‘Is that one of ours?’ he enquired doubtfully, and she replied, ‘Indeed it is, great king,’ and they exchanged the comradely, knowledgeable smiles of the thoroughly mated. For looking at each other now, returned to their absolute separateness, their otherness, these two denizens of their different realms could not believe what they had won together during their hours of submersion in each other. She was to him, again, a foreign woman, everything about her alien, though dear now in a way that estranged him more than bound him, for he feared, most deeply, where she might lead him. And she, looking at this great ox of a soldier, with his hair plastered to his head after the bath, thought that she was much to be congratulated in leading him as far as she had.
They mentally summoned hefty meals, which came, and they ate hungrily, for some time.
Meanwhile, the drum from the gardens beat, beat, beat.
No sooner had they ended their meal, than they sprang up and went out and wandered everywhere over the garden, from one end to the other. They could see no drummer and no drums. But the sound was there — somewhere — here? — no, there — they were always on the point of coming on the source of it, but always failed.
Realizing that they were not ever going to learn where this sound came from, they returned to the pavilion. Not hand in hand. Not even very close. Each felt sealed, whole, self-locked, absolutely impenetrable by the other, that foreigner.
‘However,’ said she, as if in continuation of a conversation, ‘I am certainly pregnant.’
‘You are? Are you sure? Splendid!’ Feeling that an embrace of some kind was due, he made as if to approach her, but as she clearly felt no such impulse he thankfully forgot about it.
‘Of course I am sure.’
‘Why? How?’
‘As the women of your country, but certainly not as we know.’ And with this she laughed. She laughed, while he maintained polite looks and waited for her to finish.
‘Well, good, I am delighted.’
‘Well, so am I, since it is probably what is required of us.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, of course not. I am not sure of anything.’
‘What are we supposed to do next?’
‘How should I know? But perhaps they will tell me to go home?’
At the look of instant relief on his face, she rolled with laughter, pointing at him, and he, realizing what she had seen, and that she was willingly confessing to the same, laughed with her. This feast of laughter having ended, they were forced to acknowledge that it was still far from midnight, and that if left to their own devices they would certainly separate.
‘Chess?’ he suggested.
‘Why not.’
He beat her, then she beat him. They were both very good and in fact master and mistress of the game respectively, in both their two realms. This meant the games took a long time and it was dawn when they were finished.
Both wondered (and hoping the other did not guess) if more lovemaking was yet appropriate, but decided against it.
Walking again in the mists and splashings of the gardens, with the drum everywhere, in their blood, and in their minds, she called his attention to the files of soldiers down below, deploying among the wet hazes of the meadows. She watched his face, respecting what she saw on it: it was a complete knowledge of what he saw, and she knew he was marshalling praise and criticism and orders, for the perfection of that work of his, the army.
‘And who,’ she asked, in a way that would make him know she was in earnest, ‘are your enemies?’
He tensed, and she understood he had been thinking hard on this question ever since she had first asked it of Jarnti, who had transmitted her words jeering, but inwardly disturbed, to his king.
‘If we have no enemies, then why do we have armies?’ he asked her, not at all in jest, but in respect for her questioning of him.
‘Who do you fight?’
He was tense and silent. She knew he was remembering the pillage and the rapine of innumerable campaigns, and thinking if these had in fact been for some ghost of a mistaken idea then …
‘We are not your enemies — it is not even possible for one of us to cross the border without bad effects — yet you have forts all along our frontier from one end to the other, just as close as you can get to it without the soldiers being made ill by its proximity.’
He gave an odd little shrugging movement of his shoulders.
‘How long is it since anyone fired so much as a single warning shot there?’
He laughed, shortly, in acknowledgment. ‘So long that we can’t remember. Mind you, we do sometimes arrest someone as a spy … but then let him go again.’
She laughed. ‘Then why?’
‘We have large, and efficient armies.’
Down among the golden fogs that were rising straight up into the air and dissipating at about their eye level, the glittering brightly coloured soldiers wheeled and marched, and the sharp barking sounds of the orders seemed to fade at about the same level, as if the sounds and the mists were one.
‘And Zone Five? You have forts there? A frontier?’
‘And skirmishes and even battles.’
This startled her: she had forgotten there was a war there.
‘Surely,’ she said, ‘but surely …’
‘Yes, I know.’ Awkward, embarrassed, apologetic, as if he were at fault before her and not before Them—the Providers and the Orderers — he was stammering. ‘I have been wondering since you brought the matter up. It is true … of course we are not supposed to fight … ’
‘Real battles?’
‘Yes. Well … nothing very serious …’
‘Wounded? Casualties?’
‘Wounded and dead.’
Her breath was a long, dismayed, and even frightened sigh. He tinned on her the bleakest of faces. ‘Yes, I know. But I swear it—it grew up like that. I never thought … none of us did … it was not until you … ’ And he crashed his great fist down on a low parapet that bordered a pool.
