CHAPTER 20
Autumn came again to Persia and the great caravans began to move to their many destinations. But Al Taliph accompanied none. “I am still recovering from a grave illness,” he would say to his friends and his fellow merchants. “Too, I am no longer young.” They accepted this explanation, for they were gentlemen. But it was whispered everywhere that the beauteous Aspasia, the crown of his harem, his adored one and the adorable, had disappeared from his house. Had he banished her or had she died in Damascus?
The women and the eunuchs gossiped. The women were happy that the sister of Ahriman had departed, and they were assiduous in their attempts to amuse their lord. His oldest wife suggested he acquire a new young wife from the slave markets of Greece, or Macedonia, where, it was said, there lived girls so fair that their hair was almost white and had eyes the color of hyacinths and flesh like pearl. Moreover, they were skilled in music and the dance, and were amiable and full of grace. The oldest wife, who loved her husband, felt alarm for him. He had become emaciated and his dark face, never lively or gay, was as somber as carved bronze. He accepted no invitations. He sat in the gardens, or alone in his chambers, and did not speak. He rarely frequented his library, once his pride above all his other treasures. He sent for no books. He received no visitors.
The women who had attended Aspasia in Damascus were eagerly sought out and had to repeat their story countless times. It was bare enough, but their malicious imaginations supplied factitious details. The lord had wearied of that woman’s impudence. She had become too old and had borne him no child, and was idle and contentious. They had heard him quarrel with her many times. They even hinted that she had cast a malign spell on him and had mysteriously inflicted an illness upon him, with her incantations, so that she had brought him close to death. When he recovered, despite her malevolence, he had understood and had sent her away. She had been consigned to a small mean caravan, and no one had seen her since. “Rejoice,” they said to the wives and the concubines and the slave girls, “that he was enlightened in time, for if Mithras—or Zoroaster—had not intervened he should have died.”
The oldest wife was shrewd and a little more discerning. “Why, then, knowing all this, did he not have her murdered?”
“She had cast a spell on him. Did I not see it myself?” asked Serah.
“A veritable Circe,” said one of the slave girls who was a Greek. She was forced to explain. The other women expressed horror, raising their hands and lifting their eyes to heaven. “She made a swine of our lord!” cried the youngest wife, holding her last baby to her breast and shivering.
The oldest wife said, “Nonsense. He adored her. Do I not know it? A woman who loves, as I love him, knows when another woman possesses his heart. It is given a loving woman to know it in her breast,” and she touched that ample object. “I know also that she loved him. He murmured of her in his sleep when he slept beside me, in the most endearing words, and smiled in the moonlight. A man does not do that unless his love is returned. Do I not know?”
The others looked at her with disfavor, yet also with respect.
“Nevertheless,” said the oldest wife, “it is well she does not disturb us longer. It is a mystery, with which we must be content. Let us go to the temples and offer thanksgiving and pray that he will forget her speedily.”
“He permitted her to take with her all the fabulous jewels he had bestowed on her.”
“Another spell!” cried the girl from Greece.
“Nonsense,” said the oldest wife. “Spells cannot hurt our lord; he is too powerful for them. If he allowed her to do so then it was his will, which is inexplicable to us.” She was annoyed at the mention of Aspasia’s age, for she, herself, was a year or more older. She sighed. “Who can understand a man? What they desire they do, and we women cannot comprehend.”
But one of Aspasia’s attendants in Damascus licked her lips. What she had to say was too important to be whispered in the harem. It was also valuable. It would bring a good price. Who would pay it? Eventually she thought of Kurda, who had not gone to Damascus. He would pay the price. But he disdained to gossip too much with the women of the harem, and he was busy in attendance on Al Taliph, as he loved him and was full of consternation at his appearance.
Then the rumor came that Al Taliph walked the long corridors, in starlight and moonlight, facing the gardens, pacing up and down like a man distraught and in great anguish of mind, and sleepless. His steps could be heard in the night, monotonously pacing, until the dawn.
