Glory and the Lightning (29 page)

She wondered if Hephzibah bas Ephraim had forgotten her, for Al Taliph had humorously mentioned that the Jewish lady would invite her soon to partake of a quiet dinner alone with her. However, no invitation came and Aspasia was filled with disappointed resentment. Doubtless Hephzibah regarded her as unclean and did not desire her house to be polluted by such a woman as herself.

She began to think of the house she would have in Athens, but even that was taking on the semblance of a lost dream. Al Taliph would never let her go until he tired of her, and the air of Damascus made her mind languid and without hope. She existed for the benefit of Al Taliph’s pleasure; beyond that she had no existence, but was just a glass bubble aimlessly drifting in any random breeze, catching light and color though having none of these within itself. Where was the incandescent resolution she had possessed only a few months ago? Her listlessness increased and became animation only in the presence of Al Taliph.

One day she said to him, “I had hoped to see Hephzibah bas Ephraim again. She has forgotten her promise to me.”

He averted his face and said, “Damos mentioned that she had been indisposed.” He hesitated, then continued: “I know you have pleasure in seeing the city, but it is my desire that you not go forth again from this time on, but remain in your chambers.”

She protested. “But that is my only diversion!”

He looked at her forbiddingly. “It is my command,” he said and at first would not explain for all the bright anger in her eyes. “Also,” he said, “drink not of the water from the well but only wine and eat no fruit but that it is washed and peeled by yourself, with your knife and fingers. Let no water reach your mouth, even for the cleaning of your teeth, and when you bathe close your lips tightly so that no water can enter, nor must it enter your nostrils.”

Now a faint cold alarm came to her. “What is this of which you speak, lord?”

“There is a rumor that some illness is spreading through the city and the physicians fear it is carried in wells and rivers. That may be a superstition, yet it is wise to be prudent.”

Her alarm grew stronger. “What of you, Al Taliph? Are you being prudent?”

He shrugged and smiled. “I must drink and eat what is given me in the houses of my friends and my fellow merchants, but their kitchens are fastidious and so no harm will come to me. This inn has a reputation for cleanliness. But you must remain within.” He hesitated and said inwardly, Lest you come to harm and I would be desolated. He smiled at her again and said, “Does not a man guard his treasure and are you not mine?”

She answered with acerbity, “Until I am no longer your treasure but have become tarnished in your eyes.”

Now her life became more restricted than ever before. She was not permitted to go down even to the courtyard, and she saw fright in her women’s faces. She heard them whisper; she saw them fingering amulets. Once she said to them with impatience, “Of what are you afraid?” But they did not answer but only peeped at her furtively, and she knew they feared to give their terror words lest it fall upon them like a Fury, as at a summoning. They were stupid and unlettered women, docile and sullen, and had no conversation and so they were not of any companionship to her. Moreover they were of the east and they could not understand her nor could she understand them. They began to utter dissonant chants and rock on their buttocks on the floor, their faces strained with anxiety for themselves, and the sound was discordant to Aspasia and disagreeable to her ears. She knew they were imploring their own fearsome gods. But how had any rumor come to them unless the eunuchs had gossiped? Eunuchs were worse than women, Al Taliph had once said, for prattle and idle tongues. The eunuchs, however, rarely if ever spoke to her.

The women were also much older than herself and fat and repugnant to her eyes, and as none now left the chambers the rooms began to reek with the smell of sweat and increasing incense and rank perfumes. She noticed, from her window, that men went continually through the courtyard, swinging censers or burning fires in the corners and thus filling the air with acrid smoke, and chanting as the women chanted. Perhaps the season for the caravans was ending, for Aspasia saw few and even these were decreasing and often days passed when there were none at all. She, herself, began to feel fear, and longed for news.

At last she could bear it no longer and cried to Al Taliph, “You must tell me! What is this illness of which you have told me? Would you leave me a prey to fright? It is better to know than to be ignorant.”

He appeared very tired. There were no more bronze lights on his cheeks, she saw with dread, and his nose seemed larger and his subtle mouth tighter. “Then, I will tell you,” he said. “It is cholera.”