‘Who starts it? The fighting? Is it possible for people from this Zone to cross into that one — and back — without damage, or danger?’
‘At one time I know that it was as impossible to cross from one Zone to another, as it is now for us to move back and forth between your Zone and ours, without shields. But something seems to have changed. I’m not saying that it is easy. There isn’t large-scale movement across the frontier. Nor does it happen often. But the fighting takes place along the borders, sometimes on this side, and sometimes on that — never far inside their Zone.’
‘You’ve been there?’
‘Yes. More than once.’
‘What is it like, Zone Five?’
He shuddered, and rubbed his hands up and down his forearms, to warm them. He was quite pale with dislike of Zone Five.
‘It is as bad as that,’ she said, not without irony, for she knew that he was feeling for that place what she and all of us in Zone Three felt for this one. He caught the irony, acknowledged it, nodded, and put his arm around her, in affection. ‘Yes, it is as bad as that.’
And, drawing her close, he put his face down into the coils of her hair and she heard him muttering, ‘But what are we to do. Al·Ith? What? Bad enough that I have only just begun to think of it.’
‘As I have of the deficiencies in our Zone. Do you know, Ben Ata, I have not had time to tell you, but I have ridden all around the outer regions of our Zone since I saw you last …’
‘Alone?’ said he, incredulous and sharp, despite himself, and was not able to laugh when she said, indulgent, ‘Of course alone, since I wanted to … but that isn’t the point, Ben Ata. When I was on a certain high point of country, below the central massif, but where I could look straight out northwest, I could see … but the point is, that none of us have done that for so long I don’t think anyone could say when we last did. You need punishment helmets to prevent your people looking there — ’ and she pulled him around so that his dazzled eyes rose to the gre
at heights of Zone Three, now all the colours of a fire opal. ‘Your people won’t look up there, no, keep your eyes on it, Ben Ata, but our people never look beyond our borders, and this is without any punishments or forbiddings. It never occurs to us. We are too prosperous, too happy, everything is so comfortable and pleasant with us, Ben Ata … I don’t know what to say or to think …’ and she was astounded, utterly appalled, to find that again tears ran down her cheeks, while he bent over her, forgetting the beguiling colours of the great peaks, making small concerned noises at these so foreign tears. And he even brushed a tear from her lid with one large forefinger and looked at it, as if this tear could not be like any other he had seen.
In song, in picture, and in story, this scene is known as ‘Al·Ith’s Tear.’ It is popularly believed to have to do with the tender emotions of this pair when shetold him she was pregnant, but the truth of the matter is as I tell it here.
There lay Al·Ith, rocked on the man’s strong breast, all cradled and comforted, sobbing away, just as she had wanted to do on so many occasions recently. That she didn’t believe in the efficacy of it, did not prevent her enjoying it, while it lasted.
As for him, he was both delighted that this dreadfully self-sufficient girl could have a good cry, just like any other, and at the same time he didn’t believe in it either. It simply wasn’t like her, and he was relieved when she stood up, sniffed, wiped the wet off her cheeks with two small hands, and again stood upright by him at the parapet.
‘And what is Zone Two like?’ he enquired.
‘You know more about our Zone than I can tell you about there. All I can say is that you stand and gaze and look, and never have enough of it. It is as if you looked at blue mists — or waters or — but it is blue, blue, you’ve never seen such a blue …’
‘Well, I don’t see the point in that,’ said he shortly, ‘it doesn’t get anything done.’
Which was so exactly what she expected of him that she went into a fit of laughter, in which he joined: and this led back to the couch. This exchange was by no means on the level of the last days, but was more of a confirmation that the thing was still possible — for their differences were so great that they were both always being overtaken by feelings of astonishment that they could be there together at all. And so they were to feel until the very end.
They were now at midday again: a steamy day, and she shocked him by jumping nude into one of the fountains. He had not seen fountains as containing any such possibility and he joined her, but not with abandon. He complained that the goldfish were tickling him, that they themselves were disturbing the fish, and that in any case, ‘if anyone were to see them …’
But who could?
‘There’s that drummer,’ he complained. ‘There must be someone there, it stands to reason,’ for the drum went on, on, on, no matter what they did or said.
‘What we have to do,’ she said, when they were dressed and again seated on either side of their little table, ‘is this. You know that there was a time when it was not possible for Zone Four and Zone Five to mingle. Now you do—and even fight. So what has happened? We must find out. And having done that, we must find out what your armies were for, originally. Why do you have armies? All the wealth of your land drains into the armies. No wonder you are so poor.’
‘We are poor? What do you mean!’
‘Ben Ata, you are poor! You don’t know it, but you are pathetic! The poorest of our herdsmen lives better than you do, the king. As for the clothes in those cupboards! Oh, I’m not saying that they aren’t solid and well-sewn — or not adequate. For their purpose. But if those are the clothes thought fit for a queen, according to your ideas — for with you of course a queen would have to wear one richness of garment and the wife of a soldier another —’
‘But of course. There have to be ranks.’