It was said he often uttered a groan and beat the palms of his hands together.
The attendants spoke of Aspasia’s weeping in her tent, after her departure from Damascus. “She drooped like a lily, on the oasis, and never spoke.” “Then,” said the oldest wife, dejected, “they loved each other. Why did they part?”
Once when Al Taliph slept beside her, then awoke, she said to him with gentleness, “Lord, you returned to us, to my arms. The foreign woman was not for you, and well it is that you—banished—her. Men do not banish the woman they love, unless her conduct is heinous. Was her conduct so?”
“No,” he said, touched by her love. “But we must not speak of this. What has gone has gone.”
“You yearn for her, lord, and that is a grievous thing to me.”
He left his bed and went to pace on the corridor which had been Aspasia’s favorite walk, by night and day. He looked on the scenes she had looked upon. He sat where she had sat. Rumor again quickened. He spent hours in her chamber, where he had never gone before, and sat behind a shut door. He even slept in her bed.
Sometimes he hated her for the hot and unremitting desire for her. He waited for the sound of her voice, the scent of her perfume, her laughter, her rallying conversation, the touch of her white hands. He remembered how she had ministered to him and he would say aloud, in a hoarse voice, “Why, Aspasia, if you did not love me? Was it slyness on your part so you could cajole me to permit you to leave me, as once I refused?” But he knew that above all things Aspasia had never been sly. There had always been a forthright honesty about her, a clarity of character which nothing could cloud, a pride which scorned pettiness and lies. She had asked him to give her peace, and he had acceded. What was the peace she had desired? He did not know. He only knew that something in him writhed in agony and confusion, and that nothing could appease it. Time did not diminish it. Each day was a fresh confrontation with pain and despair, fury and loneliness. It was in vain that he told himself that she was only a woman, in a world of amiable women, and that she had been a hetaira and that he had bought her companionship from the notorious house of Thargelia. At moments he was seized by an almost uncontrollable desire to find her, to implore her return, to take her by force if necessary. But, knowing Aspasia, he knew this would be of no avail. The flown bird cannot be captured again, or, if captured, sickens in its cage however much the affection bestowed on it. At these thoughts he would grip his hair in his hands and roll his head in torment, and repeat her name over and over aloud like an incantation.
He despised himself for his agony, yet it remained. He had been too hasty, he would think. He had let her go without an avowal of his love, his need for her. He began to think that if he had made this avowal, had expressed his need, she would have remained out of pity alone. But, she had never loved him; the arts she had used to please him and give him almost unbearable pleasure were taught arts, and therefore did not come from her soul. The thought of a woman pitying him and remaining with him out of pity sickened his body as well as his mind. But there were moments when he felt as abject as a whipped slave, and it would have been enough for him but to see her and hold her in his arms.
It was useless for him to tell himself that he was a satrap, and a rich merchant, and often sat with Artaxerxes in his court, and Aspasia was nothing at all but a bought woman who was no longer young. It was not for his passion that he desired her with this awful desire. It was for her, herself. He had let her go and had not uttere
d one plea, one remonstrance. What were his wives to him, and all his women now? They were not the singular Aspasia, the incomparable. Beside her they were but crows in comparison with a glowing bird, or sparrows compared with a nightingale. I cherished her more than I knew, alas, he would think. I thought I would forget her in a week, a month. But her bright wraith is in every hall, in the garden, in all rooms of my house. I turn in the night to embrace her—and she is not there. Had she died I could not mourn her more.
He would not even see his children, whom he loved. They were not Aspasia, as his women were not Aspasia. Everything he had in the world was meaningless without her. His thick dark hair began to whiten at the temples and the anguish in his soul wearied his body and made him languid and inert.
