And in the morning he went off to the war exercises, and looked Jarnti in the eye as a king does his general, and did not return until that evening. That is, he had been away for two days. He expected to find Al·Ith vituperative.
But instead she was wearing a dress he had not seen before, of a pink shining stuff. Her hair was done in the matronly way he did not much care for. He thought the dress unfortunate, because it seemed to him to signify fleshiness and it made her look plump. He saw that she was trying to be attractive to him, and this dismayed him, and made her unlikable: it seemed to him quite improper to make love at this time, when she was still unhealed from the birth. But, when the baby had been fed and put to sleep — not in their marriage bed, but in a cradle next to it — he did in fact make love with Al·Ith, whom he did not recognize at all. She clung to him, she was a suppliant, she was also aggressive, and this was because she was ashamed.
He could feel she did not really want him, not from her own need, but she wanted him to prove something — to her, or to him, he did not care. She seemed to him, in her flesh, unresponsive and slack, and he could not rid himself of a mental picture of this body stretched and opened by that child asleep in his cot who seemed, viewed from this perspective, as quite enormous. Pushing into Al·Ith, Ben Ata could think only of the child pushing out. It was awful, in fact. He hated it.
As soon as he could he turned away and, pretending to sleep, he slept, his last thought being that what he was feeling for Al·Ith now was pity. He would have liked to be allowed to hold her like a child and comfort her. But obviously that was not what was needed.
As for her she was tortured with shame. She knew that she had never done this before, nor could have done. She did not recognize herself in this harried, shrill-voiced woman who was jealous. Yet, hearing one of the women use the word in some other context — as of course words do arise in a scene or a situation, informing us when we need it, of some truth or other — Al·Ith knew she was jealous, As soon as that word had been used, she accepted it. She had never been jealous before. She had not known it was possible. If such a feeling had been described to her, at home, with her peers and her real companions, she would have refused to believe it.
Yet she had dressed herself to attract Ben Ata, in a way she had never done before — nor even had an impulse to — and had needed him to make love with her. What for?
Al·Ith lay awake, listening to her husband’s deep breathing, and the light uneven breathing of her child, and listened to the soft drum beating, beating outside, and longed for only one thing. That it would stop beating and release her.
In the morning, Ben Ata made several casual references to Dabeeb, who had not arrived, and Al·Ith knew exactly what had happened. With part of herself she raged: it was not just, it was not fair, she was disadvantaged, she was deceived — a gamut of feelings that she, with the other part of herself judged as lunatic. Such was the conflict that she was relieved when Ben Ata went off back to his armies. And when Dabeeb came up. Al·Ith reassured her with a kiss, as much for her own peace of mind as for Dabeeb’s, because she could not stand herself in the role of jailer, possessor, and accuser.
And besides, she had been wrong to want for this child what the children of her own land had by right. Arusi would be nourished in the flesh, and by what she could bring to him, had brought to him, by virtue of her own realm. He would not know the nurture of fatherhood, as she understood it. There was nothing to be done. And perhaps she had been wrong even to wish for it, and to attempt it, that first evening, with Ben Ata.
She was seeing very little of Ben Ata. He spent days at a time, then weeks, with the army. She heard — but did not challenge him on it — that he was planning a real campaign against Zone Five. If he did come in late at night to join her in their bed, she made it clear that she was tired, or even that she preferred to sleep on a couch in her own rooms, for fear of the child being restless and disturbing him. They were at that time like strangers who have been forced together by circumstances, but are determined to be courteous.
She did not even wonder whether Dabeeb had again enjoyed her husband. She refused to think about it, because she so much despised the creature inside herself this kind of thought invoked.
The child being healthy and strong, she was thinking of weaning it.
