Glory and the Lightning (25 page)

But she was awake at dawn, after a short doze. Her women slept and moaned softly, their mouths agape. Aspasia threw a cloak over her shift and opened the flap of the tent and stood in the doorway. Then she was awed, and her old exaltation at the spectacle of beauty returned like a wanderer who had been banished and then had come home, rejoicing, intoxicated. Or, she was like one who had been blinded and then had been given sight again.

The caravan was traveling over a flat plain littered with small and large stones and heavy dust. But the eastern sky was a vast conflagration of palpitating gold and saffron streaked with scarlet and emerald green, and it seemed to extend forever from horizon to horizon. It threw yellow and purple shadows on the ash-colored ground. Boulders on the barren earth were ignited instant by instant and burned like gigantic cores of fire. There was no sound in that stupendous incandescence of the heavens except for the creaking of wagons and the rattle of harness. Then, at the rim of the world, the edge of the ruby sun began to mount in his panoply of awaiting banners, and the tent of the night, still high in the heavens, and the hue of hyacinths, folded and sank to the west.

Aspasia felt that she was seeing for the first time in her life. She clutched the sides of the fabric doorway and stared and her face was illuminated by the grandeur she gazed upon with distended eyes. Her hair blew about her in the morning wind. Then she heard the pound of horse’s hoofs and there loomed beside the tent the figure of a horseman black as an iron statue against the wild storm of the sky. The horseman, mounted on a great stallion, was Al Taliph, his face covered with his headcloth, his eyes set ahead. He did not seem aware of the woman in the doorway.

He resembles a centaur, and is as unearthly, thought Aspasia. He rode beside the tent, silent and supple, tall and lithe. Never had he seemed so remote to Aspasia, so far removed from her, so alien, so strange, so in command of all about him. She felt a pang of fear as well as a thrill of pride. He touched his horse with his whip and the animal soared ahead, almost as if he were flying rather than running, like Pegasus, and both man and beast were gone. A peculiar feeling of loneliness and melancholy came to Aspasia and she returned to her cushions but not to sleep.

The caravan came to a halt. Aspasia rose, and her women rose with her, groaning. She opened the flap and saw that the caravan had stopped at a green oasis blowing with palm trees. Men were beginning to shout and fill pails and large buckets with spring water for the horses and camels. A fine golden dust floated in the warm air, for the sun had now completely risen, and heat touched Aspasia’s cheek like a hot hand. She did not know if she were supposed to remain in her tent, or alight. Her women came to her and dressed her and covered her with veil and mantle, then, bowing, they indicated that she should follow them. She emerged from the tent and climbed down beside the women. As she did so she saw that an elderly woman, veiled and in dark clothing, was leading a girl child sternly by the hand. The child’s face was uncovered though overlaid with cosmetics against the ardent light, and she was bewildered and frightened. She could have been hardly ten years old. Her robe was white and blue, her hair the color of brown wine. She pulled back once and the woman jerked her impatiently and said something in a tongue Aspasia did not know, and it was admonishing. The child cried again, a faint whimpering sound, then bowing her head she submitted.

The two approached the tent of Al Taliph, then climbed into it. Two of Al Taliph’s men, who shared the tent with him, emerged and jumped to the ground and went to the spring. Aspasia’s heart jolted and she was filled with anger and despair. Her women motioned to her to go with them, but she lingered. They patiently waited. Then Aspasia heard a muffled scream of agony within Al Taliph’s tent and could barely restrain herself from running to it. She was sickened. The child within the tent screamed again, like a tormented animal, then Aspasia heard the sharp crack of a man’s hand against childish flesh and the screams subsided to breathless moans of torment. Al Taliph’s voice could now be heard, muttering and gasping and sometimes impatient.

But I always knew, thought Aspasia. Did I not know the fate of the women in the harem, the young girls, the children? Yet, she had not heard helpless cries until now. She was taken by pity and humiliation. Only a few hours ago Al Taliph’s dusky body had lain on her white flesh, and she had embraced him and his voice had been loving. He had called her his light of life, his moon, his lily, his swan, his dove. But, had not Thargelia told her maidens that a man’s vows, his protestations of eternal love, his devotion, were all lies and were intent only on deceiving the momentary woman and dazing her senses? Had she not been warned against loving any man, lest she be destroyed? A woman who loved became a victim of a man’s brutal indifference, his deceptions, his betrayal. I hate him! she thought with deep rage, and I hate, above all things, what he is doing to that innocent child.

