“But it was I!” I seldom lose my patience so totally with Madame. “It would be odd to refer to myself as ‘her.’” I considered adding emphasis to my position by ending that day’s tea. The afternoon was waning early.
Madame pondered what I had said. “A good point indeed. A very good point, Lady.” She smiled her most conciliatory smile. “It would seem odd if suddenly you began speaking about yourself as ‘she,’ ‘her.’” She made a motion that, if she had been standing, might have been a slight bow.
“Thank you.” I returned to Herod’s palace.
Herod raised his huge goblet to me, his lips puckered lasciviously within the heavy folds of his flesh. He shouted at me:
“Arouse me with your dance, virgin whore!”
Whore!
I began my dance.
XI
IN THE SILENCE OF MY QUARTERS, I listen fascinated to the sounds of my existence — footsteps stifled by my carpets as I walk to the windows; a smothered whoosh when I decide against opening the drapes — they had swayed, allowing only a slice of night’s light into the room. I move away, very slowly, to soften my footsteps even more, studying my dark shadow as it follows me. I reach out to the marble table to touch my gun. I create the slightest sound as I smooth my fingers over the cold iron. I move it slightly, determined that that motion shall make no sound. It does — although I strain not to listen — the sound of surfaces barely separated, reconnected. I hear my breathing. Shall I stop? Create absolute silence? I continue breathing as if it is demanded! I hear the pulsing of my heart.
I exist!
Chirping! A bird’s urgent chirping outside my window!
I draw the drapes. On my balcony I peer into the night. I have an uncanny ability to see clearly into darkness. A bird trapped within branches! No, the bird is building a nest on the tree. She peers at me. I retreat behind my drapes. I want her to continue her task, twig by twig, creating the place where she will give birth to her children.
I interpreted it wrong. I see now that the bird has already laid her eggs, tiny birds have emerged; it’s their chirping I heard.
Before I can turn away in horror, I see the bird pecking fiercely at her children! They’re screaming! Their wings are matted with blood! She’s killing her own children! The nest is drenched in their blood!
I was wrong. Darkness had altered my perception into a violent one, no doubt affected by the bloody offering left at my gates an earlier night. Wind had grasped the leaves of trees and tangled them so that I thought I saw what I thought I saw. Looking again, the wind stilled, I realized that the bird was lying peacefully with her children.
Dawn confirms that.
I will bring this up without introduction: Last night when I returned from Madame’s château and rehearsed with you what she and I had roamed over during afternoon tea, I detected your doubting, recurrent whispers: What she claims occurred in Herod’s palace is not what we’ve been told!
Precisely!
And why did she stop just as she began to tell us about the dance she claims she performed to save the Baptist’s purity and life? To concoct more lies?
I note you’re eager this morning to reassert your accusations. I stopped my recounting last night at the same point where Madame Bernice and I had terminated that day’s tea, and only because I had become too drenched in the weariness of remembrance to continue then. I shall stop your conjecturing about my motivations by continuing this instant to narrate the truth of my dance before Herod and Herodias to save the Saint.
Quivering tambourines, muted drums, heralded my dance as the sweet sound of a single innocent flute strove to insinuate itself into the pulsing rhythms.
I stood for moments illuminated by the flames of torches held by naked slaves. Fiery reflections coiled about my body draped in veils.
Swiftly I swept into my dance, veils swirling, clinging to my body. I stopped and stood with one arm up. The fingers of my other hand touched the top of the first sheer veil, azure silk, the color of the holy man’s eyes. Slowly my hand encouraged the first veil to fall, but only from one shoulder.
I exulted in this: The Baptist was blocking the image of desire, of me, from his sight. He must continue to do so, even as I must heat his darkened vision with the sounds of my dance — moans, gyrations of flesh, the whispers of falling veils, perfumed scents that would float into the air with each movement I made. The tensing of the Baptist’s glorious body straining not to respond, twisting away from me, told me that I was succeeding in agitating his desire, Herodias’s goal, and, now, mine for another purpose.
I whirled. The first veil, weightless, lifted on its own, and fell, as quietly as a sigh of innocence sensing its passing. The veil kissed my bare feet, the ruby on one toe. The flute lamented innocence, while insistent tambourines and drums demanded its corruption.
I heard the Baptist sigh.
I let the second veil fall, a breath of pale-lime chiffon, allowed to be discarded, to astonish expectations of another slow removal and arouse anticipations that another veil would follow instantly, but it would not.
The flute wept, drums pulsated for more. Herod’s face brimmed with sweaty lust. Longing for the moment when she would secure her unholy prize — I knew exactly how now — Herodias did not remove her eyes from the Baptist. He wrenched against chains as if to thrust his body and his imagination away from the desire I must keep festering, only festering.
I let the third veil — a yellow smear of gauze — drift down, to rest of its own will upon my breasts. My slow inhaling lowered the filmy veil farther, held now only by the tips of my nipples. For how long? Only until I exhaled, and it fell to my hands, which tossed it away, up. The veil remained suspended for moments in the air before it alighted on me again, again veiling my body, even more fully because it had been briefly exposed.
