Glory and the Lightning (2 page)

Aspasia was leaning against her mother’s knee and contentedly eating a pastry stuffed with poppy seeds and honey and citron peel. Acilia smiled down into her daughter’s large light brown eyes, which were filled with mysterious liquid lights and shifting sparkles and shadowed and starred with golden lashes of enormous sweep and length. The child’s hair hung far down her back and seemed to be a mass of soft gilt threads. Her features were delicate and hinted of increasing maturity, though she was but six years old. When she smiled, as she did now, dimples raced over her cheeks—softly colored—and flew in and out around her full scarlet lips. There was an endearing charm about her, a certain enthrallment. She is far more beautiful than I was, thought Acilia with pride. Alas, the destiny of woman is very sorrowful, whether mistress or wife or concubine or slave. Should we not have a higher destiny than this?

Thargelia saw the mother’s changing and melancholy expression, and she said, “I have trained many children and maidens, but Aspasia is more than them all. Though very young she is already a philosopher. Her appearance is enchanting. Her mind will command the attention and the respect of even the most dissolute men. I predict a marvelous future for her. She has fate in her eyes, profound and immeasurable.”

“Women must change this world of men,” said Acilia, suddenly, and put her hand in protection on her child’s shining head.

Thargelia shrugged. “Would it be to our advantage? Men are now our adorers and our slaves. Let us not long for equality with them! We would lose our privileges and gain nothing but coarseness, anxiety, toil and disrespect.”

She laughed. “Let men continue to protect us and we will continue to rule them from our beds and with our blandishments. He who sits on a throne is never at peace or at rest. But she who is the voice behind the throne, however concealed, has all the advantages of power, and all the prerogatives, and can sleep tranquilly of a night.”

“So long as she is young and beautiful,” said Acilia, sighing.

Thargelia was vexed. “It was one of your faults, dear little one, that you were always sighing even when most happy. Youth? Clever and noble men may proclaim that they prefer green fruit. But they are ruled by women who are not young but remain dazzling, as any woman can remain if she desires. It is only the dull failed man who seeks his own futile youth in the youth of a woman, and thinks of a woman as merely a thing, like a slave.”

The young Aspasia was sipping her own small goblet of wine, but she looked up at her mother over the rim and her eyes were wise and merry and full of understanding. She is six years old, thought Acilia with some uneasiness, but she was never young!

Thargelia, watching with her astute eyes, said, “I have had a soothsayer for Aspasia. He predicts that she will glow like the moon over her country and have great men in her power, and everywhere she will be the inspiration of poets.”

“Soothsayers!” said Acilia with indulgence. Nevertheless, she was flattered and pleased. She laid a purse of gold coins on the ivory and lemonwood table. “Nothing must be denied my daughter. I trust you, Thargelia, for I have had reason to trust you. You are wiser than I. Do with Aspasia as you will, for I see you love her.”

Thargelia drew the child to her and kissed her milky brow and ran her fingers through the bright cobweb of her golden hair, which was airy and fine. “Aspasia and I understand each other,” she said, with affection, “for all we have our moments of rebellion. There are no uncertainties in her mind, no doubts, no hesitations. She will have what she wills, as a woman, and her will is already formidable.”

Acilia rose, seeing that her litter with four Nubian male slaves—gleaming blackly and naked to the waist and with crimson turbans on their heads—had arrived at the gates. Their ebony faces were carved and impassive and full of secret dignity. They had drawn aside the crimson embroidered curtains for their mistress, and Acilia entered the litter and reclined on the yellow silk of the cushions. She did not close the curtains as she was borne away. There was a sad premonition in her, as if she knew that never again would she see her daughter, who was on the steps of the portico and waving to her with the easy indifference of a child. Even as Acilia watched, Aspasia turned and ran swiftly into the house, forgetting her mother. Acilia sighed, and a tear fell from her lashes, which had been dusted with gold powder. She found her small silver mirror in her purse and carefully wiped it away. Axtochus, she recalled, detested reddened eyes in a woman, and fled from them impatiently. She arranged a beguiling smile on her face, careful not to wrinkle the skin about her pretty mouth. She opened a little alabaster pot, also from her purse, and smoothed a perfumed attar over her lips. In a moment she was thinking of the gilded cloth from the Orient and her dressmaker.

