Glory and the Lightning (17 page)

Awnings of every conceivable color and stripe and fabric lunged and flapped and fluttered and blew with the constant searing wind from the deserts. The mountains beyond were like hot lapis lazuli and brass against a sky the color of burnished bronze, and the sun within it was a hole and holocaust of flame. The crowds and throngs of customers and merchants, of men and squealing women, were jostled by hordes of children who raced between ranks of humanity and animals, brown, barefooted, naked children with ragged black hair and oily sly faces, holding hot breads and cakes and remnants of steaming meats in their hands, all of which they had stolen from brazier or table. Donkeys with laden baskets on their patient backs were beaten and pulled into the very midst of clotted bodies, and whips snarled and wheels grunted and hoarse oaths were yelled and heads were broken. All, with the exception of the children, were clothed in dusty black, crimson, yellow or blue, the men wearing headcloths bound with rope, and knotted, the women dirtily veiled with only their lustrous eyes darting everywhere.

Aspasia was not permitted to alight alone, but only in the company of Al Taliph and his band of eunuchs, headed by Kurda, and all carrying bared swords. Merchants would bring Aspasia ground lamb and mushrooms and barley roasted together and wrapped in green grape leaves, and acrid wine in metal goblets. Al Taliph, surrounded by his guard of eunuchs, would laugh when Aspasia declared that the meat was too spiced and hot for her taste and the wine too acid. He would laugh when she would eat or drink, however, and apparently enjoyed the strangeness and novelty. She once refused the soured milk, thick and bland in its earthen cups, but when persuaded she ate it and found it refreshing. At all times she sought to please Al Taliph, not only because she had been taught this but because she treasured his approval. He brought her unknown fruit which had a richness and emphasis beyond anything she had ever known. The hot cakes, filled with honeyed seeds and spices, or meats seasoned with coriander and cloves, excited her.

“I do not see pork,” she said once.

His face changed. “We rarely eat pork,” he said, and would not explain. She received raw fish in vinegar and onions with some trepidation but, urged, she would eat it from rough earthen platters, and found it delectable. There was also fried fish with capers and a pungent olive sauce which stung her tongue, and wine refreshed with the juice of lemons. Al Taliph was endlessly delighted during these experimentations and would laugh like a youth. He would always buy her some exquisite gold or silver trinket, necklaces or rings or earrings and bracelets, or some brazen vase or figure which she fancied. These she would hold in her hands, examining them, attempting to understand the east. Once he bought her a water lily of white jade, incredibly beautiful on its leaves of green jade, and this never left her possession. She believed it exhaled scent.

On another occasion he bought her a marble figurine taken from the tomb of some Egyptian noble, and there were many such in the booth of Egyptian rascals with black faces and black hidden eyes. She was repulsed by it. Turn it in her hands as she did it remained of one dimension, as if repudiating humanity and its warm aspects and contours. “Osiris,” he explained to her. “The son of Isis, and also her husband. It is said that he, a most virtuous and sacred savior of his people, was murdered by his people, and then rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, from which he rules and loves humanity.”

“The gods of Greece are handsomer and more sensible,” she replied.

Again that inexplicable look came over his face, a look of gravity and withdrawal, which she could not interpret. Later he told her of the Egyptian religion, of Ptah, the God Almighty, who ruled all the endless universes, and was concerned with all creation. “The Greeks,” she said, “are happiest when the gods forget them, for their attentions are frequently disastrous. We prefer to adore them—from a distance—and ask only their assistance when we need it.”

Once again he looked grave and absent, and she was both intimidated and dismayed and wondered how she had offended him. She tried never to offend him, not out of fear but out of respect. And something which came perilously close to love, which she never suspected. A woman did not permit herself to love a man, she had been taught. That led to calamity and grief and despair, and the disintegration of a woman’s dignity. She became a slave.

On still another occasion he gave her a large intricately carved ivory ball from Cathay. It had interstices and she discerned another smaller ball within it, and then turning it in her hands she discovered yet another ball within the second, and succeeding balls each smaller than the one which enclosed it. There was no joining, no indication of how each carved ball had entered the other, and she was puzzled. Al Taliph explained that the ball had originally been of one piece, the outer covering. “How, then, were the others carved?” she asked. He only shook his head. She marvelled, thrusting the tip of her finger, dyed red in the eastern fashion, within the crevices. The inner balls rotated; they were not fixed.

