Delusion's Master (Tales From the Flat Earth) (18 page)

After a week,
the father came to his senses. He walked into the house, and lifted his
daughter in his arms. He put an orange into one of her hands, and a mug of wine
into the other.

“I have been
stupid,” he said, “not to respect a young girl’s temerity. You must forgive
me.” Then he slipped a thick gold ring on to her thumb. “I should not have left
you to choose. I have realized my error and chosen for you. Here is the
vow-ring of the landowner’s son. In a month, you will go with him before the
elder, and be wed.”

Then he
paused, observing his daughter as if he anticipated some tantrum or other. But
she only raised her turquoise eyes, and looked full at him, a look without
reproach or hysteria.

“You believe,”
she said, “that you have acted for the best. I regret you have not.”

At her
absolute authority, at the color of her eyes, the anger in the reed-cutter
ignited. He flung up his fist to strike her across the head, but his wife
caught his fist and hung on it.

“Only think,”
she cried, “how it would look. Our girl unveiled at her wedding, with a gold
ring round her finger and a black ring round her eye!”

She could not know her
curious birth, this moonflame of a girl. How could she? Who had there been to
tell her of it, once she was old enough to reason? And surely she did
not
know, for the stars did not call to her, or the sun, as these cosmic things had
called to her true mother. She had lived among men, had the Comet’s child,
grown among them. She had never protested or eschewed her fortune. Until now,
she had never refused a single proper thing.

What then
motivated her? Some secret intuitive grasp of her nature? She was the flower
within the crystal. Of what were her mind and spirit fashioned?

It is perhaps
a fact, that to the truly good, life, and the ways of men, and goodness itself,
are very simple things. What to others appeared as her virtuousness, was to her
merely her state of being. She did not set out to be good. She was good
naturally, as another breathed. Hate and bitterness and envy and despair, those
four envenomed serpents gnawing the livers of mankind, could not get in at her.
But to herself she was nothing special; only herself to herself. And her sense
of unexplained waiting, which was total, of inexplicable purpose, which was
utter, these were as much a part of her as all else. She did not protest to the
reed-cutter, though she never once agreed with his plan. Nor did she protest to
the women who came to make her wedding garments, or to the neighbors who
brought her gifts. When one or two of the young men who had lost out on the
bargain hung about the house with wild looks, she went to them, and, as in the
past, was able, curiously and obliquely, to console them. And when the
landowner’s son arrived, his handsome face pale with romance, she was courteous
to him, nor did she refuse his token kiss. Only when he swaggered and said to
her: “I think you will not mourn, being wed to me. You wish it too,” did she
quietly reply, “I do not wish it.”

At this a
small scene ensued. The reed-cutter pacified the prospective bridegroom. The
prospective bridegroom’s haughty servant was heard to remark that the landowner
did not wish the marriage, either, and had only given in for fear the young man
would otherwise slay himself.

When the
guests were gone, the reed-cutter stormed about the countryside, convinced he
would beat his daughter if he remained indoors.

But,
unimpeded, the day of the wedding presented itself.

The women came
with songs and flowers, and escorted the girl to the elder’s house. And here,
clad in her embroidered raiment, she was married to the landowner’s son, who
then lifted her veil and tore it in two pieces, as a symbol of the breaking of
her maidenhead.

In a carriage
drawn by dove-white mares, the bride and groom were carried to the landowner’s
estate, and here, with all the village, they feasted, amid the tamarisk trees,
the olives and the tame peacocks.

Afternoon
expired, the sun politely took its leave, and dusk wandered reluctantly after.
But the eating and drinking and dancing went on, and soon the stars came out to
see. They missed the bride, for she had just gone in, led by her new
attendants, who took her to a chamber lit with scented lamps and hung with
silken drapes. Here they unclothed her, perfuming her as the lamps were
perfumed, dressing her in draperies of silk as the bed and the walls were
dressed. And as they did this, so the handmaidens marveled aloud at her extreme
pulchritude, for it was etiquette to do so. Thus, so intent were they on the
protocol of these compliments, that they missed the evidence that everything
they said was correct. She was indeed slender and supple as a lotus stem, her
breasts, truly, were like the bells of honeyflowers. Her loins and her limbs
were, for sure, a delight to eye and hand and every sense; her hair a fountain
of starshine, her eyes like the holy lake of Bhelsheved. For once, all they
said was no more than factual, but the women scarcely noticed. If you had asked
them afterwards, was the girl fair, they would have answered: “Pretty enough.”
Yet she was like the new moon gleaming upon the sea. She was like the morning
of the morning.

It was
possibly this look of her, burning softly through her robe of silk, the
glistering fall of her hair, that checked the young man when he came in to her.
He was hot with drink and desire, yet maybe he was not entirely certain,
either.

“My father at
last agrees,” he announced, however, “your lack of dowry is amply compensated
by your loveliness.”

Then he went
to her, and embraced her. He did this with artistry. Love was an occupation in
which he was well-versed, and he had learned the trade diligently. He caressed
and kissed his bride, seeking out in her those responses to which he had become
accustomed. But gradually there stole in on him one awesome new knowledge.

It was not
that she was cold to him, for she was now, as in all else, tender and gentle.
But she neither fired at his touch nor shrank in timidity. She seemed cognisant
of all he could do, yet indifferent, or rather, removed from it. It was the
crystal shell he made love to, then, not the flower. He could not come at
her
.
Finding this, a terrific fury might have overtaken him. He might have forced
her, lust not to be denied. But he felt no fury, and soon he felt no lust. The
urge sank, and slept within him, and he was neither discomforted nor
distressed. He found himself to be only puzzled.

