‘And now we must run for it,’ said Dabeeb, in the cool capable way she had, and the two went back as they had come, taking advantage of every bit of cover and running through the herds of animals wherever animals were to be seen. Dabeeb gasped out bits of information, such as that this ceremony was held four times in the year. That it was held not always in one place ‘for we are not short of fortresses and forts, whatever else!’ — and that the men of course knew that these ceremonies took place, and tolerated them. They saw them as a safety valve. ‘For if one of us did break her promise and tell her man what we do, then what can they object to? Not one of us would tell about taking off the punishment helmets, and looking up at the mountains in secret. Not one! For she would know we would kill her … it’s in all our interests, you see, for it is a long time since the men reminded themselves of what it is they should be doing …’ and now they had reached the foot of the hill on the top of which the pavilions stood, graceful and white in the early sun. ‘I’ll leave you here, or my husband’ll give me a hiding if I’m any later …’ and she swerved and ran off home.
Al·Ith climbed the hill slowly, listening for the moment when she would hear the drum, and feeling that the child was wakening with the day: she fancied him yawning and stretching in there, as she held her hand close over him.
What was it Dabeeb had said: what it was the men should be doing… Of course! It was all perfectly simple! And she could have seen it all long ago, for there was nothing very difficult to see.
What the men should be doing was not making war, in reality or in pretence. That was a displacement of something else, some other aim, or function, something enjoined that they had forgotten … and had not only forgotten but now forbade. But why? What had happened? And above all, how? That was the word. The men were supposed to … supposed to … but how?
In all the singing and the dancing and the games of the night, not one girl or woman had even hinted at that. If ‘to climb the mountains’ was the proper activity of men, then what did that mean? She knew that if she said to Dabeeb, ‘Very well then, what is the proper activity of men?’ Dabeeb would point to the mountains. Yes, but what did that mean?
And now I propose to interrupt this narrative to return briefly to Zone Three.
This business of the song and story festival Al·Ith had asked for, believing that she would find there information, or at least hints and suggestions of half-forgotten sagacities … she had been right. But wrong about where. Which was, in fact, the ceremony, or commemoration, of the Zone Four women: in their rituals, their acts of deliberate preservation. While she had so energetically been participating that night she had been thinking, too, of how one may be so right about a thing, but only half right … for now she knew — but did not know why she did — that the Zone Three festival would not be likely to yield up anything useful. And so it was.
Murti· did not neglect her sister’s request.
But she did have difficulty with it.
For one thing, as I’ve said, we had festivals of this kind at least once a year, and there were the regional festivals, too. So how was Al·Ith’s need actually to be made effective? Were we to allow it to be understood everywhere that in our old songs and verses, and even the most silly and worn out of them, there might be use, and that they were to be presented with this idea in mind? My experience has always been that an overdirect approach to such matters usually defeats itself. No, it is through the unexpected, or the sidelong, or the indirect that truths come our way … so I brooded, had to brood, since I was much concerned in preparations: Murti· left it to me in the end. Was it perhaps a question of us listening in a different way? That seemed to me to be getting near to it. It was certainly true that our songs, our stories, had not changed very much for a long time: perhaps truer or more to the point that we all took this for granted, and did not look very far … I am stating here baldly what has already been hinted at — that the general malaise, or stagnation (but such a word was hard to use of our beautiful land) was well established among us, the Chroniclers, the makers of pictures, the songsters … though as is usually the way it was not until later we were able to use words like stagnation.
Our festivals were very beautiful. I use this word after thought. That is exactly what they were. They had a rich, rolling plumpness about them. They were reassuring. Attending one was like eating one’s way through a long and abundant feast. But there was no sting or surprise there. No moments of shock. They did not stimulate.
This is certainly not the place for a discourse about what festivals are for. Discussions on this theme were plentiful during that phase of preparation and on the whole were fruitless. My experience is that discussion is fruitless. What sets forth and demonstrates is the sight of events in action, is living through these events, and understanding them …
The preparations for this special festival went awkwardly. No one knew what was demanded of them. Al·Ith wanted it: and so of course it should be … but she wasn’t here, was she? Did she intend to return for this occasion? If not, what was the point of it? Had it been commanded by the Providers? But we believed not.
When the festival took place, it went on for a week, and it was the largest and best attended for years. All our regions sent their singers and tellers. As usual everything was most lovely and — luscious. I use the word wryly …
I, and others of us — professionals, the organizers — had to be wry. Dry. And disappointed. Nothing happened that had not happened a thousand times before. Each song, each set of verses, each tale, came out so pat and smooth and smiling, and no matter how we listened, trying to borrow Al·Ith’s ears, we heard nothing that suggested more than we already knew.
Murti· was there throughout, of course, and she was in a sense Al·Ith … but there was no conviction in it. She was lackadaisical, even perfunctory, as one is when performing a duty that has no heart in it.
And when the festival was over, that was the end of it all.