At that fearful word Aspasia shivered and trembled. “Cholera,” she whispered. “Are many ill—dead?”

“A fourth of the city is dead,” he replied. “I thought to spare you the knowledge. The gates of the city are closed. None can leave nor can come in. Does it make you more at ease to know this?”

But she whispered again, “Cholera!”

“Even the physicians are dying,” he said.

She put her cold palms to her face and closed her eyes briefly. “Almost all die, lord.”

“True. I did not wish you to be afraid. You are safe here if you are careful in your food and your drink.”

She exclaimed, as she had exclaimed before, but now with terror, “What of you, lord?” Her face had turned very white and her eyes enlarged.

“I am careful also,” he said and tried to smile at her. “I tell you now so that you will understand why we are prisoners here. If not for this we should have departed three weeks ago. It is not my wish to keep you in a dungeon.”

She reached out and seized his hand and she was trembling again. “Remain with me, lord! Do not go forth again, I implore you.”

He regarded her curiously. “Do you fear that if I sicken and die you will be helpless here? Do not distress yourself, dear one. My men will convey you home.” His tone was sardonic. “Your name, sweet blossom, is in my will.”

She withdrew her hand and turned aside her head helplessly. She said, “Is the family of Damos well?”

“His wife died a month ago.” He threw the words at her as if she had incontinently wounded him and he wished to wound her in return.

She cried out and clenched her hands together. “Hephzibah bas Ephraim? Gods, what of her children—and Damos?”

“The children sickened, but are recovering. Damos had cholera in his childhood, he has told me.”

Aspasia wept for that loving young woman and covered her face with her hands. When she looked up at last she saw that Al Taliph had left her. Now her fear for him became frenzy and she returned to her chambers and walked up and down them wringing her hands and muttering her own incoherent prayers, though she felt them superstition and useless. The women, forgetting their own whimperings and fear, watched her sullenly and glanced at each other with unspoken questions. Was the foreign woman sickening? They drew together, huddling, for protection.

She paused before them suddenly and stared down at them and hated them for no reason but that they were witnesses to her uncontrolled anguish. “What is that amulet you wear, Serah?” she asked of one of them and pointed to the chain and object about the woman’s fat creased neck.

Serah covered it with her hand, protecting it from Aspasia, for all knew that she had the evil eye. She cringed and whimpered and did not answer. In a rage she had rarely felt before Aspasia bent, flung aside the woman’s clutching hand, and lifted the silver object in her fingers.

Once she had seen such an amulet about the neck of an Egyptian but it had not interested her then, though it had been of gold, and jeweled. The one she held now in her hands was the length of her little finger, and was a thin flat shaft; one third down there was a flat crossbar, of an equally thin size as the long bar. The end of the top bar was looped and through this there was a silver chain. It was not a pretty trinket as the one the Egyptian had worn, and it was cheap. Aspasia had seen many amulets before but only two of this. She said, “Whence did it come and what does it mean and what god can be invoked by it?”

Serah shrugged blankly. “I found it in a shop in Miletus and it is said to have great powers, and the Greek shopkeeper said it is the sign of the Unknown God, but Who that God is I do not know. It signifies eternal life and the resurrection of the dead.”

“Oh, what folly! Eternal life. Resurrection of the dead!” Even in her misery Aspasia felt derision. Then she remembered that the Egyptians believed in the resurrection of the dead and eternal life; therefore, they were solicitous concerning the disposal of the bodies of those who died, particularly those of royal blood. But even poor families sold all they had to pay for such preservation of a member’s body and had it embalmed. She had another thought, remembering her conversation with Al Taliph: the Unknown God, Whose altar still awaited Him in Greek temples, and the pervasive belief in His coming throughout all religions, particularly in the East.

She slowly let the object slide through her fingers, from which it dropped to Serah’s breast, and the woman hastily thrust it under the cloth of her breast. “Does it guard against illness, Serah?”

Serah again shrugged. “That I do not know, Lady. The Greek said only it has great powers.” She pressed her hand over its outlines. “What is more desirable than protection from evil and disease and death?”