“Is this some
spell you weave?” he said at length. “A spell to make me impotent?” But he did
not really believe such a thing, had suffered no foreboding.

“Your manhood
is assured with others,” she said. “But I am not for you, nor for any man, I
think.”

At this he
paled, and he whispered, “Is it the gods themselves who have kept you from
this?”

“I do not
know.”

Then he sat a
long tune drinking wine, and finally he laughed and told her they were foolish,
and he would lie with her after all. She stretched out with him, without demur,
but things went as before, painlessly and nonproductively. And even now the
impulse to rape or wrath or fear did not enter the young man’s head, though a
deep sadness came into his heart.

Eventually he
fell asleep in her arms, which were a virgin’s still, and that was their
wedding night.

In the morning
he was ashamed, but she reasoned with him with great care, untangling the
strands of his anxiety till his self-esteem was in order again.

When at last
the rich father came in to congratulate and tease them, and the women to mark
the evidence of the wedding sheet, (or, if necessary, to falsify the drops of
initial blood), they discovered the couple composedly seated at a board game.

Disconcerted,
but seeing his son to be the tutor, the girl the pupil, in this activity, the
father assumed that here was a cypher for the night’s love-ritual.

“And does your
wife take your instruction well, my son?”

The young man
raised his sad, calm face and answered: “Alas, she is not my wife. Nor may she
be.”

The women had
by now discovered the pristine bed, empty of all proper stainings of any sort,
and stood about twisting their hands.

“Is there some
impediment?” the father demanded, although, looking at the girl, he could
fathom none—only some horrible concealed thing could be the cause. But again
his son spoke softly to him.

“The
impediment is the will of the gods. It is they who will have her. She can
belong to no other than heaven.”

The
altercation which then broke out is easy to imagine and repetitious to set
down, since it was thereafter repeated both in the house of the village’s
elder, and in the houses of most of the villagers, especially the home of the
reed-cutter. Nor did this occur one or two times, but many. The landowner’s
son, a young man of great character, stood beside his wife through all these
displays of amazement and abuse, himself receiving, on the whole, more insult
than she, and that of a very obvious nature. But he did not shift from his
assertion that not he, but the gods, must have her. After some months of
celibacy and debate, he began to be credited.

Now every
twenty years, or thereabouts, certain elders of certain of the villages, and
rich men, and others in positions of authority, would be drawn by lot. And they
would make a journey through all the lands that held Bhelsheved as their
religious center, and they would select from the children, and very
occasionally from the youths and maidens, those that they thought fit to serve
the gods in the white moon city in the desert. These young persons were then
conducted to a separate establishment quite close to Bhelsheved. Here they were
subjected to tests and particular trials, to determine which of them the gods
preferred. Some consequently returned home, having been judged unworthy. Some
remained and became the gracious and unworldly priesthood of the holy city.

The season for
such another choosing was yet six or seven years off, but the problem of the
reed-cutter’s daughter gave evidence that a unique case had arisen. As anger
and argument fell away, some new format was required to take their place.
Religion flooded like water into a hollow. Then, at last, they looked at the
girl with fresh eyes, and saw her, with astonishment, for the first time. How
glowingly pale she was, how silver her hair, and such a lake-blue gaze... Yes,
in her form, she was fashioned for Bhelsheved.

Important men
visited the village. An air of self-importance visited the village in their
wake. Even the reed-cutter began to smile again. One pride was to be salvaged
by another. Anyone’s daughter could make a decent marriage. But to be chosen by
the gods themselves... Had he not always expressed doubts about her wedding,
even shutting her in the house to make sure she considered properly whether she
really wanted to wed?

She was
examined, Moonflame Soveh, who was no longer known by such names. She was
questioned. She had stayed serene through all the trouble, and serene she still
was as cold-eyed women probed her body to ascertain its chastity, as frowning
officious men probed her brain for promiscuity of thought, promiscuity sexual
or intellectual, for evil meditation, or one solitary impure dream.

But she was
like a flower to these also. Turned inside out, she was wholesome, delicious,
and much more. For as their interrogation went on, they found they could not
scathe her, or smear her, even by their words. So, and only so, they perceived
she was within the crystal. And they interpreted that crystal as a thing of
holy device, a glass jar the gods had put her in, and which they had stoppered
by divine will.

The village
wept when she was borne away to the desert, to the penultimate building a mile
from the gates of Bhelsheved. But as they wept, they rejoiced in her. Her
father rejoiced. Her mother. Those who had loved her as children and as adults.
All of them. All save the landowner’s son, who did not weep or rejoice. He lay
instead with a girl, real, imperfect and marvelous as a rose, lay with her in
love amid the pastel shade of the olive trees. And only when their bliss was
achieved and ended, did he experience, once more, that empty cell within his
heart, no larger than a drop of rain, or a single tear. Such a small emptiness.
Such a tiny room in the palace of his emotions and his appetites. It would
never again cause him any great grief. And never, never would it be filled.

The place of testing and
preparation, one mile from Bhelsheved. It was none other than that earlier tower of Sheve, Jasrin’s tower, where she had played with the bone of her child; where
Chuz, Prince Madness, that master of delusion and dismay, had come to call. But
centuries had gone by. The old tower was bolstered by new brickwork, and by a
cluster of courts and attendant buildings. The pool, where a torch had burned
under the water, was now rimmed by a cistern, and partly veiled by twining
plants. The palms were taller, though one had died and its great trunk had been
made into a wooden column which stood at the centre of the interviewing
chamber.

Seated or
kneeling, or on her feet, in company, or alone, the village girl, whose name
had once been Soveh, endured many ordeals, verbal, and of the spirit, beneath
this column.