Herod grasped his groin, demanding that it grant him his despicable victory.
I danced, twisting one leg before another, dropping to my knees, my hands tantalizing my thighs, not touching them, tantalizing my breasts, not touching them. I lay on the floor, my gleaming body extended, curving one leg over the other, the next veil pulled downward by those motions, now gathering between my legs. I stood, and the fourth veil, a blush of the most delicate pink lace, faded off my body.
Oh, how I longed to stop this necessary cruelty toward the Baptist, to drape my body in a shawl and lead him away, to end the struggle I must continue to stir, keep simmering, only simmering — in order to save him.
I faced the throne like a bewildered child exposed. Then with a moistened finger I outlined my eyes, then my lips, displaying the blatant woman’s sexuality Herodias had stamped upon my child’s face. Beyond her expectations, I would manage Herod’s lust.
Sordid sweat dripped down his garish clothes and gathered on his costly beads. Her stare scorching the Baptist, Herodias bit her lip with such fierce desire that it bled. She left the smeared blood like decoration on her mouth.
The Baptist’s eyes — I asserted with triumph — remained closed. Within his darkened imagination he must control desire. And he was succeeding! And I was succeeding.
I curved my body into sensual shapes, shifting from one form to another. My hands boldly caressed my breasts, the curve of my hips, returned to my breasts, which I held forth like an offering, then withdrew them, toward me, kissing them, wetting them so that they gleamed under the next veil.
I spun, allowing the fifth veil to unwrap, quickly spun again in the opposite direction. The veil now caressed me more tightly than before, saffron marquisette that, for only one moment — as I stood unmoving — I allowed to sketch my nipples and the triangle between my legs. The flute surrendered its last sigh, which drowned in the delirium of tambourines, the growl of drums as I spun and the fifth veil glided to my feet, became a cloud on which I stood, now draped in the sixth veil, a mist of gossamer, the last veil — but the one Herodias was certain would reveal still one more, the merest tissue.
“I begin to
see —” Madame Bernice greeted enthusiastically when I reached that crucial point, having resumed, this afternoon at tea, where we had left off yesterday. Beside her, Ermenegildo glanced at her in surprise, as if, all along, he had made the assumption that had eluded her.
Seduced, the flute now added its own sensuality to the drums and tambourines in Herod’s palace.
The ovals of my breasts, their nipples, the puff between my legs — all were drawn on the veil, which, with each breath I took, alternately strained to reveal all that was left and then quickly to hide it. As I allowed the veil to roam lower, lower, it clung to me, a tiny portion of it squeezing into the glistening parting at my legs, as if this veil demanded to be the only one to possess me, must be torn, forced away.
Herod’s fingers plucked deliriously at the insignificant lump that had sprouted at his groin. Herodias’s hands tensed on the sides of her throne as she prepared to consummate her plan when the next veil fell, the one she thought would be the seventh.
“Of course, of course,” Madame seemed thrilled. She leaned over to Ermenegildo. “You see, Herodias expected seven veils, but there were only six.” Ermenegildo eyed her coolly.
Herodias’s guards flanked the Baptist even more closely, their flaring torches prepared to execute her final orders in the plot I had deduced correctly: When what she thought would be the seventh veil fell and I stood entirely revealed, the guards would force the Baptist’s eyes open by flashing the lit torches before his vision. Desire — gathering throughout my dance and kept at the very edge of control by the protective darkness of his closed eyes — would require only that sudden exposure to the one sight capable of arousing his virginal passion — my naked body. In that moment Herodias would thrust herself into his arousal prepared by me —
She would not succeed!
I danced, moving with each perfect contraction of my body until I stood directly before the enchained Baptist.
Herodias rose in anticipation of the falling of the seventh veil.
“Open your eyes!” I shouted the crucial words at the Baptist, and I ripped the sixth veil away, and stood naked before him, my arms outstretched.
His eyes devoured my naked body, beautiful as a girl’s, beautiful as a woman’s, more beautiful than both, luminous in the moon, which stared spellbound through the glassed dome of the palace and bathed me in silver.
Desire engorged the Baptist’s groin.
Herod moaned, releasing himself at the sight of me.
Understanding that I was about to trick her, Herodias shouted, “No!” just as —
I thrust my body at the Baptist’s full erection and he came —
“Lady!”
My memories could not slide past Madame’s sharp interjections.
“Madame?”
She was extremely agitated. “I don’t for the life of me see how you saved the Saint’s powerful purity if he entered —”
“Madame —”
“Please, Lady, I must be heard on this point. Interviewers will have to understand exactly how on earth it was possible for the Saint to retain his own virginity while you sacrificed yours to him, even if you did deprive Herodias of her cunning and lustful intent. The effect is the same, whether he lost his virginity to you or to her. It was nonetheless lost!”
“He did not lose his virginity to me, and I did not lose mine, Madame,” I said. “You have not allowed me to finish.”
“Oh? Really? Well, I anticipate an enormous problem that must be dealt with because there is no way that —” Not even Ermenegildo, sensing her state and sidling up to her, could calm her. She touched him absently. Her testiness grew. “And I may as well deal with this now — rather than saying that you ‘thrust’ your body at his — his —”
“— his full erection.”
