The Scorpion God: Three Short Novels (3 page)

He was not as animated as his courtiers. He was recovered and content. He lay on a broad couch big enough for two. Leather cushions were so heaped that his left elbow disappeared among them. Just now, he held what was left of a roast duck in his right hand and ate delicately. The Liar and the Head Man sat below the couch on either side of the low table where the rest of the meal was. The Head Man was quiet, smiling, and watching Great House with an air of friendly attention. The Liar was as fidgety and jerky as ever.

Great House finished the duck and held it out behind him where it vanished in dusky hands. Other hands held out a bowl into which he dipped two right fingers and a thumb, twiddling them. As if this were a cue, the three musicians squatting to one side at the other end of the hall began to play more loudly. They were blind. Presently one of them sang nasally, the old, old song.

The God peered glumly at the singer. He crooked his little finger and took another dish of beer out of the air. The Head Man raised his eyebrows, still smiling.

“Is that wise, Great House?”

“I want a drink.”

All along the tables the dishes were being refilled. Everyone felt thirsty.

The Head Man shook his head.

“It’s a very long dance, you know, Great House.”

The God belched. The roar sagged for a moment, then came back, punctuated by belches. Over the left and in a corner, one lady, with brilliant resource was noisily sick and everyone laughed at her.

The God tapped the Liar on the shoulder.

“Tell me some lies.”

“I’ve told you all I know, Great House.”

“All you can think of, you mean,” said the Head Man. “They wouldn’t be lies if you knew them.”

The Liar looked at him, opened his mouth as if to argue, then slumped a little.

“Have it your own way.”

“More lies,” said Great House. “More lies, more lies!”

“I’m not very good at it, Great House.”

“Tell me about the white men.”

“You know about them.”

“Go on,” said the God, playfully tweaking the Liar’s ear. “Tell me what their skin’s like!”

“They look like a peeled onion,” said the Liar dutifully. “Only not shiny. They’re like that all over——”

“—every
inch
of them——”

“They don’t wash——”

“Because if they did, the paint would come off!” Great House roared with laughter as he finished speaking and everyone else laughed too. The lady who had been sick fell off her chair, shrieking hysterically.

“And they smell,” said the Liar, “like I told you they smell. Their river runs round their land in a ring and rises up in great lumps and is salt, so that if you drink it you go mad and fall down.”

Great House laughed again, then was silent.

“I wonder why I fell down,” he said. “It was quite extraordinary. One step I was running, then the next step wasn’t there.”

The Liar jerked up.

“You were tripped, Great House—I saw it. And you drank all that beer before you ran. Next time——”

“You weren’t drunk, Great House,” said the Head Man, still smiling. “You were exhausted.”

The God tweaked the Liar’s ear again.

“Tell me about—” he laughed suddenly—“when the water goes hard.”

“You heard it before.”

The God thumped the couch with his right hand.

“Well, I want to hear it again,” he said. “And again and again!”

The roar sagged and died away. The curtain at the end of the hall was drawn back on either side. Between them was a sort of monolith of white linen supported on two little feet. It advanced on them a span at a time until it stood in the centre of the space between the tables. The drummer began to beat very softly.

“—really as hard as stone,” said the Liar. “In winter, the rocks by a waterfall are bearded with it like a pebble with weed. But it’s all water.”

“Go on,” said Great House passionately. “Tell me how white and clear and cold it is, and how still—that’s very important, the stillness!”

From somewhere, a black girl had appeared. She held one end of the outer shawl and gathered it in as the little feet turned beneath. The Liar continued to talk to the God; but his eyes flickered sideways.

“The marshes are black and white and hard. The reeds might be made of bone. And there is cold——”

“Ah! Go on——”

“Not just the coolness of evening or a breeze off the river. Not just the coolness of a porous water jug; but cold that seizes a man, makes him dance at first, then makes him slow, then brings him to a full stop.”

“Did you hear that, Head Man?”

“If he lies down in the white dust which is water, he stays where he is. Presently he becomes stone. He is his own statue——”

Great House cried out.

“His Now is still! It moves no longer!”

He flung his arm across the Liar’s shoulder.

“Dear Liar, you are very precious to me!”

The Liar was dirty white round the lips.

“Oh no, Great House! You are just being kind and courteous—I am of no importance to anyone!”

But the Head Man was coughing. They both turned towards him, and his eyes showed them where they were expected to look. The shawl was just slipping from the monolith. A shining torrent had fallen free. The head was turned away but began to nod on this side and that. The torrent glittered, swung in time to the drum. The feet worked and turned.

“Why,” cried the God, “it’s Pretty Flower!”

The Head Man was nodding and smiling.

“Your lovely Daughter.”

Great House raised a hand in greeting. Smiling over her shoulder, Pretty Flower turned her back in exquisite time to the music and another shawl came off as the shining fall of hair swung femalely from hip to hip. Along the tables the roar had changed in quality to accord with the God’s smile and wave. There were affectionate smiles everywhere, gentle cooings, a delighted welcome for Pretty Flower into the family. The reed instrument and the harp joined the drum.

“She’s grown, you know,” said Great House. “You wouldn’t believe how much she’s grown!”

The Liar tore his attention from Pretty Flower, licking his lips. He leaned towards Great House and came near to nudging him.

“That’s better than hard water, eh, Great House?”

But the God’s eyes had focused a long, long way beyond his daughter.

“Tell me some more.”

The Liar frowned and thought. He came to some decision. He bent his bony face into a salacious grin.

“Customs?”

“Customs? What customs?”

The Liar whispered.

“Women.”

He hunched himself still nearer and began to whisper behind his hand. The God’s eyes became intent. He smiled. The two heads moved closer and closer together. The God reached behind him and brought another dish of beer to his mouth without looking at it. He sucked. The Liar began to shake with a prolonged snigger and his words came out from behind his hand.