And I do not think I am being fanciful when I say that this was at least partly because it had already taken place — but elsewhere. After all, this story of Al·Ith has taught us all that what goes on in one Zone affects the others, even when we believe we are hostile, or forget everything that goes on outside our own borders. We share and exchange even our times of sluggishness, insularity, self-applause. When those women strove and struggled to lift their poor heads up so they could see our mountains towering over them it was as if they were secretly pouring energy and effort into springs that fed us all. When Al·Ith made her forced descent to that dreary land it was for us all … paradoxically one reason for our festival not being much of a success was that things were improving in our Zone. This was being felt, though it had not been acknowledged openly. For instance, the animals that came in from all the regions and were pastured together outside Andaroun — they were far from melancholy, but all gave evidence in their own way of the highest of spirits. Gambolling and playfulness, all kinds of games, went on, and watching them we joked that the occasion would result in a fine crop of youngsters. And of course we watched among ourselves for signs of a new spirit — and believed we were finding them. Though not much was said … the tide had turned … we already dared to look back at a past bad time. And Al·Ith was being connected in the general mind with that time, and as we already found ourselves reluctant to think of it, so Al·Ith was being talked of less. Her visits to us of course had been discussed: different accounts of them were circulating. All made her sound bizarre. As it were tainted and contaminated. In my experience it is a rule that people anywhere will refuse to open their minds to the damaged, the hurt, unless they are forced to. Fear is the root of it: that they might be brought low themselves. I have to record that as the atmosphere of Zone Three lightened, and the confidence and morale of ourselves and our animals returned, so Al·Ith was less remembered, was thought of, even, with distaste. I am afraid that is the exact, the proper word.
One of the motives for this chronicle i
s an attempt to revive in the hearts and memories of our people another idea of Al·Ith, to re-instate her in her proper place in our history. It is not enough that a minority of us seek her out, identify with her, try to live near her, when such a large majority think of her only as we do of those who represent places in ourselves we find it dangerous to approach …
Al·Ith entered the pavilion slowly, feeling that she was tired and would shortly need to rest — and there sat Ben Ata, on the bottom of the couch, his sandalled hero’s legs sprawled, gazing at her with a white, set, wounded face. He rose to his feet and came tragically towards her, and she could see that in a moment he would strike her.
‘And where have you been, Al·Ith?’
‘At a festival. With the women,’ she said, in the coollest, most amazed voice in the world, throwing water on his flames, and she saw his fist, which had been raised, lower again.
‘And why should I believe you?’
‘But why should you not believe me?’ she enquired, in the reasonable voice of her real self, which only a few hours ago she had believed she had lost for ever.
Suddenly he caught her to him and buried his face in her neck, her hair — he, she realized, was smelling her to see if she reeked of some man or other, Jarnti perhaps? But presumably Jarnti had been with him all that time making war plans? And Al·Ith could not help feeling pleased, as if with a promising pupil. For Ben Ata would no more have been capable of the simple physical common sense of sniffing at her to see what she smelled of, when they first knew each other, than he would have been capable of doing what he did now, which was to take her hand, sit her beside him on the bottom of the couch, and, looking — still white-faced and burning-eyed, it is true, but sane enough — into her face, say, ‘Al·Ith, you must not do that again! I’ve been tormented out of my wits with worry for you.’
Al·Ith, returning forbearance for his, refrained from reminding him that in her own land it could not occur to anyone to be worried about her, and indeed it was getting harder for her to remember that this had been the case — but harder, above all, to revive in herself the reasons for it. For she had been surrounded for so long by the signs of rank, or hierarchy, that she was beginning to rely on them herself, thus allowing real faculties of discrimination to become dulled.
She now assured Ben Ata that to alarm him in any way was the last thing she wanted to do, that his peace of mind was her first concern — and said all these things with the more ease because they were true, but not perhaps as he believed them. Besides, inside this shadowy and delightful place, alone with him, the Al·Ith who was Ben Ata’s other self, had returned. She could see as she examined a face she had learned to study as if her mirror had suddenly taken to supplying her with his image, insisting it was her own, that he had truly suffered that night. His temples seemed marked with thought, and the way he held his mouth spoke of a real suffering. She saw him leaning forward to search her face, to look into her eyes as if there was a mystery in them he had been sentenced by a most inexorable judge to study. With a sigh that she refused to deepen into a groan, she again saw him as her fellow prisoner, and marvelling that this taut, grief-marked man could be the gross and fleshy Ben Ata of their first days, she enclosed him, as he did her, and their lovemaking was all a consoling and a reassurance. When his hand felt for their child, now responding quite vigorously to their lovemaking, as if wishing to share in it — as if it were the promise of a festival — it was with a respect and a promise not to an extension of himself, or of her, but a salute to the possibilities of them both: a considered and informed salute, at that, for Al·Ith, feeling the delicately contained strength of those enquiring fingers, knew that the potentialities he acknowledged were for the unknown and the unexpected, as well as for familiar delight. For this union of incompatibles could not be anything less than a challenge.
Al·Ith felt that she loved this man utterly, and it was this that united her finally with the women she had been with during their ceremonies of remembrance.
