!]

The End

Meredith Briski is currently attending a no-name, state-funded Institution of Higher Learning in Northern Ohio, and remains one of the few ants still struggling to keep their chins and eyes tilted upward under the overwhelming weight of Modern and Post-Modern Literary Interpretation. She is the author of numerous essays of little value or importance to the World in General and one little story which she has offered up, a sacrifice such as Abraham's, and which has, to the wonder of all the kindly eyes hopefully watching its progress, been gently but firmly grasped by the graceful beings who have gone before and offer hope at the end of the four-year tunnel. While not laboring under either English courses or delusions of the oddest sort, Meredith enjoys dancing, historic costume design, and working with both Campus Crusade for Christ and a student Right to Life organization.