It was at this time she had a dream. She was sexually initiating Arusi. He was simultaneously a small boy, a half-grown boy, and a young man, and it was a dream of intense pleasure, and of rightness, since this was the closest intimacy there was or could ever be, being expressed in the most natural way. And it was full of an intense regret, too, since in this act he was being set free from her to go to other women. And of responsibility, for this was not a guilty act, but a ritual and a necessity, sanctioned by everyone. When she woke, the switch from that world, where it was proper for a woman to initiate her son into sex, and this one, where such an act was inconceivable, wicked, harmful, was so great that she seemed to be wandering for hours in a between place where neither state was real, had validity.
When she saw Dabeeb coming up through shrubs on the hillside from the camps, catching at the tops of branches to release the scents of the leaves, her cheerful and energetic solidity seemed to challenge Al·Ith, who felt herself perverse and shameful for having even dreamed such a thing, and so strongly that she was still in the dream’s atmosphere.
Al·Ith was sitting on the floor on a large red cushion, and the baby was lying on another, a blue one, asleep. Dabeeb as usual beamed with fond pleasure at the sight of them. Then, acute as always, she saw that something troubled Al·Ith, and she stood, hands folded, by the central pillar, in a pose of willing service, looking concerned.
The contrast between that sturdy earthy woman, and the exquisite slight curves of the springing pillars, seemed to Al·Ith a summing up of her thoughts.
‘Dabeeb,’ she said, ‘I have had a very disturbing dream.’
‘Have you now, my lady,’ said Dabeeb, in her usual soothing nursery voice.
‘Do sit down, Dabeeb. Will you never learn to be my friend instead of my servant?’
Dabeeb sat on the edge of the marital couch, since she did not take easily to floor-sitting.
‘Yes, I dreamed that this boy here was grown, but at the same time he was quite young, about seven. And a baby too. And I — it was my task to teach him sex.’ Al·Ith looked quite shocked at herself, because she was having difficulty in bringing this out. Prudishness was a Zone Four quality …
But Dabeeb seemed unmoved, though she glanced nervously at the arch that led into Ben Ata’s quarters, where the curtains were drawn back.
It happened that he had come in a short time before and was working at his military plans.
He had in fact observed Dabeeb coming up the hill, and had heard what Al·Ith said. He now appeared in the archway, and leaned there, looking at the two women from a distance. He was preserving an expression of detachment.
Dabeeb showed signs of wanting to escape, and got off the couch, but Al·Ith nodded that she should sit down again.
‘Ben Ata, I had this extraordinary dream.’
‘So I heard you say.’
He found the proximity of these two women of his upsetting. He often wondered how he had got himself into this situation, one which offended his every instinct for discretion and order. He would have preferred that they had never known each other … that they did not know each other now … that Al·Ith should make scenes and throw Dabeeb out — anything rather than this quite appalling intimacy.
Dabeeb’s instinct to get up and go seemed to him admirable: Al·Ith’s casualness — as it appeared to him — indecorous, offensive. ‘Well, Dabeeb, aren’t you going to say anything? I can see that you do have things to say!’
‘I have had that dream myself, Al·Ith,’ said Dabeeb, in an embarrassed but stubborn way.
Ben Ata made an impatient movement, and reddened.
Al·Ith saw this and smiled. ‘There you are, Ben Ata,
I’m not alone in being perverse!’
‘I didn’t say you were perverse,’ he protested at once.
She laughed.
‘I have had that dream with every one of my sons. I’ve got four boys,’ confessed Dabeeb. She was laughing, but uncomfortable. ‘The first time I thought I was a wicked woman. But now I know …’
‘What do you know?’
‘When you talk to the women, all of them turn out to have had that dream. It is when the child is very small, but in the dream he is any age. Usually seven or about twelve.’
Ben Ata now left the arch into his quarters, drawing the curtains across firmly behind him, as if insisting on proper boundaries, and he walked to the arches that overlooked the camps at the foot of the hill. There he stood with his hands linked behind his back, his feet planted well apart, in a characteristic pose. His whole person said that he was suffering an assault which he proposed not to submit to, proposed to endure.
‘I wonder where the dream comes from?’
‘Why did you say that, Al·Ith?’
‘Well, it certainly isn’t your practice, Dabeeb, is it!’