But with what a sinking of the heart did she acknowledge this commitment to him — she could not now remember what she had felt for the men she had been with in her own realm, but she knew it had been nothing like this. It was as if she were relinquishing light and air for bonds that tightened as she breathed, growing into her flesh.
When they rose from their submersion in each other, there was a new task for her.
She was to parade, with him in front of his armies.
First, Ben Ata came with her into her apartments, and with a frowning care and concentration, looked at her dresses, one after another, bringing out from the cupboards at last a gown of gold tissue that was ornate and magnificent. There was a skill in this choosing that was even dispassionate, for it did not relate to her, or to him, but only to her role as the queen of this place.
And, of course, as mother of the heir.
She fitted the gown on, while he watched, leaning against the wall with arms folded, considering possibilities. He then turned her about, frowning. She allowed herself to be passive, and his subject. At last he nodded, but indicated with his eyes that her flowing hair would not do. She braided it, and massed it around her head. Since he still seemed unsatisfied, she pinned on a little square of gold tissue, which had the effect of seeming to confine even more those subdued masses where, during their lovemaking, he had been plunging his hands, his face, and wrapping him and her together as if these tents of glossy hair could hold off the world from them both for ever.
Outside the pavilion, among the fountains, her Yori stood waiting, and he had a bridle in his mouth, which he champed and tried to ease, and layers of gold stuffs underneath a heavy leather saddle that was tooled in gold. Ben Ata was waiting for her to challenge him on this, and she did, but only insofar as her eyes told him that the imprisoning of poor Yori was for this occasion only. Yet Ben Ata, standing there, arms folded, feet apart, was not expecting her to rebel against necessity, for he did not show the uneasiness of a false position; and she was not petulant, nor aggressive.
He lifted her on to the horse, and arranged her dress, smoothing it down so that the curve of her pregnancy was well shown. And she assisted him.
He led the horse through the fountains, by the bridle, while she pressed her hand on Yori’s neck, telling him that this indignity and discomfort would soon be over.
At the foot of the hill, near the corrals, he shouted for his horse, which leapt the stone walls and came running to him, already saddled and bridled. Up leapt Ben Ata, and the two, king and queen, cantered off down to the meadows where the armies were marching and deploying, making patterns of scarlet, of blue, of gold, over leagues of misty green, among the steaming canals.
As Ben Ata and Al·Ith rode up all movement stopped, the shining trumpets sounded, as they flew up to the lips of a hundred or so trumpeters, the drums beat, it seemed hundreds of them, a great massy earth-shaking drumming quite defeating the soft signal drum of Ben Ata’s and Al·Ith’s solitude, and to all this commotion and clamour was added the sound of cheering that began as the two sovereigns reached the edge of the parade ground and did not cease till they left it, which was a long time later. The soldiers could not get enough of the sight of Al·Ith, the queen of the legendary Zone, high on her black horse which long ago had become part of their songs and tales. There she was at last for all of them to see, so beautiful in her gold dress, and there was the evidence of this marriage, the strong triumphant curve of her stomach.
The cheering was like a storm that comes racing across fields and woods, it was like rain pouring down, it was like a steady wind blowing from all quarters of the sky at once.
And the drums went on beating, and the trumpets raised fanfare after fanfare.
There is of course always — there has to be! — a difference between the way their artists and ours portray the various incidents in the tale of our queen and their king.
There have never been lacking scholars only too willing to devote their lives to the
analysis of this or that picture or ballad, and while this exercise does not seem to me useful, I must confess I have always been a student of the different emphasis given by the two realms. Scenes popular with us are indifferently received by them, for instance: and of course, the other way around as well.
This scene of Al·Ith parading herself before the armies has always been the favourite one in Zone Four. In fact it would be easy to believe this was the only event of importance in the marriage, judging from the number and size of the pictures: the ballads, the songs, the tales. It is not too much to say that if there is any picture at all in a home or a public building then it is this one.
Usually it is not far off the truth — for why should there be any need for Zone Four to distort or embellish what could be seen that day?
Ben Ata rode first. As was always his custom he was dressed no more elaborately than the humblest of his foot soldiers. He wore a leather tunic, which came to mid-thigh, and sandals on his bare feet. Over it was a lighter tunic of glistening silver material: the ‘invulnerable’ vest. He carried his famous sword which no one but he could lift — so went the story, though of course plenty of the strongest soldiers knew they could use it as efficiently as Ben Ata did. In an army where the slightest grade of difference was marked by braid and trappings and ornaments of all kinds, an army hierarchical in every detail, Ben Ata’s simplicity was shrewd. For one thing, it protected the lowest ranks. In this mass of men, never at war as much as they liked, where campaigns were rationed like extra food, where sometimes mock wars and exercises were the most they could hope for in a year, of course there was always fighting among themselves. And no soldier coming on another in the dark, or impelled to start a fight in a bar, could do so without wondering if this unknown might not be Ben Ata himself. That was one thing. Another was that in so firmly identifying himself with the humblest, his proudly competing officers knew that he was for ever above and apart from them, and they in his eyes not worth more than the least of the new recruits. Ben Ata was always under pressure to design for himself a magnificence of a uniform, but he would not.