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 sch
ool. 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?”
She stood up, the better to be close to him. The horse’s breath was hot and parched against her cheek. She could see his great white teeth. She held up the letter to Thalias and he snatched it quickly. She whispered above the sound of hoofs, “Send it before Damascus, dear Thalias. I have asked that a reply be sent to you in the city.”
He glanced down at the letter. He saw to whom it was addressed and looked afraid. “Do not fear,” she said. “I have not betrayed you, my dear Thalias. I have given your new name to Thargelia, and the name of the street where you live in Damascus.” She gazed at him with desperate appeal. “Help me,” she pleaded, and clasped her hands tightly against her breast. “Help me as I helped you, for I am in danger.”
He arched his eyebrows in amazement, and she nodded. “I am worse than a slave,” she said. To herself she thought, Yes, I am worse than a slave for I would flee from a love which devours me and yet which I despise. Her large brown eyes, so filled with shifting stars and liquid brilliance, fixed themselves on Thalias with so much despair and sorrow that he forgot to be afraid. He thrust the letter into his robe and his eyes smiled with promise upon the girl. He dug his heels into the horse’s side and the animal sprang forward and away.
Aspasia felt undone and weak. Thalias had not spoken in reply to her plea but she knew she could trust him, for all he was a cautious man. She sat again on the platform, calling upon her inner strength. Finally she rose and in that bloody light of sunset she reentered the tent. Her women were stirring on their cushions, and yawning.
Al Taliph did not send for her that night, nor the night following, and Aspasia did not know whether to be relieved or to be crushed. She longed for him with a terrible longing, and she knew that this was just the beginning of pain and the darkness of grief and the unforgetting. But her resolution remained.
CHAPTER 15
The caravan climbed slowly and heavily to the great high plateau, between the valleys of the Tigris and the Indus, a vast basin surrounded by mountains, and fed by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and partially divided by a desert. The air of the plateau was cool, and the mountains were already turbaned by early snow. Here, on the immense wilderness lived lions and tigers, deer, lynxes, wolves, hyenas, jackals, hogs, porcupines, badgers, hares, martens and weasels, whose voices could be heard in shrieking chorus at night, in forests or on the plain. The day was profuse with the cries and screams of birds of uncountable variety. Sometimes the rare and beautiful Persian cats could be found, and frequently tamed, and were the pride of the ladies in the cities, who loved to stroke and fondle and comb them and whisper sweet words into those mysterious blue eyes. The rivers were thick with salmon, sturgeon, herring, perch and bream, especially in the estuaries.
The plateau seethed with the life of the beasts and the birds, and there were small settlements of that “manly and sturdy peasantry, healthy and brave,” of which Darius had spoken with such admiration and pride, and who exemplified for him all that was sound and strong in a nation. “Let such a peasantry become urban and corrupt with civilization, and their country dies, and all its virtues, which sprang from the soil, the free air and the templed forests.” He would also say of them with pride, “A Persian, the son of a Persian, an Aryan of Aryan stock, and shall not we Aryans inherit the earth? We come from the loins of a masculine race.” To which several Grecian philosophers and soldiers had replied ironically, “We are called effeminate by the Persians—whose men redden their lips—but it was we who defeated them with our bows and our ‘womanish’ strength. It was we who began the destruction of that insatiable empire.”
But a Persian philosopher said, also in reply, “We began to decline when we built enormous cities, and forgot our gods. The air of a city is stench, and the temples are corrupt. For cities are not the true habitats of a glorious race; they are its tombs.”
Alone, isolated and almost ignored though Aspasia was, her newly awakened sense of life, of being, of again entering existence as from a moveless dream, of again being part of the world and its sights and sounds and rapturous changes and vitality, its hubbub and unpredictabilities, engaged her growing interest in spite of her sadness. So she had felt on leaving the shelter of Thargelia’s house, but now in greater measure—for in the house of Al Taliph she had been completely immured—she felt a rising expectation, the radiance of hope, however feeble it still was and how accompanied by sorrow. She said to herself, paraphrasing a Greek philosopher: I observe, therefore I am. The natural vivacity of her nature slowly returned, resembling the tingling of a leg or an arm which had been compressed but which now was released. Though she awaited a summons from Al Taliph, which did not come, she felt a little lessening of the wild despair she had originally suffered. She found that there were moments when she even forgot him, and could look upon mountains and rivers, forests and valleys, plains and cliffs and azure pools and cataracts, with eager marveling. She often thrust aside the flap of her tent, to stand in the aperture, gazing like a freed child on aspects she had never seen before. Once she saw a gigantic migration of butterflies in the lambent air, catching sunlight on crimson, black and golden wings, and rising and falling like a colored shawl from India which Al Taliph had once given her. On another occasion she watched the dance of birds against a silver dawn, and she was ecstatic and threw out her arms as if she would rise and join them. All about her were the scents, fragrances, odors and tangs of a new world, far from opulence and heavy perfumes and motionless luxury and monotony. Cool green grass, dark trees whose names she did not know, scattered clusters of red and blue and yellow and snowy flowers, little streams bright and restless as mercury, thunderous green falls of water that shook the pure air and rumbled unde
r the wheels of the caravan, sunsets and sunrises of incomparable majesty, circling ranks of mountains of somber green or ochre or even scarlet as the season advanced, rivers flashing like white fire as they raced under the sun, river islands tufted as if with enormous ostrich feathers, caverns with black mouths—all these she saw with a revived wonder and joy. The voices she heard from men and brutes and birds were new to her; the atmosphere was pervaded with resin and the scent of cold vegetation and colder stone and icy water. She felt she was breathing liquid and shining crystal and not strong air, and sometimes her lungs stung with the sweet unfamiliarity and the purity of it, and her eyes watered. The caravan would enter dim arcades of forests, and Aspasia was awed by the vaulting and living arches above her and the living columns that slowly moved past her. She understood for the first time that there is a subtle difference between knowledge and understanding. The first was taught, the second was a gift to the soul. She had a sudden new comprehension of life and the Godhead, and she was shaken with reverence. Once when she saw a narrow river the color of gold between dark and looming banks and another like a vein of deep purple stained with fire, she could hardly restrain her delight, and worship.
She was conscious again of still being young and alive, of having her eyes filled with constantly changing marvels. The fragile hope in her began to increase. This, then, is what men feared in women, she would think: They fear, if released from a man’s arms and commands, we would see the world and desire to be part of it, and be not in a state of servitude and a victim of random passion, but a member of humanity, itself. So must an exultant slave feel when he discovers that in his heart he is free, despite his chains, and so must a master know fear when he discerns that though he can control the body of his slave he cannot control his spirit.