Woman and Puppet 13

Woman and Puppet 13

Lower down the purple muslin tunic was open at the thigh. Demetrios

gently touched her, but she did not awake. Her dream changed but was

not dispelled.

 

The eternal sea shimmered beneath a moon which was like a vast cup of

blood, but still Touni slept on with bowed head.

 

The purple of the moon upon the horizon reached her from across the

sea. Its glorious and fateful light bathed her in a flame which seemed

motionless; but slowly the shadow withdrew from the Egyptian woman; one

by one her black stars appeared, and at last there suddenly emerged

from the shadows the comb, the royal comb desired by Chrysis.

 

Then the sculptor took in his two hands Touni’s sweet face and turned

it towards him. She opened her eyes which grew big with surprise.

 

“Demetrios! Demetrios! You!”

 

Her two arms seized hold upon him.

 

“Oh!” she murmured in a voice vibrating with happiness, “oh! you have

come, you are there. Is it you, Demetrios, who has awakened me with

your hands? Is it you, son of my Goddess, O God of my body and life?”

 

Demetrios made a movement as if to draw back, but she at once came

suddenly quite close to him.

 

“No,” she said, “what do you fear? I am not a woman to be feared by

you, one surrounded by the omnipotence of the High Priest. Forget my

name, Demetrios. Women in their lovers’ arms have no name. I am not the

woman you believe me to be. I am only a creature who loves you and is

filled with desire for you.”

 

Demetrios made her no answer.

 

“Listen once more,” she went on. “I know whom you possess. I do not

desire to be your mistress, nor do I aspire to become my Queen’s rival.

No, Demetrios, do with me what you will: look upon me as a little

slave whom one takes and casts aside in a moment. Take me like one of

the lowest of those poor courtesans who wait by the side of the pathway

for furtive and abortive love. In fact what am I but one of them? Have

the Gods given me anything more than they have bestowed upon the least

of all my slaves? You at least have the beauty which comes from the

Gods.”

 

Demetrios gazed at her still more gravely.

 

“What do you think, unhappy woman,” he asked, “also comes from the

Gods?”

 

“Love.”

 

“_Or death._”

 

She got up.

 

“What do you mean? _Death...._ Yes, death. But that is so far away from

me. In sixty years’ time I shall think of it. Why do you speak to me of

death, Demetrios?”

 

He simply said--

 

“Death to-night.”

 

She burst into a frightened laugh.

 

“This evening ... surely not ... who says so? Why should I die?...

answer me, speak, what horrible jest is this?...”

 

“You are condemned.”

 

“By whom?”

 

“By your destiny.”

 

“How do you know that?”

 

“I knew it because I, too, Touni, am involved in your destiny.”

 

“And my destiny wills that I die?”

 

“Your destiny demands that you die by my hand upon this seat.”

 

He seized her by the wrist.

 

“Demetrios,” she sobbed in her fear, “I will not cry out. I will not

call for help. Let me speak.”

 

She wiped the sweat from her forehead.

 

“If death comes to me through you, death will be pleasant. I will

accept it, I desire it; but listen to me.”

 

She dragged him into the darkness of the wood, stumbling from stone to

stone.

 

“Since you have in your hands,” she continued, “everything we receive

from the Gods, the thrill which gives life and that which takes it

away, open your two hands upon my eyes, Demetrios ... that of love and

that of death, and if you do so, I shall die without regret.”

 

He gazed at her without replying, but she thought she could read assent

in his face.

 

Transfigured for the second time she lifted up her face with a fresh

__EXPRESSION__ in it, one of new-born desire driving away terror with the

strength of desperation.

 

She said no more, but from between her parted lips each breath seemed

to be a song of victory.

 

She seized him in her arms crying--

 

“Ah! Kill me ... kill me, Demetrios, why are you waiting!”

 

He rose, gazed once more at Touni as she lifted up her great eyes to

him, and taking one of the two gold pins from her hair, he buried it in

her left breast.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

APHRODITE’S PEARLS

 

 

Yet this woman would have given him her comb and even her hair for love

of him.

 

It was simply a scruple which had prevented him asking her for it:

Chrysis had very clearly desired a crime and not the ancient ornament

from a young woman’s hair. That was the reason he believed it his duty

to take part in the shedding of blood.

 

He might have considered that oaths made to a woman during an access

of love can be forgotten afterwards without any great harm being done

to the moral worth of the lover who has sworn them, and that, if ever

this involuntary forgetfulness were excusable, it was so in the

circumstances when the life of another woman, who was quite innocent,

was being weighed in the balance. But Demetrios did not stay to reason

thus. The adventure he had undertaken seemed to him too curious to be

stayed by incidents of violence.

 

So after cutting off Touni’s hair and concealing the ivory comb in his

clothing, he without further reflection undertook the third of the

tasks ordered by Chrysis: the taking of the necklace of Aphrodite.

 

There was no question of entering the temple by the great door. The

twelve hermaphrodites who kept the door would no doubt have allowed

Demetrios to enter, in spite of the order which refused admission to

the unsanctified in the priest’s absence; but what was the use of thus

simply establishing his guilt for the future when there was a secret

entry leading to the sanctuary. Demetrios wended his way to a lonely

part of the wood where the necropolis of the High Priests of the

Goddess was situated. He counted the tombs, opened the door of the

seventh, and closed it behind him.

 

With great difficulty, for the stone was heavy, he raised a slab within

the tomb which disclosed a marble staircase and descended it step by

step.

 

He knew that it was possible to take sixty steps in a straight line and

then it was necessary to advance by feeling the wall to save falling

down the subterranean staircase of the temple.

 

The coolness of this deep passage gradually calmed him. In a few

minutes he reached the end of it, ascended steps and opened the door.

 

The night was clear in the open, but black in the holy place. When he

had cautiously closed the heavy door, he felt himself to be trembling

as if he had been gripped by the coldness of the stones. He dared not

lift his eyes. The black silence terrified him; the darkness seemed to

him alive with the unknown. He put his hand to his brow like a man who

did not desire to awaken lest he might find himself alive. At last he

had the courage to look.

 

In a gleam of bright moonlight the Goddess was visible upon a pedestal

of red stone loaded with hanging treasures. She was naked and tenderly

tinted like a woman; in one hand she held her mirror and with the other

she was adorning her beauty with a necklace of seven rows of pearls. A

pearl, larger than the rest, long and silvery, gleamed at her breast

like a crescent. These were the actual holy pearls. Demetrios was lost in ineffable adoration. He believed in truth that

Aphrodite herself was there. He could no longer recognize his own work,

so deep was the abyss between that which it used to be and had become.

He extended his arms and murmured the mysterious words by which the

Goddess is addressed in the Phrygian ceremonies.