Glory and the Lightning (16 page)

“But we,” Al Taliph had gently informed her, “argue more to confuse, or to display the elaborateness of our own intelligence for the admiration of others. It is an exercise in inscrutability. It is never dull like your western bald logic, which is barren of true imagination. We argue, not to inform or educate but to mystify. It is endlessly exciting and inspires our spirits as does wine, and is intoxicating.”

“It never concludes,” said Aspasia.

“Therefore, it has more validity than your restricted western conclusions, for nothing in heaven or earth is conclusive, but ever changes and is in flux, and never is graven on eternal stone.”

“It does not possess the merits of law and order, lord.”

“Nor does reality, Aspasia. There is no fixed reality, as you have averred yourself. There are realities within realities and those endlessly change form and context and never repeat themselves. Do you understand, my sun goddess?”

“No,” Aspasia said, and laughed. But she was uneasy. She preferred boundaries even to imagination and conjecture, and all based on some acceptance of terms, however subjective they might be. “All else is chaos,” she would say.

Al Taliph would shrug, highly diverted. “We know nothing beyond our mere existence and our feeble imaginings and hypotheses. Beyond this, it is apparent to us, live enormities and vast shapes which would affright us if we glimpsed them and which you would call chaos. We of the east suspect their being. You prefer your deities, or your supernatural, to be recognizably human and governed by laws which also govern men. This is egotism of the most offensive kind. It is also childish.” He informed her that the fearful deities in the gardens did not represent actual beings but rather the emanations of those beings, “or, if you will, their attributes or passions.” But the beings themselves were not aware of humanity, or, if aware, were not concerned, or interested. They had their own identity, forever incomprehensible to man. Only their emotions, their natures, sometimes projected into the tiny realm of man, and then not by will but by accident.

Aspasia would then feel a tremor of terror which she could never explain to herself. She could only reject, for fear of insanity. However, the eastern mind accepted all this and did not stagger into madness. Perhaps, she would think, the Greeks were willing to die to halt the Persians, they half-realizing that if the east prevailed there would be no ground on which the west could stand and survive. The western mind would perish and all its reason and laws and acceptances of a common reality. Was the eastern mind corrupt? Not with the general meaning of corruption, certainly. But what else was it? She never knew though faintly she discerned, and retreated in her mind. All dealings with the east by the west must of necessity be superficial and based on some shallow compromise, acceptable to both, and profitable to both. Beyond that there was no meeting. No negotiations could be used on the basis of good will, for to the west such had one meaning and to the east it had another, and they were not compatible, and were rooted in immutable character.

“Men everywhere, east or west,” said Al Taliph, “have one meeting ground, and that is gold. It is the universal touch, the universal understanding. We may differ on everything else—but not on gold.” He had smiled at her. “You of the west find us devious. We find you naive.” She understood that he was not denigrating her, as a woman, but her whole race. Sometimes she was puzzled. The Persians and the Medes were of the Aryan peoples, as was she, herself—yet there was no complete comprehension. He would play with her wonderful hair and kiss it lingeringly, and she would smile. Men had another meeting place besides gold, she would think, and that was women. An astute woman of any race could meet a man of any race and subtly conquer him, east or west. However, she would admit, Al Taliph was never entirely conquered, as were the men of the west. Indulged, apparently loved and admired, and even respected, though she was, he could impatiently and abruptly dismiss her and ignore her, and not call her for days. He remained intact, invulnerable; for that reason alone he fascinated her. She did not love him as she understood love, yet she venerated him and often feared him, for he was a mystery to her. She was also grateful to him for many reasons, and she did not have to simulate passion for him. He was adroit in the ways of women and sometimes this humiliated her, for when she would use her taught blandishments on him he would watch her with a glint of amusement in his eyes, as one would watch a cunning child. He had power, and women, she would admit, adored power.