She tried to make her heart cold and still. She saw that her women had heard the sounds within the lord’s tent and thought nothing of it. She followed them to the area set aside for the women’s rest in the oasis. She was brought ice-cold water. A linen cloth was laid on the cool green grass before her, and upon it was placed a ewer of wine, sliced lamb, fruit, bread and cheese and oily artichokes and a pitcher of foaming goat’s milk. All the women, a large company, sat around her in a circle, gossiping to each other. They had removed their veils. A wall of canvas had been erected about them to protect them from the men’s gazes. Aspasia, as the favorite of the lord, was isolated but watched and tended. She could not eat. She drank only water. I am ridiculous, she told herself. I knew from the very beginning who and what he was. I knew he was pitiless and ruthless as well as kind and intellectual and full of power. Yet I deluded myself that he was superior to other men in appetites and passions. Had I not been warned by Thargelia? Alas, in this man’s arms I was as melting wax and I believed his vows and rejoiced in his embraces! He did not deceive me. I deceived myself, because I desired the deception. However, from this moment on I shall be deceived no longer.

A sense of strength came to her, and even her despair lessened. She began to think. Could she steal away as Thalias had stolen away from Thargelia’s house? Could she take with her the gold and the gems Al Taliph had given her, and go to Greece? Alas, she was a woman, and a woman traveling alone was in awful danger. But, I am strong and I was taught self-defense by the athletes in Thargelia’s house, and I would not hesitate to kill if necessary. Her thoughts became somewhat confused as she realized the predicament of women in the modern world. Then she thought of Thalias. He had vowed to help her if she needed his help. He owed her much and was naturally benevolent, and he had loved her if only for a night. Yet, how much could a woman trust a man? Thargelia’s cynical voice echoed in her ear: Take and take and seize and seize, while the man is still bemused by you, and then leave with your soul and your mind intact—for another man with gifts. If a man marries you that is a different matter, for in his eyes a wife—even if betrayed or rejected—is still part of him in his own estimation, and must receive some honor and responsibility from him. That is his ego. But a woman without marriage is a woman without protection, except for herself. Remember that always. If you forget, you have forgotten to your deadly peril.

I must bind Thalias to me, for my use, thought Aspasia. Her women came to her, mutely offering the food on the cloth. She shook her head. If a woman, she thought, becomes as hard and cruel and merciless as a man she may prosper. But at what a price to her womanhood, her woman’s soul, her woman’s tenderness and softness and compassion! Aspasia’s eyes remained dry but she wept within. Surely, she mused, in her pain, there are some men who can truly devote their passions and their dedications to a woman, and honor and respect her, while maintaining their own lives in the world of men. Surely love was not only lust to every man.

The vast company was now returning to the caravan in a bellow of noise, and Aspasia rose with her women. A deep weariness came to her, a heavy dejection. She passed the tent of Al Taliph. The flap opened and the elderly woman emerged, leading the little girl by the hand again. The child walked like a wounded and crippled lamb, staggering, bent over, holding her lower body in both her small hands. Aspasia could not control herself. She ran to the girl and enfolded her in her arms, to the astonishment of the women. She pressed the brown head to her breast. She murmured consolations, and the child cried and clung to her as to a mother. Then Al Taliph appeared on the platform, fastening his girdle.

Aspasia looked up at him and he saw her lifted glowing eyes. He saw her disgust and dread. But he said nothing. He did not even shrug. Yes, I am a fool, thought Aspasia. What is this child, or any other woman, to him? She smoothed the child’s hair and returned her to her guardian. Al Taliph leapt from the platform and went to his men, and Aspasia watched him go. He did not even have contempt for her, and that was the worst of all. She had entered his world at her own consent, or the consent of Thargelia. She had known from the first that to Al Taliph she was only a woman.