‘Heavens, how can you say such a thing! How you must despise us,’ said Dabeeb, offended.
‘I was joking, that’s all.’
‘Ask her if it is a Zone Three practice,’ suggested Ben Ata, his back still turned. He was doing his best to sound good-humoured.
Al·Ith, sorry for him, said soothingly that until she had the dream such an idea had never entered her head.
Ben Ata could not prevent a quick sigh of relief, and he shifted his position as if a burden had been taken off him.
‘Surely you didn’t imagine … oh, Ben Ata, you have known me for so long now, and even now you do imagine the most extraordinary things about us!’
‘Why should you be surprised? You forget, some of the things you do get up to, and which you see no reason to be ashamed of, seem bad enough to me. Of course I am just a barbarian.’
‘Well, you can take my word for it.’
Dabeeb was looking quickly from one to the other during this exchange, as usual showing pleasure and relief that they were getting on instead of quarrelling, for when they did she was made miserable, since she could not prevent herself from thinking that it was her fault. Partly, at least.
‘It is a funny thing, you should say that, Al·Ith. Only last week one of the women, it was her first son, she had this dream, and she was telling some of us — very shy she was about it, and someone else said just that same thing: where does the dream come from? Because certainly we would be ashamed here to do any such thing, we would never think of it, it wouldn’t ever come into our heads if we didn’t have these funny dreams. But we do have them.’
‘Probably it is a record of the past,’ said Al·Ith.
‘I wouldn’t like to think it was this Zone,’ said Dabeeb virtuously. ‘Not ever. It isn’t nice, is it, even to think about.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ said Al·Ith. ‘That is exactly my point. The dream wasn’t only pleasurable, but what makes it hard to understand is that it was a ritual. Something ordained. Expected of me … it is only now that I am awake again I feel it is wrong.’
Ben Ata gave a half groan.
‘I don’t think you ought to be talking like this in front of the king. It isn’t very nice for him, is it? It must be upsetting.’
‘Why? He had a mother!’ said Al·Ith, and Ben Ata groaned again.
‘Oh, Al·Ith,’ protested Dabeeb.
‘It is no good, you always shock me. I know that neither of you will understand why, but you do. How is it that you women can be content to treat your men as if they were enemies, or idiots you can’t trust or small boys?’
Silence from Dabeeb and Ben Ata: the stubborn silence of those preserving integrity against heavy and baffling pressures.
‘If I had had that dream in Zone Three, I can tell you that all of us would have talked about it and wondered about it, and we would have called in the Memories and the historians, everybody, and we would have found out everything we could. It could never occur to us to keep it a secret just for women.’
Silence again. Then Ben Ata said in a gruff hurt voice, his back still turned, that he was sorry he was so backward, but it would take a long time to get used to such ideas. ‘Perhaps I prefer to be treated like an idiot and a small boy.’ And now he turned and came over to the couch, smiling, having set himself to smile and be friendly, and not to go off in a huff, which every instinct he had was urging him to do.
Thinking as well that he might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, he even sat by Dabeeb, who was still ensconced on the couch, making a pair with her, while they both looked down at Al·Ith and the baby. She sat smiling up at them. All three were, in fact, disturbed. But containing it.
‘Perhaps the dream comes from Zone Five,’ said Dabeeb. ‘We all know what those savages get up to down there.’
‘I’ve never heard anything about it,’ said Ben Ata, thinking that he had never given himself the opportunity to hear anything much that wasn’t of fighting and loot.
‘It has to come from somewhere,’ insisted Al·Ith. ‘It is in the minds of the women of this Zone. So strongly that now I am down here with you I dream the same dream. So that means it must be somewhere in your mind too, Ben Ata.’
‘If you insist, Al·Ith.’
They laughed, but it wasn’t easy. This was a hard moment for all three of them. Ben Ata was fighting his distrust of the whole thing, the dream being only part of it, for he simply could not like this business of the three of them being so close and adaptable — seemingly.