To the right of where Aspasia now stood in the courtyard were arched windows along the walls, not as pointed as the arches themselves but rounded. These were covered with bronze grills, like prison bars. Here was the life of the palace. The building was round, rather than square, with a domed roof of blazing whiteness, surrounded by tall and narrow turrets like soaring notched needles of stone. There was another secret courtyard, smaller than this, the courtyard that led from the harem and was used exclusively by the women of the palace and the eunuchs who guarded them. Aspasia sometimes went to that courtyard, where she was not welcome, and endeavored to talk to the women and the wives.

Greeks extolled the body, as did all the western peoples, and worshipped athletes, pugilists, actors, dancers and prodigious wrestlers and racers and discus throwers. They were a physical people. But the Persians were not. The body was of less importance to them than the mind—with the exception of the bodies of their women, and their mighty soldiers. They had a certain indolence of character and deplored sweat and too much activity. The women of the harem were very plump and even fat, and this the men admired. It was strange that Al Taliph did not find Aspasia’s slenderness and quickness deplorable. He would smooth her long slim flanks with his hands and fondle her tight firm breasts and concave belly, and she would wonder, even in her excitement, why this was so, considering the heavy plumpness of his wives and concubines. Sometimes she would think that this was because he was a Mede and not a Persian. Yet, when buying a new female slave he would consider only a woman who was fat.

Once she had complained to him, “I do not understand you in the least,” to which he had replied fondly, “My white dove, feel grateful for that.” He had intimated some terror in the eastern mind, and while she shrank she was enamored.

She was not unhappy. She had a tutor who sedulously taught her the language of Persia and the customs and she endeavored to learn, the better to please Al Taliph. She was endlessly curious, endlessly engrossed. She had access to Al Taliph’s libraries and those areas exclusive to him, filled with art which at once repelled and captivated her. Yet sometimes she was depressed by the very ornateness of it, the inhuman aspects of carved jade and stone and lapis lazuli and bronze, the formal mosaics of one dimension only, the static postures that appeared to eliminate suppleness entirely. In short, they seemed to deny flesh and blood and the teeming heart and to be symbols only. “But I have caught you!” he once laughed at her. “Did you not once tell me that all in the universe is only symbols, my sweet Aurora?” She wanted to answer impatiently, but she had no words. He was far more conversant with the western mind than was she with the eastern, and he accepted the former with equanimity as a phenomenon of the world while she could not accept at all.

She believed that he loved her, if only as a novelty. Once she said to him, “Will you discard me when I am old, in a few years?” He had gazed at her with that amused tenderness which she sometimes found infuriating. “Lily of Shalimar,” he had replied, “you will never grow old.” He would then tell her of Egypt and India, their customs and religions, and her mind was diverted and she was eager to learn. He said, “That is the attribute of those who are eternally young—they learn, their souls are ardent, their eyes, seeking, never fade, their bodies are never bent. My mother was such.” That was the first and the last time that he ever spoke of his mother.

He asked her, “Are you lonely, my love?” When she answered that she had never truly known loneliness he had nodded as if deeply gratified and content. She had received priceless gifts from him, jewels and gold, and knew that she could leave him at any time she willed. But she did not want to leave. There were occasions when she felt the exhilaration of happiness.