“—sometimes they’ve never even seen them before—
strange
women!”

Great House snorted, and sprayed the Liar with beer.

“You can tell the most dirty——”

The Head Man coughed once more, with severe meaning. The rhythm of the music had changed. The reed instrument seemed more nasal, more plangent as if it had discovered something it wanted but did not know how to set about getting it. Pretty Flower had changed too. She was nakedly visible above the waist and she moved more quickly. Once, her feet had been all that moved. Now they, and her head, were all that was still. Her smile had gone, and she inspected her breasts, one at a time. For example: she would stand, right arm across her face, forearm down, palm outward and indicating her left breast, while her left curved to indicate it from below. Thus, her breast was delineated by two palms, offered, as it were, and made to pulse and quiver gently by a subtle rotation, of the left shoulder so that its warmth and weight and scent and texture was evident. Then bonelessly, she would evolve into a mirror image, this time concentrating on her right breast. It was now, with a brace of crimson nipples shaking out a perfume into the heavy air, that the reed instrument began to understand what it wanted. The nasal tone became a more than human cry. This cry was taken up along the tables, where there was some kissing among the drinking and a little delicate pawing. The Liar’s head turned slowly, compelled from Great House. His mouth was pinched as if with thirst.

“She’s beautiful,” he groaned. “Beautiful, beautiful!”

“She is indeed,” said the God. “Tell me some more, Liar.”

The Liar groaned in agony.

“You must watch her, Great House—don’t you understand?”

“There’s plenty of time for that.”

Pretty Flower was doing things with both breasts. Her hair flashed and floated wildly. The Liar was torn between her and the God. He beat his head with both hands.

“Very well,” said Great House sulkily. “If you won’t tell me any more I shall play checkers with the Head Man.”

The board appeared at once, like the beer. As Great House leant over it and shook the dicing sticks in the cup, a change came over the tables. There was less pawing, more muted conversation about food and drink and social matters and games. Pretty Flower and the musicians seemed to be performing to themselves, or the air.

“Your move,” said Great House. “Good luck.”

“I’ve sometimes thought,” said the Head Man, “it might be interesting if we didn’t let chance decide the moves but thought them out for ourselves.”

“What an odd game,” said Great House. “It wouldn’t have any rules at all.”

He glanced up, saw Pretty Flower and gave her a quite charming smile before he looked down again. She was indicating the smallness of her waist and the complex bearings of her hips which were moving in a slow circle beneath the last shawl. If there was any expression to be read behind her elaborate make-up it was one of anxiety, turning to sheer desperation. As she went into each new figure of the dance, she prolonged it, as if to enforce the invitation by sheer strength. She gleamed with more than unguents.

This was hard on the musicians. The harpist raked at the strings with the insistence of a woman rubbing out meal between two stones. The reed player’s eyes were crossed. Only the drummer beat easily, changing hands now and then, using two sometimes, sometimes only one. Along the tables, the talk was of checkers or hunting.

“Your move, Head Man.”

The Head Man shook his head and the dicing sticks at the same time. The Liar, greatly daring, was tugging at the God’s skirt for attention. The last shawl had come off Pretty Flower. She was naked and shining except for her jewels. Her mouth, drawn down at the corners in a stylized grimace of desire, had set round her gleaming teeth. She went into her last figure. This began at the other end of the hall, and brought her—the music commanding it and giving it power—in a series of convulsions down the whole length. Every few yards it threw her into display, arms out, knees apart, belly thrust forward. It brought her down the hall from a Now to a Now to a Now. Her thighs struck the God who struck the checker board and the ivory pieces flew in every direction. The God jerked back angrily and stared up.

“Do you
mind
?”

Then there was silence along the tables, silence from the collapsed musicians, silence from the dais where the ivory pieces had ceased to roll, and the only things that moved were the breasts of Pretty Flower. She fell, collapsed on the floor of the hall, face downward.

Great House moved, the anger dying out of his face. He passed the back of his hand across his forehead.

“Oh yes. Of course. I forgot.”

He swung his legs off the couch and sat on the edge.

“You know, I——”

“Yes, Great House?”

Great House looked down at his daughter.

“Very good, my dear. Most exciting.”

The Head Man leaned close.

“Well then——”

The Liar was hopping and desperate, between Pretty Flower and the couch.

“You must, Great House! You must!”

Great House had either hand laid on the couch beside him. He braced his hands, stiffening the muscles of his arms. He drew himself up, drew his stomach in, so that some faint indication of a muscled torso appeared beneath the quivering thickness. He stayed so for a few moments.

“Great House—please! Dear Great House!”

The God let out his breath. His eyes unfocused. His body slumped between slackened arms and his insides bulged out slowly into a smooth and rounded belly. He spoke flatly.

“I couldn’t.”

The sound of indrawn breath was like the flyby hiss of a monstrous arrow. Not a face in the hall but stared down. Not a finger or an eye but was motionless.

Suddenly Pretty Flower scrambled to her feet. She hid her face in her hands and fled shuddering and stumbling down the length of the hall and the curtains swung together behind her.

A young man came hurrying from the shadows at the back of the dais. He bent and whispered in the God’s ear.

“Oh yes. I’ll come now.”

The God got to his feet and the hall rustled as everyone else got to their feet too; but all faces still stared down, all mouths were silent. Great House followed the young man through the shadows and out into the open. Over the courtyard night was growing heavy at the zenith, oozing down and uncovering a myriad skypeople as it came. Beneath the creeping night and nearer to the horizon the sky was lighter blue, fragile, hardly able to bear the impending weight. Great House paused only to glance round at the fragility, whistled softly, then hurried to one of the four corners. He muttered to the young men as he went.