Then, unaccountably, she was vexed. “You prefer solutions?” asked Al Taliph, watching her. He had made her seem absurd in her own opinion and she looked sharply at him, standing at his side. The hot sunlight struck her eyes and they smarted, but she continued to look at him, seeing how the light shifted on the dark bronzed planes of his lean face as on metal, lighted his large hooped earrings, but could not lighten his secret eyes. He had a brooding expression now, and she had seen it before and it had always perturbed her.

The jostling throngs were all about them, though kept at bay by the ring of lavishly attired eunuchs with their drawn swords. The men cursed them but sidled off at a respectful distance, for one knew that within that circle stood a man of consequence. So many milled nearby, clad in dirty and dusty robes of black and red and yellow, with striped head-coverings, clasped with knotted ropes, protecting their heads, their avid and blackish faces ravenous as jackals, their eyes glittering both with fawning abjectness and curiosity. They did not recognize this richly but quietly dressed man as their governor, for his own face was half-hidden within a hood and his mantle was of dark silk embroidered discreetly with gold. He never took these excursions with his own soldiers; he preferred to be without name in the market places, and without overt honor.

Then the burning wind from the desert partially lifted Aspasia’s own hood and her veil, and a lock of her gilded hair streamed forth and the watching men came closer and raised a hoarse shout of wonder, seeing not only her hair but the whiteness and scarlet of her face, and her beauty. They pressed forward, the better to observe this unbelievable vision, and even crowded the eunuchs whose curved swords scintillated in the blinding light. Al Taliph gave no indication that he even saw the market rabble, but thrust Aspasia behind him—the usual position of a woman in the company of a man—and walked to the litter. Kurda’s eyes jumped with hatred for this woman who had jeopardized his master. He followed Aspasia; the eunuchs, thrusting the air with their swords, guarded their retreat. Aspasia, glancing only once behind her, first saw Kurda with his face lustful for her death and beyond him the seething stalls of the market and the glaring faces of the market rabble, momentarily quiet, overcome with astonishment.

She was not frightened. It was only when she was in the litter with her lord that she felt some fear. He closed the thick silken curtains and they were in a hot gloom. The litter was lifted and they were borne away. Since then two weeks had passed and Al Taliph had not as yet taken her again to the markets. She never asked for a reason, for she learned that this irritated Al Taliph who did not believe that women were worthy of being given reasons for men’s behavior.

But yesterday he had taken her to the site where Cyrus had defeated Astyages, last King of the Medes, from which battle he had entered on a career of conquest and power which ended only when he had succeeded in establishing himself as the mightiest emperor in all recorded history. He proclaimed himself the King of all the Persians and the Medes, thus uniting them in one empire, one ruthless power, extending his rule to all the lands between the Great Sea and Persia, and even to Egypt and Greece.

He had caused to be built on that site a great terraced palace, at the entrance to Fars, and a city had risen there to establish his glory. An enormous pillar had been raised beside the four-sided palace and on it, in three languages, Susian, Assyrian and Persian, had been inscribed: “I am Cyrus, the King, the Achaemenian!” The thick circular column, soaring to the incandescent blue sky, was embellished by a winged figure and an engraving of his tomb.

Silence stood all about them, the silence which inevitably followed the departure of the mighty and the illustrious, who are not as other men, and the desert wind blew fiercely into the valley. Aspasia was awed. She said, “He was an Achaemenian?”

“Yes,” replied Al Taliph, gazing at the gigantic pillar. “He was also only a petty tribal chieftain, until he met the proud Median king, Astyages, and defeated him here.”

Aspasia looked at her lord curiously. “You do not hate him?”

