Woman and Puppet 12

Woman and Puppet 12

“Where does she live? I want to see her.”

 

“She sleeps in the wood. She has done so for a year. She sold her

house. But I know where her nest is, and I can take you there if you

wish. Put on my sandals for me, please.”

 

Demetrios rapidly fastened the leather thongs of the sandals upon

Melitta’s little feet, and they went out together.

 

They walked for some distance. The park was immense. Here and there a

girl beneath a tree called out her name as they passed. Melitta knew

a few, whom she embraced without stopping. As she passed a worn altar

she gathered three large flowers from the grass and placed them on the

stone.

 

It was not yet quite dark. The intense light of the summer days has

something durable about it which vaguely lingers in the dusk. The

sprinkling of small stars, hardly brighter than the sky itself,

twinkled gently, and the shadows of the branches remained vague and

indefinite.

 

“Ah!” said Melitta, “here is mother.”

 

A woman clad in blue-striped muslin was coming slowly towards them. As

soon as she saw the child she ran to her, picked her up in her arms,

and kissed her fondly on the cheeks.

 

“My little girl! my little love, where are you going?”

 

“I am taking some one to see Chimairis. Are you taking a walk too?”

 

“Corinna has been confined. Have been to her, and I dined at her

bedside.”

 

“Is it a boy?”

 

“Twins, my dear; as rosy as wax dolls. You can go and see her

to-night; she will show them to you.”

 

“Oh, how nice! Two little courtesans. What are they to be called?”

 

“Pannychis--both of them, because they were born on the eve of the

festival of Aphrodite. It is a divine omen. They will be beautiful!”

 

She put down the child, and, turning to Demetrios, said--

 

“What do you think of my daughter? Have I not good cause to be proud of

her?”

 

“You can be satisfied with one another,” he calmly replied.

 

“Kiss mother,” Melitta said.

 

He did so, and Pythias kissed him on the mouth as they separated.

 

Demetrios went a little further still beneath the trees, while the

courtesan turned her head to watch them. At last they reached the spot

they sought, and Melitta said--

 

“Here it is.”

 

Chimairis was squatting on her left heel in a little turfy glade

between two trees and a bush. She had beneath her a red rag, which was

her sole remaining garment in the daytime, and on which she lay when

the men passed. Demetrios looked at her with growing interest. She had

the feverish look of some thin, dark women whose tawny bodies seem to

be consumed by ever-present ardour. Her great lips, her eager gaze, her

livid eyes, gave her a double __EXPRESSION__--that of covetous sensuality

and exhaustion. As Chimairis had sold everything--even her toilet

instruments--her hair was in indescribable disorder, while the down

upon her body gave her something of the appearance of a shameless and

hairy savage.

 

Near her was a great stag, fastened to a tree by a gold chain which had

once adorned her mistress’s breast.

 

“Chimairis,” Melitta said, “get up. Some one wants to speak to you.”

 

The Jewess looked, but did not move. Demetrios approached.

 

“Do you know Chrysis?” he asked.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Do you see her often?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Can you tell me about her?”

 

“No.”

 

“Why not? Can’t you do so?”

 

“No.”

 

Melitta was surprised.

 

“Speak to him,” she said. “Have confidence in him. He loves her and

wishes her well.”

 

“I can clearly see that he loves her,” Chimairis replied. “If he loves

her he wishes her ill. If he loves her I will not speak.”

 

Demetrios trembled with anger, but did not speak.

 

“Give me your hand,” the Jewess said to him. “I will see whether I am

mistaken.”

 

She took the young man’s left hand and turned towards the moonlight.

Melitta leant over to watch, although she did not know how to read the

mysterious lines; but their fatality attracted her.

 

“What do you see?” Demetrios asked.

 

“I see--may I tell you what I see? Shall you be pleased? Will you

believe me? First of all I see happiness, but that is in the past. I

see love, too, but that is lost in blood.”

 

“Mine?”

 

“The blood of a woman. Then the blood of another woman; and then, a

little later, your own.”

 

Demetrios shrugged his shoulders.

 

Melitta uttered a cry.

 

“She is frightened,” Chimairis went on. “But this concerns neither her

nor me. Events must come to pass, since we cannot prevent them. From

before your birth your destiny was certain. Go away. I shall say no

more.”

 

She let his hand drop.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER III

 

IMMORTAL LOVE AND MORTAL DEATH

 

 

“A woman’s blood. Afterwards the blood of another woman. Afterwards

thine; but a little later.”

 

Demetrios repeated these words as he walked and a vague belief in them

oppressed him with sadness. He had never believed in oracles drawn

from the bodies of victims or from the movements of the planets. Such

affinities seemed to him much too problematic. But the complex lines

of the hand had of themselves a horoscopic aspect which was entirely

individual and which he regarded with uneasiness. Thus the prediction

remained in his mind.

 

He, too, gazed at the palm of his left hand where his life was

displayed in mysterious and ineffaceable lines. He saw the signs

without being able to understand their meaning, and passing his hand

across his eyes he changed the subject of his meditation.

 

Chrysis, Chrysis, Chrysis.

 

The name beat in him like a fever. To satisfy her, to conquer her, to

enclose her in his arms, to flee away with her to Syria, Greece, Rome

or elsewhere, any place, in fact, where he had no mistresses and she no

lovers: that was what he had to do and to do at once!

 

Of the three presents she had demanded one was already obtained. Two

others remained to be procured, the comb and the necklace.

 

“First the comb,” he thought. He hastened his steps.

 

Every evening after sunset the wife of the High Priest sat with her

back to the forest upon a marble seat from which a view of the sea

could be obtained, and Demetrios was aware of this, for Touni, like

many others, had been enamoured of him, and once she had told him that

the day he desired her he could take her.

 

Thither he made his way.

 

She was there; but she did not see him approach; she was reclining with

her eyes closed and her arms outstretched.

 

She was an Egyptian. Her name was Touni. She wore a thin tunic of

bright purple without clasps or girdle, and with no other embroidery

than two black stars upon her breasts. The thin stuff reached down

to her knees and her little, round feet were shod with shoes of blue

leather. Her skin was very swarthy, her lips were very thick, her

fragile and supple waist seemed bowed down by the weight of her full

breast. She was sleeping with open lips and quietly dreaming.

 

Demetrios took his seat in silence by her side.

 

He gradually drew nearer to her. A young shoulder, smooth and dark and muscular, delicately offered itself to him.