“True,” said Aspasia. “Do we all not desire that?” She turned away and resumed her pacing. She was not veiled in the chamber nor was her head covered. As she passed by the barred windows hot bars of sunlight alternately struck her then withdrew, and her pale golden hair was like a flame over her white brow and about her pale cheeks. She kept pressing her palms together tightly, until they sweated and she prayed in herself: “If You are indeed the Unknown God, do not let my beloved die! Preserve him from evil. It is said You love mankind and desire the love of men and would be born of us. Therefore, You are compassionate as our gods are not compassionate. Have mercy, have mercy. For, if he dies I cannot live.”

A faint coolness, or a numbness, touched her heart and she became calmer. It was then that she heard a light tinkling against one of the bars of the window. She went to the window and looked without. Thalias stood there below, clad in somber robes, his face shrunken and older, his eyes reddened. He tried to smile up at her, then bit his lip. There were but one or two men in the once-crowded courtyard and they were at a distance, talking together.

Aspasia hastily glanced behind her, but her women were rocking on their buttocks and chanting again. She leaned against the bars, her face full of pity and desire to communicate her sympathy to him. He understood. His once merry blue eyes became vivid with tears. He reached to his pouch and glanced about him, then withdrew a sealed letter and showed it to her. Aspasia’s heart jumped. It could be only from Thargelia. Despairingly, she looked again at her women. They had as yet seen or heard nothing. Her thoughts flew through her head like distracted birds. Then her mind became clear. In the next chamber commodes had been prepared for her and the women so that they need not go down to the latrines in the courtyard. There was a small window there. She glanced down at her waist, which was clasped with a silver cord set with garnets and amethysts, a trifle she had fancied in a bazaar and which Al Taliph had bought for her. It was of several lengths so that it could be wound and twisted pliantly about her slender body and even about her breasts.

She looked down again at Thalias then pointed towards the window of the other chamber and turned back to the women. Sighing, she went into the adjoining chamber, which had no door but the one entering this. She closed the thick blue and gold curtains behind her then ran silently to the window. Thalias was standing below. Swiftly she unwound the gilded cord about her waist and, holding one end, she let the other through the bars of the small window very quickly, her breath tight in her throat, her eyes on the distant men.

Thalias deftly seized the end of the cord and speedily tied it about the letter. It flew up the dusty wall like a moth and Aspasia retrieved it. Then Thalias touched his forehead in farewell and wandered away, ostensibly to the latrines.

The thudding in Aspasia’s breast was harder and more painful. She looked at the closed curtains, moved to a wall and swiftly opened the letter, which read:

“Greetings to Aspasia, one dearer than a daughter:

“How joyous was I to receive a message from you, my beautiful child, for never are you out of my memory. How I cried with pleasure, for the hope of seeing you again. I shall do as you wish at once and seek a house for you, as you desire, in Athens, but it appears to me a strange house. I will not question you, for the messenger awaits my answer. You must come first to your home in Miletus where I will embrace you and hold you once more in my arms and we shall speak of many things. I await you and will invoke Hermes to bring you on wings to me.”

Aspasia thrust the letter into her bosom. The disposal of it would be another problem. Nor did she think just then how she could leave Damascus and Al Taliph. That was for the future.

But still a lightness came to her, like a wind of freedom through the bars of a prison, and her resolution, so long in abeyance, began to open like a hidden rivulet within her, at first doubtful and muddy, then springing into crystal.

As the evenings were sharply cool after the heat of the day a brazier was lighted in the chamber where she slept with her women. Aspasia was able to drop the letter on the coals where it flared a moment and then was but ashes. However, like the Phoenix, there rose from them a renewed life. It was only later while her women slept that she thought, But even if he will let me go, how can I leave him? I will leave my heart and my love behind and all that I am, and henceforth I shall be but a shadow from Hades. But I must go before he tires of me and I wander like an apparition in the chambers of the rejected, unwanted and despairing of any summons, weeping and mournfully sighing in the endless nights.