Her face haunted him, smiling, serious, teasing, contemplative, or eager, like a child’s. He saw her when she was discussing philosophy with him and obscure matters, and he had reluctantly admired her intellect which had been—he knew now—a spring of fresh water in a desert to him. It had been unique, sparkling, sharp as Damascene steel thrusting to a target, subtle. She had understood him as none had understood him before. He had found ease and entertainment in her presence, when they were not even clasped together in his bed. He had found contentment. He remembered how they had laughed together, and jested. He had often been brutal with her and often rejecting, and had forgotten her on many occasions. Now he was aware that she had always been in his mind despite all these, and that he had returned to her like an unsatisfied lover who could not have enough of his beloved.
Alas, alas, that I let you go, my white swan, my adored one, he would repeat over and over to himself. I did not know what I possessed until you left me, and I returned to dull women who only chatter and have bodies. You had a body also, not distinguished from that of other women. Now I confess that it was not your body I loved but your soul, your mind, all that you were, my beloved one. Who can replace you? I see you everywhere, and all things remind me of you, and I cannot endure it, I who have had many women, and wives and am a man. Do men love only that which has forever fled? That is not true of me, for I always loved you. I should have held you close, gripped to me always, never forgetting.
He was abased in himself and sometimes disgusted. But the yearning remained and increased each day. He could hardly eat what was laid before him. He was distraught. He lived in a cloud, which made all things unreal to him. Aspasia had been with him but four years, and his wives had been with him for many more. Yet, in remembrance, it seemed to him that he had known her forever, had awaited for her through time.
His wives artfully sent their children to the gardens, but he no longer rejoiced in them nor admired them or desired their presence. Their prattle was the prattle of his wives and had as much import. He would return to his library and hold the books she had held, and once, to his horror, he stained a scroll with his tears.
Serah at last sought out Kurda, who listened with glistening eyes and a salivating mouth. He licked his lips. He gave Serah the gold coin she had demanded and even deigned to pat her shoulder approvingly, and with glee. Then he questioned the Rais of the caravan, who questioned the men who had driven Aspasia’s tent. After several weeks he found one of the men in the courtyard who had observed a peculiar matter, and still another.
Kurda pondered. How would his lord receive this information? With fury and denial and punishment? Or, with gratitude? Kurda would sit at night on his bed, rubbing his hairless chin and debating in himself the proper approach. At last he could wait no longer and sought out Al Taliph in his library. He entered silently and Al Taliph, gaunt and gloomy, looked at him with impatience. Kurda bowed. “Lord,” he said, “I have news for you, if you can endure it, concerning the foreign woman whom you banished nearly a year ago.”
Al Taliph started to his feet, and his bones became like hard metal under his skin. “Speak!” he cried, and there was a leaping and fluttering in his breast. Had Aspasia been found? Where could he seek her?
Kurda glanced about him, and hesitated. “It will anger you, lord, and I am fearful that your anger will fall upon me, who am guiltless, instead of the man with whom that woman betrayed you.”
Al Taliph stood motionless. He stared at Kurda and his parched mouth became quiet and still. Finally he said, “There was no man, no lover. But tell me your idle tale—for I know you hated her—and I vow I will not punish you however absurd or vile the story.”
Kurda looked at him beseechingly. He said, “The man is one of your companions, your friends, who has accompanied you on a caravan. He is Damos of Damascus, once a guest in your house.”
Still staring at Kurda, Al Taliph slowly seated himself. He recalled the night when Damos had dined with him and he had offered Damos the little girls and Aspasia had intervened. He recalled that prior to this she had become agitated on her arrival in the dining hall, and he had wondered if she had recognized one of the guests. “Go on,” he said to Kurda, and his dark hands clenched on his brocaded robe.
Kurda, despite his fear, told the story well, and in sequence. He had found one of the men who had driven Aspasia’s tent. The man had seen Damos ride up to the platform, on which Aspasia was standing; the man had seen her leave the tent and creep to the rear. Curious, he had also crept along the other side of the tent and had observed that the foreign woman had given Damos a letter. They had whispered together, or spoken in low voices, and so the man had not been able to hear their rapid conversation. Aspasia had seemed to be imploring Damos.