Sometimes he would take her in his awninged chariot, blazing with brilliant enamel and embossed gems and drawn by black Arabian horses with harnesses of silver and driven by half-naked and turbaned Nubian slaves, to the furiously noisy and teeming bazaars on the outskirts of the city of Murghab. Here on an eye-blinding and sweltering plain below the barren blue and saffron mountains were endless rows of tents and booths reeking with mingled odors of spices and dung and sandalwood and nard and sand, and hot dust which blew in clouds over everything like billows of sunlit gold. Here were heaps of Indian chili powder, ranging from the palest gold to vehement scarlet, twisted tables and ornaments and jewelry of brass and silver set with semi-precious turquoise and flawed pearls and garnet, and bales of silk and embroidered tissues, exotic sweetmeats and jars of milk curds and carpets like flung flowers, and sandals and boots of the softest leather and straw. Here were merchants from Asia and Asia Minor and Cathay and Arabia and Egypt, all vociferous and unbearably vocal, and full of quarrels, laughter, oaths, as they visited from booth to booth, to study competitors, attempting to denigrate their wares, shaking treasures before their faces and haranguing them and sneering at their offerings. There were booths selling roasted meats and fowl, cakes, pastries, bottled wine and casks and beer and even Syrian whiskey. Others sold pickled olives in kegs, strings of onions, brined cabbage and cucumbers, strange breads coated with roasted and honeyed seeds and seething with flies. Camels, raising fresh dust, were dragged through the narrow passageways, screaming in peevish torment and eyeing the throngs with contempt and resisting masters, and clusters of dogs and scurrying cats, and tethered goats and cattle. Geese and chicken and ducks were confined in shaking crates of reeds, and their complaints competed with all the other hectic and disorderly sounds and sights. There were booths where knives, scimitars, swords and wrought silver daggers were sold, and which were filled with the hissing and grating shrills of grinding wheels. Yellow-skinned and sinewy men with shaved heads had booths of flowers, vegetables, woollen cloths and exquisitely carved ebony and teakwood chairs and tables inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl and little ceramics, and others sold pottery and porcelain ornaments, many of them of extreme artistry and extraordinary inlaid colors. There were beak-faced black men with cold and expressionless faces who opened small carved wooden boxes for the scrutiny of men only, and from under silk-hung tables, and they were surrounded by laughing male customers who elbowed each other and grinned in each other’s face like naughty boys.

There were booths of moneychangers, alert-eyed and drawn-faced men of all races, guarded by men with drawn swords, and there was a constant tinkle of gold and silver and bronze and brass, from locked chests behind chairs and chained drawers. The sellers remained calm and silently scornful, while customers blasphemed, shook fists, argued, slapped their hands on tables, thrust bags of coins in the faces of the bankers—who appeared aloof from all this and only whispered among themselves or threw back bags with gestures of dismissal, to the loud protestations of the sweating offerers. Some bankers merely recorded in open books, as quiet and studious as if they were in the sanctuaries of orderly banks, unaware of the masses that blew in and out of the guarded booths. Here the noise was stupendous.

“You will observe,” said Al Taliph to Aspasia, who was both hooded and veiled in this melee and jungle of uproar and running and pushing men, “that men who deal with money are not to be discomposed or disconcerted. Gold and silver have a most sobering influence—for, do they not rule the world in spite of all the philosophers and priests who cry to the contrary? If I wished advice as unchangeable as the Medes’ and the Persian law, and as adamant and sensible, I would go to a banker who is sealed in a crystal of reality and has no untidy passions. Certainly, I would go to no temple to consult the gods!”

“But gold and silver alike have value only in the subjective minds of men,” said Aspasia. “They have no intrinsic glory of themselves. They were conceived by ideas, and those ideas could be shattered.”

“I advise you to discuss this esoteric opinion with bankers,” said Al Taliph, touching her veiled cheek as one would touch the cheek of a favored child. “I doubt, however, that they would agree with you.”

“They are only symbols, and convenient ones—which men have accepted—of what is truly valuable: food, shelter, barter, land, possessions.”

“Then men would, and do, give their lives only for symbols,” said Al Taliph, laughing at her. “But, have you not said this, yourself, in your discussions with me. Yes.”

When, embarrassed, she did not answer, he said, “You have asserted that our gods, too, are simply symbols of our hopes and despairs and longings, and possibly have no objective existence. However, we in the east believe that symbols are outward manifestations of unseeable and unknowable reality.” Again he touched her cheek and smiled. “Alas, even philosophers who deride gold and priests who condemn the lust for it can only survive if they receive sustenance bought by the very thing which they despise! I have not discerned that they reject such sustenance; in truth, they are avid for it.”

Aspasia, who possessed great humor, laughed in answer. “I have observed that it is rare to encounter a gaunt philosopher or a starveling priest. But they must eat, as they are men, or die.”

“If they wish to prove their hypothesis that gold is worthless and the lust for it is wanton, then let them publicly starve in the market places as a worthy example to other men,” said Al Taliph. “I love these idealists who denounce possessions but desire them for themselves!”