CHAPTER 2

Thargelia sat with her choicest maidens—all chosen for both their beauty and their intelligence—in the outdoor portico facing the west. It was her favorite hour, before dining, for she did not care for the day during which she slept after a night of festivity. But bathed in scented water, oiled with fragrance, painted delicately and powdered, her hair arranged artistically, her peplos draped to her satisfaction, her pins sparkling and a necklace of jewels about her neck to hide the sallow wrinkles, she felt capable of facing life again. “The night was made for love, reflection, philosophy and laughter,” she would say. “But the day is made for wars, peasants, arduous workers, muscles, men of activity, and farmers and goats and sheep. In other words, for those who care little about the delights of living and know nothing of them, being engrossed with labor and sweat. From this, we hetairai have been mercifully delivered; while the laborious wives sleep we rejoice in the company of their eminent husbands. Truly, our lives are enviable, and that is why we are hated by the stupid and lightless matrons of energetic households.”

She had aged but little over the fourteen years since Aspasia had been delivered by her mother to this house. “A woman must not frown; it creates wrinkles on the brow and between the eyes, and gentlemen detest wrinkles. Nor must she laugh too much; that induces furrows about her mouth. A merry face, yes, always. But never one which resembles the masks of the theatre, with too much emotion and emphasis. A soft smile, with a regard to curvature, a twinkling of the eyes, as you have been taught, a gentle inclination of the head—these are desirable and do not age a woman. They enhance her charm. Gestures, too, must never be too emphatic. It annoys gentlemen, for they do not like vigorous women, except in their kitchens and in their beds. A woman must always imply; she must never assert. I repeat these admonitions, my treasures, so that you will be successful and rich and endlessly amusing and seductive.”

There were eight among her choice maidens, and among them was her favorite, Aspasia, of incredible beauty and incredible intelligence, which she had been taught must never be aggressive among men. “Compliance, always. Entertainment, always. But never without elegance.”

She controlled the diet of her maidens sedulously, and as vigilantly as she preserved their virginity, which would be delivered to the richest and most eminent bidder, and for a very high price to Thargelia herself.

But the maidens were not virginal in their minds and their hearts. “Even green fruit must prophesy ripeness and deliciousness, my treasures.” She wished a sheen on her maidens, so she encouraged love among them—with discretion so that they would later be lovers of men and not lovers of women. In truth, if a maiden became too ardent over a sister neophyte Thargelia would remove her to another building where she could be trained to be a pleasure to some rich widow or dissatisfied wealthy matron.

“A woman’s complexion and the softness of her body skin are her greatest assets,” she would teach the young girls. “Therefore, they must not be exposed to the sun, but shaded at all times, and carefully covered, for the kiss of Phoebus burns and darkens and turns to fissured leather, and such is repulsive to gentlemen of taste and discrimination.” The girls were bathed only in water in which perfumed oils were dissolved, and then sweet lotions were applied. Hair was brushed night and morning for at least an hour, with the help of slaves, and flesh was massaged to the polish and smoothness of marble. “A woman’s natural beauty, no matter how great, begins to fade at eighteen and twenty, if wantonly neglected. She must begin to preserve it no later than the age of five years, and guard it always. Many ladies of this school are notable beauties even in their sixties. It is an art which women must cultivate all their lives, for men, alas, no matter their intellectual endowments, never look below a woman’s complexion, firm breasts and rounded loins and thighs, to discover any mental attainments. It is the rare man who appreciates a woman’s mind; in truth, men are irritated by it unless it is accompanied by a handsome face and body. Then it is an added joy. A full rosy mouth which invents epigrams, and which can discourse on learned things, is delectable. But withered lips uttering wisdom cause a man to flee.”

She would say, “Only a girl at puberty can face daylight without fear. After fourteen or fifteen the light of Artemis is infinitely flattering, and the light of soft lamps and candles. There is a new fashion now, of having lamps suspended from the ceiling. Avoid them like a traitor, for they are indeed traitorous to any woman beyond puberty.”