And Dabeeb was guilty, but telling herself that she had not sought out Ben Ata, but he her, and it was not her place to refuse her king, and that since Al·Ith continued to show every sign of liking and esteem, she was not being blamed by her.
And Al·Ith was jealous. But not in a straightforward way. She was lonely. As she saw the two, her husband and the woman, sitting there so alike in build and sturdiness and a quality of strong endurance, she felt an alien, excluded. Somewhere inside Al·Ith wailed a little child she had known nothing about until now: oh, I am unloved, I am shut out, they love each other better than they love me.
When I leave here, Al·Ith was thinking, Dabeeb will be with my husband, and I shall even be glad of it, for I won’t want to think of him as lonely, but the truth is they have more in common together than either has with me … she was wrung with anguish. Yet smiled, as friendly as she could make it.
‘Al·Ith,’ said Dabeeb, ‘that dream means with us that the child should be weaned.’
‘Is that how you take it?’
‘Yes. We wean our boys, if we haven’t already, when that dream comes. It means that inside yourselves, though you don’t know it, you have grown apart. He begins to feel himself a man.’
‘Very well, I shall.’
Dabeeb got up and went off to Al·Ith’s rooms, tactfully leaving them. And Ben Ata, after waiting a little, and making some suitable remarks about the healthy appearance of the boy, made his excuses and left: he was not able to stand too much of this dreadful tugging and pulling. Dabeeb, Al·Ith, then Al·Ith, Dabeeb — over and over again. And also he was partly afraid that Al·Ith would want him to make love to her again, and for some reason he simply did not want to, not at all.
So he soon went back down the hill, and much later that night found his way to Dabeeb. He was by then in a state of anxiety, because he was thinking of Al·Ith’s dream, which was bad enough, but worse that Dabeeb spoke so easily of all the women having the same dream. It was as if all the dangers he had associated with Zone Three, to be summed up as a sort of smiling treachery, which could never be condemned or refused, since in some extraordinary way it was judged higher and better by them, the Providers — as if they had come close in Dabeeb, and permanent, and could never go away again. It seemed to him that half his realm, the female half, was a dark dangerous marsh, from which monsters might
suddenly appear. And this dangerousness had been suddenly and recently presented to him: he even regretted his previous state when he never wondered about women at all. He found himself hoping that when Al·Ith at last went his mind would be restored to its previous wholesome condition — but he feared not.
Dabeeb, that night, at his half-willing insistence, talked of all kinds of women’s dreams, beliefs, ideas, only hinting however at the nature of their secret gatherings, and it seemed to Ben Ata as if he was being gathered into a place of infinite comfort and reassurance — Dabeeb’s large and competent body — and when there he was being repeatedly given shock after shock of unwelcome knowledge. Between the two of them, Dabeeb and Al·Ith, he was being thoroughly done in! Who would have thought that this Dabeeb, the soldier’s wife, so sane and comely and ordinary, should turn out to be such a nest of trouble, like feeling grass seeds in his undervest when he was on parade and could do nothing about it but smile. Because where was he now going to find the real dark, real comfort, real oblivion, which was how he had only recently been taught to think of women: he could have no belief now that he could come on a woman who would not, suddenly, present him with problems and thoughts and comparisons that even went right back into history, into the far past … ‘Where does this dream or that come from?’ the women asked each other, talking about such things, but never telling the men what they thought and wondered. So mused Ben Ata, with Dabeeb, lying awake that night and other nights during the time when Al·Ith and he were as if they had an invisible barrier between them.
Meanwhile Al·Ith weaned the boy, and found herself restless and full of new energies.
She did not have enough to do. In her own realm she did so much, and so variedly! She could think of nothing but reviving her wardrobe, an occupation that the best part of herself found tedious, and she ordered new dresses from the dressmakers in the towns — thus at least stimulating manufacture. She was slender again and full of fire and did need clothes to match this new Al·Ith — as she saw herself, and as the women saw her, joking that it would be time soon for a new baby.