By Castor and by Pollux, Aspasia swore solemnly, I will regain my self-control and never, from this moment on, will a man ever beguile me. I will deceive him as he has deceived other women; a woman is cleverer than a man.

Ah, but surely in this intricate and various world there can truly be love between a man and a woman, and dignity and pride. And I will find such a man, even if I have to wander all the world. She wondered at her pain.

She did not know that Al Taliph loved her, and that to him other women were only a diversion and a necessity, and above all only a novelty. He had seen her revulsion and her disgust, and he was angered. She had spent over three years in his house and had seen many things there, and she remained blind and obdurate and without understanding. They had talked endless hours together, and it had come to nothing. He wanted to go to her and hold her in his arms—he fresh from the sweat and the blood of the nameless child. But Aspasia would not understand, though she was a hetaira. He, too, was filled with pain, as well as anger. She would never comprehend that he loved her, and he dared not try to convince her. Between men and women, even though they spoke the self-same language, there remained an impassable chasm, hewn from their nature and their very lives.

While her women slept in the heat of the late afternoon Aspasia wrote to Thargelia, using the stylus and tablet she had brought with her in one of her chests.

“Greetings to Thargelia, my dearer than mother:

“In these years, sweetest of friends, we have exchanged no letters for none would have been permitted to be sent nor any given to me. I have not been unhappy in my situation. In truth, I have had much happiness. But now I find my circumstances untenable, insufferable. I have, in my mind, the thought of establishing a school for young girls in Athens, though not a school for courtesans. Do not laugh, dear friend and mother. I know you will not for always you knew what was in my soul even as a child, and my rebellion against the degradation of women. In Persia the degradation is far worse than in Miletus or Greece. Surely you are aware of this, for do you not know all things? Enough. I am sending this letter through the kind offices of one Damos of Damascus, a rich merchant. I implore you to help one you loved so tenderly when she was an infant in your house. When it is possible I will go to you and my former home, and in the meantime you will seek a house for me in Athens where I may live and establish my school. May Hermes, swift of winged foot and helmet, speed this letter to you and your reply through Damos of Damascus, who lives on the Street called Straight. Never have I forgotten you nor my sisters, and I long to embrace you, to throw myself, as a loved daughter, into your arms, there to weep and tell you my story. I commend you to the protection of Athene Parthenos whom you have always worshipped and honored.”

She was weeping as she signed and sealed the letter, then placed it in her bosom. The next step was most dangerous and her heart thumped with fear at the thought. She looked closely at her women; they still slept. The heat in the tent was almost intolerable though it was nearing sunset. She drew her veil across her face and silently stepped through the flap of the tent and stood upon the platform, glancing fearfully about her and swaying with the motion of the wide platform. The men who drove the horses were half-slumbering on their seats, the pennant one held drooping in the fierce light. Aspasia crept along the side of the tent to the rear and found, as she had hoped, a narrow width of platform, which was covered with thick dust and sand. There she crouched, praying for the appearance of Thalias whom she knew rode at intervals with Al Taliph, and sometimes alone.

The western sky was, in its wideness and colors, even more stupendous than had been the dawn, and the bleak dead earth was crimson in the light of the falling sun, which was now an enormous globe of fire near the horizon. At a far distance there was a range of mountains like broken black teeth. Suddenly a mirage appeared on the desert, a mirage of a beautiful white city with towers and turrets and golden walls. So clear was the vision, so full of detail, in that ardent light, that Aspasia was half-convinced that the city was near at hand. Then it was gone.

She held her veil across her face to protect it from the sun. She heard the sound of an approaching horse and, thanking the gods, she saw that the rider was indeed Thalias and that he was alone. He discerned her sitting on the platform and reined in his horse in astonishment. She threw aside her veil and pressed her lips with her finger, imploring quietness. He touched his horse with his heel and came closer. His blue eyes were uneasy and darted about him. He saw Aspasia’s beautiful face, pale now and streaked with tears, and his generous heart was moved for all his dread of Al Taliph. He bent from his horse and said in a very low voice: “What is it, Aspasia?”