All the maidens, and not only the eight of the choicest, found little leisure in the school for courtesans. They attended classes presided over by female and male teachers of the best mentality, where they learned—not the arts of a household, which were the province of illiterate ladies intended for marriage by their parents—but the arts of politics, philosophy, exquisitely perfect language, rhetoric, music, dancing, the arrangement of garments, the nuances of perfumes, seduction, conversation, history, gentle athletics to preserve the figure and enhance it, a smattering of medical lore, mathematics—“One must deal with bankers later”—artistic placing of furniture, selection of fabrics most flattering, graceful movements, hairdressing, charming sophistries, penmanship, the keeping of books, literature, poetry, sculpture, painting, science, but, above all else, how to please and entrance a man and all the arts of love, including perversions.

“Young men are bulls,” Thargelia would say with severity, “therefore, unless they are tremendously rich and important, I deliver none of my maidens to them. A slut and one of my delicate courtesans are all the same in bed to them, and, as they have the identical equipment, there is no distinction. So, I am careful not to arrange matters between them and one of my young ladies, except on rare occasions and only by consent of the young lady. There is a greater danger, too: A maiden may fall in love with a young man, alas, and there is no worse fate, for young men are capricious and are soon discontented even with the most desirable of girls and look for novelty and are not interested in conversation. But a middle-aged man needs to be coaxed, and when coaxed to fulfillment he is endlessly grateful, and gratitude leads to pleasant establishment, money and jewels. Also adoration. Be careful, then, about love, which is a deceiver and a liar and men are also all deceivers and liars, and must be dealt with capably, or a woman is lost.”

The maidens were taught delicacy. “There is nothing more abhorrent than a coarse lewd woman,” said Thargelia and the other teachers. “Never must an indecent word cross your lips or a lascivious jest, not even in passion—which I trust you will never feel. (Passion can destroy a woman.) You must keep in mind that you are great ladies, of taste and discrimination and learning. You must always be in control of your emotions, and never utter a hasty harsh reproach, no matter how provoked. Pleasantness is most desirable.”

Once Aspasia said in her lovely soft voice though her eyes flashed with rebellion: “We are, then, only toys for the pleasure of men who may be inferior to us.”

Thargelia smiled at her, for it was impossible to be irritable with Aspasia. “Say, better, that we are jewels, precious jewels. How is a jewel preserved? In fine cloth, guarded and cherished, valued above all things, adored, proudly displayed. We are not utensils of the kitchen. They serve their purpose, and are used by wives, whose husbands give us gold and gems and lay their heads on our knees and worship us. Do they worship their wives? They flee from them.”

The girls were taught intensively of the nature of men, and how to preserve themselves from entanglements in their own emotions, which could ruin them. Thargelia was vehement in her admonitions that the maidens must cultivate a contempt for men, which, certainly, they must never reveal.

“Once you become contemptuous of men you will always be serene in their company, and even happily affectionate, as one feels affection for a dog. For your contempt will make you impervious to destructive inclinations, and devoid of passion and natural indignation, and will render both your emotions and your countenances bland and unwrinkled and undistorted. Contempt banishes pity. Once you pity a man, you will love him, and that is a detestable and alarming and dangerous condition, and leads ultimately to despair. Certainly, you must assume an attitude of discreet devotion, for men desire all women to be devoted to them. But never must you be truly devoted. It is suicide.”

Love, in short, must be for one’s self, and never must it be wasted on a man. “Let the poets sing of love,” said Thargelia. “But that love is not for their wives; it is only for women who contain their sentiments and are elusive as well as daintily wanton, and are never fully possessed. Had Artemis fallen in love with Acteon, and had married him, he would soon have become wearied of her love and sought a more fugitive joy. Men demand a woman’s whole heart. Pretend to give it, and then when he feels secure in its possession give him cause to feel alarm, not overtly, but with a smile, an averted head, a gentle disentanglement from his arms. He will then begin the pursuit once more, and sue for your affections with gold and jewels.”

“We must, then, live only for ourselves,” said Aspasia with the most demure of countenances.