He returned her look with mingled amusement and exasperation. “How is that possible? He was godlike, King Cyrus, and though only the poor tributary ruler of Anshan he accomplished the incredible, the impossible, and made of Persians and the Medes, together, the jeweled and invincible crown of the world. We Medes reverence his memory, for he was a noble hero, and was merciful and just, honoring the women who had observed the battle.” He smiled down at Aspasia. “Ponder. He was like one of your Greeks, who met Xerxes at Thermopylae and Salamis, with only crude weapons. He resembled your Spartan Leonidas—”

“I am an Ionian,” said Aspasia, “not a Spartan or an Athenian.”

He ignored this remark. He lifted his head and mused on the vast pillar. “The greatest of all virtues is courage, the most heroic. In the halls of courage even a petty chieftain is at one with an emperor, and they bear the same banner. I have seen the tomb of Cyrus, the mausoleum where his golden vault lies, on an ascending terrace of white blocks of stone which resembles the pyramids of Egypt. His wife was an Egyptian. I have read the inscription on the tomb:

“‘O man, whosoever thou art and from whencesoever thou comest (for that thou wilt come I know) I am Cyrus, who founded the empire of the Persians. Grudge not me then this little earth which covers my body.’”

His voice, in the profound stillness, was sonorous and commanding and even moving and Aspasia listened and was deeply stirred. He then turned away from her and went, in his usual baffling manner, towards his chariot, and Aspasia followed him in silence. Once in the chariot, with a slave protecting her from the sun with a scarlet umbrella, she said to Al Taliph, “‘A little earth.’ To that do kings and slaves return, and it is the end of glory and of slavery.”

“It is also the end of a pariah dog,” he answered, as one answers a child, and Aspasia flushed. “You think me ridiculous,” she said.

“Alas. You are only a woman,” he said and then seeing her affronted face and her mortification he lifted her hand and kissed it. “But are you women not the supreme conquerors, and we men only your slaves, even the mightiest among us?”

Had any other man of her own race, and of the west, said that to her she would have been placated. Now she could only think, in the heat of the garden: He mocks me, even with his kisses, his arcane smiles, and his gallant words. All men are strange, it is true, but he is the strangest of all. That was one of the times when I was afraid of him, for I do not understand him. He is capricious, at once tender and cruel, as a child is cruel, and then at other times he is lofty and grand and even more civilized than the Athenians. Sometimes he is as simple and direct as clear water, and sometimes he is as unsolvable as the ivory ball he gave me. Why did he desire me, in the house of Thargelia? I do not even know if he truly has affection for me. I believe that it is not my beauty, which he extols, which charms this most peculiar eastern man, yet I often fear he is not entranced by my intelligence and my learning and my arts, which he praises, for when I am most earnest and sincere he becomes hilarious. Would he grieve if I departed? I fear he would not, and I believe he would forget me the moment I was gone. Would I, in turn, mourn him? O gods, I fear I would!

She put her hands over her eyes and forbade herself to weep, for tears were smarting the rims of her eyes.

She had a hideous thought. Was it possible that she only diverted him, as a novelty would divert him for a time, and for that he cultivated her company and endured her presence? Did he display her to his guests as one would display an unusual but not human pet who had entertaining tricks, and charming ones, simulating humanity? Did she amuse those guests, as she amused her lord, and for the same reasons?

Mortification overcame her again. She vowed that at the next feast she would sit in silence, not even smiling, affecting stupidity. If Al Taliph became annoyed with her let him so be annoyed!

She began to think of her last visit to the tumultuous markets, and the booths where slaves were sold.

She always tried to avoid them and returned to the chariot, there to sit in melancholy under the white and red striped awnings, fanning herself with a jeweled and feathered fan, while Al Taliph bargained with the clamorous and gesticulating dealers. She had been surrounded in Thargelia’s house by slaves, but since early girlhood she had secretly protested against this degradation of human beings whom Greece considered only “things.” Moreover, she had sedulously studied the laws of Solon and his hope that slavery would eventually be banished by civilized nations. Slaves, however, were regarded as valuable property in Greece and her subject states, and had a measure of appreciation from their masters and were frequently loved and indulged, often educated if intelligent, and consulted.

This was not true of the east. Lords had the power of life and death over their slaves and could order their destruction at will, and with no more compunction than if those slaves had been rabid dogs or criminals. (In Greece there were some laws which protected the lives of slaves, and assured them some immunity from monstrous punishments.)