“— yes, that; might you simply say you eased your body into his arousal? After all the man was chained. But — whatever! — that still leaves us with the matter of how you saved his virginity and preserved yours yet thrust your body at his arousal — or eased it — and he — he —”
“— came,” I finished for her.
“Whatever, whatever, whatever! But if —” Forgetting she did not have a fan and that a breeze had cooled the afternoon that day on her veranda, she nevertheless “fanned” herself, her fingers splayed awkwardly — and Madame is not an awkward woman. “For the life of me, I just can’t see how —”
“If you will let me proceed, Madame, you shall understand, I promise.”
“Well, promise all you like, but how in the world —?”
I determined not to say another word until she controlled herself.
In a further attempt to calm her, Ermenegildo jumped onto a white marble bench on the veranda, remained there for a second against splays of peonies, then spread his tail with a swoosh! and turned slowly in an arc, each feather courting splendid light.
To my surprise and his horror, Madame did not notice. When he returned to her side, he seemed about to peck angrily at her hand, but restrained himself, perhaps because Madame was now attempting, not quite successfully, to compose herself. “All I’m trying to do, Lady, is to give you an opportunity to go back and adjust—”
Oh, I could not keep silent at that! “Adjust the truth? With lies?” I was aghast. I was resolute in my announcement, which I made with unequivocal firmness: “I choose now to keep the matter of the Saint’s saved virginity in abeyance, Madame Bernice. I refuse to speak my truths to such resistance — before they’re heard.”
“Fine, just fine! Absolutely fine! If you won’t listen to reason,” Madame Bernice extended her intransigence, “let’s spend our time more profitably by exploring another life. Anything! I just don’t see how in the world —”
I welcomed being able to push away the sorrow that would follow in Herod’s palace. I grasped for the memory of another life, when I was —
— Magdalene, and I saw Mary for the first time. From the way she led Jesus to the Baptist performing his rituals in the River Jordan — she walked erect, proud, directly to him — I was certain of her iron will.
Madame almost gasped when I had barely begun to move away from the enchained Baptist to Mary.
“Now you’re referring to the Holy Mother again in an unsuitable manner. You’re walking on eggshells, Lady.”
“Mary did have an iron will.” I was terse. And truthful.
“Well, well, well.” Madame’s disquietude was growing. “I’m sure you realize — don’t you? — that you’ve just reintroduced John the Baptist by the River Jordan and he was only moments earlier enchained to a column in Herod’s palace and with — with —” She was flailing.
“—with an erection, yes,” I finished calmly. I explained the obvious: “My memories just now took me to a former time, before his capture ordered by Herodias.”
I knew what was distressing her, the impasse she had created when I had reached the crucial moments in Herod’s palace. She wanted me to continue, to clarify the matter of how John’s virginity was saved, but she was trapped by her own obstinacy. I could see her battling with herself to ask me to return to Herod’s palace. She would put her hand on her cheek, one finger touching the edge of her lips; then she would remove the finger, then the hand, and try again. She bowed her head, to conceal flickerings of indecision on her face — and I noticed only then a remarkable hairpin on which there was an amethyst. Her chin jutting defiantly, her lips clasped, she raised her head.
“Very well, then, let’s return to Eden,” she said.
She had decided to remain obstinate.
Well, I would last her out. I would not return to Herod’s palace until she herself asked for clarification!
Already, time had whirled me about, spinning me back to the unwinding of the beginning, when the first wind howled, destroying the beautiful Garden, destroying Eden, exiling me and Adam.
Cassandra’s cloak thrashed in the wind as she urged us to follow her and her brother to the edge of the world.
&nbs
p; Then squads of other rebel angels joined Lucifer and Cassandra and blew trumpets against the wind to celebrate our defiant love, honoring yet another challenge to the servitude imposed by God as the fierce storm thrust us farther away from the Garden.
Snow fell. Unaccustomed to the coldness, the rebel angels who had just joined us clustered against each other. Then they wearied, needed to rest, snow flecking their bodies like beads. Only Lucifer and Cassandra continued with us through the icy storm that howled. To protect us, Cassandra extended her robe over us like wings.
My body wrenched.
I touched the place of sudden pain, between my legs. I saw blood. God had split me deeply where Adam had entered me. Adam grasped some roses the snow had not yet buried. He crushed them in his hands, and with their petals he covered the opening between my legs.
“You’re not bleeding,” he tried to soothe me, and himself. “See? Only crushed roses.”
His finger bled! God had added thorns to the roses.
Adam bent before me. With his bleeding finger, he touched me where I bled. Then he licked his finger and kissed me, joining our blood.
We spent the night in a cove draped with dying flowers. Adam wrapped my long hair about my body, and warmed me with his breath. Lucifer and Cassandra huddled in the silver darkness outside, speaking in muted tones.
Cold morning came. We journeyed farther east of Eden until we reached the edge of a stark, barren precipice.
Cassandra glanced ahead. “Of course.”
“There’s more you hadn’t perceived?” Lucifer asked anxiously.
“Yes, more is in place.”