“The driver spoke to his companion about this strange event,” said Kurda, watching Al Taliph fearfully for any gesture of violence towards himself. “But the companion had only replied that as Damos was your friend, lord, and a guest in the caravan, the foreign woman was only sending you a message, for it was known that you had not seen her for several nights. So the man shrugged, and forgot the incident, believing the explanation for it.”
Al Taliph did not speak. Kurda’s throat became dry; he could see but those terrible eyes fixed upon him.
The woman, Serah, one of Aspasia’s attendants, had seen a far more serious incident in Damascus. She had told him, Kurda, of Aspasia’s obvious restlessness, imprisoned as she was during the cholera. She had continually paced up and down her chambers like a demon, her expression growing wilder every day. Then one afternoon Serah, who was engaged in her prayers against the plague, had seen Aspasia suddenly halt near one of the windows and gaze downwards as if something or someone had attracted her attention. After a moment or two she had gone into the chamber where the commodes had been placed, and had carefully closed the curtains behind her. Serah had run first to the window and saw below the lord’s friend, Damos, who was gazing upwards at the window of the smaller chamber beyond. To Serah’s astonishment she saw that Aspasia had untied her jeweled cord and was extending it through the bars to Damos, and Damos instantly caught it and wound a letter in it. Aspasia then had swiftly drawn it upwards, and Damos had wandered away.
Serah had then run to the curtains and had drawn the edge of one aside and she discovered Aspasia in the act of reading the letter, which she then had thrust into her bosom. Serah did not speak of these odd matters to her sister attendants, being prudent and not desiring to be an idle gossip. But she had watched Aspasia and later saw her furtively drop the missive onto the coals of the brazier.
He, Kurda, on being informed of these events, had made inquiries and had not only heard the tale of Aspasia’s giving Damos a letter or message while the caravan was on the road to Damascus, but had found two other men of the caravan who had been in the courtyard alone while Damos was furtively conveying the missive to Aspasia. They had pretended to see nothing. It was of little interest to them at the time, for they had not seen Aspasia clearly at the window, but had known Damos well, for had he not ridden beside the lord during the journey on many occasions? If he was making an assignation with a woman of what matter was it to them?
“Any of these revelations, alone, lord,
would be serious though a possible explanation could be found for one,” said Kurda. “But there are three events and combined they have unspeakable import.”
Al Taliph was silent for a long time. He did not believe for an instant that Aspasia had been unfaithful to him. He recalled that Damos was a Greek and it was surely probable now that he had known Aspasia before, though he had denied ever living in Miletus, or of even visiting that city. Therefore, he had lied. Al Taliph remembered that Damos had invariably shown Aspasia deferential kindness, and that he had spoken of her to Al Taliph in the inn when Hephzibah had visited Aspasia. His voice had been gentle, as if he were speaking of a great lady, and not a courtesan, and had permitted his wife to converse alone with her, a peculiar thing for a virtuous Jew to permit. (Had he not taken those children to his wife instead of taking them to his bed?)
Had he been a random patron of Aspasia’s when she was in the house of Thargelia? No. Thargelia delivered only virgins to distinguished or illustrious or wealthy men, and Aspasia had been a virgin in his, Al Taliph’s, bed, and of that he was convinced. There had also been a pristine quality about Aspasia, a freshness, an inexperience, which could not be assumed and certainly not to a man of Al Taliph’s knowledge of women and their bodies.
Aspasia had been lured from her lord, or had induced Damos to assist her to flee, but for what reason Al Taliph did not know. Damos, deprived of a loved and loving wife, had remained in Damascus, nurturing and consoling his children and had wept when Al Taliph had bidden him farewell. Nothing could soothe his grief for the loss of Hephzibah, and his sorrow was genuine. He had not feigned his despair. Therefore, there had been no sensual communication between him and Aspasia.