‘Of course — according to you. But I tell you it is not necessary. Why do you have to have ranks, and a hierarchy? It is because you are so poor. Why do you have to wear that great brooch holding your cloak that says you are Ben Ata? With us, everyone knows I am Al·Ith. And they would if I wore sacking. Don’t you see? You are poor, poor people, Ben Ata. Everything I see as I ride here — oh, I’m not talking of this pavilion here, which has been created for just this time and this place and will probably vanish when we part —’
‘Are we going to part again?’
‘But of course! What do you imagine? That we are together for ever, Ben Ata? We are here for a purpose — to heal our two countries and to discover where it is we have gone wrong, and what it is that we should be doing, really doing …’
She was leaning forward, her eyes all persuasion and passion.
He was leaning back, watching her satirically. He was offended. He had never, not ever, imagined his country could be described as poor and strike foreigners as backward and lacking. He did not mind that this woman found him — as she clearly did — rough and unsubtle. He was a soldier! Soldiers were — soldiers. But he had believed his realm a model of what it should be. He was cold against her. Cold and furious. He was looking at her shining eyes and illumined face, from a distance — one of total repudiation.
He suddenly got up, and strode furiously around the chamber.
‘You think luxury is what matters, you said so yourself. Comfort. Ease. All that — you said it, you said it … ’
‘Yes, I did.’ And of course he pounced on it, an admission being weakness, and he was standing rocking with derisive laughter and pointing.
‘You are like a half-grown boy, Ben Ata,’ said she, and got to her feet. ‘If we are rich and have everything it is bad only insofar as it has made us forget our proper purposes. But if you are poor and barbaric, it is because all your wealth goes into war — a needless, stupid, senseless war …’ She stood there, confronting him.
His loathing for her culminated in lifting his hand to hit her. The great fist that looked the size of her small head was poised to crash down — she stood her ground and looked at him.
‘Ben Ata, I am very much less strong than you, and you can do what you like in the way of violence. I can’t stop you. And nor, in this awful country of yours, can I use any of the real strengths to stop you …’
He of course now had to carry her to the bed and to treat her as he had treated the most weakly girls of his looting nights.
She did not resist for she could not, but turned her head away and closed her eyes and was quite absent from him, as if she were dead.
He was raping a dead woman, or so he felt it. And he was loathing himself. And her — for forcing him into this act. And then he remembered that she was pregnant and that he might be damaging the foetus. All this prevented him from doing it twice, which he would otherwise have done. He rolled off her and, shaking with his dislike of her, he said, ‘and that’s that. That’s that.’
In the silence, both heard that the drum was silent.
She painfully pulled herself up, went into her rooms, and came out almost at once in her own dark red dress. She did not look at him.
‘You can’t go unless they tell you,’ he said, stupid and threatening.
‘The drum has stopped, can’t you hear?’ she said in a voice that was drained of any life.
She went out and stood calling for her horse. At once he could hear the beast coming, clip-clop among the fountains.
‘Then don’t come back,’ he said, broken. He could not believe what had happened. He could not make the early part of their being together match what he had just done.
It seemed to him that he had been standing on the verge of some landscape that he had never even imagined and that it had vanished.
‘You can go back to your damned whores,’ she said, swinging herself up onto Yori. And added, almost at once, hearing these words that certainly were not hers but were Zone Four words, ‘Oh, I must get out of this dreadful place,’ cutting him absolutely to the heart because of the sincerity of them.
She cantered away. He ran dow
n to get his horse, and rode like fury after her, not catching her up till she was a good way along the west road. The two horses, white and black, fled along side by side, and it being early evening, and still daylight, there were people on the roads and on the boats in the canals. They saw the queen of Zone Three riding ‘like a she-demon’ out of their country, with their king in pursuit, ‘as pale as death, the poor man.’
That was only on the first part of the road, for she had forgotten to take the shield, and near the frontier she leaned forward, senseless, clinging to Yori’s mane, knowing what was happening and that if she did not hold fast she would be killed as she fainted. Yori, feeling her slacken there on his back, slowed, and walked carefully on, while Ben Ata, seeing his wife lolling senseless, picked her up off Yori’s back, and carried her. The people on the second part of the road told how the queen was ill, because of her grief at leaving the Zone, and the king cradled her ‘like a baby’ and was weeping as they rode.
Yori came along behind the king. At the frontier, he set her on the ground, just on the other side — but not too far, for he could no more travel unguarded in her realm than she could in his, and as soon as she showed signs of coming to herself, stood back, with just one hand on her shoulder to steady her. What she found, when she opened her eyes, was a wild dark night, and the sharp wind that always swept up from the east into her country already strong enough to push her along. She saw Ben Ata, white and grim, and believed him angry, not seeing his concern for her.
Her horse was beside her, she climbed onto it and fled into the dark, she and Yori both vanishing like straw in a storm. And Ben Ata rode back to his camps wondering when she would be ordered to come again.